Content
Introduction
The purpose of this note is to outline the dual boot setup of Fedora Core 4 (FC4) on a Clemson IBM T42. A previous article covered disk partitioning for dual boot. Because I have been working on a FC4 development project, upgrading to FC4 was done incrementally since January using yum through pre-FC4 Test1, then Test 1, Test 2, Test 3 and then FC4. The FC3 installation that was upgraded included both Gnome and KDE desktops.
Yum. Updating FC4 using yum is easy. Since I did not do a fresh install or an upgrade install, the first step was to install the redhat-release rpm.
Go to http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/
linux/core/4/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/
Download fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
This updates the yum repos:
/etc/yum.repos.d fedora.repo fedora-extras.repo fedora-updates.repo fedora-devel.repo fedora-extras-devel.repo fedora-updates-testing.repo
I also added the repo
fedora-livna.repo
[livna]
name=Livna RPM Repository for Fedora Core
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/
$basearch/RPMS.lvn
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY
enabled=0
By default, the fedora, fedora-extras, and fedora-updates repos are enabled. Next, I used the command
yum check-update
to see what updates were available. Satisfied that I wanted them all, I used the command
yum update
Yum repos can be enabled in the repo file or using a yum option.
yum --enablerepo=development check-update
Desktop. In April 2004, I wrote an article on the setup of FC1 in which I compared Gnome 2.4 and KDE 3.1. My conclusion was that KDE was superior in the key area of file selection. In May 2005, I wrote an article comparing Gnome 2.10 and KDE 3.4 (included in FC4). My conclusion is that Gnome has caught up with KDE in several key areas and now is my desktop of choice. The article linked here compares the following features of Gnome and KDE: file selector, file manager, mime type editing, icon association, file association, menu editing, login screen, splash screen, and X background color.
Wireless. The FC4 distribution kernel includes stable version 1.0.0 of the ipw2200 driver for the Intel Pro 2200BG wireless card. Because the firmware is proprietary, you will have to install it (version 2.2) yourself.
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php install in /lib/firmware
Make sure you install the correct firmware version. The firmware web site links to the firmware by ipw2200 version. If you have any problems with this driver, you can manually install the latest stable version by following the instructions in a previously posted article. This is a two step process: remove the old driver modules, install the new driver modules. Note that if you manually install the ipw2200 driver, each time you upgrade your kernel, you will have to reinstall the ipw2200 driver.
Non-distro Installs. Krusader is an advanced twin panel file manager handy for managing web sites.
http://krusader.sourceforge.net/down.php#stable krusader-1.60.0-1.fc3kde331.i386.rpm?download
Win Partitions. In a previous article I showed how to
install ntfs kernel modules create mount points edit /etc/fstab mount the Windows ntfs C partition mount the Windows fat32 D partition sym link to Windows XP Truetype fonts
For FC4 I copied the Windows XP fonts to
/usr/share/fonts/truetype
and as root issued the commands
# cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype # ttmkfdir # mkfontdir # chkfontpath -a /usr/share/fonts/truetype # fc-cache
With the truetype fonts installed in Linux, I no longer need to install the ntfs kernel module and to mount the C partition.
Kernel Devel. To compile the Cisco VPN client and the latest ipw2200 driver, the kernel development package is needed. It is part of the base FC4 distribution.
yum install kernel-devel-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.i686
Vpnclients. The Cisco vpnclient version 4.6.02.0030-k9 was downloaded and the Clemson.pcf profile was copied into the installation directory. Then the install script was run, the client was tested, and the uninstall script was run. This client works well but I prefer to use the open source client vpnc, which is included in FC4 extras.
yum install vpnc
Browser and Mail. Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are included in FC4. Go to the menu item
Desktop menu -> Preferences -> More Preferences ->
Preferred Applications
to set the default mail client to Thunderbird. A
previous article
dealt with the sharing of Firefox bookmarks and Thunderbird mailboxes between
Windows XP and FC.
Firefox Plugins. Firefox plugins can be downloaded starting from
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html
I downloaded the Macromedia Flash plugin and manually installed it in the directory
/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
Acrobat Reader. Adobe now provides an RPM for version 7.0.
Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/
readstep2.html
Download AdobeReader_enu-7.0.0-2.rpm
rpm -ivh AdobeReader_enu-7.0.0-2.rpm
cd /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
ln -s /usr/local/Adobe/Acrobat7.0/Browser/intellinux/
nppdf.so
JRE. The FC4 release notes state the following. "Fedora Core 4 users are advised not to use the Java RPM provided by Sun. It contains Provides that conflict with names used in packages provided as part of Fedora Core 4. Because of this, Sun Java might disappear from an installed system during package upgrade operations. Fedora Core 4 users should use either the RPM from jpackage.org or manually install the Sun Java tarball into /opt. Sun Java 1.5+ is recommended for stability purposes." I decided to make my own RPM. Thanks to Thomas Chung of FedoraNew.org for posting this method.
To build RPMS as a user, do these preparation steps. As root add yourself to /etc/sudoers so that you can install the RPM as a user.
bmoss ALL=(ALL) ALL
The remaining steps will be executed using your user account in your home directory.
$ cd ~ $ cp -a /usr/src/redhat/ rpmbuild $ echo '%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/rpmbuild' >> .rpmmacros
Download the Sun JRE file to your home directory.
Go to http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.html Download jre-1_5_0_03-linux-i586.bin
Download the custom spec file jre.spec to your home directory.
Now build the rpm and install it.
$ sh jre-1_5_0_03-linux-i586.bin
$ tar zcvf jre1.5.0_03.tar.gz jre1.5.0_03
$ mv jre1.5.0_03.tar.gz ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES
$ mv jre.spec ~/rpmbuild/SPECS
$ rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/jre.spec
$ sudo rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/
jre-1.5.0_03.fdr.i586.rpm
Suspend to RAM. A separate article has been posted on this topic.
Touchpad. The Synaptics Touchpad driver was discussed in a previous article. This driver is part of the FC4 distribution. The options in
/usr/share/doc/synaptics-0.13.5/INSTALL
need to be added to /etc/X11/xorg.conf. You can then use the synclient utility to explore option changes. I turned off tapping and scrolling.
Maple & MATLAB. Installation of Maple and MATLAB were covered in previous articles.
NetworkManager. The FC4 NetworkManager utility can be used to manage wired, wireless, and vpnc connections. A separate article has been posted on this topic.
Services. Unneeded services eat up system resources. To see your list of services
Desktop menu -> System Settings -> Server Settings ->
Services
Here is the list of services that I am currently running in level 5.
NetworkManager, NetworkManagerDispatcher, acpid, anacron, atd, autofs, cpuspeed, crond, cups, cups-config-daemon, gpm, haldaemon, iptables, irqbalance, lm_sensors, messagebus, pcmcia, readahead, readahead_early, smartd, syslog, xinetd
Print. KDE printer setup was covered in a previous article on the setup of the IBM T42 under FC2. Printer setup starts with
Main Menu -> Control Center -> Peripherals -> Printers ->
Administrator Mode
Gnome printer setup can be done with the utility printconf-gui
Desktop menu -> System Settings -> Printing
If you configure a Networked CUPS (IPP) printer, you may not know the ip address or name of the printer to enter in the server textbox. If you know the subnet the printer is on and you have KDE installed, you can use KDE to scan for IPP printers. In a terminal window as root, type kcontrol. Use the KDE control panel to configure the printer and abort after scanning for the printer.
Gnome Media. The utility gnome-volume-properties
Desktop menu -> Preferences -> Removable Drives and Media
provides the following checkboxes.
Mount removable drives when hot-plugged Mount removable media when inserted Browse removable media when inserted Auto-run programs on new drives and media
with the first three boxes checked, I inserted my SanDisk, Cruzer mini 128 MB, USB key and a file manager window opened showing the contents of the key.
The default music player for Gnome is Rhythmmbox and the default ripper is Sound Juicer. So far both have worked well. Nautilus can burn CD's but I still prefer the KDE application K3b. The default movie player is Totem along with either gstreamer or xine-lib. I tried both and had the best results with xine-lib. The fedora-livna and fedora-extras Yum repos make setup of totem-xine easy.
yum --enablerepo=livna install totem-xine
Also install the latest codecs.
# wget ftp://ftp5.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/releases/
codecs/essential-20050412.tar.bz2
# tar -xvf essential-20050412.tar.bz2
# cp essential-20050412/* /usr/lib/win32
Modem. The modem in the T42 is an IBM product based on the Conexant chip set and requires an HSF driver. A free 14.4K driver is available from www.linuxant.com.
Kile. The LaTeX IDE Kile was discussed in a previous article. Kile is now included in FC4 Extras.
yum install kile
Quanta Plus. Quanta Plus is an excellent HTML editor and Tidy is an HTML syntax checker. Both are now included in the KDE kdewebdev package which is part of the FC4 distribution.
yum install kdewebdev
Kdocker. Kdocker will dock any application into the system tray. It works with both Gnome and KDE. The tarball can be downloaded from
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kdocker/
I added
/usr/local/bin/kdocker sunbird
to the 'Startup Programs' tab of the Gnome Sessions manager utility. Clicking on the Sunbird icon in the system tray opens the Sunbird window and doing it again closes it.