My first step this time around after restoring files was to install the network-related applications. I needed to get back online quickly with being able to talk to people, connect to clients’ VPNs, and hit websites.
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This is my first post in the series for installing Ubuntu 16.04 on my Inspiron 17R laptop. In this step, I am mainly just restoring files and putting the data back after formatting the drive.
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I didn’t take screenshots of the install process. I just basically accepted the defaults.
These are the directories that I restored. Maybe it will give you an idea of things you may want to restore if you do the same thing.
My backup this time was located on an external USB drive. I also had a BackupPC installation, but I didn’t restore a lot from it. For smaller directories/files, just copy and paste works fine. For larger directories, it was better to use grsync, which I installed from Ubuntu Software.
I had a couple of items that I had added to help me get to Vmware View machines. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember the exact commandline. Instead of looking it up again, I found that I could copy the .desktop files from the directory:
I’m not going through the whole configuration of the server. In this case, I just need it to connect and begin to back up the laptop after my install.
I checked the version of my apps:
$rsync --version rsync version 3.1.1 protocol version 31
First, SSH is not enabled on Ubuntu 16.04 by default. I had to install it:
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
Then, I generated the keys with this command (left the passphrase blank)
sudo ssh-keygen -t rsa
On my backup server, the backuppc user’s home directory is /var/lib/backuppc (you can confirm in the /etc/passwd file). Using vi, I copied the contents of /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub on the client to /var/lib/backuppc/.ssh/known_hosts. I’m not sure this step worked … on my test I had to remove the pistachio key (maybe I should have done that first):
ssh-keygen -f "/var/lib/backuppc/.ssh/known_hosts" -R pistachio
Then, I opened up /root/.ssh/authorized_keys2 on my laptop (client) and pasted the contents of /var/lib/backuppc/.ssh/id_rsa.pub from the server. In the end, Copy and Paste in a text editor wasn’t good enough. I had to scp the file across between the computers.
I verified security on the directory:
sudo chmod -R go-rwx /root/.ssh
Finally, I tested as the backuppc user on the backup server:
sudo su backuppc ssh -l root pistachio whoami
To troubleshoot, I ran the server with debugging messages as root:
service ssh stop /usr/sbin/sshd -d
Next time, I will configure Backup PC to backup the root .ssh directory to avoid having to reconfigure all of this.
If you want to follow along with my install process, you can check out the next post: Ubuntu 16.04 — Internet.
Labor Day Weekend made for the perfect time to get my laptop updated. I know Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) has been out for a while, but I am just now getting it installed. Here are my notes.
I didn’t take screenshots of all of the steps. They were pretty straight forward. The one thing that I did change was the partitioning. I read that having the Swap partition on the SSD drive will wear it out, so I went ahead and moved it onto the regular drive.
So, here’s what it looked like:
In previous installs, I was using Duplicity/Deja Dup. This time, I have been using BackupPC for backups. It is a nice centralized solution that de-dups and compresses nicely.
Now, to restore… The BackupPC FAQ: SSH Setup is a good place to start.
To troubleshoot, I went to the backuppc server, and ran:
$ ssh pistachio ssh: connect to host pistachio port 22: Connection refused
That tells me that the ssh server is not installed. So, I ran:
sudo apt-get install ssh
On the BackupPC server, I had already run the keygen. So, I just had to open the id_rsa.pub file and copy it’s contents.
sudo vi /var/lib/backuppc/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Then, on my laptop, I pasted it onto the end of the authorized_keys2 files (which, in my case I had to create):
$ sudo mkdir /root/.ssh $ sudo vi /root/.ssh/authorized_keys2
Next, I tried to connect to my laptop of the backuppc user on the server:
sudo su - backuppc sudo ssh root@pistachio
I had to run:
ssh-keygen -f "/var/lib/backuppc/.ssh/known_hosts" -R pistachio
These are the directories that I restored from my backup:
From here, you can see all the steps that I took in this series, or the next step is the Utilities and Configuration.
We are now proud owners of an ASUS TP500LA-AB52T laptop. It is a new laptop to help my wife with her new teaching job. I have installed Ubuntu on it so that it matches the rest of the computers in the house.
The first issue is that the wireless doesn’t work on first boot. This is a major blow because the point of the laptop was so that she could catch up on her teaching plans anywhere. Being tethered to the router in the back room kind of defeats the purpose.
Here’s the wireless card information:
$ lspci | grep -i wireless 03:00.0 Network controller: MEDIATEK Corp. MT7630e 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter
The fix was to just to manually install the wireless driver. I found a bug post with fairly good instructions (Thank you keshara Dorakumbura).
I got my official HTA Update on my Nexus 5! So, I am now at Android 4.4.3…
I am on the T-Mobile network, so I don’t know if the other carriers are pushing at the same time.
This is part of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 on my laptop. In the previous post, I configured my hybrid graphics card. In this post, I am walking through various settings and utilities that I like to install to make the final tweaks on my installation.
This is part of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 on my laptop. In the previous post, I worked through installing Virtualbox for VMs. In this post, I am working through installing the video drivers for optimal use of the video cards. My laptop has a hybrid graphics card, so I attempted to use Nvidia Prime. When that didn’t work, I dropped back to Bumblebee.
Just so you can see what I have, I looked in lspci. Here’s the Nvidia controller:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 650M] (rev a1)
Here’s the Intel controller:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
Here’s what I did…
This is a continuation of my series on installing Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. My previous post covered installing programming environments and applications. In this post, I’ll go through the different media programs that I installed back onto my laptop. If you would like to see the complete list of posts, check out my Ubuntu 14.04 install page.
One of the most important programs that I use now is Shutter. It allows me to easily take screenshots of what I am working and edit the screenshots. The shutter package is easily installed from the Software Center. Once installed, I tweaked a few of the settings in Edit > Preferences.
First, I changed the path for the screenshots from the Pictures folder to a new folder that I created called screenshots.
In addition, I checked the first two options on the “Behavior” tab to allow it to start when I boot up the computer.
I installed the following other programs for working with visual media:
These are the programs I use for playing and editing video:
This installed many different things for media. For example, I noticed that it installed True Type fonts. It also installs codecs for playing videos, etc.
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
In addition, I installed the libdvdcss to get the restricted formats. That was simply by installing this package…
sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
Then, I ran the script…
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
Finally, I determined that I had to use the /dev/sr0 as the device for playing my DVDs. Like this:
If you are following along with the complete install, check out my next post about Virtualbox. Or, you can go to the list of posts in this series (Installing Ubuntu 14.04).
This is a continuation of my Ubuntu 14.04 Install. In the previous post, I covered all of my notes on installing network/Internet-related configuration. In this post, I’ll cover setting up my programming environments and applications. If you would like to see the list of posts in this series, you can look at the Ubuntu 14.04 Install page.