After installing Fedora Core 4 on a machine, this is how we customize it.

Create New Account For Phil:
  useradd -g users -m -n -s /bin/tcsh -u 1000 phil
  passwd phil

Create and share a directory:
  as phil:
    mkdir ~/SharedDocs
  as root:

Notes on mail:
  genericstable is not standard.  Copy genericstable from a working machine.
  edit sendmail.mc
  add 
    FEATURE(genericstable,`hash -o /etc/mail/genericstable')
    GENERICS_DOMAIN(`shauna');
    GENERICS_DOMAIN(`trade-ideas.com');
    GENERICS_DOMAIN(`shauna.trade-ideas.com');
  above
    MAILER(smtp)dnl
  but change "shauna" to match the name of the current machine.
  and replace
    dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl
  with
    FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl
  run "make" and restart mail
    

Copy these files from a working machine:
  /etc/php.ini.orig
  /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf.orig
  /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.orig
  /etc/samba/smb.conf.orig
  /etc/ssh/sshd_config.orig
  /etc/mail/orig.zip
  /etc/mail/sendmail.mc.orig
  /etc/ntp.conf.orig
  /etc/rc.d/rc.phil
  /etc/exports  (May need some customization.  At a minimum include /home/phil/SharedDocs.)


Install time daemon!
ntp
on FC5 this is "rpm -U 2/ntp-4.2.0.a.20050816-11.x86_64.rpm" (CD #2)
shauna goes out to the outside world.  the other machines go to shauna.
Copy ntp.conf from any machine other than shauna.
verify that /var/lib/ntp exists.  Owner and group should be ntp.
Turn it on!

New daylight savings time rules for 2007!
FC4 did not have the right rules.  You need to copy them from an FC5 machine.
We were listing Tijuana as our timezone.  That is not correct.  We need to list Los_Angeles as they have the correct rules for daylight savings time.
Run this as root:
  cd /usr/share
  mv zoneinfo/ zoneinfo.orig
  tar xzvf /tmp/zoneinfo.tar.gz
  cd /etc
  mv localtime localtime.orig
  ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles localtime


FC5:

In FC4 we used  /media/cdrom to access the cdrom
In FC5 that is gone.  Use automount instead.
In /etc/auto.master change "#/misc        /etc/auto.misc --timeout=60" to "/misc /etc/auto.misc --timeout=10" to turn this on.
But automount is giving me trouble.  So I created /media/cdrom
Then I added 

In FC5 by default SE linux is on, but it causes problems.
in /boot/grub/grub.conf add "selinux=0" to the end of "kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00"


setting up the database on DOM:
edit fstab.  Remove the entry for the partition that we reserved for the database.
  /dev/sda7 was mounted at /tmp/raw_for_db
  copy /var/lib/mysql/mysql/ from a working machine before starting the DB for the first time.
cp /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-5.0.18/my-innodb-heavy-4G.cnf /etc/my.cnf
  changed innodb_buffer_pool_size from 2G to 14G.  
    That was the whole point of DOM, to have huge memory for the database.
  changed innodb_data_file_path to ../../../../../../dev/sda7:224500Mnewraw
edit /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysqld
  add "chown mysql:mysql /dev/sda7" immediately under "chown mysql:mysql "$errlogfile"".
run /etc/init.d/mysqld start
  ignore the error message
  run "tail - f /var/log/mysqld.log" to see what's really happening.
  after initialization is complete, run "/etc/init.d/mysqld stop"
  change innodb_data_file_path to "../../../../../../dev/sda7:224500Mraw" (removed "new")
  run /etc/init.d/mysqld start
copy the original data from the master server.
  Log into mysql on DOM and type "CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='drama', MASTER_USER='replication', MASTER_PASSWORD='replication';"
  On DOM run (mysqldump --no-data --opt -u root -p -h drama mydb `mysql -u root -p -e "SHOW TABLES" -h drama mydb | grep '^\(alerts\|candles\)'`;mysqldump --opt -u root -p --single-transaction --master-data=1 -h drama mydb `mysql -u root -p -e "SHOW TABLES" -h drama mydb | grep -v '^\(alerts\|candles\)' | grep -v Tables_in_mydb`)|gzip -1 > `date +%F_%H-%M-%S`_mydb.sql.gz
  On DOM run zcat 2006-08-01_01-10-11_mydb.sql.gz |mysql -u root -p mydb
  stop the mysql server.
  edit my.cnf again  (I probably should have done this the first time!)
    set a unique server-id
    comment out the line "log-bin=mysql-bin"  (In previous versions of mysql this line was "log_bin")
    add the line "replicate-wild-ignore-table=backups.%"
  start the mysql server.
  run "START SLAVE;"
  need to manually copy the missing tables:
    mysqldump -u root -p -h drama mydb alerts_daily |mysql -u root -p mydb
    mysqldump -u root -p -h drama mydb candles_d | mysql -u root -p mydb
    mysqldump -u root -p -h drama mydb candles_5m | mysql -u root -p mydb
    and alerts.
Need to set swappiness to 5.
  By default the system wanted to give a lot of space to buffers and the cache, taking it from the database.
  Mysql was being swapped out at times, when it shouldn't have been, so it was very slow.
  Add "vm.swappiness = 5" to /etc/sysctl.conf
  See http://gentoo-wiki.com/FAQ_Linux_Memory_Management for more information.


Making lighttpd work:
It is easy to install lighttpd.  There is no package, but you can load and install the tarball from http://www.lighttpd.net/.  Making php work is slightly tricky, in part because a lot has changed between versions 1.4 and 1.5 of lighttpd, but the documentation has not yet caught up.
Changes to spawn-php.sh:
  SPAWNFCGI="/home/phil/lighttpd-1.5.0/src/spawn-fcgi"
  FCGIPROGRAM="/usr/bin/php-cgi"
  FCGI_WEB_SERVER_ADDRS="127.0.0.1,192.168.1.207"
Add this to lighttpd.conf to talk to php:
  $PHYSICAL["existing-path"]  =~ "\.php$" {
        proxy-core.balancer = "round-robin"
        proxy-core.allow-x-sendfile = "enable"
        proxy-core.protocol = "fastcgi"
        #proxy-core.backends = ( "amanda:1026" )
        proxy-core.backends = ( "127.0.0.1:1026" )
        proxy-core.max-pool-size = 16
  }
Add this to lighttpd.conf to talk to custom programs:
  $HTTP["url"] =~ "\.phil$" {
       proxy-core.balancer = "round-robin"
       proxy-core.allow-x-sendfile = "enable"
       proxy-core.protocol = "fastcgi"
       proxy-core.backends = ( "192.168.1.215:1234" )
       proxy-core.max-pool-size = 16
  }
To install php on a machine for fcgi, you need the following:
  Minimum to make it work:  php-cli-5.1.6-3.x86_64.rpm
  But you really need mysql for php:  php-mysql-5.1.6-3.x86_64.rpm
  These have a lot of dependancies.  The mysql component, in particular, requires Apache!  A partial list of the dependancies:  php-pdo-5.1.6-3.x86_64.rpm httpd-2.2.3-5.x86_64.rpm apr-1.2.7-10.x86_64.rpm apr-util-1.2.7-3.x86_64.rpm 
To configure php you need to update /etc/php.ini:
  output_buffering = Off  -- You need to do this if you want to report results before the script is complete.  flush() does not work unless you do this!
  doc_root = /home/phil/www/  -- This seems to be required if you are not running on the same machine as lighttpd.