SOURCEFORGE » RALF

h1. Xubuntu 14.04 installation guidelines

The distribution GNU/Linux Xubuntu 14.04 has been chosen for several reasons: long term support (until 2017), active community, light desktop environment, available binary packages from Ettus Research.

During the installation process, the following partitioning is recommended:
* primary SWAP, 1 GB;
* primary ext4, /, 40 GB;
* secondary ext4, /home, (remaining space).

Once the installation is performed, it is assumed to realize the following operations using a root shell (@sudo -s@). If necessary, a proxy will be set through appropriate environment variables:
<pre>
export http_proxy=http://host:port
export https_proxy=http://host:port
</pre>

h2. Additional packages installation

Update the package list.
<pre>
apt-get update
</pre>

Install the following additional packages.
<pre>
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 synaptic evince xournal \
eog python-matplotlib python-scipy ctags doxygen ntpdate libpam-ldap nscd screen \
htop inkscape filezilla gparted
</pre>

h2. Services configuration

h3. Sudo configuration

Any modification to the @sudo@ configuration should be performed through the following command.
<pre>
visudo
</pre>

Append the following line in order to preserve environment variables @http_proxy@ and @https_proxy@ through @sudo@.
<pre>
Defaults env_keep += "http_proxy https_proxy"
</pre>

h3. Enable root account and install public keys

On Ubuntu systems, the root account is not enabled by default, enabling is done by setting a password.
<pre>
passwd root
</pre>

Then assume that SSH is installed and enabled. Public keys to install are supposed to be in file <my_public_keys>. They have to be deployed in the following way.
<pre>
cd /root
mkdir .ssh
cp <my_public_keys> /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod -R 700 .ssh/
</pre>

h3. Enable LDAP authentication

In order to authenticate through the network using LDAP, it is necessary to install the following package.
<pre>
apt-get install libpam-ldap
</pre>
At the end of the installation, an interactive configuration process is triggered. It can called back using the following instruction.
<pre>
dpkg-reconfigure libpam-ldap
</pre>

Add the @ldap@ module to the first three instructions in @/etc/nsswitch.conf@ in order to obtain something like this:
<pre>
passwd: ldap compat
group: ldap compat
shadow: ldap compat
</pre>

In case of successful login, add the following line to @/etc/pam.d/common-session@ in order to create automatically the home directory.
<pre>
session required pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel umask=0022
</pre>

Finally, restart the @nscd@ service.
<pre>
/etc/init.d/nscd restart
</pre>

h3. Enable NTP

In order to synchronize the real time clock through the network, install the following package.
<pre>
apt-get install ntpdate
</pre>

If applicable, add local NTP servers to @/etc/default/ntpdate@. Then trigger the first synchronization.
<pre>
ntpdate-debian
</pre>

Notice that NTP synchronization is performed at each network interface bootup.