Install Fedora Core

Installing Fedora Core 6

This guide is intended as a beginners guide to installing Fedora Core 6. I read a few webpages for tips before starting and found link below so please read it before continuing.

  http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html#install

 So to begin

Download stage

Download FC6 for your particular hardware platform from here,

  http://fedora.redhat.com/Download/ 

I chose to download all 5 CD’s however, I only used CD 1 and 2 during the installation. My collegues prefer to download a minimal install CD and add the extra packages they require over the network, using the Yum package manager. I’ll get one of them to input some notes on this method here.

Preperation Stage

I wanted a dual boot scenario so I deleted all disc partition structure, created a new 60Gb partition during a fresh install of MS Windows XP SP2 on NTFS. I left the remainder of the hard disc unallocated. If you have an existing installation and want it dual booting you will need to resize it (not covered in these pages)

Installation Stage

The FC6 CD number 1 was in put the drive and the laptop booted from this device, I did a typical install next next etc. until I got to partitions and file systems page. My collegues reccommended a small 50 Mb ext2 partition for /boot and lvm EXT3 for the rest. The install continued next next etc the CD number 2 was inserted when prompted. The hardest part for me was to decide on a suitable hostname, domain, usernames and passwords, when this completed I rebooted.

I logged in and was impressed at how easy the process was, the next thing the system wanted to do was to update its packages all 206 of them. So I clicked ok and went to get a coffee. When I returned, the system wanted a reboot to install the new Kernel, so I complied.

Repositories stage

I was reccomended to include some extra repositories so these will be added here for

Faster Mirror

Nvidia

IPW3956

so follow these instructions

  http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html#yum

Hardware

This was completed on Dell XPS M1710,

All worked out of the box except wireless, theres a shocker…..

a college pointed me at the link below

IPW3956

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wireless-internet/81579-intel-3945abg-fedora-core-6-problem.html

Post installation

I used lsmod to see if the wireless module is running

if you cant see

ipw3956

start the module as a daemon with

  /sbin/3945d 

recheck lsmod

  lsmod | grep ipw3945

if its running bring eth1 online with the command

  iwconfig eth1 up 

open the network manager, can you see the wireless card, if so highlight the wireless card, click

  connect

if it doesn’t connect

Troubleshooting stage

what can the wireless card see

  iwconfig eth1

If it can see and be associated with an access point

iwconfig eth1 mode managed iwconfig eth1 essid magicword iwconfig eth1 key magic number dhclient eth1

you should now have an ip address which you can check with

  ifconfig

enjoy surfing 

There are many network managers apart from the one supplied with FC6 such as WifiRadar

easy to install and use, when started the application auto detects wireless signals and tries to log you in. It can save previous connection details for use another day.

  yum install wifimanager

Graphix enhancemnets

There are some fabulous graphics enhancements such as Beryl or Comsit etc Ive seen Beryl in action so i elected to install that.

Beryl

This is a very exciting desktop manager with some funky features. Luckilly I have a graphics card supported by Beryl an Nvidia 7900GS.

All we needed to do was install the kmod-nvidia package specific to the kernal version we are running using the yum installer. follow these tips

  http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html#nvidia

To find out which kernel we are running

  uname -r

it showed I was running kernel

 2.6.19-1.2895.fc6

so to install nvidia

  yum install kmod-nvidia 2.6.19-1.2895.fc6 

erckles !!!

mismatched kernel and versions of nvidia

To solve this my collegue recommended reverting to the old 2.6.18 kernel then installing new kernel with matching kmod-nvidia kernel version at the same time,

yay, we are cooking on gas

Testing Beryl

fire up the beryl manager, configure the settings and spend the next half hour playing with the funky graphics.

Additional Software

Media

I suppose you will want to play media files, have javaruntime, flash and adobe etc. Well click the link below and scroll down, follow the steps to install each item you require. How easy is that.

  http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html

Ever wanted to use an alternative operating system for testing purposes whist using another. Cant afford several spare pc’s well a virtual machine is the answer. There are several around VMWare, etc

Qemu

this is an open source package see wikipedia and seach for Qemu or click the link below

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qemu

once installed add kqemu which is an enhancement

create your image

It can be fired up either with a command like

  qemu -hda xpie6.qcow -m 512 -net nic -net user -soundhw all

Where

  xpie6.qcow = image name to open   -m 512 = memory allocation limit   -net = network enabled   soundhw = all is with sound 

or by using a graphical manager like

qemu launcher