Installing Rivendell on an RHEL-6 System

Fred Gleason


Table of Contents

Introduction
Overview
Prerequisites
Installing the Base Distribution
Running the Installation Script
Final Details

Introduction

Overview

This technical note contains procedures for installing the Rivendell Radio Automation System on a system running RHEL 6.x derived distributions. Such distributions include:

  • Community Enterprise OS (CentOS) 6.x

  • RedHat Enterprise Linux 6.x

  • Scientific Linux 6.x

Installing Rivendell on these platforms consists of three primary steps:

  1. Install the base distribution and establish an Internet connection.

  2. Bootstrap and run the installation script.

  3. Secure accounts and finish up final details.

Prerequisites

The following items are required to complete the installation.

  • Target hardware. Both 32 bit (i686) and 64 bit (x86_64) AMD or Intel architectures are supported.

  • A generic installer image for the distribution. DVD, Network and USB installation sources are all supported.

  • A working Internet connection.

  • A basic working knowledge of how to install vanilla RHEL 6.x. Consult the documentation of the particular distribution for more information.

Installing the Base Distribution

The base distribution should be installed in 'Minimal Desktop' mode, which will result in a basic Gnome 2 desktop environment after the initial reboot.

Be sure to create an rd user during the install to run applications.

After logging in as that user, networking can be initialized by right-clicking on the networking icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and selecting Edit Connections.

Select the desired network connection and then click the Edit... button.

Ensure that the Connect automatically box is checked, then click the Apply... button.

The system will prompt for the root password. Enter it and then click the Authenticate button, then close the Network Connections dialog.

Once Internet access is functioning, open a root shell by clicking on the Applications button in the upper right-hand corner of the desktop, selecting the System menu and clicking on the Terminal item.

Enter the following command to get root permissions:

su -

You will be prompted for a password. Enter the root password and then press Enter. The password will not be echoed to the screen as you enter it.

The command prompt will change from a $ to a # to indicate that the shell now has root permissions.

Then apply all online updates by running the command:

yum -y update

Reboot the system when the update is complete with the command:

reboot

The system is now ready to have Rivendell installed.

Running the Installation Script

Log back in as user 'rd' and open a root shell (see above), then enter the following commands:

wget http://download.paravelsystems.com/CentOS/6/Paravel-Broadcast.repo -P /etc/yum.repos.d/

wget http://download.paravelsystems.com/CentOS/6/RPM-GPG-KEY-Paravel-Broadcast -P /etc/pki/rpm-gpg

yum -y install rivendell-install

Three different types of installation are available. For a stand-alone setup (single, self-contained Rivendell system), start the script with the command:

/root/install_rivendell.sh --standalone

For a server setup (system capable of hosting Rivendell client machines that share the server's database and audio store), start the script with the command:

/root/install_rivendell.sh --server

For a pure client setup (one that uses a central server for the database and audio store), first create a host entry for the new client in RDAdmin on the server (RDAdmin->ManageHosts->Add), then start the script with the command:

/root/install_rivendell.sh --client

Depending upon the speed of the system and your Internet connection, installation can take between several minutes to an hour or more.

Final Details

After rebooting, the system will come back in GUI mode, automatically logged in as user rd. To secure the system fully, perform the following steps:

  1. Open a root shell (see above).

  2. Set the password for the local rd account with the following command:

    passwd rd

  3. Set the MySQL administrator password with the following command (substitute your password for pwd):

    /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'pwd'

  4. Remove the Rivendell installer script with the following command:

    yum -y remove rivendell-install

The system is now ready for service.