Kuo Lab Wiki

• before installing Ubuntu, power on the workstation, enter the BIOS setting, and update the boot setting. CD/DVD-ROM should be listed as the 1st choice, following by the hard drive for Ubuntu installation

• The system administrator requires the HWaddr of the Network Interface Controller (NIC) to add the new machine to the DHCP server.
• In Terminal, type “ifconfig” to get the HWaddr of eth0 (format = XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX). Write down this string and send it to the administrator.
• After the DHCP server setting has been updated, restart the computer to obtain the correct intranet IP.
• Note: this only has to be done once (no need for re-installation unless the Network Interface Controller has been changed)

• Basic installation
  • Put the Ubuntu14.04 DVD into the DVD-drive.
  • Restart the computer and boot the computer through that DVD.
  • Follow the instruction to install Ubuntu.
  • hard drive partition:
    • use the SSD as the primary hard drive
      • SWAP >= the size of RAM
      • the remaining part could be mounted as root ('/') and used for OS installation
    • the larger/slower hard drive could be mounted as '/backup'

• Install the OpenSSH server
  • The OpenSSH client is installed by default (so you can ssh into other computers). The OpenSSH server is required for connection into this machine (e.g., auto backup from the lab server). Use sudo apt-get install openssh-server to install.
• SSH security
  • Once the OpenSSH server is installed, it is important to increase the security
  • see more info here: SSH security
  • Minimally, update the /etc/hosts.deny and /etc/hosts.allow files to allow only the IPs that should have access
  • Install Fail2ban: sudo apt-get install fail2ban

• official drivers of nvidia graphic card (gnu) is required for better performance.
• check nvidia graphic card information

$ lspci -vnn | grep -i VGA -A 12

• nvidia: find driver version
• Take Quadro 600 for example, the driver version is 340.65

Remove old version

• For example, remove version 331

$ sudo apt-get remove nvidia-331 && sudo apt-get autoremove

Install driver

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa -y
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-340

Change nvidia settings

• nvidia-xconfig
• nvidia-settings

$ sudo apt-get install icedtea-7-plugin openjdk-7-jre

Optional

$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

For Oracle Java

Java 7
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer
Java 8
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Check version

$ java -version

Switch between Oracle Java 8 and Java 7

$ sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-7-oracle
$ sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-8-oracle

# Find path to new disk
$ sudo fdisk -l
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb2   *      501758   976771071   488134657    5  Extended
/dev/sdb5          501760   976771071   488134656   8e  Linux LVM
$ sudo mkdir -p /backup
$ sudo mount /dev/sdb5 /backup/
# check disk info
$ df -h