Fedora 21 Server

Currently Under Construction! Expect an amazing article soon! Last modified: April 10th, 2015.

Notes... Fedora 21 server does not have a GUI. This guide, however, will guide you through installing FOG totally (with various setups).

lets see...

READ FIRST, COMPLETE FIRST ---Prerequisites CHECKLIST... Choosing a password for FOG user and root. Deciding where images will be stored. Full FOG DHCP or ProxyDHCP ?

Installing Fedora 21 server

configuring the /images directory during Fedora installation (optional)

Working from the comforts of your desk (using SSH - Optional but highly recommended)

Connect using SSH from another Linux machine

ssh -l root x.x.x.x

restart server

shutdown -r

Formatting & mounting a 2nd drive (optional)

ls -l /dev/sd*

(lists all scsi/sata device files to find the new extra disk device file)

The output will look something like this.

brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  0 Apr  6 17:49 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  1 Apr  6 17:49 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  2 Apr  6 17:49 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 Apr  6 20:49 /dev/sdb

Normally sda is drive 1. sdb is drive 2. Note that SATA drives begin with sd, IDE drives begin with HD. If you had additional drives or even flash drives, they'd be listed as sdc, sdd, sde, sdf, etc. After identifying the right drive, you'll want to create a partition on it. For this, we use fdisk.

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk /dev/sdb

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.25.2).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.


Command (m for help): 

hit the "m" key to get the menu, to show you what you can do in there. "g" creates a new GPT partition, so tap "g" After creating the partition, you can verify it with "p" You must write your changes with "w", otherwise nothing will be done.

We need to format that partition next (we're going to do it the ultra-simple but probably "will upset old-time Linux users" way). if you'd like an ext4 filesystem, you'd use:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb

Next, we want that partition to mount to the /images directory at boot. We'll need to edit /etc/fstab for this, and you'll need to use Vi to do it (it's easy).

vi /etc/fstab

Vi is NOT anything like a GUI based text editor... Move the cursor around with your arrow keys. Put it where you want to type. Using the "right" arrow to get to the very end of a line.

press "i" to insert text. After pressing "i", you may still move around with the arrows, but now you have editing ability. You can use things like backspace, enter, and you can type.

You need to add this line to the end of the file. Make sure to use the right partition name, and the right file system type.

/dev/sdb    /images    ext4    defaults    0    0

When you're done, you need to stop "inserting", to do that, hit the escape key. Now, you need to write your changes. do that by typing :w and then hit enter. It should tell you it wrote the changes. Next, to quit, type :q and hit enter.

You may reboot to mount, or you can mount now using this:

cd /
mkdir images
mount /images

All done.

mounting a smb share/NAS at boot to store images (optional)

cd /
mkdir images
sudo chmod -R 777 images
vi /etc/fstab

//x.x.x.x/RemoteSharedFolder /images cifs username=UserNameHere,password=PasswordHere,noperm,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

Where x.x.x.x is the remote share's IP. Replace the username and password. Please note that you're password will be stored in plain-text. You MIGHT want to create a user on the hosting server, and give that user a non-critical password, and assign that user ownership to the share with full control, and disallow everyone else.

Installing SVN (required) (installs Beta of Subversion)

yum install svn

Updating Fedora (optional)

yum update

SSH'ing into your server (optional, but strongly recommended). SSH is the ONLY thing that isn't blocked in Fedora by default. The default firewall in Fedora has everything locked down except SSH. All other versions of Linux that I know of come with the firewall disabled. This hints at SSH's importance!

ssh -l root x.x.x.x

Note: this is for SSH'ing in from another linux computer. From windows, you can use PuTTY [1].

Static IP address

yum install system-config-network
cd /usr/bin
./system-config-network

Follow on-screen prompts (it's easy).

Disable firewall and SELinux.

systemctl disable firewalld.service

vi /etc/selinux/config

Change the line:

SELINUX=enforcing

To:

SELINUX=disabled

generally, the easy way to make the SELinux setting take effect is to reboot.

dnsmasq (ProxyDHCP) setup

edit the ltsp.conf file:

vi /etc/dnsmasq.d/ltsp.conf

port=0
log-dhcp
tftp-root=/tftpboot
dhcp-boot=undionly.0,x.x.x.x,x.x.x.x
dhcp-option=17,/images
dhcp-option=vendor:PXEClient,6,2b
dhcp-no-override
pxe-prompt="Press F8 for boot menu", 3
pxe-service=X86PC, “Boot from network”, undionly
pxe-service=X86PC, "Boot from local hard disk", 0
dhcp-range=x.x.x.x,proxy

Restart dnsmasq:

systemctl restart dnsmasq.service

Enable dnsmasq to start on boot:

systemctl enable dnsmasq.service