On the bleeding edge

Fedora 20 Alpha

Got curious about the "did someone say Alpha" URL at the fedora download page.

Hmmmm. Thought I'd give it a shot. What's a few MB of bandwidth? But first ...

So I grabbed the K desktop, or KDE Live CD, the x86-64 Alpha flavour, and gave it a shot. Some folks prefer the Gnome desktop, some don't. Gnome is snazzier, but if one is accustomed doing stuff with a Windows desktop and little else, KDE will be a bit closer to the familiar.

Woah, its a 921MB .iso download so ... oh well, its not like I don't have lots of DVD blanks. But I am not anxious to waste the twenty minutes it would take to burn another coaster on my wonky DVD drive (yes, Wonky ... its an Industry Toim). Wonky, Its An Industry Toim as in Marisa Tomei's character in My Cousin Vinny "Industry Toim" perspective, but first ...

So fire up Virtual Box and set up a new virtual machine. But first, to keep things organized, move the downloaded .iso image file to a vm folder, and massage the New button in Virtual Box Manager.

In the VM create, Fedora (64 Bit) is one of the versions that shows up after setting the Type to Linux. If you grab the x86 flavour boot image file, that is fine too, just keep your architectures straight. Don't confuse me, I'm thinking here. If you try to boot an x64 .iso image but leave the guest set at "plain" or x86, it won't quite fly. One can set the guest to x64 and boot up with an x86 image, that will work. But first ...

Onward, through the fog, give it 800MB of RAM, that is plenty for a try out. Go a full 1GiB, or 1024MB if you have lots of RAM. For a Windows desktop with 4GiB, that is not quite enough to run a 1GiB guest. One must leave enough memory for the host OS. Every time I go the full 1024MB on a VM with the laptop, with 4GiB RAM, start the virtual machine, one can hear the processor fan kick in. Maybe more on that later, but first ...

Create a hard drive, a VDI (Virtual Box Disk Image) type works fine, and one can go with the "Fixed size", or the the default "Dynamically allocated" grows the disk image .vdi file as it uses up its space.

Point the file location at a new folder under vm, yes, keep things neat. Set the size to at least 10GiB, while 8GiB might be enough, it will be a tight. Might hit somewhere near the 95% used, or more, when a big batch of updates need to be applied. More on that later, of course, but first ...


The first teenager that says something like "Back In The Day" gets a smack upside the head with a floppy disk. Don't remember who said that one first, I don't make this stuff up, I just write 'em down. Anyways, pretty sure there's another screen shot around here with a similar System boot device list.

System boot list

I have seen eight inch floppy based computer systems.

Seen them in operation too, yes indeed, working operation.

Quite a bit before getting an actual and genuine professional position in the Information Technology industry. So no actual 8" floppy drive systems have ever been on my resume bullet point list, I don't go quite that old skool. Can't be too lucky, or too careful these days. But first ...

Anyways, uncheck the floppy drive from the boot list on the System settings, and move the hard disk up to the top. Its a new hard disk, and it won't be worth a boot (yet). If you really prefer the Easy button, visit the the Storage section.

Storage attributes

If you really need the Easy Button, point the CD/DVD drive to your Live .iso file. Not required, and it will have to be taken out later to get the guest addition bits to run, more on that later, GA is kind of important. But not quite yet, but first ...

So with Virtual Box we're emulating hardware in software. Neat trick. 'Nuff said on that. No dual boot setup needed to worry with and pollute your mind or your desktop, just to try out a new OS.

Might get around to a post or three on mysql, will definitely promise a hit up or two for Apache, and there is definitely some PHP stuff in the works as well. More on those bits later. But first ...

If you're happy with the disk size, boot order, and memory size, massage that virtual box Start button. If you went the Easy route and pointed the CD/DVD to the boot .iso it should be on its merry way. Otherwise, you'll have to dig around and find the download .iso file, then get prepared for take off. Next time there should not be quite as much digging, Virtual Box does have a nice habit of remembering things previously done with other VMs.

Eventually you should get a nice, clean, GUI desktop, with a Install icon in a desktop folder. Probably with networking disabled, so don't expect a browser to have much luck. Go ahead and massage that Install icon. Or dig around the desktop first if you'd like to get a feel for the lay of the land.

It took me a couple tries to get the install rolling, the Installation Options screen went stubborn on me- the radio button "I want to review/modify my disk partitions" did not want to take a click. For a little while. And for a few moments it looked as if the installer had not yet picked up the disk partition setup, but it eventually took off. One of those "wait for it ... wait for it" scenarios.

As briefly mentioned before, I really like to bump up the swap partition to a full 2GiB, or 2048MB, even if it is just for a quick try out, a POC (Proof of Concept) mode. The root, or / partition, will have to be decreased a "bit" (no pun intended) to grow swap. A calculator might come in handy, and is not considered cheating by any means. Measure twice, cut once, like the experienced carpenter always says.

Making changes to swap is a good exercise, something one might have to do on a real system, in real time. Its a bit tricky, depends on which OS flavour is in question, but might touch that topic later. But first ...

If you're really feeling adventurous, surf up the Fedora download options or formats page and try out the DVD or one of the other desktop flavours, maybe later. But first, using a Live image, with its smaller download, is the quicker path, while going the full DVD route chews up the bandwidth and download time. And does have lots more options. And lots more complications as well. Try the Live, easy route first.

Anyways, long story short, the Fedora 20 (Alpha) KDE Live .iso went fine for me, not much different. The first update count was over 500 packages, I *think* it was 520-something, maybe 525, that took a bit of time. So the Alpha has been out for a while, darn.

Getting the Guest Additions working with the VM was a breeze. That one usually trips me up, as there are a couple packages not included with the Live install "out of the box" but this one was pretty easy to get GA working. More on that later, but first ...

When the Install starts loading up stuff to the VM disk a couple icons will need a massage. First things first, set a root user password, and write it down, if you must. And create a user, going with just your initials means fewer keystrokes. Same deal with the user password, and write it down if you have to. One can check the "Administrator" check box, but that is optional too. Might make things in the GUI easier, but there's an even "more better" way to get superuser rights at the command line, will get to that soon as well.

If one struggles with coming up with decent strong passwords, there is an app for that. Really. Although it is a bit old school, you can get a random password generator web page after getting Apache and a bit of perl working on the box. Definitely more on those later. But first ...

Next up, Updates, and the Guest Additions. If you want to share a folder on your desktop to the VM guest host, or let the host machine see a folder on the guest, GA are a must have. And for pasting content into the guest, or copying content from the guest to your clipboard, that requires GA as well. But first ...

virtual box

Virtual Box

Ah, another dependency picture. Graph.

But first,what's that mean?

Take a glance at the code, note the lines adding  nodes to the graph, placing a few attributes on the nodes.

URLs, like the  one on "Virtual Box", takes the visitor to the Downloads web page for the Virtual Box software.

Similarly, the "boot .iso" URL leads to the Fedora Project download page where one may grab a (roughly) CD sized .iso image to use for booting a desktop to install Fedora.

Well, not exactly. The image is just an image, but the php code should render, for instance, with a tool tip on the "dkms" node showing some of the packages needed to get all this working. Or, for that particular node, a mouse over should reveal some of the pieces to get the Virtual Box guest additions working in the guest system.

And the "Download" tab at fedoraproject.org presents the default Fedora install, with the Gnome desktop. Which is fine, but if one uses a Windows desktop, a lot, as I must do, the K desktop, or KDE, will be somewhat more familiar territory. Gnome is alright, but my preference is KDE for a few reasons, will go into those soon. But first ... the code ...

<?php

require_once 'Image/GraphViz.php';

$gv = new Image_GraphViz();
$gv->addEdge(array('virtual box' => 'startup, install'));
$gv->addEdge(array('boot .iso' => 'startup, install'));
$gv->addEdge(array('boot .iso' => 'burn CD'));
$gv->addEdge(array('burn CD' => 'startup, install'));
$gv->addEdge(array('startup, install' => 'update'));
$gv->addEdge(array('update' => 'dkms' ));
$gv->addEdge(array('dkms' => 'vbox GA' ));
$gv->addEdge(array('startup, install' => 'httpd' ));
$gv->addEdge(array('httpd' => 'virtbox.php'));
$gv->addEdge(array( 'virtbox.php' =>'pretty picture' ));
$gv->addNode('virtbox.php',
        array( 'URL'      => 'virtbox.php.html' ));
$gv->addNode('virtual box',
        array( 'URL'      => 'http://virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads' ));
$gv->addNode('boot .iso',
        array( 'URL'      => 'http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-options' ));
$gv->addNode('vbox GA',
        array( 'URL'      => 'https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=15679' ));
$gv->addNode('httpd',
        array( 'label'    => 'httpd php graphviz' ));
$gv->addNode('dkms',
        array( 'tooltip'    => 'gcc devel dkms' ));

// draw it
$gv->image();

// *or* dump the gv object. cant do both, rats.
//print '<h4>$gv object</h4><p style="white-space:pre;">';
//print_r ( $gv );
//print "</p>\n";

?>

Note the comments, either let the .php page render the image, or one may turn on the commented code lines to see a dump of the $gv object, with an inline css style attribute so that the text for the object is a bit more legible.

As mentioned in the comment, can't do both the image and other stuff. Oh well, there's always a trade off. Maybe will figure out a way to get the graphviz image into a .php page along with other content, but there is always other important things to see, do, and learn. But first ... 

One could take the boot image .iso file, fire up a CD/DVD burn program and create a boot CD or DVD, go into the BIOS settings and put the optical drive above the hard drive in the boot order list. A totally optional step.

But in the amount of time it takes to burn a DVD, one could just about have Fedora, or Ubuntu, or Mint, or SUSE, or any distribution of linux installed, booted, and a running a new desktop. Perhaps it was Steven Wright who said "Any place is walking distance, if you have the time." Way, way back in 1984 or sometime around then. Maybe we'll go look that up for a proper credit. Soon. But first ...

Skip the waste of making another coaster, and the time. Avoiding a CD or DVD burn step completely by setting up a virtual machine in Virtual Box, point the drive to the  boot image file, and in a moment or three the install is underway.

No hassles with trying to set up a dual boot scheme on your desktop, no mucking about with making a dual boot system work, and keeping it healthy. Updates to your desktop OS may very well break a dual boot setup.

The Fedora Live boot file is easier. Fewer choices, less complicated. Following the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Silly!) is one way to get a linux host up and running, quickly, without too much fuss. A full DVD boot .iso presents many more install options, perhaps selecting a web server if that is the desired direction one wants to go, and/or a workstation with a few (or several) developer platforms.

All at just the right price. Your time is the price, be careful how its spent. Its one of the things that does not have a "do over" option. Time is a precious resource, and once its used, its gone, there are no take backs.

Now for the downside. The Live boot file is the quick path, and choosing KDE also has drawbacks. KDE does include a web browser, Konqueror, while Gnome has Firefox "out of the box". Overall, firefox is the better browser, but KDE includes a few GUI admin tools, like a runlevel editor, an item not easily added in Gnome.

The Service Management program

For a nice tutorial showing a Virtual Box install see the SysAdmGirl Fedora 17 video, at under ten minutes, it will be time well spent.

SysAdmGirl shows Fedora 17, while 18, and (really soon now) Fedora 19 will be the primary offering at the fedoraproject download page. Oh well, there is usually a downside to everything. Fedora 18 does fit into an 8GB disk, barely, although going for a 10GB partition won't hurt. Its always good to have a bit of spare disk space in the back pocket for any system admin.

For the system memory, a one GB virtual machine is plenty of room for linux. If memory is tight on the host machine, smaller is OK but when it comes to memory, more is generally better. Especially when using a 64 bit operating system.

There are reasons for going the x64 route, but saving memory is not one of them. If the hardware does not support x64, oh well, x86 works fine. Giving the virtual guest host a full 1GB of memory is not required, and do not give it that much unless at least 4GB of RAM is available on the host machine.

One thing I do like to do on a virtual machine setup for linux, shave a bit of space from the main partition and give the space over to the swap partition, bring it up to a full 2GB. That is 2GiB, as in 2048MiB. And one could spend an hour, even more, setting up additional partitions and mount points for guest OS. But first ... more on that later.

And do not expect a particular Fedora flavour to have a particularly long life span, a new version comes out every few months, a downside of choosing Fedora. But when creating a virtual machine, for Linux, do take a moment and glance at the System properties.

One thing to point out, on the Motherboard tab note the section "Extended Features", there is a check box "Hardware clock in UTC Time". Be sure to leave that checked, its quite important. Most any unix server will have its clock on Universal Coordinated Time, a critical point with operating systems, and one of the (many) reasons unix can be a better OS than ... the competition.

Be sure to stay tuned, more on that, and lots of other things too. But first ...