The Perfect Setup - Fedora Core 5 (64-bit)

Version 1.1
Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
Last edited 12/01/2006

This is a detailed description how to set up a Fedora Core 5 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters (web server (SSL-capable), mail server (with SMTP-AUTH and TLS!), DNS server, FTP server, MySQL server, POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.). This tutorial is written for the 64-bit version of Fedora Core 5, but should apply to the 32-bit version with very little modifications as well.

I will use the following software:

• Web Server: Apache 2.0.x
• Database Server: MySQL 5.0
• Mail Server: Postfix (easier to configure than sendmail; has a shorter history of security holes than sendmail)
• DNS Server: BIND9 (chrooted!)
• FTP Server: proftpd
• POP3/IMAP server: dovecot
• Webalizer for web site statistics

In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

Requirements

To install such a system you will need the following:

• Download the Fedora Core 5 DVD iso image or the 5 CD iso images from a mirror near you (the list of mirrors can be found here: http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html), e.g. ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/fedora-core/5/x86_64/iso/FC-5-x86_64-DVD.iso
• an internet connection...

1 Install The Base System

Boot from your Fedora Core 5 DVD or CD (CD 1).

It can take a long time to test the installation media so we skip this test here:

The welcome screen of the Fedora installer appears. Click on Next:

Choose your language next:

Select your keyboard layout:

I'm installing Fedora Core 5 on a fresh system, so I answer Yes to the question Would you like to initialize this drive, erasing ALL DATA?

Next we do the partitioning. Select Remove linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout. This will give you a smalll /boot partition and a large / partition which is fine for our purposes:

We want to remove all Linux partitions (remember, this is a fresh system), so we answer Yes to the following question: