Fresh Install of Red Hat Fedora 10 (F10) on Generic Linux Desktop Machine 1

My Fedora 10 installation went pretty smoothly except for my Radeon HD 4850 (as usual). However, all issues seem to have been resolved by now. The biggest disappointment in Fedora 10 for me was that I could not set a static IP address using the System / Administration / Network GUI. It's not that it was such a hard bug to track down and work around; it's that I was really surprised to have to chase down a bug on this level--one that should never have slipped through testing by the individual who introduced the bug, or all the people using the test release, etc. I understand that this is all free software, but normally the software engineering standards are professional grade in the Linux world, so I really was surprised and disappointed. In fact, that was when I finally went out and bought a Mac. I needed a break from ``senseless breakage''.

This time (for Fedora 10) I decided not to copy in my personal files. Instead I set up a set of links to those files on another disk (which can still be booted into Fedora 8 at any time). By saving all link-making commands (and other customization commands) in a script, I can quickly execute them again after a fresh install of Fedora 11, etc., and I can install over F10 instead of on a new disk.

So, here is the (pretty terse) blow-by-blow. (More chatty discussion appears regarding earlier Fedora installations in later sections.)

1. Do a default install (not selecting packages to install in any detail)

2. Append the following to /etc/fstab to mount my other disks at boot time:

   /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 /mnt/sda	 ext3	 defaults	 1 2
   /dev/mapper/VolGroup01-LogVol00 /mnt/sdb	 ext3	 defaults	 1 2
   

3. Set up links:

   ln -s /mnt/sda/home/me/projects ~
   ...
   

4. Copy selected configuration files. (I minimize this because I have had many compatibility problems using old config files with new program versions.)

   # my directory:
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/home/me/.emacs ~
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/home/me/.tcshrc ~
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/home/me/.jackdrc ~
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/home/me/.latex2html-init ~
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/home/me/.octaverc ~
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/home/me/.pdrc ~
   
   # root's directory:
   mv /root/.bashrc /root/dot-bashrc-F10
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/root/.bashrc /root/.bashrc
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/root/.emacs /root/.emacs
   cp -pd /mnt/sda/root/.jackdrc /root/.jackdrc
   cp -rpd /mnt/sda/root/.ssh /root/.ssh
   

5. Copy desired lines from /mnt/sda/etc/hosts to /etc/hosts

6. Add my printer using the GUI

7. Get Samba working (this was a pain -- I've heard this is easier to do at initial installation time).
   • In System / Administration / Firewall, enable SSH, Samba, Samba Client, Network Printing Client, Network Printing Server
   • make sure services iptables and ip6tables are enabled in System / Administration / Services
   • yum install samba-swat
   • enable and start service xinetd
   • enable and start service smb
   • enable and start service nmb
   • enable swat and navigate browser to http://localhost:901/
   • Ack! system-config-samba no longer exists!:
   • yum install system-config-samba
   • Add desired samba user via Preferences / Users / Add User
   • /sbin/service smb restart
   • /sbin/service nmb restart

8. yum -enablerepo=updates-testing update system-config-network (which fixes bug in which gateway IPA overwrites net mask)

9. Now manually enter static IP address and DNS in System / Administration / Network. (Previous step REQUIRED. Otherwise, the gateway IPA overwrites net mask.)

10. DNS still vanishing -- disable Network Manager in Services and said /sbin/service network restart. Firefox must explicitly be taken out of offline mode. Hmmm.

11. Install Foxmarks in Firefox

12. yum install emacs

13. yum install xfig

14. yum install gv [I still prefer it for PS viewing]

15. Check out, build, and install from various SVN repos using a script I've built up for that.

16. cd /usr/local/bin; ln -s /usr/bin/perl [I have perl scripts needing this]

17. Disable isdn service [why is this enabled by default? who uses ISDN any more?]

18. yum install adobe-release [from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/]

19. Set time manually, add local location

20. Display
    • yum install system-config-display [To get xorg.conf back]
    • system-config-display -reconfig
    • Do not forget about [ctrl][alt][f2] et al. when display is hosed
    • Finally discovered included radeon driver can be configured to work (after much futzing with fglrx, unsuccessfully)

21. yum install octave-forge

22. Install Planet CCRMA: Instructions at
    http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/installplanetnine.html
    • rpm -Uvh http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/mirror/fedora/linux/planetccrma/10/i386/planetccrma-repo-1.1-2.fc10.ccrma.noarch.rpm
    • yum install planetccrma-core [still necessary for Gina 3G support in JACK]
    • yum install planetccrma-apps
    • yum install pd-extended

23. yum install gsl-devel [GNU Scientific Library for pure]

24. Install tarballs for llvm, pure-0.2, pure-xml, and faust2pd-2.0 (written in pure)

25. yum install mercurial [needed by next command:]
26. hg clone http://freehg.org/u/cozzyd/tabsynth/ [graphics-tablet synthesis control]
27. yum install gtkmm24-devel [needed by tabsynth]
28. ln -s /l/stkrs/include /usr/local/include/stk [needed by tabsynth]
29. yum install xcdroast [for DVDs etc.]
30. yum install flash-plugin [so last-fm Firefox plugin would work]
31. gstreamer-properties [set Default Output to ALSA, and Device to Gina3G (my system only, of course) => alsasink device="hw:2,0"]
32. yum install PackageKit-cron [for automatic updates] - edit /etc/sysconfig/packagekit-background