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Category: Configuration

How to configuring a new astronet client box

Published by jweisber on 2009-02-05

How to make an astronet client from a virgin machine

BDUFFY 2011-04-26

===============================================
Assign a DHCP entry
===============================================

If this is a new machine:

Get the macaddr of the client box and ask dflynn in ITS to set up a DHCP entry with the desired name before installing RHEL5.

This makes setup go more smoothly for a number of reasons.

===============================================
Install RHEL5.4
===============================================

Carleton has only a subscription for the Server version, and by default Virtualization hosting options are preconfigured.  Turn them off during the installation process.

Turn on SELinux to Permissive

When setting the system time, make sure to open the ntpd tab and select the option to get time from the local time servers.

No matter how many times the installer asks you, *do not* register the box during RHEL5 installation.  We will register the machine later on.

===============================================
Mount thuban’s LVMs
===============================================

On Thuban:

Add client to thuban’s /etc/hosts file:

137.22.6.xxx<client>.physics.carleton.edu   <client>

Modify /etc/exports to export to <client>.  Here’s a set of entries for the client Mirzam:

# Mirzam – Joel’s office
/home 137.22.6.89(rw,insecure,sync,no_root_squash)
/data 137.22.6.89(rw,insecure,sync,no_root_squash)
/docs 137.22.6.89(rw,insecure,sync,no_root_squash)
/etc/secret   137.22.6.89(rw,insecure,sync,no_root_squash)
/usr/share/astro  137.22.6.89(rw,insecure,sync,no_root_squash)

Run ‘exportfs -a’ afterwards.

On <client>:

Add entry for thuban to <client>:/etc/hosts:

# astronet hosts
137.22.6.9  thuban.physics.carleton.edu thuban

Create mount points for thuban’s partions:

mkdir /home /etc/secret /data /docs /usr/share/astro

Append these lines into /etc/fstab to mount thuban’s exported partitions:

thuban:/home /home   nfs defaults 1 1
thuban:/etc/secret   /etc/secret nfs defaults 1 1
thuban:/data /data   nfs defaults 1 1
thuban:/docs /docs   nfs defaults 1 1
thuban:/usr/share/astro  /usr/share/astro nfs defaults 1 1

Execute:

‘mount -a’ to verify that the partitions have been mounted

NOTES:

One of the mounted LVMs, ‘/etc/secret’ contains many of the resources we use to configure clients.  See below for details…

===============================================
Register machine with Carleton’s Science Group at redhat.com
===============================================

Execute:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/rhnreg-to-science-group.sh

NOTES:

Rich Graves in ITS created a “Science Group” at rhn.redhat.com and made me the owner.  The Science group has it’s own registration key.  Register all my linux boxes with rhn as one of my ‘Science’ linux boxes on campus by running the above script.

NOTE: Via rhn.redhat.com, I modified the Science group by adding access to additional rpm download ‘channels’ for the entire group so that we can download non-server related rpms such as openoffice.org-*

===============================================
Configure client to participate in /etc/secret system
===============================================

Append these lines to /etc/crontab:

#
## ASTRONET CONFIG
14,29,44,59 * * * * root /etc/secret/cron/import-acct-info.cron

NOTES:

This makes the client upload master copies of /etc/(passwd,shadow,group,host) files from the server.

See thuban:/etc/secret/README.txt for details…

===============================================
YUM configuration:
===============================================

Insert these lines into /etc/yum.conf:

keepalive=1
retries=0
timeout=0
exclude=kernel*

Append these lines to <client>:/etc/crontab:

# ASTRONET CONFIG
04 3 * * * root /etc/secret/cron/yum-update.cron

NOTES:

The yum.conf lines exclude kernel updates and tell yum to keep trying to download rpms when redhat’s repository is flaky.

The crontab change automates a nightly ‘yum -y update’ to update the machine’s rpms.

NOTE: Carleton maintains a RHEL 5.2 yum update cache, but I decided not to use it.  See http://rhn.carleton.edu/pub/RedHat/keys.html

At the time I was configuring the clients, access to rhn’s package repository was very flaky, and changing the clients to work through carleton’s cache made it even worse, so I undid this change.

Notes from talking to Rich re RHEL AS5 support:

RHEL5’s yum uses a stripped down version of up2date to connect to it’s rpm repositories.

Rich said I should run ‘yum clean all; yum -y upgrade’ rather than just ‘yum -y update’.  The clean gets rid of partially downloaded packages, and ‘upgrade’ is better than ‘update’ because it will actually replace outdated packages with newer replacements, as when ‘seamonkey’ browser was superseded by firefox.

I decided not to use ‘upgrade’ — because I thought it could invalidate assumptions made by science packages.

===============================================
Install master list of yum packages:
===============================================

Run:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/install-programs/install-packages.sh

You may need to temporarily comment out the ‘exclude=kernel*’ line in /etc/yum.conf if yum decides it needs to pull in ‘kernel-headers’.  Don’t forget to uncomment the line when you’re done.

NOTES:

James did a ‘yum list installed’ on a fully populated client and converted the output into the ‘yum -y install’ script named above.  This script is essentially the master list of installed packages for the astronet client machines.

===============================================
Enable user ldap authentication
===============================================

Run:

rpm -i –force /etc/secret/clientconfig/carletonldapauth-1.02-3.noarch

NOTES:

Because most users accts inherited from algol were defined to authenticate against their carleton netid/pw, the /etc/secret system assumes you’ve install this rpm:

# rpm -i –force carletonldapauth-1.02-3.noarch

…which can be found at http://rhn.carleton.edu/pub/

===============================================
Mount network drives script
===============================================

Run:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/mntdrive-scripts/install-mntdrives.sh

NOTE: This script only works for users logged into accts that match their Carleton online accts. If you’re logged in as root or any other acct whose username doesn’t map to a Carleton online user it won’t work.

===========================================================
Printer configs (Olin301, 304)
===========================================================

Run:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/printers/install-ppds.sh

This will stuff the xerox ppd files into /usr/share/cups/model/Xerox

Invoke the web based CUPS configuration panel by pointing a web browser at this URL: (‘http://localhost:631’).
NOTE: If CUPS doesn’t come up properly, reboot the machine.

First, configure CUPS to show only local printer definitions by going to the admin page and deselecting ‘see other printers’.

Add the printers OLIN301-X4500 and OLIN304-X6350 by doing the following:

1. Select ‘Add printer’

2. On the ‘Add new printer’ page, enter the printer’s name & desc and select ‘continue’

3. On the ‘Device for ‘ page, select ‘LPD/LPR Host or Printer’ from the ‘Device’ dropdown menu and select ‘continue’.

4. On the ‘Device URI for ‘ page, in the ‘Device URI’ typein, enter ‘ldp://goprint.its.carleton.edu/<printername>’. For example ‘ldp://goprint.its.carleton.edu/olin301-x4500’.

5. Then select make and model of the printer (Xerox, (‘phaser 4500DT’ or ‘phaser 6350DP’))

After the printer is defined, edit the printer definition to set 2-sided printing.

For Xerox Phaser 4500’s, auto tray select doesn’t seem to work , so set paper source to ‘Tray 2’.

Print test page.

===============================================
Install ATI graphics driver (Not necessary as of RHEL5.3)
===============================================
OBSOLETE
Follow the instructions in:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/videodrivers/video-drvr-instruct.txt

Run /etc/secret/clientconfig/selinux-policy-mod/fix-selinux.sh

NOTES:

We’ve learned that when selinux is active it prevents the graphics driver from getting the access it needs to prevent drag-tearing.  Running fix-selinux.sh fixes that.

See ~/Work/Notes/Linux/RHEL5/SELinux-graphics-card-speedup.txt for details on how to build the policy module.

================================================================
Make Graphics DRI accessible to non-root users
================================================================

Append these lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "DRI"

Mode 0666

EndSection

NOTES:

Apps that use the Direct Rendering Interface for fast screen writing (such as idl71’s idlde) can’t run properly on the optiplex 755’s unless you change the permissions on /dev/dri/* from 600 to 666.

The challenge was to find the right file that would change these perms at the right time. At first I thought that modding the <dri> entry at the bottom of /etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default.perms would do it, but it didn’t work. That’s because the dri devices don’t exist at the time this file is applied at boot, but only after X is launched.

================================================
Enable sound for non-root users:
================================================

Run:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/device-permissions-fix/install-device-fix

NOTES:

With the version of RHEL5 we installed, sound doesn’t work for root unless you run the script above.

The script modifies /etc/security/console.perms.d/50-default.perms, which resets device perms at boot time.  In particular it mods that file to set the perms for /dev/audio (or rather the <sound> group of devices that includes /dev/audio) to ‘0666’:

[root@NCHRISTE41272]# diff 50-default.perms~ 50-default.perms
37c37
< <console>  0600 <sound>  0600 root
—
> <console>  0666 <sound>  0666 root
[root@NCHRISTE41272 console.perms.d]#

===============================================
Enable non-root users to use usb key drives
===============================================

Run:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/usb-key-drive-fix/install-hal-fix.sh

NOTES:

On a vanilla RHEL5.3 install, inserting a usb key drive when you are NOT root will result in failure to mount the key drive and a nasty “DBus.Error.AccessDenied on Hal.FindDeviceByCapability” popup.

The above script installs an alternate copy of the file that fixes the problem by commenting out the last two “deny” lines in /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf

See thuban:/etc/secret/clientconfig/usb-key-drive-fix/README.txt for details…

===============================================
Modify client to show host name and time at login screen *and* to allow
user switching from locked screen.
===============================================

Run:

/etc/secret/clientconfig/gdmtheme/install-gdmtheme.sh

NOTES:

The script installs a modified version of /usr/share/gdm/themes/RHEL/RHEL.xml.  James diff’d rigel’s version (a RHEL4 system that showed the host and time in the LR of the screen) to deneb’s (a new RHEL5 system) and found this difference (after prettyprinting the xml files with ‘tidy’):

276,290d275
<   <item type=”rect”>
<   <pos anchor=”se” x=”100%” y=”100%” width=”box” height=”box” />
<   <box orientation=”vertical” xpadding=”50″ spacing=”5″>
<   <item type=”label”>
<   <pos x=”100%” anchor=”se” />
<   <normal color=”#ffffff” font=”Sans Bold 11″ />
<   <text>%h</text>
<   </item>
<   <item type=”label”>
<   <pos x=”100%” anchor=”se” />
<   <normal color=”#ffffff” font=”Sans Bold 11″ />
<   <text>%c</text>
<   </item>
<   </box>
<   </item>

NOTE: you can test a theme by launching this app:

gdmthemetester xdmcp <theme name, in this case “RHEL”>

===============================================
Create symlink to g95
===============================================

Execute:

ln -s /usr/share/astro/g95/bin/i686-pc-linux-gnu-g95 /usr/bin/g95

NOTES:

Joel needed find g77, g95 (gnu fortran compilers).

I installed g77 on all machines like so:
yum install compat-gcc-34-g77

… and added this package to the master yum install script in thuban:/etc/secret/clientconfig/

But g95 (which was already on the shared partition /usr/share/astro) couldn’t find libg2c.  Joel did some more digging and found it in /usr/lib/libg2c.so.0.0.0 and created the above symlink to it in /usr/share/astro so that his /usr/share/astro scripts could find it more easily…

===============================================
Install Denyhosts (new as of April 2009)
===============================================

Install from:

rpm -i /etc/secret/clientconfig/denyhosts/denyhosts-2.6-5.fc6.noarch.rpm

Select the proper rpm based on the post in this blog that deals with denyhosts.

Configure and run:

cp /etc/secret/clientconfig/denyhosts/denyhosts.conf /etc/ [yes to overwrite!]
chkconfig –level 345 denyhosts on
service denyhosts start

===============================================
Configure shells to check user quota at terminal launch
===============================================

Append these lines to /etc/bashrc:

# Check user's quota at terminal launch
if [ "$PS1" ]; then

/etc/secret/bin/quotacheck.sh

fi

Append these lines to /etc/csh.cshrc:

# Check user's quota at terminal launch
if ($?prompt) then

/etc/secret/bin/quotacheck.sh

endif

Append these lines to /etc/zshrc:

# Check user's quota at terminal launch
if [[ -o interactive ]]; then

"/etc/secret/bin/quotacheck.sh"

fi

===============================================
Reboot
===============================================

Reboot the machine so that the OS can pick up the permission changes you made to the sound and usb devices.

===============================================
Turn off avahi service
===============================================

Avahi is a port of Apple’s Bonjour service and it generates a lot of spam in the /var/log/messages file. To turn it off issue these commands as root:

/sbin/chkconfig avahi-daemon off
/sbin/service avahi-daemon stop

How to restore files from old 8mm Exabyte tapes

Published by jweisber on 2008-04-17

8mm Exabyte backup tapes written between 1994 and 2003 were created with the ufsdump command on a Solaris box. We no longer have the Solaris box, but the Exabyte tape drives are now hooked up to algol (running linux) and can be used to recover the files using restore, the linux port of ufsrestore.

Unlike ufsrestore, restore requires you to specify the blocking factor used to write the files to tape. And, since the dump scripts wrote multiple file partitions to each tape, you also need to tell restore which tape file the partition was written to on the tape. Both the blocking factor and tape file index can be determined by inspecting the the old dump logs stored on algol under /docs/thuban-docs/dumps/

Example:

Joel hands you an Exabyte tape with the label “2/9/95” on it, and asks you to recover a file from the “/usr3” partition that was written to that tape.

1. Login to algol as root

2. cd /docs/thuban-docs/dumps/1995/

3. View the dump log for that date (e.g. ./02.09.95.dmp.gz) using emacs or less (which run gunzip on the fly), and look for ‘/usr3’.

4. Determine the blocking factor used for that tape. Look for a line like: “DUMP: Writing 32 Kilobyte records“, and remember that value (’32 Kilobyte’ in this case). Note that historically the blocking factor changed over time, so always check the blocking factor used for the particular dump in question.

BLOCKING FACTOR = 32KB

UPDATE 2015-06-17: Older tapes (for which there are no dump logs) often used a blocking factor of 10KB.

UPDATE 2015-06-17: If you don’t know the block size, use the commands “mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 0; mt -f /dev/st0 setdensity 0x0” to set the drive to “variable mode”. This gives you lower performance (only 1 block is transferred for each SCSI command, plus Check Condition overhead). If you do this, don’t specify the -b <blocksize> argument when using the restore command.

5. Now determine the index of the tape file the partition you want to recover. Starting at the top of the dump log file, counting from ‘1’, count the number of “DUMP: DUMP IS DONE” lines until you get to the “DUMP: DUMP IS DONE” line for your partition.

In this dump log, partition ‘/usr3’ was written as the 16th tape file to the tape, so:

TAPE FILE INDEX = 16

6. Insert the tape in the Exabyte tape drive

7. Rewind the tape. Currently the Exabyte tape drive is /dev/st0, so issue this command:

mt -f /dev/st0 rewind

8. Tell linux what the tape density is using ‘mt‘. Linux seems to autodetect this, but just to be safe… :

mt -f /dev/st0 setdensity 0x15

If you don’t know the tape density, you can set the density to 0 instead:

mt -f /dev/st0 setdensity 0

9. Tell linux which blocksize to use with ‘mt’. In this case our BLOCKING FACTOR is 32kb, which the ‘mt’ command likes to get as an actual byte count. So we multiply 32 x 1024 to get 32768.

mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 32768

If you don’t know the blocksize, set it to 0 (and don’t specify the -b <blocksize> argument to restore:

mt -f /dev/st0 setblk 0

10. cd to the directory you want to put the recovered files in.

cd /tmp/recovery/1995-02-09

11. Call the ‘restore’ command with the following syntax:

restore -a -i -v -b <blocksize> -s <tape file index> -f /dev/st<tape drive ID>

The above arguments tell ‘restore‘ that we want to recover files in interactive mode (-i), ignore volumes (-a), and run in verbose mode (-v).

Given our BLOCKING FACTOR of 32kb and TAPE FILE INDEX of 16, we issue this command:

restore -a -i -v -b 32 -s 16 -f /dev/st0

‘restore‘ should now forward the tape to the 16th tape file and then enter interactive mode, which is somewhat ftp-ish.

Once in interactive mode you can use ‘cd‘ and ‘ls‘ to explore the partition. You can specify the files to extract by issuing the ‘add <fname>‘ command. When <fname> is a directory ‘add‘ recursively targets the directory and it’s contents. The ‘ls‘ command prefixes the names of files ‘add‘ed to the extraction list with an ‘*’.

For a full list of commands use the ‘help‘ command.

Once you’ve told ‘recover‘ which files to recover to your local directory with ‘add‘ commands, issue the ‘extract‘ command to initiate the recovery. This can take several minutes, up to an hour in some cases, so go do something else and come back later.

When ‘recover‘ has recovered the files it will ask you:

set owner/mode for '.'? [yn]

Answer ‘n‘.

Here’s a sample interactive recovery session. In this case we restore the directory ‘./applications/p1391/’ from the ‘/usr3’ partition saved to the ‘2/9/95’ dump tape:

[root@algol /tmp/recovery/1995-02-09]$ restore -a -i -v -b 32 -s 16 -f /dev/st0
restore > ls
.:
11.29.dmp applications/ old_lang/ spool/
aipsnewest/ lang/ software/ tmp/

restore > cd applications/
restore > ls
./applications:
book/ games/ hiabs/ psrcat/ tempo/
ftptool/ graphing/ p1391/ starlink/ timing/

restore > add p1391
restore > extract

… [WAIT UP TO AN HOUR] …

set owner/mode for '.'? [yn] n
restore > quit
[root@algol /tmp/recovery/1995-02-09]$

Kudos to James Fuller for figuring this out.

konqueror (nautilus?) file browser and kwrite (kate?)text editor setup hints

Published by jweisber on 2008-01-15

Added by jmw 2020 may 28: Maybe these konqueror and kwrite config hints are still somewhat useful for nautilus and kate???

I find konqueror the best file browser for linux. To customize it a little, for example to get .idl files to open with my favorite text editor, kwrite:

with konqueror running:
settings>>configure konqueror gives some options like what your home dir should be (eg /home/youusername

to make conqueror behave a certain way with a certain kind of file, i made in my home dir (/home/jweisber) a file called dummy.idl

if you select it inside konqueror (one click to highlight it)

go to edit>properties
it should pop open a window labelled “Properties for dummy.idl – Konqueror”
‘way to the right of “type” is an icon of a bunch of tools. push on it.
it should pop open a window labelled “Edit file type application/idl KDEditFileType- Konqueror”
if its not already there, add a filename pattern of *.idl
that means any file ending with that will be treated in the way you are getting ready to set up

under application preference order, enter
kwrite

if you wish, you can also associate a pretty icon with *.idl by clicking on the “?” icon to left of “filename patterns”

click ok and from now on , when you dble-click on any file ending in .idl, it should open it with kwrite (see addition below)

(you may have to entirely quit and restart konqueror for the new properties to take)

–jmw january 2008

——addition feb 2008 – to get kwrite to use “syntax highlighting” (ie to color idl files with a certain color set; fortran etc etc):

open an idl file in kwrite.

in the kwrite toolbar up top, hit settings>configure editor>highlighting

now here is what took me more time than i am willing to admit:

the panel should now be labelled highlighting rules.

the first thing to do is to select a type from the pulldown menu near the top; eg “sources idl ”

then inside properties:file extensions, type *.pro;*.idl;*.batch

inside properties: MIME types, type application/idl

then hit the icon on the far right of this line and get a panel saying “Select the mimetypes you want highlighted using sources/idl syntax highlight rules”

and check the relevant mime types.

(note if the right mime types arent there, see joel)

note that some of these properties do not “take” until you jump out of konqueror and restart it!

Algol can now talk to its SDLT Tape Drive

Published by jweisber on 2008-01-11

Algol has never been able to properly communicate with the SDLT tape drive. The symptoms were that you could write/read single small file to/from the tape drive, but an attempt to write a *directory* to it drive would fail with this message in shell:

tar: /dev/st1: Cannot write: Input/output error
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

…and this message in /var/log/messages:

Jan 9 15:20:08 algol kernel: st1: Error with sense data: Current st1: sense key Aborted Command
Jan 9 15:20:08 algol kernel: Additional sense: Synchronous data transfer error

The first thing that James Fuller and I did was to see if the other tape drive, a sun 8mm exabyte drive known to algol as /dev/st0, was working. It worked fine. That indicated that algol’s Adaptec 39160 scsi controller card was as least partly working.

The next thing we did was reboot algol. This wasn’t really planned as part of our attempt to get the tape drive working, but rather to test the newly installed idl7.0 license manager. But it was a good thing we did. During the boot sequence we saw a screen titled “Adaptec SCSI Select: hit Ctrl-A to enter”. Prior to this time we had no idea such a utility existed. It’s basically a BIOS for the scsi controller card.

We hit ctrl-a, entered the utility and poked around. The utility enables you to see, for each of the two “channels” A & B (ports), the devices mapped to device ID’s 0-15. On channel A, only the scsi controller itself is mapped (to device ID 7). On channel B, the exabyte tape drive was mapped to device id 0, and the Quantum SDLT was mapped to device ID 6 and the scsi controlloer to device ID 7.

Each channel screen showed a matrix of the devices and parms for each device. The first such parm was “Initiate Wide Negotiation”. This rang a bell in James’ head — he remembered reading somewhere that this parm, when turned on, could cause problems for some scsi devices. So we turned it off for device 6. Note: making this change had the side effect of changing the communications speed value from 160Mb/s to 40Mb/s.

However, when we exited the utility and allowed the reboot to complete, we could write to/read from the SDLT tape drive.

I verified that it was really working by writing /home to it, reading it back to a temporary location, and then doing a recursive diff (diff -rq /home /root/foodir/home) against the original and the copy read from the tape. There were no diffs, and /home takes up 1.5G so I feel confident that Algol can really talk to the SDLT tape drive now.

sudoer list

Published by admin-joel on 2007-07-17

As of this post date 2007, the Astro network syncs thuban’s sudoers file to the other workstations, just as it does with user accounts. Please contact fullerj with any problems regarding sudo.

Where to set up Environment variables etc for ALL users on login

Published by admin-joel on 2006-10-03

OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.

Here is how to set the path or add to the path for all users when they log in. The procedure depends on whether the users’ shell is tcsh (usual case) or bash.  (To determine if your shell is tcsh, type ‘printenv SHELL’.)

———————

TCSH:

For tcsh users, the file to modify is /etc/csh.login. (Also note that other startup conditions can be set for all users in /etc/csh.cshrc).  To add an environment variable simply type

setenv JAVA_HOME /usr/java/1.3.1

To append to the Path in say YOUR OWN .cshrc, type:

setenv PATH “${PATH}:/path/to/be/added”

(This will append your new desired path to the path set for everyone in /etc/csh.login)

————————————————-

BASH:

For users that like bashrc, you can modify /etc/bashrc to add the necessary path or variable. To add a variable, for instance java’s home directory, simply type

export JAVA_HOME=”/usr/java/jdk1.3.1″

If you wanted to add an extra path to sys set up path in YOUR OWN bashrc, type:

export PATH=$PATH:path/to/be/added

Date and Time Configuration

Published by admin-joel on 2006-09-15

OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.

For our systems, we want to use the network time protocol put in place by the college. Therefore, we do not set the time manually but rather, have it sync from the Carleton Network Time server. To do this follow these easy steps.

As root, under the Applications menu to the right of the little red hat, click on System Settings/Date and Time.

Click on the Network Time protocol tab. Under this tab you should see a place to add and delete network time servers. Delete any servers that are there.

Then type ntp.carleton.edu and click the add button. ntp.carleton.edu should then appear as a server on the list. Click OK and wait a few moments for the machine to sync with the server.

Double check the time to make sure it is accurate. Your system should now have the correct date and time.

Algol tape drives

Published by admin-joel on 2006-08-02

We have two tape drives now attached to Algol. The first is an exabyte tape drive listed under

/dev/st0 (or /dev/nst0 depending on if you are using no rewind or not)

The SDLT 320 tape drive is listed under /dev/st1 (/dev/nst1).

To read data from the exabyte. Simply CD into the directory you want to put your data in. Then use the command:(must be run as root)
>>tar xvf /dev/st0

If this fails, try setting the bock size and density using these two commands and then try again.

>>mt setdensity 0x00

>>mt setblk 0

To extract from the SDLT tape drive, the tar command should work as well.

WARNING: When retrieving data from tape, make sure the directory you are in is empty as you can overwrite data files without even realizing it.

Configure astro network client

Published by jweisber on 2006-07-27

OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.

OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.

Steps to configure an astronomy department linux client computer.

  1. Install Redhat Enterprise Linux AS 4
  2. Install redhat keys from:
    http://rhn.carleton.edu/pub/RedHat/keys.html
  3. Add line to /etc/hosts
    137.22.6.54 algol.physics.carleton.edu algol
  4. Add to /etc/fstab:
    algol:/home /home nfs defaults 1 1
    algol:/etc/secret /etc/secret nfs defaults 1 1
  5. Add computer’s IP address to Algol’s /etc/exports file and then run:
    /usr/sbin/exportfs -a
    on Algol
  6. Install Carleton RPM for LDAP auth:
    rpm -i –force carletonldapauth-1.00-3.es40+fc2.noarch.rpm
  7. Put mntdrives and umntdrives scripts in /usr/local/bin available on /etc/secret/RPMS/mntdrive_scripts (mntdrives.tar.gz)
  8. Make collab scripts runnable:
    chmod u=rwxs,g=rxs,o=rxs /usr/bin/smbmnt
    chmod u=rwxs,g=rxs,o=rxs /usr/bin/smbumount
  9. cp /etc/secret/RPMS/cron_scripts/redhat_update.cron /etc/cron.daily
  10. /etc/cron.daily/redhat_update.cron
  11. cp /etc/secret/RPMS/cron_scripts/get_account_info.cron /etc/cron.hourly
  12. /etc/cron.hourly/get_account_info.cron
  13. Set up printer for computers in Olin 304 and 311 (see separate “printer setup” post)
  14. test