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 from a USB-CDROM. Make sure the BIOS is configured to boot from the CD-ROM. Also, under Peripheral Devices you will need to enable all legacy support (or it will hang on installation).

For a flash drive, apparently Josh has had some success following these directions.

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;

Now we want it to setup to run periodically:

sudo crontab -u lcdmenu -e 
* * * * * /home/lcdmenu/bin/lcdmenu_check.sh

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"

Network Status

The MAC Address, to configure your router, can be obtained from the LCD Menu:

>F1:Server Status
>F2:Network Status
>F3:MAC Address

Similarly, if you have plugged the server into a network with DHCP, you can get the IP Address:

>F1:Server Status
>F2:Network Status
>F3:MAC Address

Webmin

See me or just cut and paste:

sudo aptitude install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl
wget http://garr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/webadmin/webmin_1.441_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.441_all.deb

Browse to:

https://your-server-ip:10000/

and login as the user you created on Ubuntu installation.