These are the steps I used on a custom "everything" install of Fedora Core 4. Log in as a normal user in the wheel group and:

Python 2.3.5

Python 2.4 is the default Python in Fedora Core 3. But Python 2.4 has not been security audited with Zope yet. We need a parallel install of Python 2.3.5. Don't use Python 2.4 with Zope unless you can accept unknown security exposures.

su
cd /usr/local/src
wget http://python.org/ftp/python/2.3.5/Python-2.3.5.tar.bz2
bzcat Python-2.3.5.tar.bz2 | tar -xf -
chown -R root:root Python-2.3.5
cd Python-2.3.5
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Python-2.3.5 --enable-unicode=ucs4
make
make test
make altinstall
cd /usr/local/Python-2.3.5/bin
ln -sf ./python2.3 ./python

Zope 2.8.1

This release of Zope contains the "Five" project, which backports super cool Zope 3 features into Zope 2. Camp Five, an intensive guru led training session and sprint for Five, will be held at UNC-CH the first week of 2006. Don't use the Zope 2.8 RPMs from the Fedora "Extras" project, either. As of this date of this recipe, the RPMs still use older releases, and still won't know where you've placed your parallel install of Python 2.3.5.

/usr/sbin/useradd zopemgr -m -G users,wheel -s /bin/bash
passwd zopemgr
/usr/sbin/adduser -r -g zopemgr -s /sbin/nologin zoperun
chgrp wheel /usr/local/src
chmod g+w /usr/local/src
cd /usr/local/src
su zopemgr
wget http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.8.1/Zope-2.8.1-final.tgz
tar -xzvf Zope-2.8.1-final.tgz
exit
cd Zope-2.8.1-final
su zopemgr
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Zope-2.8.1 --with-python=/usr/local/Python-2.3.5/bin/python
make
exit
make install
mkdir /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1
chown zopemgr:zopemgr /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1
su zopemgr
/usr/local/Python-2.3.5/bin/python /usr/local/Zope-2.8.1/bin/mkzopeinstance.py
# /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1/plone
# zopeown
# password
# password
nano -w /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1/plone/etc/zope.conf
# port-base 1000
# effective-user zoperun
chmod g+w /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1/plone/var/
chmod g+w /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1/plone/log/
exit
nano -w /etc/sysconfig/iptables
# -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 9080 -j ACCEPT
/etc/init.d/iptables restart
ln -sf /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1/plone/bin/zopectl /etc/init.d/plone
ln -sf /etc/init.d/plone /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S90plone
ln -sf /etc/init.d/plone /etc/rc.d/rc4.d/S90plone
ln -sf /etc/init.d/plone /etc/rc.d/rc5.d/S90plone

Plone 2.1

This just installs Plone and no third party products yet (as the third party products have not caught up with Plone 2.1 at the time of this recipe). There is a Plone 2.1 RPM from the Fedora "Extras" project. But why RPM when you can have full control over your build and it's this easy:

cd /var/lib/Zope-2.8.1/plone/Products
su zopemgr
wget http://umn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/plone/Plone-2.1.tar.gz
tar -xzvf Plone-2.1.tar.gz
cd Plone-2.1
mv * ..
cd ..
rmdir Plone-2.1

Fire it up!

Everything is ready now. Start your Zope instance, login with zopeown and the password you created in the Zope installation step, go to the ZMI, and start creating Plone instances:

exit
/etc/init.d/plone start
exit