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These are notes I accumulated while installing Ubuntu 10.04 on my workstation. They are by no means complete and definitely NOT ALWAYS the proper way to do things. I encourage people to alter these instructions, especially if you are knowledgeable with Ubuntu. Lia
A quick note
Before doing any of this I bought Linux in a Nutshell (6th ed.) It proved a trusty sidekick for several reasons.
- When you run into a weird error and you just can't figure out what went wrong, copy and paste the error into your favorite search engine. At least one other person has had the same problem as you, and has posted it to a forum. This is an easy way to find "magic" fixes. However, it is helpful to understand more about the commands used to fix your problems. The Linux in a Nutshell book has a glossary of commands and describes them in slightly more detail than the man pages.
- Read about apt-get and other package management suites using this book.
- Read about subversion, it rocks! I have my own repository set up online at http://www.beanstalkapp.com
How to check out an svn repository:
svn co http://lia.svn.beanstalkapp.com/repository_name
Mine will ask for a username and password, so don't even try!
Installing Ubuntu on Your Workstation
First I downloaded the most recent Ubuntu distribution and burned a CD. (Follow the instructions online for creating an install disk, since burning the .iso file will not create a proper install CD.)
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download
I backed up all of my data to an external hard drive.
I installed from the Ubuntu disk. (Note: I had to press F12 from the startup screen to make the computer boot from CD.) I chose the same username and password as I had previously, and set the computer name to the same one previously assigned to my workstation (juliet).
NOTE: I chose the 64-bit distribution of Ubuntu.
There was a strange error when I asked the computer to restart, so I did a hard reboot.
I turned the computer back on, and the OS loaded just fine. Shortly after restarting, it asked to install several updates. I let it do so, and the computer restarted cleanly.
Installing Printers
System -> Administration -> Printing
Click Add
Click on arrow next to Network Printer
Select Find Network Printer
I entered bee.astro.columbia.edu and it found the desired printer. I selected bee from a long list and then clicked Forward. It installed the drivers for the printers and asked for some basic info. (I set Collate to No and clicked the Duplex box.)
To make sure that bee prints double-sided pages by default, right click on its icon when you open System -> Administration -> Printing. Select Properties and then click on Printer Options from the left. Under General you will see the option 2-Sided Printing. It was off by default. Select Long-Edge Binding.
NOTE: Even though I set this, it did not appear as the default setting. It was not until I set Long-Edge Binding when printing a single document, that it became the default.
I entered dragonfly.astro.columbia.edu and it was not found. Dragonfly has been out of commission for awhile, so it might be off. I never print to it much, so I will try installing it later
At a later time, when I tried to use lpr -P bee, it didn't work. A quick google search showed me that I had to install:
sudo apt-get install cupsys-bsd
---> It still does not recognize "bee" as a printer name, but just using lpr will print to bee because it is the only printer set up on my system.
Installing IDL
From ticket 942, I clicked on the link to the IDL 7.0 distribution. (http://docs.astro.columbia.edu/files/idl/7.0/)
I downloaded idl706linux.x86.tar.gz
Note: You need IDL 7.0 because the license provided by the department is IDL 7.0 (32-bit). It takes a day or two to get permission to download IDL directly from the ITT site.
sudo mkdir /usr/local/itt sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/itt sudo ~/Downloads/idl706linux.x86.tar.gz /usr/local/itt/ sudo tar -xvvf idl706linux.x86.tar.gz sudo ./install
I installed as root so that the necessary links were created in /usr/local/bin. (Only root had permission to create files in /usr/local/bin, even though I had the option to install IDL as lia.)
I said 'no' to starting the DICOM Network Services at boot time.
Note: Make sure that /usr/local/bin is included in $PATH. The "idl" link there will get idl started for you. Ubuntu installed nicely, so I didn't have to make any edits to my .bashrc profile.
The installation looks fine, but when I type "idl" at the system prompt I get the following error:
exec: 617: /usr/local/itt/idl706/bin/bin.linux.x86/idl: not found
I found this fix from the internet: http://www.mofeel.net/1098-comp-lang-idl-pvwave/6093.aspx
cd ~/Desktop touch arch emacs arch
--> I edited the file to contain the line "uname -m"
chmod 755 arch sudo cp arch /bin/
It works! The webpage also tells you how to get IDLDE and it's support structure (e.g. Java) working. I don't use it very much, though, so I skipped that.
Now get the license running. There are directions for this at http://docs.astro.columbia.edu/wiki/IDL
scp pluto.astro.columbia.edu:/opt/itt/license/license.dat ~/Desktop/ sudo cp ~/Desktop/license.dat /usr/local/itt/license/
To get IDL up to your old functionality and preferences, do the following:
- Copy your old idl_startup file to your workstation's home directory
- Edit your .bashrc profile with the line
export IDL_STARTUP=$HOME/idl_startup
- If you had extra libraries, download and then add them to
/usr/local/itt/idl706/lib/
Other Applications I Installed
sudo apt-get install emacs23 sudo apt-get install subversion
To get Flash 10 : Go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer and select APT for Ubuntu 9.04+ This will automatically download and install Flash (for Firefox).
To enable Flash 10 for Chrome: (Disclaimer: Chrome is still under development and ever changing. These instructions are good as of July 26, 2010)
Right click on your Chrome shortcut. Select Properties from the menu. In the Command box shows where the shortcut points to. Append --enable-internal-flash to the end of the command. Close and restart Chrome. Type "about:plugins" into the url box and see that "Shockwave Flash" is one of the plugins listed. If so, you're good to go!
Here's an example of how to install something and then remove it if you change your mind.
sudo apt-get install eclipse
---> This also installed a java library
I wanted to use eclipse as a workbench for python. I installed a python library, but did not find it very useful. (Eclipse is made primarily for Java developers, though it can be used for other types of code.)
I ended up removing it using:
sudo apt-get autoremove eclipse
----> This also removed all the packages eclipse relied on, including java.
Changes to .bashrc
To reflect my personal preferences:
alias emacs="emacs -nw" export IDL_STARTUP=$HOME/idl_startup
Installing Python
Ubuntu 10.04 came with Python 2.6 installed!
Now for some support packages (I looked them up using synaptic from the terminal.) You can also search available packages by using
apt-cache search numpy
as an example on how to find relevant NumPy packages.
sudo apt-get install python-numpy sudo apt-get install python-scipy sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib sudo apt-get install python-pyfits
Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
August 13 - I also installed an astronomical library (Similar to the standard IDL Astronomy library) from http://www.scipy.org/AstroLib/
In my home folder:
mkdir astrolib cd astrolib svn co http://svn6.assembla.com/svn/astrolib
NOTE: At first I did the checkout in my home directory, which put my entire home directory on version control. Oops! To fix this I deleted the trunk, branches, and tags from the checkout. Then I deleted the .svn folder:
rm -rf .svn
Then I did what is shown above.
