Host setup

Small script to set up a new Ubuntu or MacOS desktop/laptop for personal use.

Things to test manually before committing to a new Ubuntu release

• External monitor works after locking and unlocking.
• Screensharing works in Google Meet (Wayland has/had no support for this).
• Bluetooth headphones work as a headset. Mic works and audio quality is good.

Ubuntu

To upgrade in-place rather than reinstall

If you wait long enough the Software Updater app will offer to upgrade Ubuntu. Before that, or if it doesn't:

• sudo apt update
• sudo apt upgrade
• sudo apt dist-upgrade
• sudo apt autoremove
• sudo do-release-upgrade

Read this much from the old machine

• If reinstalling over an existing Ubuntu instance:
  • Back up ~/.ssh to a USB drive. The Ubuntu installer image has a 25GB writable partition you can use for this.
  • sudo mkdir /media/[username]/writable/dot-ssh
  • sudo cp -r ~/.ssh/* /media/e/writable/dot-ssh (this preserves the file modes)
  • Do the same for any .env files in local repos.
  • Larger files can go to a back up machine over scp, but sshd will need to be running there.
• If retaining the Windows installation:
  • Don't be surprised if the machine doesn't give you the boot menu with F1 or F12. Boot into Windows first.
  • Disable Bitlocker in settings.
  • Search "boot" in settings, and do an advanced boot.
  • Boot from USB drive.
  • Hit enter while the machine is booting.
• Go for the minimal installation, plus 3P software.
• Add a Google account straight out of setup. This puts a mountable network drive into the file manager.
• While the installation is happening, review the list of apps to install in setup.sh in this repo.
• Sign in to Ubuntu Single Sign-on and then Canonical Livepatch
• Open Firefox, search “Chrome download” and download the .deb file. Save it, don't open it with the archive manager.
• sudo apt install ./google-chrome*
• This also sets up the Google repository for Chrome. Find Chrome in all apps and add it to the favourites.
• Open Chrome and go to this repo on Github

Now switch to the new machine

Install git and run this script

• sudo apt install git
• git clone https://github.com/eliotstock/host
• cd host
• ./setup.sh

Fix any errors in the script.

Configure git user. Cache the personal access token from Github for one week. Get your noreply email address from https://github.com/settings/emails.

• git config --global user.email "[email protected]"
• git config --global user.name "Your Name"
• git config --global credential.helper cache
• git config --global credential.helper 'cache --timeout=604800'
• git config pull.rebase false

Push any changes to the script up for next time. If there are no changes, do a push anyway just to get the Github password into the cache.

Open github.com in a browser and sign in, using 2FA.

Gnome config

Then use the GUI tool to make more tweaks. Run it with dconf running in another terminal tab to see which gsettings keys are being modified, then add those above for next time.

• dconf watch /
• gnome-tweaks

As of Ubuntu 22.10, gnome-tweaks doesn't give you much. Use Settings instead.

• Appearance
  • Style -> Dark
  • Wallpaper
• Ubuntu Desktop
  • Desktop Icons -> Size: Small

Also do the Terminal Preferences.

• 106 columns by 55 rows
• GNOME dark

Printer/scanner

Go to Settings > Printers and expect the HP Laserjet MFP M125nw to be there, without having to add it, even over WiFi. Print a test page. May no longer be required for 20.04.

Set up scanner manually with:

• sudo hp-setup -i

Then test with:

• simple-scan

udev

Get a udev rules file for Open OCD, maybe the one from their Sourceforge repo here, and put it in /etc/udev/rules.d. chmod it to 644. Make sure your user is in the plugdev (and maybe dailout) groups. Reboot.

Firmware, for Thinkpad laptops only

Get new firmware from the LVFS stable channel if anything doesn't work (eg. fingerprint reader)

• fwupdmgr enable-remote lvfs
• fwupdmgr get-devices
• fwupdmgr refresh
• fwupdmgr get-updates
• fwupdmgr update
• fwupdmgr disable-remote lvfs

Go to Settings, Users, e and enable the fingerprint reader.

Package sources

So that apt-get source foo will work, open the "Software & Updates" application and check "Source code"

Dev env

Node.js

Follow instructions here to get Node.js. Don't use the snap for this.

Then get nvm (Node.js version manager) from here.

Rust

Follow your nose at rustup.rs to get the latest stable Rust, including cargo.

Docker

Follow your nose at docker.com to get Docker set up.

To be able to run docker without sudo'ing, follow instructions here.

Python

Get Python 3.9 for AWS SAM but do NOT downgrade the system Python to it or you'll break it. Get virtualenv working instead. Note that the deadsnakes PPA only supports LTS versions of Ubuntu (22.04, 24.04). Use pyenv instead.

• Folow your nose at the pyenv repo.
  • Don't forget the suggested build environment
• pyenv install 3.9
• Follow your nose at pyenv-virtualenv repo

Golang

• sudo apt install golang

AWS

Follow this to get the AWS CLI: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/getting-started-install.html

Follow this to get the AWS SAM CLI: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/serverless-application-model/latest/developerguide/install-sam-cli.html

ssh keys

If reinstalling over an existing Ubuntu instance, restore ~/.ssh from old instance.

• The Ubuntu installer image has a writable partition you can use for this.
• mkdir ~/.ssh
• sudo cp -r /media/[username]/writable/dot-ssh ~/.ssh (this preserves the file modes)

Otherwise, generate new ssh keys locally. Use no passphrase.

• ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[hostname]"

Push them up to the server(s) you need to connect to. This won't work if the server doesn't allow password auth for ssh, ie. /etc/ssh/sshd_config already has PasswordAuthentication set to no. You'll need to set that to yes and sudo service sshd restart first.

• scp -P [port] ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub [username]@[server IP]:/home/[username]/.ssh/authorized_keys.[new_host]

ssh to the server, verify the file is there and then append it to the existing .ssh/authorized_keys file if it exists (cat ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.[new_host] >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys) or create it if not.

Put /etc/ssh/sshd_config back to having PasswordAuthentication set to no and sudo service sshd restart if applicable.

tmux config

Make mouse wheel scrolling work in tmux.

• code ~/.tmux.conf
• Add set -g mouse on
• Kill any running tmux sessions to pick up the change: tmux kill-server

MacOS

If the installer forced a draconian password requirement on you, change it with the CLI, which does not enforce the same policy.

passwd

Install Mac OS developer tools.

xcode-select --install

Change the hostname.

sudo scutil --set HostName eliot_mac

Change from zsh to bash.

chsh -s /bin/bash

Get this repo's bashrc.sh to execute from ~/.bash_profile by adding this to the end of it. Note that this should really go into ~/.bashrc but Warp has a bug and won't run it.

if [ -f ~/r/p/host/bashrc.sh ]; then
  source ~/r/p/host/bashrc.sh
fi

If you had to create ~/.bashrc, also make it executable:

chmod u+x ~/.bashrc

Get homebrew by executing the one-liner on https://brew.sh/.

Get Node.js and nvm from Homebrew.

brew install node

Browser extension wallets

Enter seed phrases to recover accounts.

Re-import the same accounts that were imported on previous machine.

SSH

On any new client, create a new SSH key.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "eliot_HOSTNAME"

Then copy the public key from the pair to the clipboard.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy

Now put the public key into https://github.com > Settings > SSH and GPG keys > New SSH key. This and every other public key in GitHub can be appended to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the server to allow ssh access as follows (on the server):

ssh-import-id gh:eliotstock

If you lose a client machine, just go to GitHub and delete the key there, then go to the server (from another client) and remove that key from ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. The labels in GitHub do not show up in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, so you have to match the key value.