CentOS 6.0 Zimbra 7.1.1 Open Source Edition install

Update 8/12/2011:
Good news! CentOS 6.x is out of beta and in stable with version 7.1.2 from HERE. In fact, you may just want to check their download page.

I wanted to take a peak at what is going on with Zimbra and CentOS 6 install capability. Currently, CentOS 6/RHEL 6 is listed as a beta for Zimbra 7.x installs. To to be deterred, I grabbed the beta download from the beta download page

wget http://files2.zimbra.com/downloads/7.1.1_GA/zcs-7.1.1_GA_3196.RHEL6_64.20110527010625.tgz

Test server is decent Dell Poweredge 2950 type II with 2 Intel quad core E5335 with 6GB RAM, RAID 1 for / (qty 2x80GB SATA) and RAID 5 for /opt (qty 4x500 SATA)
CentOS 6.0 x86_64 install was done as a "web server" install to provide most options I thought I would need as a start for the Zimbra install.

Note: I always suggest to install OMSA on any Dell server!

After the system is setup make sure that services that will interfere with Zimbra installed version are stopped and will not turn on at boot time:

chkconfig postfix off
service postfix stop
chkconfig httpd off
service httpd stop
tar -xzvf zcs-7.1.1_GA_3196.RHEL6_64.20110527010625.tgz
cd zcs-7.1.1_GA_3196.RHEL6_64.20110527010625
./install.sh

64 bit install but the installer still wants "libstdc++-4.4.4-13.el6.i686" installed.?

yum install libstdc++-4.4.4-13.el6.i686

Read Zimbra install info seems to be the moral of the story.

Finally installed with:

./install.sh --platform-override

followed prompts. Initial failure with log message with many:

sudo: sorry, you must have a tty to run sudo

Ran visudo to temporarily comment the "Defaults    requiretty" line and then ran:

/opt/zimbra/libexec/zmsetup.pl

To complete the install. Reboot just to make sure everything starts and begin the setup process. Now on to the much harder Zimbra setup!

Wow, still not done! Zimbra zmconfigd seems to need netcat, but is not a rpm requirement.??

yum -y install nc

Also, the install seems to need a patch before I can start working:

wget http://files2.zimbra.com/downloads/7.1.1_GA/zcs-patch-7.1.1_GA_3213.tgz

CentOS 6.0 install on Dell E6410 laptop

First I would like to say, "Thank You!" to all of the hard working developers and other at CentOS. In spite of some VERY well published delays in getting CentOS 6.0 out the door, it's finally here! I hope to see 6.1 soon.

I am using a more recent Dell E6410 laptop with 4GB RAM, an Intel i7 M620 CPU and dedicated nVidia GT218 [NVS 3100M] video card. WIFI is handled by the Broadcom BCM4314 chipset. Pretty good by current standards. It's the same laptop I have used for my Fedora 13 review.

When I first went to burn the i386 .iso file, k3b greeted me with an interesting, "your image will not fit on your disk" kinda message. I was puzzled and then discovered the issue noted in the CentOS 6.0 release notes about the DVD+R media creation issue. Fair enough, I did not have at the time any other media, so I just overburned past the disk and tried to boot from the media anyway (which worked fine for *my* install). Just don't try to validate the disk ;)

Next, my default DVD install attempt was met with a very disappointing blank/black screen with the onboard Nvidia ??? video card. My good buddy google quickly lead me to some information that either "nomodeset" kernel option or install with the "basic video driver" would be needed. And either of those allowed me to move on through the install.

Reboot after install leads to a rather disappointing 800x600 resolution login screen. At least there is a login screen at all. First a quick <ctrl><alt><f2> key sequence to dump me to console in order to log in as root in order to do a full update and reboot just to see if that will help my screen resolution issue with the *default* install. Darn, still no better resolution! Need to jump to elrepo's kmod-nvidia fast.

Normally, the rpmfusion repository would be my way to get the included BCM4313 with a simple
yum -y install broadcom-wl kmod-wl-`uname -r`
After being told by yum that there was nothing to install, I scratched my head and google'd a bit and found that "Due to an excessively restrictive license accompanying this Broadcom driver, the ELRepo repository developers have refrained from supplying it via an rpm package" according to at least CentOS Broadcom page. Shame on you Broadcom... at least there is a way around the issue based on the instructions on the CentOS page noted! It would be so much easier if Broadcom's legal would just relax.

The bluetooth functions without issue. I could pair with my Droidx in seconds.

Sadly, I don't seem to be able to update the BIOS from the Dell OMSA repository. Initial indications are that they don't care.

Here's the lspci for the laptop:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 05)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 05)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 82801 SATA RAID Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GT218 [NVS 3100M] (rev a2)
01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
04:00.0 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e822 (rev 03)
04:00.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Device e832 (rev 03)
3f:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02)
3f:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02)
3f:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02)
3f:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02)
3f:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)
3f:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02)

Helpful links:
E-Family Reimage “How-To” Guide
E6410 Manuals

LibreOffice for CentOS 5 or CentOS 6 install howto

OpenOffice at this point seems to have stalled out with no recent bug fixes. The LibreOffice folks seem to to be be moving forward and fixing issues. This is just a simple install howto for getting LibreOffice onto your otherwise stock CentOS 5 or CentOS 6 desktop system. If you are doing these easy steps, you might as well take the steps to get Thunderbird 5 or FireFox 5 on your system. I have every reason to believe that all of these steps will work just fine for any Scientific Linux 5 or 6. Heck might as well just stall onto the otherwise identical RedHat Enterprise Linux RHEL 5 or RHEL 6.

First download a version of your choice.

UPDATE 05/02/2012: the following code has been updated for the 3.5.3 release of LibreOffice.

wget "http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/3.5.3/rpm/x86/LibO_3.5.3_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz"
tar -xzvf LibO_3.5.3_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz
cd LibO_3.5.3rc2_Linux_x86_install-rpm_en-US/RPMS/
mv desktop-integration/libreoffice3.5-freedesktop-menus-3.5.3-2.noarch.rpm ./
yum remove openoffice\*
yum install --nogpgcheck lib*

You will likely want to install the helppack rpm

wget "http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/stable/3.5.3/rpm/x86/LibO_3.5.3_Linux_x86_helppack-rpm_en-US.tar.gz"
tar -xvf LibO_3.5.3_Linux_x86_helppack-rpm_en-US.tar.gz


yum install --nogpgcheck LibO_3.5.3rc2_Linux_x86_helppack-rpm_en-US/RPMS/libobasis3.5-en-US-help-3.5.3-2.i586.rpm

You can copy line for line or copy paste into a script, but the jist of what needs to be done is easy to figure out above.

Redhat menus install nicely

Startup loading bar is nice

LibreOffice starts fast and looks familiar to existing OpenOffice users, but with more bug fixes

One easy upgrade! Nice job LibreOffice peeps! Enjoy.

CentOS 6.0 install on Dell D630 laptop and short review

First I would like to say, "Thank You!" to all of the hard working developers and other at org.org. In spite of some VERY well published delays in getting CentOS 6.0 out the door, it's finally here! I hope to see 6.1 soon.

Once again, I am using my venerable Dell D630 laptop with 2GB RAM, a dual core Intel T7500 and dedicated nVidia G86M Quadro NVS 135M video card. WIFI is handled by the Broadcom BCM4312 802.11a/b/g chipset. Modest by today's standards. It's the same laptop I have used for my Fedora 15 beta review. I can say with certainty that both this laptop and I are very grateful to be running Gnome 2.x instead of 3.x!

When I first went to burn the i386 .iso file, k3b greeted me with an interesting, "your image will not fit on your disk" kinda message. I was puzzled and then discovered the issue noted in the CentOS 6.0 release notes about the DVD+R media creation issue. Fair enough, I did not have at the time any other media, so I just overburned past the disk and tried to boot from the media anyway (which worked fine for *my* install). Just don't try to validate the disk ;)

Next, my default DVD install attempt was met with a very disappointing blank/black screen with the onboard Nvidia NVS 135M quadro video card. My good buddy google quickly lead me to some information that either "nomodeset" kernel option or install with the "basic video driver" would be needed. And either of those allowed me to move on through the install.

The rest of the install proceeded without issues. After the reboot, I was glad to see the nouveau driver seems to work well enough after the initial install problem. I was even more happy to see my wifi (Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g) installed with *no* intervention. And by this time, I always expect the onboard ethernet of (Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express) to work without issues or intervention. Thankfully, I was not disappointed with any networking issues. Sorry to say that this laptop does not have bluetooth onboard, so I can't test that.

I was greeted with good old Gnome 2 running after login. Everything looked fine at 1440x900 resolution without messing with any xorg.conf file! I do not yet see a reason to blacklist nouveau. I expect even less to use the a downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-*.run file as the elrepo binary kmod-nvidia* version will end up being no additional work after a kernel upgrade.

Laptop is running very stable, dynamic CPU fan control functions as expected. Suspend and resume has not had any issue at all with the nouveau driver. Nice to have it all just work (minus the install quirk).

More updated versions of most major apps would be better. OpenOffice 3.2 is included rather than 3.3 or even better now, the Libreoffice version that Fedora 15 has.

In the end, I would have to say that for a good solid Linux OS experience, I would suggest CentOS 6 as a good option to any current distribution. You will have a long support cycle and a very stable base.

I have a very minor annoyance that seems to be shared now with all the recent Fedora versions; resuming the laptop shows an initial screen that is your session even with the screen lock applied. This running session screen last only a second or two, but kinda odd that it shows at all.

As a note, I have added the "xdriver=vesa nomodeset" options to my PXE install for this class of device to get past the video driver issue on install.

For completeness, here is the lspci for this Dell D630:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G86M [Quadro NVS 135M] (rev a1)
03:01.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. Cardbus bridge (rev 21)
03:01.4 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 01)

My intent is to soon publish a server based CentOS 5.6 -vs- CentOS 6.0 competition review using the same hardware. Stay tuned.

CentOS 5.6 Thunderbird 5 working setup and install howto

UPDATE: Thunderbird 6.0 does not require the hack below!

If you are getting the error

thunderbird-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by libxul.so)

You have come to one of the correct places. This is a continuation of the FIreFox 4 install. Again, I did not come up with this on my own! I just want to spread the word as much as possible that one very enlightened fellow referenced as "rkl" at forums.mozillazine.org has made it possible for the rest of us to hit the "easy button" and got FireFox 4.0 working on CentOS 5.x (CentOS 5.6 at this time). HERE is the original link that I lucked upon while trying to google it on my own.

This is my mostly plagiarized summary based on the original FF4 information for the link above. My testing was specifically done on CentOS 5.6 32bit desktop install:

1. Unpack the Thunderbird thunderbird-5.0.tar.bz2 somewhere (e.g. /opt/thunderbird5). A quick way to get the tar file is from the mozilla Thunderbird EN download link.

2. Download this 32-bit Fedora 9 libstdc++ RPM and unpack it with this command:

rpm2cpio libstdc++-4.3.0-8.i386.rpm | cpio -i --make-directories

3. Move the unpacked shared library into /opt/thunderbird5:

mv usr/lib/libstdc* /opt/thunderbird5/

Note: It's "usr/lib/libstdc*" above (i.e. the unpacked tree from the RPM, not the system /usr/lib tree) - do NOT put a leading slash there!

4. Run Thunderbird 5 with:

/opt/thunderbird5/thunderbird

I will say that TB5 is an *major* improvement from Thunderbird 3.x. So far there are less mailbox issues than with previous versions.

CentOS 5.x FireFox 5 working install

UPDATE: FireFox 6.0 does not require the hack below!

If you are getting the error

firefox-bin: /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9' not found (required by /opt/firefox5/libxul.so)

You have come to one of the correct places. This is a continuation of the FIreFox 4 install. Again, I did not come up with this on my own! I just want to spread the word as much as possible that one very enlightened fellow referenced as "rkl" at forums.mozillazine.org has made it possible for the rest of us to hit the "easy button" and get FireFox 4.0 working on CentOS 5.x (CentOS 5.5 at this time). HERE is the original link that I lucked upon while trying to google it on my own.

This is my mostly plagiarized summary based on the original FF4 information for the link above. My testing was specifically done on CentOS 5.6 32bit desktop install:

1. Unpack the Firefox firefox-5.0.tar.bz2 somewhere (e.g. /opt/firefox5). A quick way to get the tar file is from the mozilla EN download link.

2. Download this 32-bit Fedora 9 libstdc++ RPM and unpack it with this command:

rpm2cpio libstdc++-4.3.0-8.i386.rpm | cpio -i --make-directories

3. Move the unpacked shared library into /opt/firefox5:

mv usr/lib/libstdc* /opt/firefox5/

Note: It's "usr/lib/libstdc*" above (i.e. the unpacked tree from the RPM, not the system /usr/lib tree) - do NOT put a leading slash there!

4. Run Firefox 5 with:

/opt/firefox5/firefox

rkl references the FireFox 4 beta version, but all steps still apply for official FireFox 5 release.

I will say that FF5 is an incremental improvement from FF4. My initial usage has been positive. There seems to be a "follow the rapid release cycle of Google's Chrome" mentality. I hope this will not make it more difficult for organizations to break from the IE "standard".

novi merge utility for creating a fully updated install (base plus updates)

Novi is a very handy repository merging utility! The purpose of novi is to remove the problem of a system install followed by an immediate update in order to get a system fully patched and ready to go into service. Maybe this quote from the website makes it more clear:

novi is a tool for finding the latest-version RPMs in a tree. You can use it to create Kickstart trees or yum repos that contain the updated RPMS. In the case of Kickstart, this means machines come to life with the updates already applied. Using novi for yum repos trims the size of the repodata files, which reduces client download and processing time.

In reality, novi saves time and resources. This is especially true when dealing with the Fedora distribution.

For example, if an install takes 15 minutes and then the update takes 30 minutes depending how you update (local mirror I hope), you end up with about 45 minutes of time. With novi, that's just 15 minutes total time to get to the same place. Plus you have a much cleaner install without all of those pesky .rpmnew and .rpmsave files cluttering up the pristine new filesystem.

Naturally, I team novi with PXE boot and Kickstart files for the ultimate in lazy installs on systems. I will only focus on the novi portion as much as possible and leave the other pieces for another time.

The most basic setup requires a machine with enough drive capacity to handle the the base install files (however you want to get them) and all of the updates that you may want. I don't want EVERY update, so I tend to limit what I get by excluding packages I will NEVER install. Really, I don't need anyone install AlienArena on any system under my control, for example ;) Luckily, novi can hard link the merged repository and not just add to any space issue. You will also need that server to provide ftp or http services for the merged repository in order to install a client. Ethan McCallum was nice enough to VERY WELL explain most all of the entire concept, already.

My current multi-repository mirror is a CentOS 5.x server. This example is *very simple* Fedora 13 via ftp install. This could also be a http accessible area. As stated above, I do have a fair number of items to exclude via rsync. I took the extra step of rpmbuild'ing the latest CentOS 5 capable version, 1.1.9 from src.rpm. Sadly, most every repository I found only had the 1.1.5 version. CentOS 6 will be able to use the newer 2.1.11 version (when released).

#!/bin/bash
BASE_DIR="/var/ftp/pub/yum/Fedora/linux/releases/13"
EXCLUDES="$BASE_DIR/13.excludes"
INCLUDES="--include-from=$BASE_DIR/13.includes"
LOCAL_DIR="$BASE_DIR/updates/"
MERGED="$BASE_DIR/merged/i386"
ADMINEMAIL=admin@yoursite.com
MIRROR_SITE="rsync://mirrors3.kernel.org/fedora/updates/13/i386"
LOGFILE="/tmp/`basename $0`.out"
cd $MERGED
for DIR in $LOCAL_DIR $MERGED_DIR
do
  if [ ! -d "$DIR" ]
  then
    mkdir -p "$DIR"
  fi
done
rsync -PvaH --bwlimit=300 --timeout=600 $INCLUDES --exclude-from=$EXCLUDES --numeric-ids --delete --delete-after --delay-updates --delete-excluded $MIRROR_SITE $LOCAL_DIR >& $LOGFILE
EXIT="$?"
if [ "$EXIT" -eq "0" ]
then
  rm -f Packages/*.rpm
  novi -a hardlink -t $MERGED/Packages $BASE_DIR/os/i386/Packages $LOCAL_DIR/i386
  createrepo -g repodata/fce31f091be8211a394d8942fcf4f6cbeffa3d40d87b61af55a97b1a88b46987-Fedora-13-comps.xml $PWD
else
  cat $LOGFILE | "ERROR in $0 on `hostname -s` exit status of $EXIT" $ADMINEMAIL
fi

As usual, comments are welcome and appreciated! Again, this is a basic chunk of code that should be better fleshed out by you. It also only includes the i386 branch and is easily extended.

(Note: I know F13 is EOL, but we have been utilizing novi for a long time)