CentosWorkstation

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How to make a Centos Workstation (VM)

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

A virtual machine makes installation and testing faster and easier, especially since it makes it easy to make and revert to snapshots.

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

Imaging Setup

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

/usr/sbin/si_getimage -golden-client 152.98.195.144 -image centos_golden_client -ip-assignment static -autodetect-disks

  • Kill rsync daemon used for

Software

  • yum install pymol zsh lyx
  • 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.

How to make a Centos Workstation (Real Machine)