Ubuntu to FC7.

I have an old machine on which I currently run Ubuntu. Last night I downloaded FC7, the K version, to give it a try. I use the machine as a Subversion server, whose content I have elsewhere, so little is lost if it all goes pearshape. I'm using Fedora as my reference.

The single disk booted OK, my only real options were to check the disk then boot from image. That's now happened and I have yet another desktop. It's the K desktop with which I'm not that familiar. Found /system/install to harddrive, which is what I was looking for. This sets off into the familiar (by now) Fedora installation setup. I chose to let it reformat the disk, it's only 20Gb anyway. I seem to be locked out of setting my Gateway access for the network though. There, but greyed out. Wrong again, its just badly laid out on screen. Edit the network device and there it all is. Set the IP, gateway and DNS easily enough. Set the root password and off we go. It was a single CD download rather than 6 as with previous releases.

Currently formatting the filesystem. I currently have a blank screen which is a little worrying! The CD is currently highly active, so I guess that's something. What's worse is that I have an energy saving screen with both analogue and digital inputs, so I'm never sure what's stopped working. Yuk. That was it. I'd lost the signal from the analogue input, so it switched back to the digital one, which had timed out and left a blank screen. Now copying the 'live' (FC7 term) image to the hard drive. Watching Linux wonder in the same direction as Windows, i.e. bigger installs, I'm suspicious that my 20Gb disk may not be enough for one of these updates. The system clock is showing 10:49, and I've set the region, so I guess the mb battery is on the way out. Just noticed, there's an icon on the desktop, 'install to hard drive'. Why do I always do things the hard way. I'll go read some more. Moved on to 'post installation system changes'. I wonder .....

My ignorance is showing again. Looks like Redhat are using pixie dust. At this url, they are telling me all about pixies! Whatever next. OK. Pre-boot execution environment. Looks like RedHat are employing the jargon kiddies in force.

All done. Rboot minus the CD and see what happens. Apart from losing one character off the left of the screen in the bios boot, so far so good. Yes, back to graphics mode V. Bit more setup... Seems we now have a 'Setup Agent'. Set the firewall. Enabled SELinux (It's been on my other Linux box without bothering me since FC4, so why not). connected to nntp, so the battery issue is less of a problem. New bit. They grab a bit of the current config and send it back to ... what is the Redhat equivalent of Redmond? I guess they learn from it, and the default is not to send, so I'm happy with that. Oops. Another blank screen.

And that's it. Well... Yum's turn to do it's thing. Using fedora and updates so far... OK. It's normally 300 Mb of stuff on the first time round the buoy after a new version. Not bad, about 30 items, headers in about a minute. 30 packages, 20Mb. More than reasonable. Though supposedly this is a minimal setup. Updating now. Oops. /var/temp/rpm-tmp.52075: line 14: fg: no job control. Wonder where that message escaped from! And.... quick yum clean, check-update.. yes. selinux-policy is there. Darned tricky these yum types. Round the buoy again. Nope. Metadata file does not match checksum. Another mirror... No. Two more mirrors and I remain with not the latest selinux-policy. Perhaps I can live without it! Ninth mirror, I do hope they aren't in a circular reference! 31 mirrors? This is getting suspicious. Well bu.. me. Done it. Two packages and we're done. Now to satisfy my own urges. A server and an editor. Now that emacs 22 is out.... Emacs first then. 22Mb. Now firefox. Bit remiss to omit that? Another 21Mb. Subversion 1.4.3-4, 2.7Mb. httpd, 1Mb. mod-dav-svn, seems to be there already. Oops, sloppy typing. yum install mod_dav_svn works. Drat. My documentation for the httpd.conf is ood. Grrr.

24 hours later and lots of frustration. I've correctly set up httpd.conf, but forgot all about selinux. chcon is not a command I've used much. faq tells me about it, so it looks like I'm not the only one. Alls well that ends well. I now have an FC7 install to play with, I'm backed up off my main machine and can get back to other things.