CentosWorkstation

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How to make a Centos Workstation (VM/Real Machine)

Warning Do not install the Xen virtualisation package within the virtual Centos as it will crash during boot when running inside the VirtualBox VM!


Building the VM (Virtual Machine)

  • Inside VirtualBox (F7|C5) server, add users to vboxgroup (/etc/group), run VirtualBox, register product, create new virtual machine
    • Centos 5.3 Workstation
    • Linux, Red Hat 64-bit
    • 1.5GB RAM
    • Boot hard disk (Primary master)
      • Create new hard disk
        • Dynamically expanding storage
        • Location: /data/virtualbox/Centos.vdi
        • Size: 40.0 GB
  • Further settings

Installing Centos

  • Start VM
  • Press Enter at Centos installation screen
  • Skip media check
  • Ignore colour mode message
  • Centos Installation screen (GUI)
    • Language: English
    • US English
    • Click OK to erase all data on device hda
      • Hard disk
    • Create custom layout
    • hda 40955MB VBOX HARDDISK
    • Partitioning
      • /boot, ext3, 100MB, Fixed size, Force to be a primary partition
      • /, ext3, 18000MB, Fixed size, Force to be a primary partition
      • /usr, ext3, 18000MB, Fixed size, Force to be a primary partition
      • swap, 2048MB, Fixed size
      • /data, ext3, Fill to maximum allowable size
    • The Grub boot loader will be installed on /dev/hda
      • Default: CentOS /dev/hda3 (/)
    • Network
      • Active on boot, eth0, DHCP, Auto
    • Hostname:
      • Automatically via DHCP
    • Time
      • Australia/Brisbane time
      • System clock uses UTC
    • Root password
      • <standard workstation root password>
    • Installation
      • Desktop - Gnome/Desktop - KDE
      • Centos Extra
        • eth0/DHCP/IPv4 (for downloading packages)
      • Customize later
    • Begin!
    • Wait ~20 minutes
    • Reboot (unmounting ISO)
  • Post Installation Configuration
    • Firewall: Disabled
    • SELinux: Disabled
    • NTP: Enabled, 130.102.2.15, 130.102.128.43, Synchronise system clock, Local time source
    • Create User: Use Network Login: LDAP for both User Information & Authentication:
      • LDAP Search Base DN: dc=md,dc=smms,dc=uq,dc=edu,dc=au
      • LDAP Server: ldap://lychee.md.smms.uq.edu.au/
    • Sound should be OK
    • Reboot

System configuration

After installation of the base system, we need to perform some steps to allow it to be imaged to real machines

  • Add sorbonne repository to /etc/yum.repos.d/Centos-Base.repo

[sorbonne]
name=Sorbonne
baseurl=http://redhat.sorbonne.fr/CentOS-5/epel/i386/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Software

  • yum install pymol zsh
  • pymol: (Dirty hack). yum install pymol. As the one from sorbonne repository gives the python shared object in 32-bit, we need to rebuild it. This involves running, inside the pymol source, python setup.py build. Then, copying the libpymol.so built to /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/pymol/_cmd.so.