These are the steps I do after installing Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.  I am collecting them here because I have several computers to upgrade, and I want to make sure I make the necessary customizations on all of them – a standard image if you will, so I can move from one to another and have a consistent environment.

Fix the Theme

1. Right Click Desktop -> Change Desktop Background
2. Change the background to something other than purple.
3. Under the Theme tab, select New Wave to put the close button back to the right.
4. Click Close.

Fix the Terminal

1. Open Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
2. Edit -> Profile Preferences
3. Uncheck “Terminal bell”
4. Unckeck “Show menubar by default in new terminals”
5. Set the Default size to 125 x 25.
6. On the Colors tab, uncheck the box that says “use colors from system theme” and set to “White on black”
7. Hit Close
8. Re-open the terminal to see the new size.

Change Some Nautilus Settings

1. Hit Alt + F2 and type in “gconf-editor”
2. Navigate to /apps/nautilus/preferences/”
3. Check the box that says “always_use_location_entry” to show the full address path instead of the folder box thingys
4. Navigate sideways to the desktop directory to add additional icons to the desktop as desired

Change the Logon Background

1. Open up a terminal, and run:
   sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gnome-appearance-properties
2. Change the background accordingly.

Remove the Universal Access Preferences Taskbar Icon

1. Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard
2. Under the Accessibility Tab, uncheck the box that says “Accessibility features can be toggled…”
3. Click Close

Set Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to Restart the X Server

1. Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard
2. Click on the Layouts tab
3. Click on the Options button
4. Expand the section that says “Key sequence to kill the X server”
5. Check the box next to “Control + Alt + Backspace”

Restore Various Computer Settings / Files

Assuming you backed up your home directory, these are the specific files that I usually restore.

• Nautilus bookmarks: ~/.gtk-bookmarks
• Mozilla Firefox Profile: ~/.mozilla
• Mozilla Thunderbird Profile: ~/.thunderbird or ~/.thunderbird-3.0 (if you were like me and upgraded Mozilla Thunderbird to 3.x during the last Ubuntu release)
• SSH Keys & Authorized Hosts: ~/.ssh
• Pidgin Profile: ~/.purple
• Gnome Keyring: ~/.gnupg & ~/.gnome2/keyrings
• gEdit Settings / Snippets: ~/gnome2/gedit
• QuickSynergy: ~/.quicksynergy

These are just the settings and program profiles. Of course don’t forget Documents, Desktop (even though you don’t store a bunch of crap on your desktop, right…right?), Videos, Pictures, and all the other random folders created over the years.

Configure Local Apt Mirror

1. Fire up a terminal
2. I have the sources.list on my server with the local mirror already in place, so to import it into a new machine, I run this command:
   sudo mv /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.original
sudo scp server-01:/home/share/apt/lucid.list /etc/apt/sources.list
3. Run “sudo apt-get update” to make sure all the sources are reachable.
4. Run “sudo apt-get dist-upgrade” while we are at it.

Install Some Software

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

sudo apt-get install abiword alltray amarok armagetronad audacity \
banshee blender bluefish cdrdao chromium-browser clusterssh \
compizconfig-settings-manager devede duplicity dvdauthor easytag-aac \
epiphany-browser ffmpeg filelight frozen-bubble gdesklets gftp gimp gnibbles \
gnome-breakout gnome-do gnome-do-docklets gnome-do-plugins gnomebaker \
gnumeric gpaint gpass gphpedit graphviz gwakeonlan htop hydrogen inkscape \
k3b kino listen mdbtools-gmdb mencoder mousepad mplayer mysql-admin \
mysql-client mysql-navigator mysql-query-browser neverball neverputt \
oggconvert openclipart-openoffice.org openclipart-png openoffice.org \
openoffice.org-base openssh-server oxygen-icon-theme p7zip-full pidgin \
pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr pidgin-plugin-pack pingus prism prism-facebook \
prism-google-calendar prism-google-docs prism-google-mail \
prism-google-reader prism-twitter rapidsvn rar sound-juicer sqlitebrowser \
ssh supertux-stable supertuxkart terminator thunderbird ttf-dejavu \
ttf-dejavu-extra ttf-lyx ttf-sil-gentium ttf-sil-gentium-basic \
ttf-symbol-replacement ttf-ubuntu-title vlc wine wireshark xchat subversion \
smbfs gedit-plugins quicksynergy padevchooser nautilus-image-converter

Install Binary nVidia Driver

1. Install the driver via the Drivers manager & reboot.
2. Run “sudo nvidia-settings”
3. Click on the X Server Display Configuration and enable the second screen.
4. Click on Apply, and then Save to X Configuration File.

Connect Samba Shares in /etc/fstab

I have a couple Samba shares that I want visible on my computer. Create the empty directories in /mnt where they are to be mounted, and then use the commands like the one below to setup the mount.

1. Copy this in the fstab:
   //server/path /mnt/path smbfs credentials=/root/.smbpasswd,uid=1000,gid=1000 0
2. .smbpasswd looks like this:
   username=user
password=topsecret

Adding Thunderbird to the Indicator Applet

I prefer Thunderbird over Evolution, so I am going to remove the Evolution icon and add Thunderbird.
sudo rm /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/evolution
sudo bash -c "echo /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop > /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/thunderbird"

Removing Empathy from the Indicator Applet

The casual observer would note that Pidgin was included in the software install above. Up to this point, I have preferred Pidgin, but this time I think I’m going to give Empathy another try. If you want to remove it, run the below command. I will leave them both there and choose my favorite one later.
sudo rm /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/empathy

Install the Citrix XenApp for Linux

Citrix is a virtualization software package to run programs remotely. I use it for work.

1. Download the package from the download page.
2. Extract the package using the Nautilus right-click menu or this command: tarr -xzvf linuxx86-*.tar.gz
3. Fire up a terminal and cd into the directory where the package was extracted to.
4. Run “sudo ./setupwfc” and follow the installation instructions

The Citrix receiver will now allow you to run Citrix applications from your favorite web browser.  If you want to configure desktop shortcuts or need to use the GUI manager, run these commands:

sudo apt-get install libmotif3
ln -s /usr/lib/libXm.so.3.0.2 /usr/lib/libXm.so.4

Install DVD Playback

sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh


Install MythTV From Source

http://www.mythtvbook.com/wiki/The_Hard_Way:_Installing_MythTV_From_Source

Set the Background to Something Useful

http://www.webupd8.org/2009/09/real-time-earth-wallpaper-for-linux.html

Configure Alternate Networks (If Laptop)

1. Configure wireless networks
2. Configure mobile broadband connection

Note: I will be modifying this article as time goes on and my installation technique gets tweaked. Don’t come to this article 3 months later and start blindly running the commands because you think you remember what they do.

If you want to download them all along with the GIMP source file, here it is: Ubuntu 10.04 CD Covers

When opening the Gimp source file, make sure you have the Ubuntu title font installed:

sudo apt-get install ttf-ubuntu-title

Enjoy!

rsync -rougv --archive --delete-excluded --ignore-errors --exclude=*.gvfs* /home/andrew /backup/

Below is the command that I use for each user on my main file server. This copies over SSH, so I have SSH keys on the destination server so I can run this in a cron job, and it won’t get hung up with a password prompt.

rsync -rougv --archive --delete-excluded --ignore-errors --exclude=*.gvfs* /home/user1 bckup@server-02:/media/external/backups/server-01/

From the man page, here is an explanation on all the options I use:

• -r, –recursive             recurse into directories
• -o, –owner                 preserve owner (super-user only)
• -u, –update                skip files that are newer on the receiver
• -g, –group                 preserve group
• -v, –verbose               increase verbosity
• -a, –archive               archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
• –delete-excluded       also delete excluded files from dest dirs
• –ignore-errors         delete even if there are I/O errors
• –exclude=PATTERN       exclude files matching PATTERN (so it doesn’t copy any SSHFS-mounted directories on my system)

To whoever tried to hack my “administrador” account: Brute forcing for a password won’t work unless you know how to spell “administrator”.  Once you learn to spell, also learn that linux servers doesn’t have an “administrator” account to begin with.

Check out this screenshot of my dual-display desktop with a dark theme enabled:

Looks pretty cool…just like all those other screenshots you see, but they are leaving out some common problems that I find when I try it out for real.  Let’s see another screen shot with some other common programs.

This one looks quite worse.  Firefox thinks it needs to theme my text boxes, form buttons, and scroll bars according to my desktop theme, and not according to the site style.  Behind the Firefox browser is the OpenOffice.org Processor.  That opened up with a text area and font color that matches the theme as well, and I don’t think it should.  It’s supposed to mimic a white piece of paper, and it doesn’t in this case.  Moving on to Bluefish (on the left), it is clear that one cannot write code in that environment.  Removing the white background will make your eyes hurt with the syntax highlighting.  Bluefish either needs to make the entire editing area white or have alternate syntax highlighting themes for a dark background.

I have done endless searching and found no solution for Firefox & Bluefish.  OpenOffice does offer the option to manually change the background or use the default background (theme color).  In general, I think that the dark theme is more appealing and easy on the eyes (especially at night), but until programs are made to easilly adapt to different color schemes, this won’t be an option for me.

Yup, future leaders in the making…

Make Sure Everyone is on the Same Domain

Even if you don’t have multiple domains pointing to your site, it’s possible that www.example.com and just example.com will work.  If that’s the case, Google and other search engines could be crawling your site twice and the website could take a ranking hit for duplicate content.  The following example shows how we can redirect visitors from two domains down to one.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.net$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.net$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Force SSL on Specific Site Directories

I use SSL on a couple of my sites, but it doesn’t need to be enabled (or forced) on the entire site, so we use .htaccess mod_rewrite rules to enforce SSL where we need it.  The following peice of code will force SSL on all requests in the directory named ’secure’.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^secure/.*$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Both of these lines need to be copied if we need to enforce more than one directory, so if we need the directory ’secure’ and the the directory ‘users’ secured, we would use this code.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^secure/.*$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^users/.*$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

For the rest of the site, we don’t need SSL, so use something like this if we have the ’secure’ and ‘users’ directory with SSL enabled.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !secure/.*$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !users/.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Force SSL on a Domain or Sub-Domain

Similar to the need above, we can force SSL on an entire domain if we need to.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^wells-it.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Take a Website Offline

If a website needs to go down for maintenance or whatever, that can be done with a simple few lines of code.  Just remember to change the page’s path in both lines where you see not-up.htm, or you could create a redirect loop.

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^123\.214\.71\.126
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/static/not-up\.htm$
RewriteRule .* /static/not-up.htm [R=302,L]

Remove ‘index.php’ From the URL

This is one that will come in handy if you use CodeIgniter or any other framework that sends all requests through index.php.  Basically, this code checks to see if the URL request exists as a static file or directory.  If does, it would be a picture, style sheet, javascript include, etc.  If it is not found, then it assumes that it must be for the framework to handle, and it sends it to the index.php file.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

Keep Visitors Off the Stage

On my large sites, I have both a production copy and a stage copy.  The stage copy is where I do all my developing and testing.  When I am satisfied with the changes, I push the changes to my live site.  The problem is that I don’t want site visitors seeing my stage copy, so I use some mod_rewrite code to keep them off.  You need to know your IP address for this one, and if you have a dynamic IP, you will have to change the file every time you get a new one.

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^56\.51\.98\.126
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^stage.wells-it.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://wells-it.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If you have multiple IP address that you want access to the stage, you can just add another condition.

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^56\.51\.98\.126
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^74\.65\.95\.128
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^stage.wells-it.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://wells-it.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Turn .htaccess Into a Web Application Firewall

I didn’t write this one, so I can’t take credit for it, but you can find the code here.  It contains some very slick code to keep malicious page requests from getting through to your web applications.

Final Notes

Since some of these URL rewrites actually redirect the browser, it’s possible to get into a redirect loop where you will never satisfy the rules you have in place, and the browser will redirect forever…until it detects a loop and stops with an error.  If this happenes, try to see where the loop is or post a comment if you’re stuck.

Download the Gimp source file: ubuntu-cd.xcf

The color background behind the edition and processor type can be changed so you can better identify them when they are in your cases.  Just look for the version-bg-(n) layers in the image.

Also, the wallpaper layer can be hidden if saving ink is desired.  I used the full color background when printing out the desktop editions, but then hid the background for the server & alternate editions to save on ink.

If you don’t have The Gimp, you can download it here, or see all the different versions that you can make with this file below.

I live in the Midwest – Northern IN/IL area to be exact.  Early January is usually a time for snow.  Here are a few pictures of the snow we got on New Years Eve.  Typical of this area.

But a week later, mother nature had other plans.   A member of my storm chasing team, Tony, started to warn me of a possible storm system and to ready the storm chasing equipment.  Honestly, I didn’t give that statement much weight because it was January.  He said it will happen on January 7.  Even that morning, I checked SPC’s daily forecast, this is what it was:

It wasn’t very encouraging.  It seemed that the NWS wasn’t prepared for a winter severe weather event.   Later that day, the SPC did issue a Slight Risk, but that was far too south for us to reach.  It wasn’t until their afternoon outlook that they iussued a wide-spread Slight Risk.

That was good enough for me.  We hit the road shortly after that outlook was published.  It took me so long to write up a post about it, so I don’t remember that much about it.  What I do remember was that it was like Spring.  It was well in the 60s and humid.  The funniest thing was that we still saw snow in some of the ditches and Christmas decorations on some houses…and we were chasing storms.  When we got to our destination, it was already starting to get dark (remember, It’s January), so the pictures weren’t very impressive.  We did not see any tornadoes, just the usual wall clouds.  It turned out that 75 tornadoes touched down before the day was over.  Kudos to Tony that predicted it way ahead of the SPC, and if this is a sign of things to come this Spring, hold on your your hats.