To install BigTree on a fresh Fedora 15 Linode instance, first setup a LAMP server by following Linode's LAMP Guide for Fedora 15.

After completing those steps and ensuring that you can connect to your web server, you will want to enable a few additional key components to your LAMP stack that BigTree needs to function:

  1. GD Library support for PHP
  2. AllowOverride support

GD Library Support

To install GD support in PHP, you will want to run the following command from your root shell:

yum install php-gd

AllowOverride Support

Fedora 15's default Apache configuration does NOT allow for .htaccess to run properly.  You will need to edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and change "AllowOverride None" to "AllowOverride All" wherever it is found.

Restarting Apache

After you have enabled mod_rewrite and installed php5-gd, restart Apache by running the following command from your root shell:

service httpd restart

Installing BigTree

When you run the install.php script (by visiting http://www.yourdomain.com/install.php) you will see a warning about .htaccess Overrides not working.  This is a false negative and can be ignored. There will also be a warning about short_open_tag being off. BigTree should be able to properly override this in .htaccess on Fedora 15, but if you wish you can change this value in /etc/php.ini. Continue your install normally and you should be all set.