Setting up Res-Srv-Lin-01

Initial setup

First, update the package sources and upgrade the installed packages to the latest version:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -yy

Install packages needed later in the setup.

sudo apt install build-essential git wget tasksel

We are currently using the Gnome desktop. For a minimal installation run

sudo tasksel install ubuntu-desktop-minimal

At this moment, it is good to reboot to allow our changes to take effect.

We want to use the MAC address for DHCP identification. To do that, add the following to every NIC in /etc/netplan/<...>.yaml

dhcp-identifier: mac
optional: true

To prevent automatic updates open Software & Updates > Updates and set

Subscribed to: All updates
Automatically check for updates: Never
When there are security updates: Display immediately
When there are other updates: Display weekly
Notify me of a new Ubuntu version: For long-term support versions

Home setup

Many of the key programs will be installed using the snap packaging format. The snap daemon requires the user’s $HOME to be located under /home on the local filesystem (see more here). To do that we need to bind-mount the alternative home location to /home (in this setup users’ home directories are located in the external storage mounted on /data). Create the mount point

sudo mkdir /data

Mount the external storage on /data and bind-mount the actual /data/home directory on /home. To make sure these changes are permanent add the following to /etc/fstab:

UUID=<replace-with-disk-uuid> /data ext4 defaults 0 1
/data/home /home none bind

It would be good at this point to reboot the system.

Add users

Add any new users with

sudo useradd -m <replace-with-username> -s /bin/bash

This creates a new user, whose $HOME is located on the external storage and their default shell is bash.

ATTENTION: This needs be done AFTER bind-mounting the home directory!

Python

To setup Python install the following packages

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ipython3 python3-pip \
  python3-dev python3-tk python3-venv

R and RStudio

To install R just follow the instructions.

To install RStudio, first download the deb package from their website. Navigate to the download location and run

# Need to navigate to download location!
sudo apt install ./rstudio-<replace-with-version>.deb

The downloaded .deb file can now be removed.

Point the CRAN mirror to the local IPCI CRAN mirror by changing the repo name in /etc/R/Rprofile.site to http://Shr/SRV-CRAN/CRAN:

local({
    r <- getOption("repos")
    r["CRAN"] <- "http://Shr/SRV-CRAN/CRAN"
    options(repos = r)
})

For cryptography install libsodium-dev package:

sudo apt upate && sudo apt install libsodium-dev

Program installation

Install Pycharm, Atom, and Chromium using snaps. The snap package manager is installed on Ubuntu by default, so no need to install it.

sudo snap install pycharm-educational --classic
sudo snap install atom --classic
sudo snap install chromium

Welcome