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Fedora 21 machine setup

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This is the (almost) complete list of actions performed at the command line to bring up an Acer Laptop to 'operational standard' from its original installation via 'Fedora 21 XFCE Live Spin (64-bit)' from a USB drive onto the laptop's brand new SSD drive.

Update machine after initial USB install

yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror
yum update
reboot

Install essential tools

yum install firefox geany joe scite git libreoffice unison keepassx

Copy lots of stuff from previous HD

This was stored on the HD using full-disk encryption - which I expected to make mounting/reading it painfull. However, Fedora appears to detect what's going on when the HD is plugged in (now using a USB-to-SATA interface) and the mounting goes through flawlessly (after the password is entered). the ln -s is done for command-line convenience.

ls -l /mnt/
ln -s /run/media/andrewsm/8f8d7243-4319-4e55-897e-76e53e16b43b /mnt/hd
ls -l /mnt/hd/home/andrewsm/

mkdir install-old-hd
cp  /mnt/hd/home/andrewsm/install.* install-old-hd/

# All OSS projects (but includes some data directories)
rsync -avz --progress  /mnt/hd/home/andrewsm/OpenSource .

# Internal 'sketchpad' for miscellaneous works-in-progree
rsync -avz --progress  /mnt/hd/home/andrewsm/sketchpad .

# Bring over settings so that logins work elsewhere (clone old HD's settings)
rsync -avz --progress  /mnt/hd/home/andrewsm/.ssh .

# Bring over old unison file-sync settings to make it seamless
rsync -avz --progress  /mnt/hd/home/andrewsm/.unison .

# Bring over a file-sync directory directly to avoid needless network sync
rsync -avz --progress  /mnt/hd/home/andrewsm/Personal .

More tools

Now that machine is looking more like home (and proven itself somewhat stable), pull in more heavy-weight packages :

yum install gcc python cmake make
yum install gimp inkscape gthumb

Bumblebee install (for Nvidia card)

As per instructions on this blog :

yum install -y libbsd-devel libbsd glibc-devel libX11-devel help2man autoconf git tar glib2 glib2-devel kernel-devel kernel-headers automake gcc gtk2-devel
yum install VirtualGL

yum -y --nogpgcheck install http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/public/bumblebee/fedora20/noarch/bumblebee-release-1.1-1.noarch.rpm
yum -y install bbswitch bumblebee

yum -y --nogpgcheck install http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/public/bumblebee-nonfree/fedora21/noarch/bumblebee-nonfree-release-1.1-1.noarch.rpm
yum -y install bumblebee-nvidia

touch /etc/sysconfig/nvidia/compile-nvidia-driver
reboot

Make the Suspend of the NVidia GPU work

As per instructions on this blog :

# Check whether noveau or nvidia are currently running
# (Should be '' for both)
lsmod | grep no
lsmod | grep nv

# This should give back results
optirun lsmod | grep nv
optirun --no-xorg modprobe -r nvidia
more /proc/acpi/bbswitch

# Get the script from the blog post...
scite /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/turn-off-gpu.sh &
chmod 755 /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/turn-off-gpu.sh
/usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/turn-off-gpu.sh pre suspend-test
more sleep.log

Install numpy / theano / ipython Prerequisites

yum install libyaml-devel zeromq-devel
yum install openblas-devel atlas-devel gcc-gfortran
yum install python-virtualenv
yum install libpng-devel freetype-devel
yum install hdf5-devel

Install the CUDA toolkit

As per instructions on this blog :

chmod 744 /home/andrewsm/Downloads/cuda_6.5.14_linux_64.run
/home/andrewsm/Downloads/cuda_6.5.14_linux_64.run --override
echo "/usr/local/cuda-6.5/lib64" > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/cuda.conf && ldconfig
joe /home/andrewsm/.bash_profile

Install geany-project-tree plugin

yum install geany-plugins-geanypy

# launch geany and enable the GeanyPy plug (Tools Plugin Manager)
geany -i

# Download the geany-project-tree plugin, and install
mkdir tools
cd tools/
git clone https://github.com/mdda/geany-project-tree.git
cd geany-project-tree/
ln -s `pwd`/project-tree ~/.config/geany/plugins/geanypy/plugins/
# Load the plugin via Tools Python Plugin Manager
geany -i

# Test the installation (on the plugin's own setup, sample config provided)
cd geany-project-tree/
geany -i

# Just for convenience, enable git password caching (15 mins is default timeout)
git config --global credential.helper cache
# Set the cache to timeout after 1 hour (setting is in seconds)
git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=3600'

Remove superfluous RPMs

yum remove transmission* claws-mail* midori*
yum remove pidgin* remmina* liferea* abiword* orage* parole* ristretto*

RPMs required for 'ruby bundler' (for Jekyll - i.e. this blog)

yum install ruby-devel rubygem-bundler
yum install nodejs

Now, going into the project folder, do a bundle install to bring in the Ruby dependencies, and this should allow local serving/testing of the content as follows :

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --watch --unpublished

Install vlc

(First checking which repositories worked best on previous machine) :

ls -l /mnt/hd/etc/yum.repos.d/
yum install http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-21.noarch.rpm
yum install http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-21.noarch.rpm
yum install vlc

Install Google Chrome

First, get the download from the the Google Download site, then :

yum install Downloads/google-chrome-stable_current_x86_64.rpm

Mount an SMB drive to copy some media files

# As a local user, create a suitable SMB credentials file :
mkdir -i ~/.cifs
echo "user=username" >> ~/.cifs/viewqwest
echo "password=password" >> ~/.cifs/viewqwest

# and as root :
mkdir -p /mnt/media
mount -t cifs //viewqwest.herald/2tb /mnt/media -o rw,user,noauto,credentials=/home/andrewsm/.cifs/viewqwest,uid=andrewsm,gid=nobody

Install EncFS (for sync-able encrypted folders)

This is for regular (sync-able) file-system files that can be encrypted/decrypted on the fly. Very usefull in conjunction with unison :

yum install fuse-encfs

# remove '#' before user_allow_other
joe /etc/fuse.conf

The following script mounts an encrypted folder simply :

#!/bin/bash

#Capture the full path (required for mounting)
p=`pwd`
fusermount -u ${p}/Finance

DIALOGTEXT="Enter the Personal-Finance EncFS Password"
encfs \
 -o allow_other \
 --extpass="zenity --title 'EncFS Password' --entry --hide-text --text '$DIALOGTEXT'" \
 ${p}/.Finance-encfs/ ${p}/Finance/

And the following script un-mounts it :

#!/bin/bash
fusermount -u Finance

Install Skype

First, install Skype from [http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-linux/](the Skype Linux download page) (the 32-bit Fedora one works).

Then, check that there are no pre-64-bit RPMs installed on the machine. That will (likely) prove that the Linux install is pure 64-bit native, meaning that (helpfully) Skype is the only reason that 32-bit packages are installed. This in turn means that when it comes time to replace Skype with something more Linux-friendly, it will be easier to remove it cleanly.

rpm -qa | grep i586
rpm -qa | grep i686
rpm -qa | grep i486
# NO 32-bit RPMs before Skype

yum install Downloads/skype-4.3.0.37-fedora.i586.rpm
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