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.