Instructions for installing CentOS on your computer¶

Why CentOS?¶

Linux distribution recommendation
If you have a new computer(s) for your Leginon/Appion installation, we recommend installing CentOS because it is considered to be more stable than other varieties of Linux.

CentOS is the same as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), except that it is free and supported by the community.

The reason I mention CentOS is because I wanted to keep the guide really simple. Another student and I run appion on Fedora 10 and we've run appion on SuSe in the past. I know we gotten most bits working on MacOSX, but some of the python libraries contain ancient Fortran code that does not compile easily on a Mac. But CentOS is certainly not a requirement in general, it is just that the first iteration of the guide is written for CentOS.

We provide the following instructions for CentOS Installation:

Download the ISO disk of CentOS 5.4 ¶

1. ISO files are available at
   1. http://wiki.centos.org/Download
2. Click on i386 for 32bit machines or x86_64 for 64bit machines
3. Pick a mirror and download 'CentOS-5.4-x86_64-bin-DVD.iso' file

Confirm download went correctly¶

perform a SHA1SUM confirmation:

sha1sum CentOS-5.4-x86_64-bin-DVD.iso

The result should be the same as in the sha1sum file provided by CentOS:

• http://centos.mirrors.tds.net/pub/linux/centos/5.4/isos/x86_64/sha1sum.txt for 64bit
• http://centos.mirrors.tds.net/pub/linux/centos/5.4/isos/i386/sha1sum.txt for 32bit

Burn ISO file to DVD disk¶

Use dvdrecord in Linux to burn disk

dvdrecord -v -dao gracetime=10 dev=/dev/dvd speed=16 CentOS-5.4-x86_64-bin-DVD.iso

Install CentOS 5.4 with default packages ¶

• Setup network, root, password as desired
• This install will assume that only "Desktop - GNOME" to be selected
• More information available at [http://wiki.centos.org/Documentation CentOS Documentation]

Add yourself to the sudoers file¶

Make sure you have root permission.
Open the file in an editor. ex. vi /etc/sudoers
Look for the line: root ALL=(ALL) ALL.
Add this line below the root version:

your_username ALL=(ALL)       ALL

Logout and log back in with your username.

The CentOS installation is complete.

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