FC4: Things to Do after Installing Red Hat Fedora Core 4 (FC4)

Below is a list of the things I needed to do after a fresh install of Fedora Core 4 (FC4). Nearly all actions required root privileges.

• Installation of Selected Fedora Extras:
  • yum install emacs (!)
  • yum install gftp [nice FTP client]
  • yum install yum-utils [e.g., yumdownloader]
  • yum install tk [needed by the Synthesis Tool Kit (STK)]
  • yum install samba [for file-sharing over ethernet between Windows and Linux]
  • yum install samba-swat [pulls in xinetd (!) and system-config-samba (!)]
  • yum install compat-gcc-32 [Usually ``./configure cc=gcc32'' is faster than debugging older code not compatible with the more strict gcc-4.0]
  • yum install octave [runs most of my Matlab scripts]
  • yum install octave-forge [for signal-processing tool-box items]⁹
  • yum install gv¹⁰ [has nicer page-positioning, document reload, etc.]
  • yum install xpdf [has nicer link-following features than evince]
    Be sure to look at the xpdf man page for complete set-up info. I had to manually create a ~/.xpdfrc file containing

    urlCommand "firefox %s"
    psFile "|lpr"
    

  • yum install xfig [for drawings -- pulls in transfig]
  • yum install tetex-prosper [for making slides/overheads in LaTeX]
  • yum install maxima [Maxima is the original symbolic mathematics program. To get started, say help;[return]... pulls in Common Lisp, libsigsegv (user-mode page-fault handling), and postgresql-libs (database utilities)]

  • Things needed for developing DSSI plugins for the rosegarden music sequencer. (If you are not going to develop applications or loadable plugins with GUIs, you can skip this whole group.)
    • yum install gtk+ [gimp (and GNOME) toolkit -- I need this to compile various dssi plugin GUIs]
    • yum install gtk+-devel [gimp toolkit header files etc.]
    • yum install jack-audio-connection-kit-devel [needed for DSSI plugin development]
    • yum install anjuta [``integrated development environment'' for UNIX/GNOME]
    • yum install glade2 [GUI builder used by anjuta - pulls in several devel packages]
    • yum install devhelp [for context-senstive API documentation]
    • yum install libgnomeui-devel [GNOME libraries used by glade2 - pulls in several more devel packages]
    • yum install libglademm24-devel [needed to make the ll-scope-0.2.1 DSSI plugin - pulls in five other ``*24'' packages]
    • yum install fftw3-devel [need fftw3.h to make libconvolve which is needed to make the dssi_convolve plugin]

• RPM Installs from the Web (not in Fedora Extras)
  • unrar [needed to unpack Sound Font files from the Web]
  • scons [Build system used by rosegarden as a replacement for autoconf, etc.]

• Tarball Installs from the Web (not in Fedora Extras)
  • qdu [disk-space usage analyzer/manager]
  • valgrind [for catching out-of-bounds memory access and memory leaks in C programs]
  • ps2eps [ps2eps -B -C < infile.ps > outfile.eps trims away excess whitespace in a postscript figure]

• Getting Samba working
  • Open Desktop / System Settings / Security Level / Modify Policy / Samba / Disable SELinux protection for the smbd/nmbd daemon [so WinXP can see things]
  • Desktop / System Settings / Server Settings / Services / Samba
    • smbpasswd -a me
    • add `me = <Windows XP username>' to end of smbusers
  • Desktop / System Settings / Security Level / Firewall / [eth0 trusted]
• Edit /etc/updatedb.conf [to enable daily updatedb]
• /etc/X11/xorg.conf: ctrl:nocaps, or (better):
  Desk Top / Preferences / KeyBoard / Ctrl Key Position / Alternate Ctl
• Evolution: answer questions to set up email
• cp -rp /mnt/olddisk/usr/local /usr [or just copy what you still want]
• cp -rp /mnt/olddisk/home/me /home/me-new
  • I prefer to move in old stuff as needed to eliminate old junk.
  • Be very careful when copying configuration files ~/.*, since they may change format across major releases. I copy very few of these ``dot files'', and I look them over first when they are important (such as Evolution email directories, etc.). Before copying, be sure to move the newly installed version to a new name as a backup.
• Desk Top / System Settings / Printing / Set HP Laser Jet as PostScript printer

• Getting LaTeX2HTML Working
  • yum install latex2html
  • Carry forward bugfixes for pstoimg and latex2html (all have been reported, but few have been incorporated--it is not clear that LaTeX2HTML is actually being maintained). See §9 for some of the bugfixes.
  • Disable QV override in /usr/share/texmf/dvips/misc/alt-rule.pro This fixes the gray underbar problem in math images.
  • comment-out hyperref usage in my standard L^ATEX header file (seems to be built in now)
  • Immediately start using the new latex option ``-file-line-error''!
  • Start using the new latex option ``-output-format pdf''.
• ln -s /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/perl [my scripts want it here]

• In Desktop / System Settings / Network
  Change 'localhost.localdomain' to '<preferred hostname>.localdomain'
  In root shell: /sbin/service network restart
  (This causes GNOME to complain on login - can't find address of hostname.
  FIX: add hostname.localdomain as EXPLICIT synonym in /etc/hosts)

• Desktop / System Settings / Server Settings / Services
  Turn off bluetooth, PCMCIA, Red Hat update checks
  Turn on yum updates

• cp -p daily-mirror.cron /etc/cron.daily/
  (daily backup = ``slow RAID-1'' -- see §7 for daily-mirror.cron)

• Miscellaneous Optional Installs to Consider
  • yum install thunderbird [Most popular email client among Linux Journal readers--Evolution #2]
  • Find and install acroread, gpdf [for orthogonal pdf viewing/printing support]
  • yum install gsview [alternate postscript viewer]
  • yum install gnumeric [alternate numeric spreadsheet like MS Excel]
  • yum install python-matplotlib [makes nice figures from numeric]
  • yum install bonnie++ [disk benchmarks]
  • yum install gnotime [time tracker]
  • yum install pdftohtml [I prefer LaTeX2HTML in general, but this is worth a look]
  • yum install subversion [nice version control app, extends CVS]
  • Install Dropbox from the Web [more convenient computer-file-synching than svn when no version-control needed]
  • yum install nautilus-dropbox [Dropbox integration for Nautilus]
  • yum install eclipse-platform [integrated development environment for Java, C++, etc.]
  • yum install yumex [GUI for yum]
  • yum install BibTool [bibtool manipulates bibtex citation databases (used with L^ATEX)]
  • yum install HelixPlayer [media player that works with Web browsers such as firefox et al.]
  • yum install alsa-tools [ALSA command-line tools for specific hardware such as an FM OPL2/3 loader for ALSA (sbiload) - pulls in fltk]

• Install Planet CCRMA
  To make yum aware of the Planet CCRMA package repositories, I use a modification of the files by Benjamin Hardy:

  cp -p planetccrma.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/

  cp -p RPM-GPG-KEY-planetccrma

  Alternatively, one can use apt as described in the online doc. After the gpg key and yum repository pointers are installed, one can look search for all packages starting with ``planet'' in yumex. Here is what I installed (listed as if done from the command line):
  • yum install planetccrma-core-edge [installs the basics]
  • yum install planetccrma-audiovideoapps [installs all apps]
  • yum install planetccrma [installs a copy of the online doc, package lists, configuration files, etc., in /usr/share/planetccrma/
  Note that yum install planetccrma-core-edge is not needed if you do not need the low-latency kernel and replacement ALSA sound driver kernel modules. (I needed this for sure to obtain the snd-echo3g driver, which supports my Gina 3G audio hardware interface.) Another option is planetccrma-core--see the Planet CCRMA instructions for details.

  Note that whenever the ALSA drivers are installed, such as after installing Planet CCRMA, it is necessary to unmute and set the gains on your audio output channels using gamix or alsamixer. The updated settings can then be stored by typing (as root)

  /usr/sbin/alsactl store
  

  This saves current sound settings for the ALSA driver in a system configuration file. Without this, you have to unmute and set gains on all channels after every reboot.¹¹

• Incompatibilities
  • nedit replaced by gedit
  • gv and xpdf are replaced by evince, but I'm addicted to many features of the former tools that were not carried forward. Since TEX can now output PDF directly, I am trying not to use postscript any more. However, I do not yet have a replacement for gv on the output of psnup. I think xpdf may be adequate for my needs, so we'll see how it goes. As of 11/2011, I still like it better than Evince or Acrobat Reader 8 (great key equivalents, keeps its slide-bars positioned,...).

• Broken things I'm avoiding at present
  • yum install mathml-fonts [Math Markup Language fonts]
    This enables MathML display in firefox when, additionally, pango (http://www.pango.org/) is disabled in /usr/bin/firefox (see http://lists.linuxcoding.com/rhl/2005/msg31103.html) and math fonts from Wolfram Research are installed (see
    https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2005-September/msg02194.html). It is known that Pango is incompatible with MathML (see
    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=150393), and disabling Pango in firefox allows it to display MathML. However, firefox aside, installing mathml-fonts also broke many fonts used by Terminal (characters were replaced by graphical elements and smiley faces, etc.). I worked around this by selecting a working font (Courier 10 Pitch) under Edit / Preferences / General in Terminal. More seriously, however, all GUI fonts in kile (a KDE WYSIWYG LaTeX editor that I don't use but wanted to try out) were similarly clobbered. yum remove mathml-fonts fixed the problem. I plan to try again after some number of yum updates have gone by.