Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

Install the Lexmark printer drivers. The steps are exactly the same (they haven’t updated the drivers since ubuntu 12.04, except this time, we need the 64-bit drivers. Remember that when the Lexmark printer utility is looking for the printer over Ethernet, it takes about a minute to find it. Be patient. Also install the Scan driver for 64-bit Linux distributions with Debian-based packaging.

Install Gimp.

Install unity-tweak-tool to change UI settings. This is a separate application from System Settings.

In Appearance application, select the Behavior tab and show menus in the window’s title bar.

Install Digikam and Darktable. Change Digikam setting for Import, File Renaming Option to “INI-[date]-[file].[ext]”, where INI is your initials.

Install gallery-uploader.

Set the keyboard shortcuts for logging out.

First up, run the Software Center and load Synaptic. Use Synaptic to load these packages:

• emacs
• nautilus-dropbox
• keepassx
• gkrellm
• system-config-lvm
• cifs-utils
• gnucash

Load Firefox and install Chrome. Sign in to Chrome.

Set up user accounts and groups

1. As root, edit /etc/passwd and add the other users from Boon’s /etc/passwd
2. Copy the corresponding lines in Boon’s /etc/shadow for the other users
3. Edit /etc/group and add the groups for those users and also the ds411p2 group from the same file on Boon

Install NAS credentials

From Boon, copy the NAS authorization file:
/etc/ds411p2pwd

Set up NAS mounts

As root, edit /etc/fstab and add these lines, substituting your username for {me}:

//ds411p2/video /mnt/ds411p2-public-video cifs rw,suid,gid=ds411p2,credentials=/etc/ds411p2pwd 0 0
//ds411p2/music /mnt/ds411p2-public-music cifs rw,suid,gid=ds411p2,credentials=/etc/ds411p2pwd 0 0
//ds411p2/photo /mnt/ds411p2-public-photo cifs rw,suid,gid=ds411p2,credentials=/etc/ds411p2pwd 0 0

//ds411p2/home /home/{me}/ds411p2 cifs user,uid={me},gid={me},rw,suid,credentials=/home/{me}/.ds411p2pwd 0 0
//ds411p2/video /home/{me}/ds411p2-public-video cifs user,uid={me},gid={me},rw,suid,credentials=/home/{me}/.ds411p2pwd 0 0

As root, create the above directories in /mnt. You can (as root) mount them now, but don’t mount the home directories yet.

Port user home directories

TAR all the home directories on Boon to a file on the NAS, then extract them to Jennings. (There are other ways to do this, of course):
On Boon:

1. cd /home
2. sudo tar cvzf /home/dave/ds411p2/boon-home-all.tgz --one-file-system {myuser} {anotheruser} {theotheruser}

On Jennings, download the TAR file from the NAS through the web console to /home. Write these next steps down, then close all programs except your terminal because we’ll be overwriting the home directories.

1. cd /home
2. sudo tar xvzf /boon-home-all.tgz
3. sudo mount /home/{me}/ds411p2
4. sudo mount /home/{me}/ds411p2-public-video
5. Log out and back in again
6. Dropbox will ask you to sign in again and the Gnome keyring will complain that your password is different. Use the Jennings password to unlock it.
7. Make sure you can see the NAS files in the /mnt and ~/ds411p2* directories.

Install Java 8

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

Install Minecraft for the kids

1. On Boon: cd /usr/local/games; sudo tar cvf ~{me}/ds411p2/usr-local-games-minecraft.tar *
2. On Jennings: cd /usr/local/games; sudo tar xvf ~{me}/ds411p2/usr-local-games-minecraft.tar
3. rm ~{me}/ds411p2/usr-local-games-minecraft.tar

Jennings is a new Lenovo K450E. It’s replacing Boon which is getting flakier every day.
Jennings came with Windows 8.1 and UEFI. I tried to install Ubuntu alongside Windows, but failed. It turns out I was doomed from the start because I got Jennings with an NVidia card (GeForce GTX 750) that was so new, the Linux Nouveau drivers don’t support it yet, nor has nvidia-current been updated with the new NVidia drivers. As a result, when booting with UEFI, it would lock up. The Boot Repair Disk I needed to fix the UEFI issues also locked up. Eventually, I gave up and installed Ubuntu by itself in non-UEFI mode. For some reason, with UEFI turned off, it would load and run fine, except for the video being stuck at a lower resolution than the monitor could handle.
To fix that, I needed the NVidia binary driver, available at http://www.nvidia.com. The instructions are simple, just download and run the installer as root. The only catch? You can’t have X running when you do so. And because of the confused nouveau driver, I didn’t have any console TTYs. To get around that, I ssh’d in from another box on my network. Setting the runlevel to 3 didn’t shut down X. I had to sudo service lightdm stop for that. Once X was out of the picture, the NVidia installer ran and only complained that a distribution pre-install script failed, but that didn’t affect anything. After letting the installer update my X configuration, I ran sudo service lightdm start and was back in business–no reboot required.

Update: The console TTY issue has been solved, so there’s no need to log in remotely to do this. The bad news is that these steps must be run after every kernel update:

sudo service lightdm stop
sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-340.24.run
Accept/Yes/Reinstall to everything
sudo service lightdm start

I tried to upgrade Boon (an Ubuntu 13.10 installation) to 14.04. During the upgrade, the / file system ran dangerously low on space. I was removing stuff from the file system to give it enough breathing room and got no errors, but when I rebooted, Grub failed to load:
Error: symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found
Entering rescue mode...
I found a reference to a bug causing Grub to break which had a fix.

I booted my live USB drive of 32-bit Ubuntu 13.10 (it took a few times–see my notes about the hard lock-ups). Once I got it running, I did the following:

sudo mkdir /mnt/u13boot
sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/u13boot
sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/u13boot /dev/sda

(/dev/sda6 is the location of the /boot directory of the installed Ubuntu and /dev/sda is where Grub is installed.)