UBC Physics Administrator’s Guide for Computer Lab Eric Nodwell Copyright © 2003 Eric Nodwell This document can be freely redistributed according to the terms of the GNU General Public License. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". This manual details how I installed the Linux Terminal Server in the UBC Physics Computer Lab. The server runs Debian Linux. It is assumed that the reader is somewhat familiar with administering Linux, but not necessarily with LTSP or Debian. Table of Contents Installation ...................................................................................... 2 BIOS Settings .............................................................................. 2 Debian Installation .......................................................................... 2 Configure Second Network Interface .......................................................... 5 Upgrade to the Testing Branch of Debian ...................................................... 6 Install Useful Software ...................................................................... 6 Correct xfs config file ...................................................................... 10 Install a firewall ........................................................................... 10 NTP configuration ......................................................................... 10 Customization .................................................................................. 10 bash ...................................................................................... 11 Gnome menu .............................................................................. 11 KDE menu ................................................................................ 14 Gnome Panel .............................................................................. 14 KDE panel ................................................................................ 15 KDE desktop .............................................................................. 16 emacs .................................................................................... 16 ssh ....................................................................................... 16 Internationalization ........................................................................ 16 Browser (Galeon) .......................................................................... 17 Linux Terminal Server Project .................................................................... 17 Install pre-requisite software ................................................................ 18 Download and install LTSP ................................................................. 18 dhcp configuration ......................................................................... 19 xfs configuration ........................................................................... 20 gdm configuration ......................................................................... 20 kdm configuration ......................................................................... 21 nfs configuration ........................................................................... 21 tftp configuration .......................................................................... 21 Boot a client with a floppy .................................................................. 22 Boot a client without a floppy ............................................................... 22 Integration in Physics Network ................................................................... 22 1 UBC Physics Administra- tor’s Guide for Computer Lab Mount home directories .................................................................... 22 User Accounts ............................................................................. 23 Mail configuration (nullmailer) .............................................................. 23 KMail (imap connection to physics) ......................................................... 23 Printers ................................................................................... 29 User Documentation: An Introduction to Command Line Linux ................................. 30 Custom Scripts ................................................................................. 30 users-ps ................................................................................... 30 Debian Tips .................................................................................... 31 su, then xauth merge ....................................................................... 31 dpkg ..................................................................................... 31 apt-get update and apt-get upgrade ........................................................... 32 apt-cache search, apt-cache show and the packages web page ................................... 32 dpkg-reconfigure .......................................................................... 32 Recompiling a .deb package, or back-porting ................................................. 32 update-alternatives ......................................................................... 32 MANPATH ............................................................................... 33 update-rc.d ................................................................................ 33 Still To Do ..................................................................................... 33 Installation BIOS Settings Disable shadow RAM, because Linux doesn’t use it. Debian Installation I’m going to do an unusual install, which doesn’t require any installation media. The general instructions for this kind of install are here [http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch-preparing.en.html#s-linux-upgrade]. The first thing needed is a KNOPPIX [http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/] CD. Boot with this CD, which gives you a fully-functional Linux system, running entirely off of the CD. Set up the network for KNOPPIX, under the system menu KNOPPIX -> Network/Internet -> Network card configu- ration. Use the same network settings which you will ultimately use for the server (given below). Get a root console on KNOPPIX with sudo bash Partition the hard drive with fdisk /dev/hda. I set up /dev/hda1 to be a 1GB swap partition, and the rest as a single Linux partition /dev/hda2. You probably want to reboot KNOPPIX after this. Format /dev/hda2 with the ext3 file system. mke2fs -j /dev/hda2 mkswap /dev/hda1 Create a mount point and mount the partition we will install on. mkdir /mnt/debinst mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/debinst 2 UBC Physics Administra- tor’s Guide for Computer Lab Now call the debootstrap which will install a Debian base system. /usr/sbin/debootstrap --arch i386 woody /mnt/debinst http://http.us.debian.org/debian Now we chroot into our new bare-bones Debian system. chroot /mnt/debinst /bin/bash We need to create an /etc/fstab file. (You can use the nano editor, which is part of Debian base and easy to use, or, since you’re running a KNOPPIX X-session, you can select the following file contents with the mouse, run cat > /etc/fstab, clip with the middle mouse button to paste in the selected contents, and then hit CTRL-D.) #/etc/fstab for lts1 # file system mount point type options dump pass /dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 0 0 /dev/hda1 none swap sw 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,rw,sync,exec 0 0 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro,exec 0 0 We need to mount the proc file system before continuing. mount -t proc proc /proc To configure the networking, we need an /etc/network/interfaces file. # /etc/network/interfaces auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 172.16.0.10 network 172.16.0.0 netmask 255.255.0.0 broadcast 172.16.255.255 gateway 172.16.0.1 And we need a /etc/resolv.conf file. search physics.ubc.ca nameserver 172.16.0.1 And a /etc/hostname file. echo lnx1 > /etc/hostname At this, point, you should also run hostname lnx1 3 UBC Physics Administrator’s Guide for Com- puter Lab We also need to make sure that the network driver kernel module is loaded at boot time. To find out which module it needed, run lsmod. It’s one of these, since KNOPPIX has figure it out. In the present case, I need to add this line to /etc/modules: eepro100 Now run base-config to configure some other stuff and answer the questions. Don’t select md5 paswords, because of compatibility with Solaris. Don’t select any packages or package groups either - we’ll leave this till later. usr/sbin/base-config Now we are going to customize apt, the package management system. We are going by default to use the testing branch of debian, with some packages from unstable (at the current time, some important KDE and Gnome stuff is still in unstable). Contents of /etc/apt/sources.list: # Stable deb http://mirror.direct.ca/linux/debian/ stable main non-free contrib deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free # Testing deb http://mirror.direct.ca/linux/debian/ testing main non-free contrib deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free # Unstable deb http://mirror.direct.ca/linux/debian/ unstable