Difference between revisions of "Fedora Linux Distribution Reference"

Revision as of 15:47, 11 April 2008

Fedora Core is Red Hat's free hobbyist version of Linux, designed to mature technologies quickly for use in the premium Red Hat Enterprise Linux product and to sate developers' appetite for new features. The Fedora foundation was announced by Redhat in in June of 2005.

In April of 2006 Redhat announced cancellation of the Fedora Foundation. This doesn't mean the distribution has been cancelled, but rather the body that maintains it will change. They moved the governing of Fedora Core from the foundation to the Fedora Project Board. The board includes five Red Hat employees and four outsiders. This move was a means for Redhat to keep the Fedora developers focused on initiatives more in line with Redhat's overall agenda.

The Fedora distribution lives on. Fedora 9 will be (or has been depending on when you are reading this) released by the Fedora Project in May, 2008. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and anyone is welcome to join.

Administrative Tasks

Note: the System menu is not in the traditional place, it is a seperate menu, from the left the 4th over on the task bar.

Screensaver and Screensaver Password

Change your screen saver by going to System, Preferences, Look and Feel, Screensaver.

Changing the display resolution and color depth

From the System menu choose System, Administration, Display. On the resulting Screen Resolution Preferences window, use the Resolution drop-down box to choose the resolution that you desire.

If you can't see all of the resolutions supported by your monitor it is probably due to an install time issue. You can change this configuration by going to System, Administration, Display to change the system system-wide display settings. When you open up certain applets from the System menu, Fedora prompts you for the root password, since these tools require administrative access to the machine. Once you provide the root password, the "Display settings" dialog window opens. From this menu, select the resolution that you would like to use.

Software Package Management

Fedora Package Collection List

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/collections/

yum

The yum utility is used to manage software packages on the Fedora Linux system.

• To install new software from package repositories
• To install new software from an individual package file
• To update existing software on your system
• To remove unwanted software from your system

Usage: yum [options] < grouplist, localinstall, groupinfo, localupdate, resolvedep, erase, deplist, groupremove, makecache, upgrade, provides, shell, install, whatprovides, groupinstall, update, repolist, groupupdate, info, search, check-update, list, remove, clean, grouperase >

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -t, --tolerant        be tolerant of errors
  -C                    run entirely from cache, don't update cache
  -c  [config file]     config file location
  -R  [minutes]         maximum command wait time
  -d  [debug level]     debugging output level
  -e  [error level]     error output level
  -q, --quiet           quiet operation
  -v, --verbose         verbose operation
  -y                    answer yes for all questions
  --version             show Yum version and exit
  --installroot=[path]  set install root
  --enablerepo=[repo]   enable one or more repositories (wildcards allowed)
  --disablerepo=[repo]  disable one or more repositories (wildcards allowed)
  -x [package], --exclude=[package]
                        exclude package(s) by name or glob
  --disableexcludes=[repo]
                        disable exclude from main, for a repo or for
                        everything
  --obsoletes           enable obsoletes processing during updates
  --noplugins           disable Yum plugins
  --nogpgcheck          disable gpg signature checking
  --disableplugin=[plugin]
                       disable plugins by name

Get yum ready by configuring it: (as root)

yum -y install yum-priorities

Edit the yum config file

vi /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf

Add the following line:

check_obsoletes = 1

Important Commands:

• To see a list of available software:

yum list available > /tmp/packages.txt
vi /tmp/packages.txt

• To install some software, you type:

yum install packagename

• To update some software, you type: (If you leave out "packagename" yum will update all your software.)

yum update packagename

• To see what updates are available, you can do:

yum check-update

• To search for a package, you can do:

yum search word

yum package installation example: vncserver

For this example we will install vncserver. Here's what it looks like:

yum install vnc-server.i386
Loading "priorities" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package vnc-server.i386 0:4.1.2-24.fc8 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size 
=============================================================================
Installing:
 vnc-server              i386       4.1.2-24.fc8     updates           1.8 M

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      1 Package(s)         
Update       0 Package(s)         
Remove       0 Package(s)         

Total download size: 1.8 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
(1/1): vnc-server-4.1.2-2 100% |=========================| 1.8 MB    00:12     
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Installing: vnc-server                   ######################### [1/1] 

Installed: vnc-server.i386 0:4.1.2-24.fc8
Complete!

The VNC Server now must be configured, see VNC Server Setup In Redhat Linux for more details.

Livna: Get Important Packages Missing From Fedora

Livna, rpm.livna.org, is a repository of add-on packages for Fedora. It provides many useful packages that can not be distributed in Fedora (previously known as Fedora Core and Extras). Typically, they cannot be distributed with Fedora due to licensing issues. Livna solves this problem by making the missing packages available to Fedora users.

To use with yum you need to install the rpm repository list. For Fedora 8, as an example, do the following:

wget http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
rpm -ih livna-release-8.rpm

The ffmpeg package is missing from Fedora 8. After adding livna packages to the database a simple execution of:

yum install ffmpeg

downloads and installs ffmpeg along with dependencies on your Fedora system.