Fedora 14 Guide
Make that old computer useful and learn something. Make a server out of it with Linux.
I have an old Dell Optiplex GX110 that is a Pentium III 733MHz with 256MB of PC133. The only use I have of it is playing old DOS and Win95/98 games on it. I'm going to install Fedora Linux on it and make it an emergency backup for my home server in case it ever dies.
Backup Server's Specifications: |
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If this thing sounds like a blast from the past, it is. With Windows 98 installed, it tears up games like: Doom, Hexen, Master of Magic, Redneck Rampage, Destruction Derby, Decent, Quake, and even more intense games like Half-Life, Serious Sam, and Unreal Tournament!
Ok, so the Soundblaster & Voodoo cards are unnecessary for a command line only Linux server. I removed those.
My distro of choice is still Fedora. At the time of this writing Fedora 15 is out. Unfortunatly, anaconda (fedora's installer) requires greater than 640MB of ram to install Fedora 15. Fedora 14 does not so I will install it first then upgrade to Fedora 15.
I had an old IDE DVD drive laying around so threw it in the machine. I downloaded the i386 Fedora 14, 32bit DVD ISO, and burned it.
I then installed Fedora 14. On a system this old, you get the text mode installed that has few options. You only get to choose what hard drive partition, language, and assign a root password. The installer defaults to installing a base system without a X sever. This is fine for my needs. A X server is not good to have on a server, and the base install doesn't load the computer up with much.
The first time it boots, you have to login as root as there is no option in the base text installer to assign users.
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root Password: ******** |
Creating a user will be the first task:
| useradd username |
Now assign that user a password or you can't login with it.
| passwd username |
If you want to setup sudo now is the time to do it. I personally don't use it on servers as I feel it's a security risk. It may be convenient to set it up and then remove it once the heavy configuration is completed.
Logout from root and login using your new user you just created.
| logout |
or
| exit |
They both log you out.
Note: In Fedora 15 it is no longer called 'eth0' it may be named something like 'p7p1' instead. Adjust all commands here accordingly.
First item of business is getting networking running. Since this is simply a backup machine, I am going to just setup a static IP within the bounds my DCHP server would.
I did this by editing the network config file:
| sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/network |
Edit it's contents to look like the following. Use your own network credentials here:
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NETWORKING=yes NETWORKING_IPV6=no HOSTNAME=backup.mysite.com FORWARD_IPV4=yes GATEWAY=192.168.1.1 |
I turned off IPv6 as I don't have an IPv6 domain name. The gateway should point to your router.
Then editing the ifcfg-eth0 file.
| sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 |
Edit it's contents to look like the following. Use your own network credentials here:
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DEVICE="eth0" USERCTL="no" HWADDR="00:B0:D0:98:23:4F" NM_CONTROLLED="no" ONBOOT="yes" BOOTPROTO="none" BROADCAST="192.168.1.254" NETWORK="192.168.1.0" NETMASK="225.225.225.255" IPADDR="192.168.1.100" |
Since I am not using DHCP I need to manually setup where to look for DNS. This is in the /etc/resolv.conf file:
| sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf |
It will likely be blank, so enter where to look for your nameserver. Best to point it at your router. I will come back and remove this once I have BIND setup and running on this server.
| nameserver=192.168.1.1 |
Last we need to enable networking at boot. Type chkconfig into a terminal and it will return a chart saying what services on installed plus which are on and which are off.
| chkconfig |
If the chart shows network being off in run levels 2, 3 & 4 you should run this command to turn them on at boot time:
| sudo chkconfig --level 234 network on |
Now start the restart networking service.
| sudo service network restart |
Check the network status by typing
| ifconfig |
It should look something like this:
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eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1F:BC:08:03:B5 inet addr:192.168.1.66 Bcast:192.168.1.254 Mask:255.255.255.255 inet6 addr: fe80::21f:bcff:fe08:3b5/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:48511 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:7574 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:12216292 (11.6 MiB) TX bytes:1124596 (1.0 MiB) Interrupt:20 Base address:0xc000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:1841 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1841 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:96945 (94.6 KiB) TX bytes:96945 (94.6 KiB) |
'eth0' stands for your wired ethernet device and 'lo' stands for the internal loopback.
At this point ping some site like Google and if it's working a response like this comes back:
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ping -c 4 google.com PING google.com (74.125.91.106) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from qy-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.91.106): icmp_req=1 ttl=51 time=71.0 ms 64 bytes from qy-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.91.106): icmp_req=2 ttl=51 time=61.0 ms 64 bytes from qy-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.91.106): icmp_req=3 ttl=51 time=69.7 ms 64 bytes from qy-in-f106.1e100.net (74.125.91.106): icmp_req=4 ttl=51 time=77.0 ms --- google.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 61.068/69.709/77.013/5.700 ms |
Now my old backup system has a functional Fedora 14 on it, time to upgrade it to Fedora 15. This is actually mainly so I won't have to worry about upgrading it for another two years. Ok the second reason is that I will need to upgrade my main server at some point, this makes for a good, dry, practice run.
First thing is, ensure the system us up to date with YUM.
| sudo yum update |
For a couple of versions of Fedora it has been possible to update versions right through YUM. The instructions are found here. Here's the process to upgrade from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 copied right from the Fedora site:
First install the new Fedora 15 gpg key. You may wish to verify this package against https://fedoraproject.org/keys and the fedora ssl certificate.
| rpm --import https://fedoraproject.org/static/069C8460.txt |
Upgrade all packages with
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yum update yum yum clean all yum --releasever=15 --disableplugin=presto distro-sync |
After that process finishes, reboot and check the version of Fedora by typing in:
| cat /etc/redhat-release |
Success! Jump to page 2 to see how I start setting up servers and transfer my site to the backup server.
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