Fedora Core 2 Installation Notes

by Stanton Finley on Jun 8, 2004

The original article is located at http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_2_installation_notes.html

Download and burn the five Fedora Core 2 CDs from iso images from your nearest mirror site. (You should get FC2-i386-disc1.iso, FC2-i386-disc2.iso, FC2-i386-disc3.iso, FC2-i386-disc4.iso and FC2-i386-rescuecd.iso.)

Partition your hard disk with something like PartitionMagic.

Configure your bios settings to boot first from the CD drive.

Insert the first Fedora Core 2 CD and reboot your machine.

Select "Custom" installation.

Select "Everything" in the installation package selection dialog.

On first boot dialog select "Enable Network Time Protocol". Select "clock.redhat.com" in the pull down menu. (Be patient. For some reason it takes a long time for this process to complete.)

Shut computer down and restart.

Set up the Ximian Evolution email client.

Open a terminal as root and do "yum update".

Firefox:

Open Mozilla, go to mozilla.org/firefox and download firefox-0.8-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz to /usr/lib. (Or for the bleeding edge, you could go to http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-0.9/.)

Open a terminal as root and do "cd /usr/lib", then "tar -xzvf *.gz", then "rm *.gz", then "rm: remove regular file `firefox-0.8-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz'? y".

Open "Browse Filesystem" from the main menu and go to "/usr/lib/firefox".

Drag the "sh" file "firefox" onto the bottom panel.

Type "Mozilla Firefox" into the "Name" and "Generic name" boxes, then click on the icon box and browse to "/usr/lib/firefox/icons" and select "mozicon50.xpm".

Open Firefox by clicking the icon and set it up according to your preferences.

Open the file browser, go to /etc, right click on "modprobe.conf", choose "open with" > "gedit" and add the lines "alias net-pf-10 off" and "alias ipv6 off" to the bottom of the file, then save and exit. This will significantly increase browsing speed by decreasing DNS lookup time.

Close all windows, reboot, log in as root and restart Firefox.

Additional Up2date archives (Livna):

In order to add up2date accessibility for the Livna packages (for such things as xmms mp3 support) edit "/etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources" in a similar fashion as above and add the lines:

      # User contributed archives
      yum livna-stable http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/2/i386/yum/stable/
      apt fedora-us-stable-fc2 http://download.fedora.us fedora/fedora/2/i386 stable

Get the GPG public keys for the Livna and Fedora packages by doing, as root:

      rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KE
      rpm --import http://www.fedora.us/FEDORA-GPG-KEY

Launch "up2date" and install all of the packages that are presented. (The initial invocation of "up2date" will take quite a long time as it downloads all headers in the "Testing package set / solving RPM inter-dependencies" step.) While you are waiting do the following:

Flash:

Download the Flash plugin for Fedora Core 2 from http://sluglug.ucsc.edu/macromedia/site_ucsc.html. Do, as root:
```
      rpm -ivh flash-plugin-7.0.25-1.i386.rpm
```

Open the file browser, go to Accessories > Text Editor, browse to /usr/lib/firefox, open the "sh" file "firefox", add the following line near the top of the file. (This will significantly speed up the flash player. It runs very slowly for some reason without this fix. Close and restart Firefox to enable the plugin.)
```
      export FLASH_GTK_LIBRARY=libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
```

Java:

Download the Java J2SE JRE [ RPM in self-extracting file (j2re-1_4_2_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin) ] from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html. Do the following as root (one line at a time). Close and restart Firefox to enable the plugin.

      sh j2re-1_4_2_04-linux-i586-rpm.bin
      rpm -ivh j2re-1_4_2_04-linux-i586.rpm
      ln -s /usr/java/j2re1.4.2_04/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so
      cd /usr/lib/firefox/plugins
      rm libnullplugin.so
      rm: remove regular file `libnullplugin.so'? y

RealPlayer:

Download RealPlayer 8 from http://forms.real.com/real/player/unix/unix.html. Do, as root:

      mv rp8_linux20_libc6_i386_cs2_rpm rp8.linux20.libc6.i386.cs2.rpm
      rpm -ivh rp8.linux20.libc6.i386.cs2.rpm

Download the RealVideo 9.0 Codecs from http://docs.real.com/docs/playerpatch/unix/rv9_libc6_i386_cs2.tgz. Do, as root:

      gunzip -cf rv9_libc6_i386_cs2.tgz | tar xvf -
      cp rv9/codecs/* /usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Codecs/
      cp: overwrite `/usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Codecs/drv1.so.6.0'? y
      cp: overwrite `/usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Codecs/drv2.so.6.0'? y
      cp: overwrite `/usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Codecs/drv3.so.6.0'? y
      cp: overwrite `/usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Codecs/rv10.so.6.0'? y
      cp: overwrite `/usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Codecs/rv20.so.6.0'? y
      cp: overwrite `/usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Codecs/rv30.so.6.0'? y
      cp rv9/plugins/rvrend.so.6.0 /usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Plugins/
      cp: overwrite `/usr/lib/RealPlayer8/Plugins/rvrend.so.6.0'? y

XMMS audio MP3 support:

You must have "Additional Up2date archives (Livna)" configured in order to do this - see above. Get the mp3 plugin for xmms by doing, as root:
```
      up2date xmms-mp3
```

Open Audio Player (xmms), go to Options > Preferences, deselect the box "Enable Plugin" for the MPEG Layer 1 / 2 / 3 Placeholder Plugin and select the box for "Enable Plugin" for MPEG Layer 1 / 2 / 3 Player. Hit "Apply" and the "Okay".

NTFS support (for mounting your Windows partition):

Find your kernel version and processor by doing:
```
      uname -r -p
```

Then go to http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora2.html and download the proper NTFS driver for your system. Do, as root:
```
      rpm -ihv kernel-ntfs-2.6.5-1.358.i686.rpm
```

Go to http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs.html to learn how to mount your Windows partition in Fedora. An easy way is to do, as root:
```
      mkdir /mnt/windows
```

Then do, as root:

      mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows -t ntfs -r -o umask=0222

You can add that same line to /etc/rc.local to mount your Windows partition each time you boot into Fedora.

"Samba" (for networking and network printing):

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf for your home network to include at least the following:

      [global]
	 # workgroup = NT-Domain-Name or Workgroup-Name
	 workgroup = your_windows_home_network_workgroup_name
	 # server string is the equivalent of the NT Description field
	 server string = Samba Server
	 hosts allow = 192.168.1. 192.168.2. 127.
	 security = user
      [homes]
	 comment = Home Directories
	 browseable = no
	 writable = yes

Then to test the configuration do, as root:
```
      /usr/bin/testparm
```

On the main menu go to "System Settings" > "Server Settings" > "Services" and select (check box) "smb" for runlevel 5 to enable Samba. (In this step I also disable "FreeWnn" "apmd", "canna", "bluetooth", "sendmail", "pcmcia", "hpoj" and "spamassassin" as I don't use them.) Hit "Save" and close the service configuration window. Reboot your machine and do the following to verify Samba is working.
```
      /usr/bin/smbclient -L localhost -N
```

Network Printing:

Go to "System Tools", "Print Manager" and set up your network printer. The queue type should be "Network Windows SMB". Be sure to edit the configuration to include your Windows share name, Windows user name and password (if used). The print manager should autodiscover these parameters with the exception of your Windows user name and password if everything is configured correctly.

"Xine" - all you need for multimedia:

Go to Daily xine RPMS, download packages appropriate for your system, and follow the installation instructions.