Setup Fedora 17 on VirtualBox

Installing the Fedora Image

I installed Fedora v17 in VirtualBox v4.1.16, using the LXDE live spin. It installed without a problem , expect at the end of it, the FirstBoot program exited with a core dump! I didn’t notice anything wrong with the system only each time it restarted, I had to go through this program again and again! Reading this post gave me the clue how to turn it off.

# as root:
echo "RUN_FIRSTBOOT=NO" >/etc/sysconfig/firstboot

Don’t forget to update.

yum -y update
#Install some utilities I can not live without!
yum install gvim vim mc

Installing VirtualBox Guest Additions

yum install kernel-devel kernel-headers dkms gcc-c++
# use the vbox menu Devices->Install Guest Additions...
# Fedora 17 mounts the drives in /run/media//
cd /run/media/$USERNAME/VBOXADDITIONS_4.1.16_78094
./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
#restart:
shutdown -r "now"

Setting up an RPM Build Environment

I used this blog post for setting up the rpm build environment.

Installing Node.js

As mentioned in Node.js Wiki I did:

# as root:
yum install git python-devel openssl-devel
# now as normal user
mkdir sources && cd sources
git clone https://github.com/joyent/node.git
cd node
git checkout v0.6.18
./configure --prefix=/opt/node
make
#as root:
make install
# to add to path still as root:
echo "export PATH=\$PATH:/opt/node/bin" > /etc/profile.d/node.sh

Actually there is a good and complete repository maintained by node.js developers, that you can use to install node.js.