'gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view default-zoom-level small'
1/30/2019 - 'sudo yum install redhat-support-tool' and search for data on SSD/trim support in RHEL.
20 May 2019 (last significant edit)
This page describes certain features of the "is a launching point for information about the Linux Desktop 2.0 " pilot/R&D project. While this project has been in progress for some time, these notes begin in July 2018.
There are an estimated 200-300 Linux desktop users at SLAC. This project aims to provide a basic managed and maintained building block desktop from which users may customize to their specific needs. At this writing, either Ubuntu or CentOS are available options. This is very much a work in progress....
Table of Contents |
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echo "get Kickstart_end" | /usr/bin/tftp lnxpapa
or do this for them automatically after the first build. Make this an attribute for the node build ? Consider this for ubuntu too - And ubuntu and kickstart are not great together, unless this is very, very dated https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KickstartCompatibility
Package | Status | Date installed | Install Tool | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Linux | required | 7/13/2018 and 8/28/2018 | pxe boot | Basic CLI |
2 | X11 | required | 7/17/2018 and 9/28/2018 | note 1 below | X11+gnome+gazillion dependencies |
3 | window manager | required | 7/17/2018 and 9/28/2018 | " | gnome based - working on conf file |
4 | desktop | required | 7/17/2018 and 9/28/2018 | " | (various convenience apps) |
5 | chef-client | required | 11/13/2018 | (installed by KSA) | Needed for installing YFS |
6 | Windows Active Directory | new authentication model (old=kerberos) | |||
7 | printing | required | [10/4/2018] | sudo system-config-printer | Printing will be via Windows AD IP based printing. In the meantime, configure locally using built-in printing system. Configure B048F2COPIER as a generic postscript printer. This probably needs to be rethought. |
8 | YFS | required | 11/14/2018 | chef-client -o slac_yfs-client | Auristor's YFS (AFS) client. Use "kinit [<userID>]" followed by "aklog" to get a token |
9 | emacs | required | 7/19/2018 and 9/28/2018 | gnome-software | |
10 | chrome | required | 9/28/2018 | d/l + yum install | |
11 | thunderbird | required | 7/19/2018 and 9/28/2018 | gnome-software | |
12 | NX | required | 9/28/2018 | d/l + yum install | NoMachine client for use with NERSC |
13 | citrix client | TESTING INC0211099 not sure if it will work | |||
14 | fastx | required | 9/28/2018 | d/l + tar -xvf | https connection fails, but ssh connection works. KSA has opened ticket with vendor |
15 | slack | required | 9/28/2018 | d/l + yum install | |
16 | zoom | required | 9/28/2018 | d/l + yum install | (implies support for microphone, camera and speakers) |
17 | LibreOffice | required | 7/19/2018 and 9/28/2018 | gnome-software | calc,writer,base,draw,impress,CAD |
18 | python v3 | required | 9/28/2018 | yum install | |
19 | sshfs | required | 12/19/2018 | yum install | sudo yum install fuse-sshfs commands include: sshfs, fusermount |
20 | dev tools (gcc) | required | 9/28/2018 | yum install | sudo yum group install 'Development Tools' |
21 | filezilla | required | 10/1/2018 | gnome-software | GUI file transfer between comet2 and SLAC servers |
22 | Ksnapshot | required | 10/1/2018 | gnome-software | screen shot utility |
23 | DbVis | needed by Fermi/LSST app developers | |||
24 | NetBeans | needed by Fermi/LSST app developers | |||
25 | LSF client | convenient | 10/25/2018 | requires slac_yfs-client | requires desktop is in the lsf configuration file and allowed to run batch commands, if desktop name is not in LSF configuration, start a service now ticket to request addition Needs YFS to do run command a link for /etc/lsf.conf (likely a cookbook configured setting?) |
26 | VPN | required | 11/14/2018 | download | Must download from a current Cisco AnyConnect customer , e.g., NCSA |
27 | clamav | not needed | sudo yum install clamav | Anti-virus (needed to access SLAC VPN, but not necessary on machine connected to internal network) | |
28 | media codecs | very strongly desired | 12/14/2018 | Many steps --> | Followed numerous "sudo yum install ..." commands from https://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/MultimediaOnCentOS7 |
29 | htop | very strongly desired | 12/14/2018 | yum install htop | in EPEL |
30 | gimp | elective | 12/17/2018 | desktop installer | Gnome installer accessed through the Window Manager menu: Applications -> System Tools -> Application Installer |
31 | code42 | required | 112/20/2018 | (via SU web) | Stanford supported disk backup (for local files) https://stanford.app.box.com/v/SU-SemiCustomized-CPPe-Install |
32 | nVidia driver/dashboard | probably not needed | -- | -- | Needed to run dual monitors. On comet2, two (DVI) monitors connected to the two displayPorts on the Quadro 2000 board work just fine with the built-in (nouveau) driver seems to work fine. |
33 | GTK+ v3 | elective | 1/23/2019 | via KSA | needed to build galculator. (Also: gnome-software as gtk3-devel-3.22.20-3.el7) |
34 | galculator | elective | 1/24/2019 | d/l from web and build | One of the few decent RPN calculator apps available for linux |
35 | |||||
36 | |||||
37 | |||||
38 |
Notes:
X11 & GUI installed in this way:
Code Block | ||
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| ||
curl http://yum/centos-gui > /tmp/centos-gui
/bin/sh /tmp/centos-gui |
...
Software installed via the GUI, e.g., Thunderbird, emacs, LibreOffice
Code Block |
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sudo gnome-software |
...
Attempt to install FastX downloaded from www.starnet.com. Code is unpacked from a tar.gz file and run without any special installation. Attempt to configure SLAC but code fails with a relocation error associated with /lib64/libssl.so.10. Karl to the rescue! Use the "ssh" connection rather than "https" while he queries the vendor for a proper fix.
...
Desktop
The default desktop manager is gnome. A large number of desktop settings are stored in the dconf database. There are several ways to view/set these settings:
For example, to increase the idle time interval until the screen blanks and locks to one hour:
Code Block |
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$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 3600
$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay
uint32 3600
and
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 0
$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay
uint32 0 |
Date | uname -a | Notes |
---|---|---|
7/13/2018 | 3.10.0-862.6.3.el7.x86_64 | |
8/8/2018 | 3.10.0-862.9.1.el7.x86_64 | |
8/28/2018 | 3.10.0-327.el7.x86_64 | Fresh install by ksa |
8/29/2018 | 3.10.0-862.11.6.el7.x86_64 | |
10/4/2018 | 3.10.0-862.14.4.el7.x86_64 | |
12/7/2018 | 3.10.0-957.1.3.el7.x86_64 |
The following table indicates a "standard" suggested disk partitioning for centos5.
This is a work-in-progress!
Partition | Type | Size | Red Hat guideline | encrypt? | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
/boot | ext4 | >1 GB | |||
/ | ext4 | >10 GB | root | ||
/home | ext4 | >1 GB | local user $HOMEs | ||
swap | >1 GB | calculation based on amount of RAM | |||
/opt | ext4 | 3rd party software | |||
/tmp | ext4 | don't let this fill up! | |||
/var | ext4 | logs | |||
/scratch | ext4 | yum! | |||
/scswork | ext4 | maybe combine with / ? | |||
/usr/vice/cache | ext4 | AFS/YFS only | |||
/afs | auristorfs | --- | empty mount point (AFS/YFS only) | ||
Here is comet2's current disk config (on a 160 GB HDD):
Code Block |
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NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 149.1G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 600M 0 part /boot
└─sda2 8:2 0 148.5G 0 part
├─VolGroup00-LogVol07 253:0 0 55.2G 0 lvm /scratch
├─VolGroup00-LogVol01 253:1 0 30G 0 lvm /opt
├─VolGroup00-LogVol06 253:2 0 5G 0 lvm /tmp
├─VolGroup00-LogVol05 253:3 0 5G 0 lvm /scswork
├─VolGroup00-LogVol04 253:4 0 4G 0 lvm /usr/vice/cache
├─VolGroup00-LogVol03 253:5 0 8G 0 lvm [SWAP]
├─VolGroup00-LogVol02 253:6 0 10G 0 lvm /var
└─VolGroup00-LogVol00 253:7 0 30G 0 lvm /
|
...
check if firmware updates need to happen
- BIOS, IDRAC, DISK/PERC
NETDB needs for the node:
a. NetDB must have the MAC address
b. NetDB must have these dhcp-opt options: --options filename=pxelinux.0,next-server=lnxpapa,tftp-server-name=lnxpapa
c. NetDB must have dhcp enabled
d. Determine the pxeboot-kickstart to use. There are many!
and we should agree on which one to use. I'd recommend we make that part
of the netdb record the way we do with some newer builds - I think it
helps. See for instance comet2
pxekickit: CentOS7/default.netboot.CentOS7.linux_desktop_2 NOTE I would like to change the attribute name on the netdb record from 'pxekickit' to 'netboot' I came up with the pxekickitit name, it made sense sorta at that time, but now that we will expect to have more than just kickstart builds, think Ubuntu, I think it better to just change this naming convention to netboot.
...
Determine is there anything special about this machine that needs to be considered
If this is rhel[56] node with a taylor.opts take a look and see if there
is a one to one correstpondence between what taylor.opts is doing on the
node and what we can do in chef. For example, if the pre-cheffed node is
using automounter, then all parties ( unix platform, the user) need to know that no NFS native mounts are supported.
an effort to evolve from the "RHEL6-64 desktop server" model to one which is more up-to-date and more sustainable by the folks in SCS. The current focus of this work is to provide a path for updating an existing Linux RHEL6 (or earlier) machine to either Centos 7 or Ubuntu (16 or 18). Machines are expected to be resident at SLAC and connected to the SLAC public network and used in a scientific or engineering environment.
Contents:
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7/13/2018 - comet2 machine arrives in bldg 48 rm 248. Kerberos authentication (temporary). Initial pass at identifying and installing needed software packages (above table) 8/28/2018 - comet2 rebuilt, lose login ability 9/28/2018 - regain ability to login via local account. Re-install needed packages. Also move offending file which causes polkitd to consume too much CPU, "A workaround that I've been using is to remove /etc/xdg/autostart/org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Account.desktop until the above mentioned bug is fixed." (but this does not clear up the issue - polkitd still consumes 7-6% of the CPU continuously) 11/13/2018 - chef client installed (by Karl). Unexpectedly (to TG), this also activated unix kerberos authentication, thus I begin to use the 'dragon' (SLAC) account in favor of the dragon1 (local) account on comet2. 12/17/2018 - Karl adds 'dragon1' and 'dragon' accounts to /etc/group 'wheel' group. This allows a user to run, for example, the software installation tool GUI launched from the Applications -> System Tools menu in the WM. 12/19/2018 - Karl adds 'dragon' to sudo list. 1/14/2019 - Add system monitor to "top panel" in Gnome3 (right-click in that area no allows one to add new widgets): Applications->System Tools->Application Installer->Add-ons 1/18/2019 - Erik Chavez kindly provided two displayPort-to-DVI adaptors and that seems to work just fine with default display driver, etc. 1/22/2019 - install 'hdparm' on comet2 in anticipation of running with SSD. Use: "lsblk" to determine the device for the HDD/SSD, then "hdparm -I /dev/sda2" for details. (Current HDD is Western Digital 160 GB drive.) 1/24/2019 - Karl installed GTK+ v3, enabling build of galculator (./configure, make, make install). 1/24/2019 - Attempt to update BIOS on comet2 (from A26 -> A30). After multiple attempts, was unable to produce a bootable FreeDOS USB device using parted & unetbootin on comet2. However, using rufus (http://rufus.akeo.ie/) on a Win10 machine was trivial (and successful). BIOS was updated to version A30 on 1/25/2019. Hint: rename the Dell bios updater app so that it has 6 or fewer characters, or it will be abbreviated by DOS. 1/25/2019 - Reduce those huge desktop icons with
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Here is a list of gotchas or concerns that I stumbled into during this project investigations.
Stanford minimum security requirements:
https://uit.stanford.edu/guide/securitystandards
SLAC support for Linux:
Ubuntu/CentOS 7 Desktop Scope of Support
...