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)

For serving the image to lychee, VirtualBox needs to be run as root because the NAT port forwarding from 873/TCP on the host to 873/TCP on the virtual machine is only possible in Linux if the VirtualBox processes are run by root. It is not necessary to run VirtualBox as root for other stages, but it can make things easier.

  • 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
  • This creates a $HOME/.VirtualBox directory, which contains all the information about the VM
  • 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. VM stands for commands run on Virtual Centos (Virtual Machine), H stands for commands run on the host, such as commands to the VirtualBox application itself, and L stands for commands to lychee, which is used as the image server.

  • VM: scp -r -P 2023 lychee.md.smms.uq.edu.au:/etc/yum.repos.d/\* /etc/yum.repos.d/
  • VM: yum update
  • VM: yum install perl-AppConfig
  • VM: rpm -iv systemconfigurator-2.2.11-1.noarch.rpm systemimager-common-4.1.6-1.noarch.rpm systemimager-client-4.1.6-1.noarch.rpm systemimager-x86_64initrd_template-4.1.6-1.noarch.rpm
  • VM: We don't need to open port 873/TCP (for serving the image) as no firewall is turned on
  • VM: Edit /etc/systemimager/updateclient.local.exclude:
  • VM: Prepare the image for lychee (IP Address 152.98.195.188)
    • /usr/sbin/si_prepareclient --server 152.98.195.188
      • Continue? y
      • Continue? y
  • H: Forward port 873/TCP on the host to the VM
    • VBoxManage setextradata "Centos 5.3 Workstation" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/rsync/Protocol" TCP
    • VBoxManage setextradata "Centos 5.3 Workstation" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/rsync/GuestPort" 873
    • VBoxManage setextradata "Centos 5.3 Workstation" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/rsync/HostPort" 873
  • L: Grab the image from the virtual Centos running on the VirtualBox VM on the host computer (this case uqmd13, which has IP address 152.98.195.144)

/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
  • yum install fonts-chinese
  • TODO: yum install fonts-chinese
  • 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)