Setting up Fedora
Introduction
This article explains how to install Fedora from a boot CD and fetch files
from an FTP server.
Setup
If you don't want to burn five
CD's or a DVD, you can just burn a CD with boot.iso (a.k.a. netinst.iso; Yes,
it's 250MB), boot from this small
image, and fetch files from an FTP server close to you.
- After burning the ISO, use this CD to boot the computer
- Choose the basic option, and TAB to append "askmethod" to
the boot command
- A list of mirrors can be found at http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html.
Aim at where the /os directory is located, eg. http://mirrors.ircam.fr/pub/fedora/linux/releases/13/Fedora/i386/os
Important:
If you get a "Unable to receive install.img" error, use a HTTP
server instead of FTP. Also, if you get an error while downloading one of
the RPM's, just hit Retry: It might just be a network glitch
- Follow the wizard to install Fedora. A complete installation documentation
can be found here
Note:
If the Ethernet interface isn't up after logging on locally, here's how
to configure Fedora to start Ethernet automatically at boot time: chkconfig
network on
- Update through "yum update"
- To update the kernel and kernel-devel packages, you might see yum downloading
mismatched files (eg. i686 for kernel, i586 for kernel-devel), so you're
better off downloading RPMs and updating locally. Reboot and use this new kernel
- Install NTP to keep the server synchronized:
- yum install ntp
- vim /etc/ntp.conf to allow all hosts on network 192.168.0/24 to
sync with the server:
restrict 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0
nomodify notrap
- Sync the server a couple of times, and wait a few minutes:
ntpdate
-u 0.pool.ntp.org
ntpdate -u 0.pool.ntp.org
- Launch ntp:
/sbin/service ntpd start
- Add ntp to the list of services launched at boot time:
chkconfig
ntpd on
- To sync Windows host, read this
- Done.
Adding multiple mirrors for yum to use
Edit /etc/yum.conf
- [main]
- cachedir=/var/cache/yum
- debuglevel=2
- logfile=/var/log/yum.log
- pkgpolicy=newest
- distroverpkg=fedora-release
- tolerant=1
- exactarch=0
- # Added this because some mirrors go down and then retying takes forever.
- retries=1
- # Uncomment below if you want to autoupdate also the kernel rpms (reboot
is necessary to use the new kernel, once installed)
- # exclude=kernel*
-
- ## Basic Fedora ####################
-
- [base]
- name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
- baseurl=ftp://ftp.proxad.net/mirrors/fedora.redhat.com/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/
- http://ftp.lip6.fr/ftp/pub/linux/distributions/fedora/5/i386/os/
- ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os
- http://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
- http://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
- http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os
- http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/fedora/fedora/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.os
-
- [updates-released]
- name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates
- baseurl=ftp://ftp.proxad.net/mirrors/fedora.redhat.com/fedora/linux/core/updates/5/i386
- http://ftp.lip6.fr/ftp/pub/linux/distributions/fedora/updates/5/i386/
- ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/fedora/linux/core/updates/5/i386
- http://ftp.ens.utulsa.edu/pub/linux/fedora/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch
- http://rpmfind.net/linux/fedora/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch
- http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch
- http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/fedora/fedora/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.updates
-
- ## Fedora Extras #####################
-
- [fedora-stable]
- name=Fedora.us Extras (Stable)
- baseurl=http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora.us/fedora/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.stable
- http://fedora.quicknet.nl/fedora/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.stable
- http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/fedora/fedora/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.stable
- http://fedora.mirror.sdv.fr/fedora/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.stable
- http://download.fedora.us/fedora/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.stable
Using Yum to manage packages
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7448
Command:
- install package1 [package2] [...]
- update [package1] [package2] [...]
- check-update
- upgrade [package1] [package2] [...]
- remove | erase package1 [package2] [...]
- list [...]
- info [...]
- provides | whatprovides feature1 [feature2] [...]
- clean [ packages | headers | metadata | cache | dbcache | all ]
- makecache
- groupinstall group1 [group2] [...]
- groupupdate group1 [group2] [...]
- grouplist [hidden]
- groupremove group1 [group2] [...]
- groupinfo group1 [...]
- search string1 [string2] [...]
- shell [filename]
- resolvedep dep1 [dep2] [...]
- localinstall rpmfile1 [rpmfile2] [...]
- localupdate rpmfile1 [rpmfile2] [...]
- deplist package1 [package2] [...]
The following are the ways which you can invoke yum in list mode. Note
that all list commands include information on the version of the package.
- yum list [all | glob_exp1] [glob_exp2] [...]
List all available
and installed packages.
- yum list available [glob_exp1] [...]
List all packages in the
yum repositories available to be installed.
- yum list updates [glob_exp1] [...]
List all packages with updates
available in the yum repositories.
- yum list installed [glob_exp1] [...]
List the packages specified
by args. If an argument does not match the name of an available package,
it is assumed to be a shell-style glob and any matches are printed
- yum list extras [glob_exp1] [...]
List the packages installed
on the system that are not available in any yum repository listed
in the config file.
- yum list obsoletes [glob_exp1] [...]
List the packages installed
on the system that are obsoleted by packages in any yum repository listed
in the config file.
- yum list recent
List packages recently added into the repositories.
All the list options mentioned above take file-glob-syntax wildcards or package
names as arguments, for example yum list available ’foo*’
will list all available packages that match ’foo*’. (The single quotes
will keep your shell from expanding the globs.
The following are the ways which you can invoke yum in clean mode. Note that
"all files" in the commands below means "all files
in currently enabled repositories". If you want
to also clean any (temporarily) disabled repositories you need to use --enablerepo=’*’
option.
yum clean packages
Eliminate
any cached packages from the system. Note that packages are not automatically
deleted after
they
are downloaded.
yum clean headers
Eliminate
all of the header files which yum uses for dependency resolution.
yum clean metadata
Eliminate
all of the files which yum uses to determine the remote availability
of packages. Using this
option
will force yum to download all the metadata the next time it is run.
yum clean cache
Eliminate
the pickle based cache used for faster access to metadata. Using this
option will force yum
to
recreate the cache the next time it is run if you don’t have sqlite available.
yum clean dbcache
Eliminate
the sqlite cache used for faster access to metadata.
Using this option will force yum to
recreate
the cache the next time it is run.
yum clean all
Runs
yum clean packages and yum clean headers as above.
Resources