Installing on Mini-Box

These are installation notes for getting the mini-box LCD appliance up and running with Ubuntu Server 32-bit 8.10 (Intrepid) wth an Atom processor and making use of the menuing system.

Ubuntu

Although we will intend to run this box without a monitor for the moment we will plug in the monitor to install Ubuntu. Now create a Ubuntu USB Install Stick. You may want to read mini-box's USB Booting Note. Go into the BIOS and select.

>Advanced BIOS Features
>First Boot Device
>USB-FDD

Plugin in the USB and restart.

LCD Menu

First create a user 'lcdmenu' that can't login:

 sudo adduser --disabled-login --gecos  lcdmenu 

This applies to LCD Menu 1.0 which is not packaged yet. Download it in whatever way makes you happy and install it to /home/lcdmenu/bin (once you have made the directory).

Now edit the "sudoers" file by running:

sudo visudo 

and add this line to grant the lcdmenu user limited access to system functions

%lcdmenu ALL=NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown, /etc/init.d/apache2, /etc/init.d/mysql, /usr/bin/mysqldump, /usr/bin/apt-get

Create a "backup" user in mysql with localhost only access and no password which can lock and select all tables

  mysql -u root -p
  mysql> GRANT SELECT,LOCK TABLES on *.* TO backup@localhost IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD ;
  mysql> quit;

Automount

The LCD Menuing system has a "backup MySQL database to a flash drive" feature. Since we will not be using GNOME, we will need a USB automounter:

  sudo apt-get install usbmount

Then edit the file /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf and add "vfat" to the FILESYSTEMS e.g:

   FILESYSTEMS="ext2 ext3 vfat"

then make sure the FS_MOUNTOPTIONS line has at least:

   FS_MOUNTOPTIONS="gid=lcdmenu,dmask=0007,fmask=0117"