[EDIT 29 Jan 2009:] I just figured out something very important. Upon completion of the “Firefly” series on Hulu.com, I pop in my DVD of Serenity, and… nothing. VLC won’t open it, neither will xine, nothing. Having used libdvdcss in the past, I immediately go to yum and try to install it, but it isn’t there. Afer searching teh blagoweb for several minutes, I finally find, in a comment on this post, that the repo at rpm.livna.org is still up to serve one package that RPMFusion refuses to carry. Guess what that package was? The first long command in this guide now installs the livna repository and libdvdcss.[/EDIT]

After several months of working fine, one of Fedora 10’s updates last week killed my MacBook’s networking capability. I tried everything I could think of, but to no avail, so last night I reinstalled Fedora 10, and I realized that I do a lot of post-install configuration work that I don’t have saved on this blog, so here’s How I Configure Fedora 10.

PRE-INSTALL (MacBook):
Partition your drive using Boot Camp… you really only need to use it to shrink the Mac OS X hfs+ partition. The rest of the partitioning doesn’t matter.
Install rEFIt.
Install the StartupSound.prefPane in Mac OS X and mute the startup noise… unless you really love annoying everyone around you every time you turn on your computer.

INSTALL:
During my install, which I generally do from the Fedora 10 netinstall CD (which I get via bittorrent), I usually make a / partition (about 15GB, ext3), a swap partition (2 or 3GB, swap), and a /home partition (whatever is left, ext3). The EFI boot system on the MacBook requires a /boot partition (100MB, ext3). I always set a hostname for the computer, and for package selection, I uncheck everything except the “Base,” “Java,” and “X Window System” groups. If you use GNOME, KDE, XFCE, or whatever other window manager aside from FVWM, then you should check the appropriate box at that point and remove “fvwm” from the long command listed next.

POST-INSTALL COMMAND LINE:
You can do a lot with one command. This command removes PackageKit, the Totem line of media players, and the Presto yum plugin, adds the Adobe, Google, Livna, FedoraJunkies, and RPMFusion software repositories, and adds in all the software I use on a regular basis. It also fixes the Google favicon mismatch in Firefox. The last thing that happens is sensors-detect, which helps the kernel to know what hardware sensors are available on your computer. You’ll have to manually enter “yes” to each of it’s questions.

64-bit, including MacBook: yum -y install yum-fastestmirror && yum -y remove *packagekit* *PackageKit* *totem* yum-presto && rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm && rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm && wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub && rpm –import linux_signing_key.pub && cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ && wget http://nstickney.googlepages.com/google.repo http://nstickney.googlepages.com/google64.repo http://nstickney.googlepages.com/fedorajunkies.repo && cd && yum -y update && yum -y install aterm AdobeReader_enu boinc-client boinc-manager conky firefox fvwm gcc gdm gimp gnome-mount-nautilus-properties gnomesword gnupg google-desktop-linux gparted grip gvim imlib2 imlib2-devel libdvdcss libogg mozilla-vlc mpc mpd numlockx padevchooser paman paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter picasa pidgin pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr sonata thunderbird thunderbird-lightning transmission scrot vlc yumex && yum -y install *fonts* nautilus* pulseaudio* –exclude=*debug –exclude=*devel && cd /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins/ && wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz && tar -xvzf libflashplayer-10.0.22.87.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz && cd /usr/lib64/firefox-*/searchplugins/ && rm -rf google.xml && wget http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/google.xml && cd && wget http://dnmouse.org/fedora/truecrypt/10/x86_64/truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.x86_64.rpm && yum -y install truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.x86_64.rpm && rm -rf truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.x86_64.rpm && sensors-detect

32-bit: yum -y install yum-fastestmirror && yum -y remove *packagekit* *PackageKit* *totem* yum-presto && rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm && rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release.rpm && wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub && rpm –import linux_signing_key.pub && cd /etc/yum.repos.d/ && wget http://nstickney.googlepages.com/google.repo http://nstickney.googlepages.com/fedorajunkies.repo && cd && yum -y update && yum -y install aterm AdobeReader_enu boinc-client boinc-manager conky firefox flash-pluin fvwm gcc gdm gimp gnome-mount-nautilus-properties gnomesword gnupg google-desktop-linux gparted grip gvim imlib2 imlib2-devel libdvdcss libogg mozilla-vlc mpc mpd numlockx padevchooser paman paprefs pavucontrol pavumeter picasa pidgin pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr sonata thunderbird thunderbird-lightning transmission scrot vlc yumex && yum -y install *fonts* nautilus* –exclude=*debug –exclude=*devel && cd /usr/lib/firefox-*/searchplugins/ && rm -rf google.xml && wget http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/google.xml && cd && wget http://dnmouse.org/fedora/truecrypt/10/i386/truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm && yum -y install truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm && rm -rf truecrypt-6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm && sensors-detect

HARDWARE SPECIFIC COMMAND LINE:
If you have an aluminum MacBook, you’re probably wondering why you have no video… To fix it, add support for the nVidia video card with the following command, which also adds networking support for the Broadcom wireless card. The second half of the command (after “&&”) fixes the soundcard detection for the new MacBooks. For Fedora to start a GUI automatically on a new MacBook, you’ll have to edit the file /etc/inittab and change the “3” in the very bottom line to a “5” (id:3:initdefault: becomes id:5:initdefault:).
yum -y install kmod-nvidia kmod-wl && echo “options snd_hda_intel model=mbp3” >> /etc/modprobe.d/sound

The wireless card on my fiancé’s laptop (2004 model 17" Dell Precision M60) is a Broadcom card, but it’s older than the one in the MacBook and so the kmod-wl driver solution doesn’t work. Ndiswrapper to the rescue! Note: substitute in a link to your card’s WindowsXP drivers package where I put “R115321.EXE” in this command – you’ll have to find it on your own.
yum -y install kmod-ndiswrapper && mkdir wld && cd wld && wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R115321.EXE && unzip R115321.EXE && cd DRIVER && ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf && cd && rm -rf wld && ndiswrapper -m

My desktop computer has an ATI video card; to make it work, I installed the kmod-fglrx package from RPMFusion.
yum -y remove xorg-x11-drv-ati && yum -y install kmod-fglrx

My desktop’s wireless card is a Netgear card, but the important thing is that it’s an Atheros chipset… an AR5212/AR5213 to be exact. To make it work, I simply installed the Madwifi drivers.
yum -y install kmod-madwifi

If you’re just now getting video, you’ll realize that Fedora 10 won’t let you log into a GUI session as root. So you’ll have to make a user. If you had video from the beginning, you probably made a user during the GUI setup the first time you booted after installation. If so, you don’t need to do this.
useradd new_username -p

I have a Canon Pixma MP210 printer, and it also requires some special work. The command below gets the four required .rpm driver files from the Canon Australia support page and installs them, along with their dependencies.
cd && rm -rf *.rpm && wget http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDgyNzAx http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDg0NDAx http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDg0MjAx http://pdisp01.c-wss.com/gdl/WWUFORedirectTarget.do?id=MDEwMDAwMDgzMTAx && yum -y install *.rpm –nogpgcheck && rm -rf *.rpm

FINALIZING COMMAND LINE CONFIG:
Clean everything up and reboot to GUI.
yum -y update && yum -y clean all && rpm –rebuilddb && updatedb && reboot

POST-INSTALL GUI:
As I mentioned in this post, PulseAudio doesn’t work right out of the box for some people; to fix it, add tsched=0 to the end of the line load-module module-hal-detect in the file /etc/pulse/default.pa.

The applesmc kernel module allows control of fans and sensors in Apple hardware. Instructions for autoloading the module at boot are available at Cenolan’s guide for installing Fedora 10 on older MacBooks. That guide also includes information for getting the Plymouth graphical boot loader working on MacBooks; I don’t use Plymouth, prefering a text-only boot (see next paragraph)… but the guide works as advertised.

My preference is a text-only boot, and I like to actually see the boot menu, even when it only has one item. Both are easy enough with grub. I simply delete the line hiddenmenu and any instances of rghb quiet from the file /etc/grub.conf and set the timeout value to “3”.

A default Fedora 10 install starts a lot of services at boot, many of which I don’t need. Mauriat Miranda has a pretty good explanation of them at his website. I generally run system-config-services and set it so that everything is disabled except the following: acpid, auditd, cpuspeed, cups, gpm, haldaemon, ip6tables, iptables, kerneloops, lm_sensors, messagebus, microcode_ctl, network, portreserve, rsyslog, setroubleshoot, and udev-post. Many people like to have NetworkManager running as it can automate switching wireless networks (great for laptops), but it’s never worked for me, so I disable it and enable network. If you are running a software raid array, you should also enable mdmonitor.

My post about essential software covers all the Firefox/Thunderbird extensions, Greasemonkey scripts, and other bits and pieces, and there’s no real need to list it all again, so here’s a link to that post.

My last steps are to install my personal FVWM and other configuration files… but that’s another whole post, or a few thousand.