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Linux & Open Source ● Multimedia

Fedora Post-installation Configurations

Published: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:31:03 +0000 Updated: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:31:03 +0000 | 31 comments

Inspired by an old post by Rui Moura, I’ll maintain here the plain commands needed to setup a freshly installed Fedora or Red Hat system, to include essential softwares they don’t ship by default due to legal issues.

These instructions are currently optimized for Fedora 14, 15 and 16, but most of it should work on any other Fedora and modern Red Hat Enterprise Linux too. Good suggestions provided as comments bellow will be added to this guide.

Index

  1. Permissions Setup
  2. Enabling GMail as System’s Default Mail Relay (so you get sysadmin e-mails from your machine)
  3. Keeping System Updated
  4. Repositories Setup
  5. Install Adobe Flash Player Globally
  6. Install Google Chrome Browser
  7. Access LAN Hosts by Name Without a DNS Server (Bonjour, Zeroconf)
  8. Keep Date and Time Correct and Precise
  9. Dramatically Improve Fonts
  10. Install Web Standard Fonts
  11. MP3 Support
  12. Amarok: The best audio player for Linux
  13. Enable Any DVD Player Software to Play DVDs from All Regions
  14. General DVD and DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.264 Movie Player
  15. General Digital Video Authoring and Editing tools
  16. Command Line DVD Copy & Decrypting Tool
  17. Access Windows NTFS Partitions From Linux
  18. Configure text console in high resolution and smaller fonts

Terms highlighted in red should be changed to match your system.

Permissions Setup

This step will allow you to issue some administrative commands without having to be all the time logged in as root — the system administrator.

bash# echo 'your_plain_loginname_here ALL=(ALL) ALL' >> /etc/sudoers

Note that this is the only command throughout this guide that shows a root prompt (bash#). All other commands are indicated to be run as a regular non-root user (indicated by bash$).

After configuring sudo, every time you execute an administrative command with its help, a password is requested. This is your password (the regular user’s password), not the root password.

Enabling GMail as System’s Default Mail Relay (so you get sysadmin e-mails from your machine)

Prepare a new configuration for Sendmail:

bash# yum install sendmail-cf patch wget
bash# wget -O /tmp/sendmail.mc.patch http://avi.alkalay.net/articlefiles/2011/01/sendmail.mc.patch
bash# cd /etc/mail
bash# patch < /tmp/sendmail.mc.patch

Put your GMail login and password into a authmap file (and protect it) so GMail will let your system send messages as you:

bash# cd /etc/mail
bash# echo 'AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com "U:root" "I:YOURADDRESS@gmail.com" "P:YOUR-GMAIL-PASSWORD"' > gmail-relay-auth
bash# chmod 0600 gmail-relay-auth         # make it unreadable by others
bash# makemap -r hash gmail-relay-auth.db < gmail-relay-auth
bash# chmod 0600 gmail-relay-auth.db      # make it unreadable by others

Build and install new Sendmail configuration, and restart the service to make changes effective:

bash# make    # to regenerate the config files based on our changes
bash# service sendmail restart

Now the system is able to send you warnings, cron outputs etc by e-mail. To test it, you can do this as any user:

mail -a /some/file/to/be/attached -s "Subject line" recipient@somedomain.com <<EOF
Body of the message goes here...
EOF

The message will be sent.

Keeping System Updated

After all the steps bellow and from time to time, update all software installed on your system with the following command:

bash$ sudo yum update

Repositories Setup

RPM Fusion is a repository of many essential multimedia and general purpose software for Fedora and Red Hat systems. It is a good idea to have it configured so you can easily install players for DVDs, MP3s amongst other useful things.

bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Install Adobe Flash Player Globally

bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
bash$ sudo yum -y install flash-plugin --exclude=AdobeReader\*

On 64bit systems (x86_64) use this:

bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
bash$ sudo yum -y install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.x86_64 nspluginwrapper.i686 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 libcurl.i686 --exclude=AdobeReader\*
bash$ mkdir -p ~/.mozila/plugins; ln -s /usr/lib/flash-plugin/libflashplayer.so ~/.mozila/plugins

Restart your browser to activate the plugin. For reference: Flash Player for Linux home page.

Install Google Chrome Browser

bash$ sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/google.repo http://avi.alkalay.net/articlefiles/2011/01/google.repo
bash$ yum -y install google-chrome-beta

You can also find Picasa on the same repo but is 32 bit only and not on the latest versions.

Access LAN Hosts by Name Without a DNS Server

You can access servers and machines on you LAN by name, instead of using their long IP address using the Zeroconf standard (implemented as Avahi in Linux). This is so useful and works out of the box in Ubuntu. The setup in Fedora is easy too, but not automatic.

bash$ sudo yum -y install avahi-tools nss-mdns

Now, instead of accessing local hosts by their IP, you can use the .local domain appended to their names. Just like this:

bash$ ssh 10.0.0.5 # stop using the IP address of dbserver
bash$ ssh dbserver.local # start using its hostname

Evnetually this will only work if you correctly configure or disable packet filtering (firewalling). To disable:

bash$ sudo service iptables stop
bash$ sudo service ip6tables stop
bash$ sudo chkconfig --del iptables  # disable even for next reboots
bash$ sudo chkconfig --del ip6tables # disable even for next reboots

Tip grabbed from Fedora Project wiki.

Keep Date and Time Correct and Precise

Your system can have 100% correct time and date everyday, synchronizing with atomic clocks across the Internet.

bash$ sudo yum -y install ntp    # install time sync tools
bash# ntpdate 0.fedora.pool.ntp.org    # make the first time sync with a Fedora clock mirror
bash# chkconfig --level 2345 ntpd on    # enable the synchronization service to run on every boot
bash# service ntpd start    # run the service so you don't need to reboot

Read more in the official Linux Time Precision HOWTO.

Dramatically Improve Fonts

bash$ sudo yum install freetype-freeworld

Logoff and login again your graphical environment to this update take effect.

To understand why you need this update read this section on the Linux Font HOWTO.

The freetype-freeworld package uses a technique described in this bug report.

Install Web Standard Fonts

These packages include popular fonts as Arial, Times New Roman, Tahoma, Verdana, as well as new Windows Vista and MS Office 2007 fonts. Learn more.

bash$ sudo rpm -Uvh \
http://avi.alkalay.net/software/webcore-fonts/webcore-fonts-3.0-1.noarch.rpm \

http://avi.alkalay.net/software/webcore-fonts/webcore-fonts-vista-3.0-1.noarch.rpm

Then, configure your desktop as described in the Linux Font HOWTO, for KDE or Gnome.

MP3 Support

For Gnome and GStreamer:

bash$ sudo yum -y install gstreamer-plugins-ugly libmad libid3tag id3v2


For KDE:

bash$ sudo yum -y install kdemultimedia-extras-nonfree id3v2

Amarok: The best audio player for Linux

bash$ sudo yum -y install amarok-extras-nonfree

Enable Any DVD Player Software to Play DVDs from All Regions

bash$ sudo wget -O /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo http://avi.alkalay.net/articlefiles/2011/01/atrpms.repo
bash$ sudo rpm --import http://packages.atrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms
bash$ sudo yum --enablerepo=atrpms -y install libdvdcss

General DVD and DivX/Xvid/MP4/H.264 Movie Player

bash$ sudo yum -y install gnome-mplayer

General Digital Video Authoring and Editing tools

bash$ sudo yum -y install mencoder mkvtoolnix mkvtoolnix-gui ffmpeg avidemux subtitleripper

Command Line DVD Copy & Decrypting Tool

bash$ sudo yum -y install vobcopy

Now, thanks to libdvdcss installed above, you can use vobcopy to clone DVD while removing their protections like this:

bash$ sudo mount /dev/dvd /mnt
bash$ cd /some/directory
bash$ vobcopy -m /mnt

Access Windows NTFS Partitions From Linux

bash$ sudo yum -y install ntfs-config

Then run the ntfs-config-root graphical tool and configure your partitions to be writable and mountable.

bash$ sudo /usr/sbin/ntfs-config-root

An example of my system:
NTFS config tool screenshot
After you configure the tool and quit, your NTFS partitions will be mounted in the specified place. In my case /media/Windows and /media/Work.

Configure text console in high resolution and smaller fonts

This tip is for the text console.

bash$ sudo echo 'SYSFONT="lat0-08"' >> /etc/sysconfig/i18n  # set a ISO-8859-15 font
bash$ sudo echo 'fbset 1024x768-60' >> /etc/rc.d/rc.local    # set console resolution to 1024x768 @ 60Hz

These settings will take effect after a reboot, but you can test them before rebooting executing the following commands:

bash$ sudo setfont lat0-08
bash$ sudo fbset 1024x768-60

Note that you can set different resolutions than 1024×768 if you have a video card and monitor that will accept it. A full list of modes can be listed with the command:

bash$ grep "mode " /etc/fb.modes
By Avi on Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:31:03 +0000 | Tags: | Categories: Linux & Open Source Multimedia

31 comments to Fedora Post-installation Configurations

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