Debian Wheezy 7 installation guidelines¶

The distribution GNU/Linux Debian Wheezy has been chosen for several reasons: long term support (until 2017), active community, stable packages. We consider an installation performed thanks to a Debian Live support. Once the installation is performed, it is assumed to realize the following operations using a root shell.

Partitioning¶

During the installation process, the following partitioning is recommended:

• primary SWAP, 1 GB;
• primary ext4, /, 40 GB;
• secondary ext4, /home, (remaining space).

Packages installation¶

Edit /etc/apt/source.list and add contrib and non-free targets in order to obtain the following.

deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib non-free

# wheezy-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main contrib non-free

If needed, configure an HTTP proxy.

export http_proxy=http://host:port

Then, update the package list.

apt-get update

Complete the installation with the following command.

apt-get install texlive-full texstudio auctex wireshark filezilla \
openssh-server vlc octave-communications subversion git thunar-vcs-plugin \
xfce4-goodies arandr libreoffice-l10n-fr flashplugin-nonfree evince xournal \
eog python-matplotlib python-scipy ctags doxygen ntpdate libpam-ldap nscd screen \
htop inkscape filezilla gparted sudo

Services configuration¶

Sudo configuration¶

Any modification to the sudo configuration should be performed through the following command.

visudo

Defaults env_keep += "http_proxy https_proxy" 

If one wants to give administrator rights to an user, a easy way to proceed is to add him to the sudo group.

adduser <login> sudo

Enable LDAP authentication¶

dpkg-reconfigure libpam-ldap

sudo nano /etc/nsswitch.conf

passwd:         ldap compat
group:          ldap compat
shadow:         ldap compat

sudo nano /etc/pam.d/common-session

session required    pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel umask=0022

/etc/init.d/nscd restart

Enable NTP¶

nano /etc/default/ntpdate

ntpdate-debian