6 Installing Linux

By:

Stephen Carville

Revision:

02/01/2002

1. Put CDROM in CD Drive
2. Power on Machine
3. If necessary change BIOS to boot from CDROM
4. At the Boot: prompt, type 'text'.
5. Language English
6. Keyboard Configuration US (usually)
7. Installation Method Local CDROM
8. Installation Type Custom System
9. Select partitioning method. If this machine will not be using RAID then Disk Druid is OK. Otherwise use fdisk
10. Partition Disks.

    7.0:

    If bootable RAID1 is needed, partition the second disk as a normal drive and proceed to Setting Up RAID1 after the installation has finished.

    7.2:

    RAID can be configured during install.

11. Formatting Partitions: Format all partitions and check for bad blocks
12. When asked to select packages Select at least:
    1. Printer Support
    2. DOS/Windows Connectivity
    3. Networked Workstatiion
    4. Network Management Workstation
    5. Emacs
13. Server services that may be needed
    1. SMB Server (most servers can use this)
    2. Web Server
    3. Anonymous FTP Server
14. It is usually a good idea to install the compatability and development packages.
15. After formatting and package installation you will need to enter the Hostname, Network Configuration and Time Zone.
16. Reboot the machine.
17. If not done at Step 14:
    From the installation CDROM, install the package compat-libstdc++. This is needed for the JDK.
    # mount /mnt/cdrom 
    # rpm -Uvh /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/compat-libstdc++*.rpm 
    # umount /mnt/cdrom 
    # eject
18. Proceed to install any additional software or upgrades

6.1 After Install Setup

1. Add domain and search to /etc/resolv.conf
   domain totalflood.com 
   nameserver 192.168.124.10 
   nameserver 192.168.124.20 
   search totalflood.com
2. Create /etc/path eg:
   PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
   Source /etc/path in /etc/profile
   . /etc/path 
   (This may require commenting out or deleting some path manipulation provided by the vendor)
3. For machines running JAVA create /etc/java.sh (See: 6.1.2 for example)
   source /etc/java.sh in /etc/profile
   . /etc/java.sh
4. Set the system clock
   # rdate -s <timserver>
5. Set the hardware clock
   # setclock
6. Add a script in /etc/cron.daily to set the clock daily.
   #!/bin/sh  
   # contact a time server and set the system time  
   # requires that timezone be correctly set  
   # on linux, drop in /etc/cron.daily  
    
   TIMESERVER=congo  
   RDATE="/usr/bin/rdate -s"  
   $RDATE $TIMESERVER
7. Add some necessary system groups: bbgroup (101), postfix (220), dba (110), apache (48), cvs (105)
   # groupadd -g 101 bbgroup 
   etc...
8. Add system accounts from ``master'' (currently chena)
   $ ssh chena sudo accounts/snarf.pl accounts/system | sudo sh
9. Add user accounts from ``master'' (currently chena)
   $ ssh chena sudo accounts/snarf.pl accounts/users | sudo sh
10. Install samba-swat if necessary. It is not installed by default.
11. Turn off unneed services such as nfs, nfslock, rstatd, and portmap.
    # chkconfig <service> off
    # service <service> stop
12. Check for and disable any unexpected services using netstat:
    # netstat -atp 
    # netstat -aup

6.1.1 Oracle servers

Oracle servers require some additional setup

1. Determine how much main RAM exists
   # cat /proc/meminfo
   The value for Mem: will be used to calculate the value for SHMMAX. Normally SHMMAX will be half of the available memory. The other values below will probably not have to change but always use judgement.
2. Create a file /etc/rc.d/oracle-sys: 
   #!/bin/sh 
    
   # set oracle kernel values on boot up  
   # generally use the Oracle recommended values or system defaults  
   # whichever is larger 
    
   # kernel sys directory PROC=/proc/sys/kernel 
    
   # set semaphores (not graven in stone :-)  
   # maximum number of semaphores for each userid  
   SEMMSL=250  
   # maximum number of semaphores on the system  
   SEMMNS=32000  
   # maximum number of operations per sempop call  
   SEMOPM=100  
   # maximum number of semaphore sets in entire system  
   SEMMNI=128 
    
   echo "$SEMMSL $SEMMNS $SEMOPM $SEMMNI" > $PROC/sem 
    
   # set shared memory parameters  
   # maximum allowable size of shared memory ~= 50% of physical RAM  
   SHMMAX=134610944 
   # maximum number of shared memory segments  
   SHMMNI=4096 
    
   echo $SHMMAX >$PROC/shmmax  
   echo $SHMMNI >$PROC/shmmni

   The script oracle-sys must be called before starting oracle. If oracle is started from an init script, then be certain oracle-sys is called first.

3. Add a line to rc.local calling the above script
   . /etc/rc.d/oracle-sys

6.1.2 Sample /etc/java.sh

#! /bin/bash
# set up for java and tomcat
# path to the JDK
JDK_HOME=/usr/java
JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk

# jakarta path
JAKARTA_HOME=/var/jakarta

# JAVA CLASSPATH Is this necessary any more?
CLASSPATH=$JAVA_HOME/lib:$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib:$JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext

# path to ant
ANT_HOME=$JAKARTA_HOME/ant

# path to jaxp
XML=$JDK_HOME/jaxp

# tomcat home
TOMCAT_HOME=$JAKARTA_HOME/tomcat
CATALINA_HOME=$JAKARTA_HOME/tomcat

# finally add java and jakarta to the PATH
PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin:$ANT_HOME/bin

export CATALINA_HOME JDK_HOME JAVA_HOME JAKARTA_HOME TOMCAT_HOME ANT_HOME 
export CLASSPATH PATH