The following is an outline of the important steps in installing Red Hat Linux 7.1on an IBM A21m laptop computer as supplied to the faculty and students at Wake Forest University. Much of what you will find below will also apply to other version of Red Hat Linux as well as to other pre-packaged versions of Linux.

1. Install Options: I chose a Custom System.
2. Disk Partitioning: I chose Manually partition with Disk Druid. If you do not use PartitionMagic to repartition your drive, you may have to use fdisk instead of Disk Druid if your linux /boot partition is beyond the 1024th disk cylinder.
3. Partitions: Within Disk Druid, you must assign Mount points for all of the Linux partitions. Just select each partition and Edit it. You do not need to set a mount point for the swap space (hda6) and I did not set a mount point for the Win95 FAT32 partition as I will add this later. I made the following assignments:

   Device	Mount point
   /dev/hda5	/boot
   /dev/hda7	/
   /dev/hda8	/home

4. Choose partitions to format: I also chose to format /home since this was a new installation and not an upgrade.
5. LILO Configuration: You need to decide where to install LILO. This is an important decission. Since I am using BootMagic, I installed LILO on the first sector of the boot partition. For more information, see the section below on Multiple OS booting and LILO.
6. Account Configuration: You must enter a root password. It is also helpful to create a standard user account for yourself. Here at WFU, it is best to enter your WFU userid as the Account Name. This will make it easier to connect later to other WFU resources. Once you have entered your Account Name, Password, and Full Name, press the Add button.
   Note: when your account is created, it will have a userid number associated with it that is different from the one used on the WFU system. It may be worth your while to change this. You can get your WFU userid number by loggin onto ac.wfu.edu and typing id. If you do want to change your userid number on your Linux laptop, you need to edit the file /etc/passwd. Find the line that starts with your Account name. You want to change the number in the 3rd field to match your WFU userid number. After editing the file, if you are using shadow passwords, you need to run the comand pwconv. You will also need to change the ownership of you home directory and any files in it after changing your userid number since they will be owned by the old number. You must do this as root.
   
7. Selecting Package Groups: I chose to include most of the packages except the various sever packages and the Network Management Workstation package. Be sure you include the laptop package. I also checked the option to Select individual packages so that I could review the automated choices and add any packages that I wanted and were not installed already selected. The most important changes I made were:
• Applications/Editors: selected emacs-X11 and deselected emacs-nox.
• Applications/Engineering: selected gnuplot and units.
• Applications/Multimedia: selected transfig, and xfig.
• Applications/Publishing: selected enscript.
  
8. Unresolved Dependencies: If there were any unresolve dependencies, you should select Install packages to satisfy dependencies.
9. Finally, during the X Configuration, on the Custom Configuration screen, I chose the Color Depth to be 32 Bit. I then reset the Screen Resolution to 1024x768 and tested the settings.

Post-Installation Configuration

You may want to visit the RedHat web site and download and install any relevant updates!

SSH

OpenSSH will create a directory called .ssh in your home directory that contains useful information. Make sure that only you can read the contents of this directory. You can create a filed called config in this directory with both global and host specific options for ssh to use. For example, you can have aliases to machines in this file and you can specify what user name to use with each host. My config contains lines like

# WFU SP2
Host wfusp2
HostName f3n9.sp2net.wfu.edu
User cookgb

# Global defaults
Host *
ForwardX11 yes

If you want to use public key authentication, then you should read the man pages for ssh, ssh-agent, and ssh-keygen. You can use the following commands to generate rsa and dsa keys:

ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh-keygen -t dsa

These commands create both public and private keys. Make sure only you can read your private keys! You can transfer the public keys to other hosts and use them together with an ssh-agent to keep from having to type in your password. How this works depends on whether the remote host is running SSH2 or OpenSSH.

On an OpenSSH host, you add your public key the the authorized_keys2 file in the .ssh directory. (If you decide to use protocol 1, then you also need to create an rsa1 key and put it in a separate file called authorized_keys.

On an SSH2 machine, things are different. First, you need to create a SSH2 style public key from your dsa private key. You do that with the following command:

ssh-keygen -x -f id_dsa > somefilename.pub

 

Copy this file to the .ssh2 directory of your remote host and edit/create the file authorization so that it contains a line for this key. For example, the line might look like:

Key somefilename.pub

Note: Most installations using SSH2 will need to use the dsa key, not the rsa key.

 

If you set up an ssh-agent, then you can use ssh-add to automatically use your private key. For example, to read in your dsa private key, you would use the following command:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_dsa

You can set up your ssh-agent to be running underneath your entire X11 session. In the GNOME environment, you need to edit the file .xsession in your home directory so that it contains the lines:

#!/bin/sh
ssh-agent gnome-session

Printers:

Printers can be set up using the "Printer Configuration" tool in the GNOME environment. Printers should be set up as remote lpd printers.

In the Physics department at WFU, an for the settings would be:

• Name: OlinPS_303
• Hostname of printer: printer1.center.wfu.edu
• Name of queue on remote host: olin305b
• Device: Optra S 1855

 

Additional Software:

There are several additional software packages that I have installed. Since I do Motif and OpenGL programming, I have install Lesstif and Mesa. I describe my installation of these and a few other software packages below.

Multiple OS booting and LILO

There are several tools that allow you to boot into either Windows or Linux (or any of a number of other operating systems). LILO (Linux Loader) is a simple tool that comes with Linux and should serve as to your needs. BootMagic came with my version of PartitionMagic, so I use it. It provides a configurable graphical interface for selecting which OS you want to use at boot time. If you use LILO as the primary tool for selecting which OS to boot, then you should install LILO in the master boot record (MBR). However, if you use another boot loader (such as BootMagic), then you must install LILO into the first sector of your linux /boot partition. If you install it in the MBR, you will overwrite any existing boot loader. If you later install another boot loader, you will overwrite LILO and you will have to figure out how to get it back onto your system.

Hardware

• Hard Drive: IDE, 18.6Gb formated
• Memory: 192Mb
• Sony CD-R/RW CRX700E
• Mouse: PS/2 trackpoint (generic 3 button PS/2)
• Monitor: IBM ThinkPad LCD 1024x768
• Keyboard: Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
• Display Adapter: ATI Rage Mobility M1 AGP
• Sound Card: Crystal SoundFusion(tm)
• PCMCIA: Texas Inst. PCI-1450 CardBus Controller
• Infrared: IBM ThinkPad Fast Infrared Port
• APM: Intel 82371EB Power Management Controller
• Network: Intel(R) PRO/100+ MiniPCI
• USB: Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
• Modem: Xircom MPCI+ Modem 56 WinGlobal

Additional Software:

openMotif: (openmotif-2.1.30)

I obtained the files

• openmotif-2.1.30-5_ICS.i386.rpm
• openmotif-devel-2.1.30-5_ICS.i386.rpm

from the online binary distributions at the MotifZone and installed them using rpm.

Mesa: (MesaLib-3.4.2)

Mesa is included with the RedHat 7.1 distribution, however, since it does not include the Motif and OpenGL widgets, I decided to compile the source myself.

I obtained the source code using CVS using the following commands:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.mesa3d.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/mesa3d login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.mesa3d.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/mesa3d co mesa3d
cvs update -r mesa_3_4_2

This creates a directory called Mesa in your current directory. I compiled the source as follows

setenv CFLAGS "-g -O2"
./bootstrap (only need the first time you check out the CVS repository)
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-x86 --without-glide
make
su
umask 002
make install

If you also want the Motif and OpenGL widgets, then you need to cd into the widgets-mesa subdirectory and execute the following commands:

setenv CFLAGS "-g -O2"
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-x86 --with-motif
make
cd man
vi Makefile
(change mandir = $(prefix)/man/man3 to mandir = $(prefix)/share/man/man3)
cd ..
su
umask 002
make install
(the following steps are optional)
cd /usr/lib
ln -s libMesaGLwM.a libGLw.a

OpenDX: (opendx-4.1.3)

I obtained the files

• opendx-4.1.3-1.i386.rpm
• opendx-samples-4.1.3-1.noarch.rpm

from the online binary distributions at the OpenDX web site and installed them using rpm. There will likely be one or two unresolved dependencies that rpm will complain about. One will be for libGLcore.so.1. You may also have a problem with libGL.so. The latter will occur if you do not use the Mesa rpm. However, if you have compiled and installed Mesa yourself, this is not a problem. To avoid problems with libGLcore, you simply need to link this file to libGL. You should do the following:

cd /usr/lib
ls -l libGL.so (Note what this link points to, on my system it is libGL.so.1.2.030402.)
ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2.030402 /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.1
ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2.030402 /usr/lib/libGLcore.so
(Replace libGL.so.1.2.030402 with what is appropriate for your machine.)

You can now use rpm (gnorpm) to install the two opendx rpms and ignore the dependency warnings.

RevTeX: (revtex.3.1.tar.gz,revtex4.tar.gz)

I like to keep new LaTeX packages in a separate location, so I created the following directories (the default packages are found in /usr/share/texmf):

• /usr/share/texmf.local/tex/latex/
• /usr/share/texmf.local/bibtex/bib/
• /usr/share/texmf.local/bibtex/bst/

  For compatibility with version 3, install revtex-3.1:

  In each of the three directories mentioned above, create a subdirectory called revtex-3.1. Then unpack the revtex package and cd into the subdirectory it creates. Before installing the files, we need to create a patch file to fix a problem with LaTeX2e. Following the directions in the README file, create a file called revtex.cls that contains:

  %%
  %% This file allows REVTeX v3.1 to function correctly under
  %% the 12/94 release of LaTeX 2e. Put this file wherever
  %% revtex.sty is. Continue to use \documentstyle{revtex}
  %% (with the correct options) and REVTeX will run normally
  %% in compatibility mode. Thanks to David Carlisle for
  %% pointing out this fix.
  
  \ifx\every@math@size\undefined\else
    \let\old@expast\@expast
    \def\@expast#1{\old@expast{#1}\let\@tempa\reserved@a}
  \fi
  
  \input{revtex.sty}

  Now, run the following commands from the revtex 3.1 source directory:

1. cp *.sty revtex.cls reftest.tex /usr/share/texmf.local/tex/latex/revtex-3.1
2. cp *.bib /usr/share/texmf.local/bibtex/bib/revtex-3.1
3. cp *.bst /usr/share/texmf.local/bibtex/bst/revtex-3.1

For compatibility with version 4, install revtex-4:

Create a subdirectory called revtex-4 in the /usr/share/texmf.local/tex/latex and in /usr/share/texmf.local/bibtex/bst. Then unpack the revtex package and cd into the subdirectory it creates.

Now, run the following commands from the revtex 3.1 source directory:

1. cp *.sty *.cls *.rtx /usr/share/texmf.local/tex/latex/revtex-4
2. cp *.bst /usr/share/texmf.local/bibtex/bst/revtex-4

You now need to edit the file /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf to change the default list of locations to search for packages. Locate the following variables and make sure they are set as shown (you don't have to set the HOMETEXMF variable):

• TEXMFLOCAL = /usr/share/texmf.local
• HOMETEXMF = $HOME/texmf
• TEXMF = {$HOMETEXMF,!!$TEXMFLOCAL,!!$TEXMFMAIN}

Now, run texconfig. Run the CONF command fromt he main menu. The Kpathsea variable TEXMF should include the new texmf.local directroy. If it does, then run the REHASH command from the main menu to rebuild the ls-R database.

Writing CDs on the builtin CD-RW drive:

The buildin CD-RW drive on WFU A21m Thinkpads is supported in the RedHat7.1 Linux release. If you have installed the RPMs that contain mkiosfs and cdrecord, then you can write CDs. I created an executable script called dumpCD that contains

#!/bin/sh
echo $*
IMG_SIZE=`mkisofs -R -q -print-size $* 2>&1 | sed -e "s/.* = //"`
echo Preparing to write ${IMG_SIZE} bytes to CD...
[ "0$IMG_SIZE" -ne 0 ] && mkisofs -R $* | \
cdrecord speed=4 dev=0,0,0 tsize=${IMG_SIZE}s -data -

This command takes a list of directories and files and writes them to the CD. The process involves two steps. First, mkisofs creates the filesystem that will be written to disk. Second, cdrecord actually writes the data to the disk. In the scriptdumpCD, mkisofs is first called to determine the size of the filesystem that will be created. This size is stored in IMG_SIZE. Second, mkisofs actually creates the filesystem and pipes it to cdrecord. The -R option causes mkisofs t create a "RockRidge" file system that is appropriate the Linux. An alternative is to use -r on second call to mkisofs to cause the userid and group numbers to be set to zero on the CD. This is appropriate for a CD that will be shared with others. The -R option is appropriate for creating private backups. The options for cdrecord should work for all WFU A21m Thinkpads. The only option that might need to be changed is dev. This tells cdrecord where the CD-RW drive is. You can use the command:

cdrecord -scanbus

to find the appropriate values for your machine. For more information on recording onto CDs, look at the man pages for mkisofs and cdrecord.

Files and directories to backup off of / prior to upgrade:

• /etc/printcap
• /etc/passwd
• /usr/share/texmf.local/