1 - Kennesaw State University



1.6.2 Fedora Server Installation

First, boot the machine from a Fedora installation DVD, and select the first option.

The Fedora 9 is the most current version of Fedora Linux operating system.

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Skip the media test, because it takes a long time to complete

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Click the Next button on the welcome screen.

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Select English language as the language to use for installation.

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Select “U.S. English” or other appropriate keyboard layout.

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The next step, creating partitions for the Linux file system, is very important. Partitioning divides the hard drive into isolated sections (partitions) where each partition acts as if it were a separate drive. If multiple operating systems co-exist on the same machine, then each operating system requires at least one dedicated partition. Linux frequently uses several partitions. Note the option at the base of the screen to “Review and modify partitioning layout”.

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To install Linux, you must have enough space for the operating system files to be placed. To create a partition to hold the Linux files, there are five options shown on the next screen. For the default layout with a small boot section, select one of the first four options. If you prefer to customize your layout of the Linux file system rather than using the default settings, select the last option.

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If you want default file system layout and either have an empty disk or desire to erase everything on your existing disk, select the first option. The default layout generates three partitions.

1) Swap partition

This partition provides a system with virtual memory. When there is not enough RAM, data is written to this swap partition. Linux allows users to set the size of the swap partition. Common settings are the same size as the amount of RAM on machine or twice the amount of RAM. For example, if a computer has 1GB of RAM, the size of swap might be 1GB or 2GB. Other values are legal and will affect performance. If the partiton is being heavily used, you might want to consider increasing the amount of RAM on the computer.

2) /boot partition holds the Linux kernel and bootstrap process files. The separated /boot partition is for protection of these import boot programs.

3) root(/) partition holds all system programs, application programs, user data, and packages. It is about 5GB.

The first four partition options are for default layout. The default file system for Fedora is the ex3 file system based on ex2. The ex3 system is easier for file system recovery from crash over the ex2 system. You do not need to change this setting.

Option1) Removes all partitions on the specified drives: it will install the new system to replace an existing Linux.

Option2) Remove Linux partition on the specified drives: it will wipe out everything and install a new system.

Option3) Allows one to resize existing partitions.

Option4) Keeps all existing partitions and uses free space to create new partitions: it will install the new system on free space and retain your current partitions.

Dual-boot system

Dual-boot systems have two co-existing operating systems such as Windows and Linux. You can choose one of them to boot at machine start up time. If you don’t have any operating system installed on the machine, you can create a partition for Windows first and leave enough space (20GB) for Fedora. Of course, you can add a new additional hard disk drive, for example, an IDE drive, just for Fedora installation. This drive is assigned as hdb and hda is assigned to Windows partition. If you have two partitions on the first hard drive, they are recognized as hda1 and hda2

You can install Fedora on an existing hard drive or partition; just tell the installation program to install Fedora Linux in the designated drive (additional available disk drive) or partition (available free partition on the same drive where other OS is installed in different partition). Fedora even includes an option to resize existing partitions to create space to install Fedora.

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On the next screen, set the /swap partition size to be twice as large as RAM. The swap partition is for virtual memory. It is used as an extension to RAM, if the computer runs short of RAM.

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Next, create a 100 MB /boot partition to hold the system boot program

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Now create the system root (/) partition.

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The three partitions created so far are default partitions and are created in a standard installation.

Users can create additional partitions during installation if desired. The sequence of creating partitions is not important.

Here we create a separate /home partition where each user stores his data and programs in their own home directory so that user data is placed in a separate partition from system data.

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You may also want to create a /usr partition to hold application programs shared by all users.

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The size of each partition depends on your environment. For example, if the system has many users or users have large data and programs, then you need to allocate much more space for the /home partition.

Here is the summary list after you configured the partitions.

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The following two screen shots show the progress of partition creation. It will take a while to complete the disk writing.

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Next, you decide on the boot loader. The boot loader is used to load the operating system. Without a boot diskette, a boot loader should be installed. When the machine starts, the BIOS reads the master boot record (MBR), which is located in the first sector (1024 bytes) of the hard disk. The master boot record holds a part of, or all of, the boot loader program and the partition information table. With the read data the BIOS activates the boot loader. The MBR can only hold one boot record for one operating system due its limited size. If you need to boot multiple operating systems, the system must use a boot loader. The boot loader will determine which operating system to load and then transfers the control to that system kernel software; the kernel then initializes the operating system.

Linux Loader (LILO) and GRand Unified Boot loader (GRUB) are two popular boot loaders that come with Linux distributions. The LILO is an older Linux boot loader.

GRUB is a newer boot loader tht is installed by default. GRUB can load a variety of open source operating systems as well as proprietary operating systems. GRUB has an interactive command interface and supports booting from a network. GRUB can always perform boot loading in its default command-line interface, even if the configuration file is configured incorrectly.

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Now, you need to configure the network settings for the computer. The default setting is Dynamic Host Configuration protocol (DHCP) where the IP address will be assigned by your Interface Service Provider (ISP) each time you have your own ISP. If you have an assigned IP address, click on the Edit button to enter static IP configuration mode. Linux will detect the network interface cards automatically and let you enter additional information by typing in values. This allows you to enter a static IP address and subnet mask to specify the host and network in IPv4 format. You can re-configure the machine to use a static IP address after you complete the installation. If you do not know the address now, you can set it later. If you are installing Fedora on a machine in an academic lab as part of a course, ask your instructor what values to use for your network settings.

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Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) is the fourth version of the Internet Protocol (IP), but it is the first version of the protocol to be widely used. IPv4 uses 32-bit (4-byte) addresses, which limits the address space to 232 or 4,294,967,296 possible unique addresses. The rapidly growing number of computers connected to the Internet is expected to soon exceed the 4,294,967,296 addresses available; forcing the adoption of IPv6 that uses 128 bit addresses. We use IPv4 addresses in this text, since that is what is commonly in use today. IPv4 uses dot-decimal notation (182.126.0.1) to represents an IP host address. The following step sets the host IP address and its subnet.

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The next setting is for the network interface card configuration, the server’s gateway(to access internet outside the LAN), the primary DNS and Secondary DNS. The Domain Name Server (DNS) is used to convert host names into IP addresses (ex: 192.168.1.94) only. A detailed discussion of these settings and their meanings is provided in the networking chapter. Press the ‘Edit’ button at the top right and enter the IP address, network mask and disable IPv6 support. Then manually set hostname (domain address), gateway, and DNS servers. Your numbers should not match those shown here.

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You have now completed setting up networking on the server. The next step is to set the time zone.

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Then assign the root account password here.

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When you install Fedora Linux you can also include many application packages such as Apache Web server.

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Install the KDE GUI desktop software and the GNOME GUI software.

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You can install many server component packages on the software packages screens. To complete exercises in other chapters you will need DNS Name Server, FTP Server, Mail Server, and My SQL Database.

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After selecting all the additional software packages that you would like to install at this time, launch the installation process, by clicking Next.

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Congratulations! It took you about 30-45 minutes to complete the entire Fedora installation. If you need to add more software packages after system installation, you can still install them using GNOME: System -> Administration -> Add/Remove Software or using yum command.

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The installation now allows you to create a user. For tasks that do not require root privilege, it is safer to use a regular user account instead of root admin account. The “john” account will be used in Chapter 2.

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Set up system date and time.

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Here is the first screen you will see after the system installation. Many system administration tasks can be performed from the GNOME desktop. Look for system administration tasks in the System -> Administration menu.

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