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how-to-setup-the-lab-computers.md

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Install

Use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Use the 32-bit image unless you have at least 3 or 4 GB of RAM (our computers don't). By the way Ubuntu uses a PAE kernel by default in the 32-bit install so you can use up to 64GB of RAM even with the 32-bit install but the 64-bit image performs a little better but uses a little extra hard drive (well, wine installs the 32-bit libraries if you use wine) and RAM.

Personally I prefer to not install updates or the extra MP3/Flash stuff during the install but do it afterwards. It used to be possible for the install to fail if there was a problem with installing those packages. That bug was supposed to be fixed with 12.04 so the risk is pretty minimal.

After Install

####Software Center####

  • Uncheck View > New Applications in Launcher
  • Edit > Software Sources
    1. On the first tab, uncheck Source Code
    2. We can change the Ubuntu mirror we want to pull packages from, but this isn't currently done.
    3. On the Other Software tab, enable the Partner repository and disable the source code lines.
    4. On the Updates tab:
      • When there are security updates, download and install automatically.
      • When there are other updates, display every two weeks. (This doesn't matter much but should reduce the Update Manager popup from appearing slightly.)

####System Settings####

  1. In User Acccounts, unlock and turn on Automatic Login.
  2. In Brightness and Lock, turn off the Lock and Require password when waking from suspend (so that our users don't have to enter the password as often).

####Firefox#### Click Edit > Preferences

  • On the General tab:
    • Delete the about:startpage line. When this line is blank, Mozilla's nicer default homepage is used.
  • On the Privacy tab
    • Tell websites I don't want to be tracked.
    • Firefox will never remember history
    • Clear the history too.
  • Switch back to the General tab.

####/etc/fstab#### On the final line, replace UUID= with /dev/sda6

(This is the swap directory and it happens to have different UUIDs on the different computers we use. We could clone the swap directory too but why bother?)

####Apport####

  • Apport is Ubuntu's automated bug reporting tool. It looks like it's enabled by default for certain crashes/issues in Ubuntu 12.04 but the popup is too distracting/confusing for people new to Ubuntu.
  • Change the value in /etc/default/apport to 0 to disable

####Install useful stuff#### sudo apt-get install arduino blender cheese fritzing gimp inkscape pitivi icedtea-plugin
libreoffice-presenter-console ubuntu-restricted-extras virtualbox git mplayer tree

####Setup Arduino####

  1. Run Arduino for the first time. It will helpfully offer to add your user account to the correct system group.
  2. Log out and back in.
  3. Run Arduino again and click Tools>Serial Port>/dev/ttyUSB0 (You'll need to have an Arduino plugged in to your USB port for that to work)

####Enable DVD support#### sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

####Cleanup#### When you've finished, clean up the cached package files to save space

sudo rm -r /var/cache/apt

You can also purge the old linux-image-*

####Ubuntu images#### Add the latest Ubuntu 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu images to the Downloads folder. Anyone can then Startup Disk Creator to make an Ubuntu installer out of their USB stick (existing files on the USB stick are preserved) or they can burn a CD.

For VirtualBox on the lab computers, you need to use the 32-bit image since we're running a 32-bit host OS.

####Prepare for the Command Line Workshop#### git clone git://github.com/open-it-lab/cli-workshop.git cli-workshop

####Other interesting stuff (not currently installed)####

####Add PPAs (not currently done)#### sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

This might be cool if there's a LibreOffice stable PPA we want, for instance.

Clonezilla

  • Download and extract the files to the USB stick.
  • Run bash utils/linux/makeboot.sh /dev/sdd1
  • On the boot screen, choose Other>Boot from RAM.
  • After the first blue wizard screen appears, remove the USB stick.
  • Re-insert the USB disk when prompted.
  • Save and load the image to the root directory of the USB stick is fine (it will use a subdirectory anyway)
  • 6 or 7GB used partition will still fit on a 4GB USB stick.

Misc

You can connect to Wifi in the original computer, but it won't work in the cloned machines because NetworkManager keeps track of the MAC address of the computer's network card which is unique from computer to computer. To fix that:

  1. Click Edit Connections in the network menu
  2. Edit the Wifi connection.
  3. Change the Device MAC Address to the wlan0 device.

####Apt Errors?#### sudo rm -r /var/lib/apt/lists sudo apt-get update