Ubuntu Customization

Many customizations will use The apt-get Package Management Tool to install applications or servers to the system. Others will require editing system files.

Secure Shell Support for Remote Login

If the ssh server is not already installed, we will use apt-get to install. As root or using sudo do the following

apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client 
service ssh start

Add new user to system

As root or using sudo do the following

useradd -c "Nicole Ploof" -m -s /bin/bash nicolep
passwd nicolep
passwd -u nicolep

The first line creates a new user account on the system, using the next available UID for users and creates a home directory /home/nicolep with the default shell bash assigned. The next line prompts you to set a password for user nicolep and the last line ensures the login is unlocked. Substitute nicolep for the username of your choice as well as -c comments in quotes for the first and last name of your choice.

Mount some shares from a Windows machine or SMB NAS

fstab example: persistent mounts using exposed credentials

There are more than one ways to do this. This example uses cifs to permanently mount the shares so that they will be available after reboot. If the system complains add the 'noauto' parameter.

• First edit your /etc/hosts file and add the hostname and IP address of the windows share or file server
• Next create mount points in /mnt for each windows share
• Make sure you have cifs installed
• Edit /etc/fstab and add a line for each windows share, see examples:

//apollo/public/ /mnt/public cifs username=nicolep,password=yourpass,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm  0  0
//apollo/media/ /mnt/media cifs username=nicolep,password=yourpass,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm  0  0
//apollo/video/ /mnt/video cifs username=nicolep,password=yourpass,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm  0  0

• mount the shares

mount -a

• This provides read-only access to the network shares.

Example with file permission specified and full rw access

//apollo/public /mnt/public cifs defaults,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,domain=workgroup,username=nicolep,password=yourpass,uid=1000

troubleshooting: devs keep breaking samba

KERNEL CHANGE BREAKS CIFS.

Somewhere between kernel 4.10.0-38 4.15.0-20 a change was made that COULD PREVENT your cifs shares from mounting. Kernels at and before 4.10 used SMB (Server Message Block) version 1.0 as the default if not specified. Most folks did not specify it so it defaulted to 1.0 and worked. Microsoft ditched 1.0 in Windows 10 and dropped support. Linux kernel developers decided to change the kernel code to no longer default to SMB 1.0 and now default to a newer version. For people that are using legacy networks or NAS devices, it breaks the mounting example from above.

Solution: Specify the SMB version.

The solution is to tell mount.cifs to use the SMB2, SMB2.1 or SMB3.0 protocol using the "vers" parameter. in Linux CIFS Utils and Samba Specify 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, or 3.0.

For the following full line example a linux desktop is connecting to an older NAS device. It is necessary to specify SMB version 1.0. Example:

//apollo/video/ /mnt/video cifs defaults,vers=1.0,domain=workgroup,username=nicolep,password=mythtv,iocharset=utf8,sec=ntlm 0 0

FAILED TO CLOSE BROKEN PIPE

Update 2024 Kernel 5.15 Samba 2:4.15.13+dfsg-0ubuntu1.6 -

cp: failed to close 'filename': Broken pipe

A problem with this latest at the time samba Can't copy large files to Windows share - Error closing file: Input/output error issue workaround, specify prior version of cifs on fstab, see example:

//apollo/video/ /mnt/video cifs vers=2.0,defaults,domain=workgroup,username=nicolep,password=yourpass,uid=1000

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