Difference between revisions of "New Linux Workstation Post Installation Tips"

Latest revision as of 12:14, 23 December 2017

For Ubuntu based Linux Distribution Desktop Workstaion

Install and Configure VNC Server

Install the vnc server

apt-get install vnc4server

Or if you prefer TightVNC

apt-get install tightvncserver

Note: This requires a local user to be logged into a desktop session before a remote client can connect. It is also possible to make vncserver start as a system service. See the following guide on this wiki:

• Configure vncserver on Ubuntu

Set VNC password

sudo x11vnc --storepasswd

or for TightVNC server

sudo vncpasswd
sudo vncpasswd /root/.vncpasswd

The first will set it for your own username. The second will set it for the root user.

Configure SSH and zmodem file transfer

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

Easy way to secure transfer files

apt-get install lrzsz

Install Chooser shell scripts

Install Useful shell tools

Install vim editor

apt-get install vim

Install Firefox

Install Firefox, because Chromium doesn't support NoScript.

apt-get install firefox

Don't do this. Firefox Quantum / Firefox 57 is terrible. Install their Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). See Mozilla Firefox.

Enable partner Repositories and Install Latest Flash Plugin for Firefox

Consider this process has (2) main parts. The first part you need only do one time, for the first time you update flash player. The second part you do each time a new update is released. Plugin updates from Adobe are security patches only.

If you have already added partner repositories then you can skip Part 1 and go directly to Part 2. Always run 'apt-get update' before installation.

Part 1: First Time Pre-Update Configuration

As "root" or using sudo (place the command 'sudo' before all commands below if not already root...

What flash plugin packages are already installed?

apt-cache pkgnames|grep -i flash

You might see "flashplugin-installer" in the list. flashplugin-installer installs the 32-bit version of Flash and a related compatibility library which may be slower and less stable, so it’s recommended to install the adobe-flashplugin package from canonial partners repository.

To enable the partners repositor open the sources.list file

vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the partner repositories by removing the # in front of the following lines

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner

Part 2: Subsequent Regular Update

In this example we are using Ubuntu Precise (Precise Pangolin). If you're using another version simply replace "precise" with the correct string. Now Synchronize the package index files. This is necessary each time before checking for an update to the flash plugin to make sure the index is current.

apt-get update

Now update to the latest version of flash

apt-get install adobe-flashplugin

Additional Information

Adobe Flash Player 11.2 was released in 2012 which Adobe announced would be the last native version for Linux. This isn't a problem for Google Chrome users as the plugin is built into the browser. Firefox users are left out. However, Adobe does seem to release occasional "security" updates for 11.2 such as an update in late 2014 (11.2.202.425) which corrected a known exploit (Adobe Flash is full of security holes.) Firefox users would have seen a message similar to:

Flash Player Plugin on Linux 11.2.202.424 and lower (click-to-play) has been blocked for your protection.

HTML5 is an alternative to Adobe Flash that web developers are encouraged to use rather than creating Flash objects.

Flash is under the Restricted Formats in Ubuntu. Because of Adobe's anti-competitive and anti-open standards license restrictions on Flash, the people at Ubuntu say they cannot include Flash automatically. This is why "partners" repository has to be enabled. They also want people to consider using one of the open-source Flash player alternatives that will render Flash objects.

• Lightspark is available from the project's Launchpad page: https://launchpad.net/lightspark.
• Gnash and Swfdec are available as Ubuntu packages from the Universe repository.

On Some Systems

Edubantu system older distribution kernel 3.11.0-26-generic / Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

Install Firefox Security Plugins

CIFS Windows file share connectivity

To connect to windows shares you need cifs

apt-get install cifs-utils

Mount Windows Share Example

Although this example comes from a MythTV configuration, it is a universal example. Simply modify to suite your needs.

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

See Linux CIFS Utils and Samba for more information on installing cifs-utils and mounting Microsoft Windows shares.

Further Customization

See: Ubuntu Customization for additional configuration tips.