MAS OS Configuration email template

OS Download and install

We currently support Ubuntu from version 6.06 through version 10.04. For new installations we recommend Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. It is available here.

 http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.04/

There is some flexibility in the OS, but we must patch and recompile the kernel and we're already familiar with these versions of Ubuntu. If you'd much rather use Fedora, or something, we can probably work that out. Ubuntu has a very strong user support presence on the internet.

Installation is fairly straight-forward, just some basic network stuff and disk partitioning. If you're comfortable with manipulating partitions, it is probably a wise idea to make a smallish (20-30 GB) partition for the root "/" of the file-system, and then use the rest of the free space for data (mount as "/data"). This will make it easier to replace the OS later, if that becomes desirable or necessary.

If you install the Server Edition, it will not have programming tools or a window-manager installed by default. To get started with those, you can login (on the text terminal) and then type:

  user:~#  sudo apt-get update
  Password:
  user:~#  sudo apt-get install build-essential ubuntu-desktop gdm

Note about "sudo": by default, the root account on ubuntu does not have a password (this means that no one can log in as root). Instead, privileged users can do root things on a command-by-command basis using "sudo" (as above), or can open a root shell like this:

  user:~#  sudo -s
  Password:
  root:~#

If you would rather enable the root account (so you can use "su" to get a root shell, for example), just do:

  user:~#  sudo -s
  Password:
  root:~#  passwd

and set the password.

To set up the rest of the system, we will need to ssh into that computer. To make sure ssh access is enabled for normal users, install openssh-server:

  user:~# sudo apt-get install openssh-server