Ubuntu Post Install Exercises
Ubuntu Post Install Exercises
Ubuntu Post Install Exercises
PacNOG3June18 Rarotonga,CookIslands
1. Getusedtousingsudo 2. Createaninstaccount 3. Learnhowtoinstallsoftware 4. Installgccandmake 5. Learn how to control services 6. Use the ip tool 7. See the state of your machine 8. Create the locate database 9. So, you wanna be root... 10. Install Gnome 2.18 and proper video driver 11. Configure your X server
$ sudo vigr You are now in the vi editor (you have a handout to help you with this editor). Type: /yourUserid Then press the n key for next to see each group you belong to. Notice that you are in the adm group. To exit vi type: :q! Get used to using sudo to do your system administration work. The final exercise, number 9, will give you a couple of other options for using system privileged commands as well.
Full Name []: Room Number []: Work Phone []: Home Phone []: Other []: Is the information correct? [y/N] y
<Press ENTER for default> <Press ENTER for default> <Press ENTER for default> <Press ENTER for default> <Press ENTER for default> <Press ENTER for default>
user@pcn:~# You are almost done. We want the user inst to belong to the adm group as well so that you can run privileged commands using sudo with this userid. If you use the useradd command it's possible to do this at account creation time (see man useradd for details). To do this now type the following command:
user@pcn:~# usermod -G adm inst
At this point you are done and the user inst now exists on your machine as we need it for the week.
synaptic there is a master file that tells Ubuntu where to look for software you wish to install. This file is /etc/apt/sources.list. You can update this file to point to different repositories (third party, local repositories, remove the cdrom reference, etc...). In our case we are now going to do this. We'll edit this file and we are going to edit out any reference to the Ubuntu 7.04 cdrom. In addition we are going to point our installation to use our local Ubuntu archive for software installs. This will save us a huge amount of time vs. attempting to download new software over our satellite link. First to edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list do: $ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list In this file we want to comment out any references to the Ubuntu cdrom. You'll see the following lines at the top of the file:
# # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.04 _Feisty Fawn_ - Release i386 (20070415)]/ feisty main restricted deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.04 _Feisty Fawn_ - Release i386 (20070415)]/ feisty main restricted
Update this by simply commenting out the one line (see your vi reference sheet for help):
# # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.04 _Feisty Fawn_ - Release i386 (20070415)]/ feisty main restricted #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 7.04 _Feisty Fawn_ - Release i386 (20070415)]/ feisty main restricted
Once you've done this we want to remove references to the ck.archive.ubuntu.com archive. This is the default archive used for the Cook Islands unfortunately this is in London. We have a local archive at archive.conference.pacnog.org that we should use instead. To do this enter the following in vi: :1,$s/ck.archive.ubuntu.com/archive.conference.pacnog.org/g and press <ENTER>. Note the : to place you in command mode in vi. This should do a global search and replace of ck.archive.ubuntu.com with archive.conference.pacnog.org. Now that you have done this you should save and exit from the file by doing: :wq Now to tell apt that you have a new set of repositories to be used you do: $ sudo apt-get update Now to actually install the build-essential meta-package type: $ sudo apt-get install build-essential and respond with a Y when asked if you ...want to continue. Once the installation process finishes you should have both gcc and make installed on your machine.
At this point the script is installed. You should be able to just run the script by typing: $ rc-config Try viewing all scripts and their status for all run-levels: $ rc-config -l Now trying viewing the status of just one script: $ rc-config -ls anacron You can see how this script works, if you understand enough of bash scripts, by taking a look at it's code: $ less /usr/local/bin/rc-config
Additionally you can view detailed information about processes and network status using the netstat command. For instance try doing: $ sudo netstat -antlp Read man netstat and try to figure out what all these options means. To see every process currently running on your machine type: $ ps -auxww | more As usual, read man ps to understand what the switches mean. For the above, in short, aux is to see all processes in user-oriented format. The ww means include the entire process descripton, even if it i wraps on multiple lines on the screen. Note that other versions of Linux require that you use www to get the full description. More or less you should understand pretty much everything you see in this output. A couple of more useful commands include: $ w And the top command. To break out of top press the q key. The top command can show you many variations of information dynamically by pressing various keys. Try pressing l and m after you type: $ top To find out how much physical disk space is in use (note that top includes how much RAM and SW AP is in use) use: $ df -h The -h is for human readable format. It is not as exact. To see more exact numbers remove the -h option. There are many more commands for understanding what is going on with your system, but these are some of the most commonly used ones.
instead of the file system to find files. While this is much is much more efficient it has two downsides: 1. If you create the locate database as root then users can see files using locate that they otherwise would not be able to see. This is considered a potential security hole. 2. The locate command is only as precise as the locate database. If the database has not been recently updated, then newer files will be missed. Many systems use an automated (cron) job to update the locate database on a daily basis. To create an initial locate database, or update the current one do: $ sudo updatedb Once this process completes (it may take a few minutes) try using the command: $ locate ssh Quite a few files go past on the screen.To find any file with ssh in it's name or it's path and which has the string conf you can do: $ locate ssh | grep conf Read about grep using man grep for more information. The locate command is very powerful and useful. For a more exacting command you can consider using find. This is harder to use and works by brute-force. As usual do man find for more information.
Install Gnome 2.18 and proper video driver NOTE! Please do not do these last two exercises until just before the lunch break.
It is actually quite simple to install a graphical desktop on Ubuntu. By default Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop. If you wish to use KDE with Ubuntu there is a separate version of the Ubuntu distribution called Kubuntu that you can find at www.ubuntu.com. We have configured your workshop lab so that the files for Gnome are on a local machine. The installation requires over 400MB of files to download and over 1GB of total space. Downloading will not take long, but unpacking and installing will take some time. In addition, with the same command we are going to tell Ubuntu to download an updated video driver for the particular machines in our classroom. Ubuntu version 7.04 has an issue with the Intel i810 chipset and the specific Intel i810 driver. There is a newer driver that works just fine called intel. By default Ubuntu will first install the i810 driver when you install Gnome, so we'll specify to Ubuntu to install Gnome and the correct video driver using the following command: $ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop xserver-xorg-video-intel This will now take quite some time. Feel free to go to lunch if it is time do to that. If you are around when this install prompts you to pick a default resolution for your Gnome desktop, then you should choose: 1280x1024. Except for the few workstations that have smaller Dell LCD panels. You should pick 1024x768 as your default resolution (which will be plenty to work with during the week).