Fedora 21 Server

Currently Under Construction! Expect an amazing article soon! Last modified: 7-23-2015.

Installing Fedora 21 server

Configuring partitions for FOG

The one thing with using Fedora (or any red-hat based distro) is that the default partitioning isn't optimal for FOG. The default is that "root" only gets 50 GiB and the rest goes to /home. This is not optimal. The most simple partitioning setup for FOG is below:

• Give "swap" the same amount as the amount of RAM the system has.

• Give "home" just a little for working space.. like 5 gigs.

• Give the "boot" partition about 2 gigs to be future proof.

• Finally, give the rest to "/" (root).

Fedora (and most red-hat installers) auto-adjust partition sizes for you if you go over what is available... meaning.. if you are unsure about how much space is left on the drive to assign to "/", and you have a 500GB drive, you can just type something absurd in like 999 GiB and hit "update" and the installer will auto adjust that amount to what is available.

Continue installation

• Under network settings, set a static IP and a name. DNS entries are comma delimited (no spaces).

• Set the timezone.

• Start installing

• Set a root password.

Fedora 21 server pre-config

Update Fedora 21 server

Update everything installed with this line:

yum update -y

Continue pre-config

After installation is complete and reboot is done, you can work through putty from this point forward. You can get a copy here.

• Log in as root with the password you set earlier.

• Disable the firewall now and on boot:

systemctl stop firewalld
systemctl disable firewalld

• Disable SELinux on boot by editing /etc/selinux/config

vi /etc/selinux/config

Instructions on using Vi: Vi

Change the line

SELINUX=enforcing

to

SELINUX=disabled

• Stop SELinux from running with

setenforce 0

Install MySQL

Fedora 21 Server currently needs mysql installed before the latest FOG Trunk is installed.

Do that with this line:

yum install -y mysql mysql-server

Setup FOG Trunk

This will install the latest developmental version of FOG using the Subversion method found here: SVN

yum install -y subversion
cd ~
mkdir svn
cd svn
svn checkout https://svn.code.sf.net/p/freeghost/code/trunk
cd trunk/bin
./installfog.sh

• Follow the on-screen instructions to setup fog for your environment. If you are unsure about anything, choose the default option.

Post Config

Set the FOG services to start 30 seconds after boot

(necessary with Fedora 21 & r2922 and up. There's an issue with the FOGMulticastManager after a reboot; it's timing related.)

• Disable FOG services with:

systemctl disable FOG{MulticastManager,Scheduler,SnapinReplicator,ImageReplicator}

Create a startup script with:

vi /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Instructions on using Vi: Vi

• Make that file look like below, exactly. This creates a 30 second delay for starting these services at boot.

#!/bin/bash
sleep 30
systemctl start FOGMulticastManager
systemctl start FOGScheduler
systemctl start FOGSnapinReplicator
systemctl start FOGImageReplicator
exit 0

• save the file

• Then Run this command to make that file executable:

chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Setting the proper interface name for your storage node

You can list all interface names with this:

ip link show

You'd take the non-loopback one and type it into the interface field for your storage node, here:

Storage Management -> DefaultMember -> Interface

Other Post-Configurations for Fedora 21 Server and this setup (Optional)

Verify DHCP config (if using DHCP)

If you chose to install FOG with DHCP, the configuration file is (On a typical red-hat install) located here: /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

You can edit it using this command:

vi /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

Instructions on using Vi: Vi

Things you might want to verify in this file is:

• The range of IPs you want to give out.

• The network address.

• The subnet mask.

• The bootfile you want to use. The default is set to undionly.kpxe and this works with most newer computers. Older computers (and especially Lenovos) should use undionly.kkpxe

To find your network address and subnet mask, you'd type:

route -n

Updating FOG to Latest

cd ~
cd svn/trunk
svn up
cd bin
./installfog.sh -y

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

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

This is how you would mount a windows share to Fedora 21 server for backups or other numerous reasons.

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

Instructions on using Vi: Vi

Add this line to the bottom of /etc/fstab to permanently mount //x.x.x.x/RemoteSharedFolder to the folder called backups:

//x.x.x.x/RemoteSharedFolder /backups 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 your password will be stored in plain-text. There are other methods of mounting without storing your passwords in such an obvious place, but this is not within the scope of this document. We're doing it the quick and dirty way to get you going with minimal difficulty.

dnsmasq (ProxyDHCP) setup

Install dnsmasq:

yum install -y dnsmasq

edit the ltsp.conf file:

vi /etc/dnsmasq.d/ltsp.conf

Instructions on using Vi: Vi

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

Where you see "x.x.x.x", replace this with your FOG server's IP address. You may change the timeout for the menu or remove it totally.

Restart dnsmasq:

systemctl restart dnsmasq.service

Enable dnsmasq to start on boot:

systemctl enable dnsmasq.service