Ubuntu 7.10(Gutsy Gibbon) Setup

Ubuntu 7.10(Gutsy Gibbon) Setup

A. A very simple Boot Setup

1. Open GRUB configuration file, /boot/grub/menu.lst. Remember take a backup before change.

2. Some kernel arguments in menu.lst

Parameter	Function
splash	boot with a startup image
quiet	keep boot message from displaying
vga=xxx	setup console frame buffer, detail in section B. vga=normal, keep normal frame buffer vga=ask, ask you which mode to choose when boot. *This argument is not supported by default setup of Ubuntu 7.10.

3. More parameters here

http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt

B. Setup Console Frame buffer

If you suffer from 80x25 console and you want a higher resolution, look here:

This guide of setup Console Framebuffer comes from http://www.savvyadmin.com/2007/12/25/console-framebuffer-in-ubuntu

1. Ensure the initrd image includes framebuffer support by adding "fbcon" and "vesafb" to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules.

$ echo "vesafb" | sudo tee -a /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
$ echo "fbcon" | sudo tee -a /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

2. Remove (or comment out) "vesafb" from blacklisted modules in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer.

#blacklist vesafb

3. Add the desired framebuffer variable to the default kernel options section in /boot/grub/menu.lst. For 1024x768, the string should look like the following.

# defoptions=quiet splash vga=791

Colour depth	640x480	800x600	1024x768	1280x1024	1400x1050	1600x1200
8 (256)	769	771	773	775
15 (32K)	784	787	790	793
16 (65K)	785	788	791	794	834	884
24 (16M)	786	789	792	795

4. Update GRUB.

$ sudo update-grub

5. If Usplash is configured for a higher resolution than your framebuffer, it will appear off-centered. So adjust /etc/usplash.conf to use the same resolution.

xres=1024
yres=768

6. Update initramfs to rebuild the initrd image.

$ sudo update-initramfs -u

C. Chinese Font Support

1. Install Chinese Language Pack.

$ sudo apt-get install language-pack-zh language-support-zh language-pack-gnome-zh

2. Install Windows fonts, e.g. Simsun, Tahoma, Verdana, Courier New...

$ sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/winfont
$ sudo cp (Windows Fonts) /usr/share/fonts/winfont
$ cd /usr/share/fonts/winfont
$ sudo mkfontscale
$ sudo mkfontdir
$ sudo fc-cache

3. Install Chinese X11 font support (needs test whether this is required after last step)

$ apt-get install xfonts-intl-chinese xfonts-intl-chinese-big

4. Setup preferred fonts by editing /etc/fonts/language-selector.conf
Here is a part of my own setup, the fonts before SimSun is used for other languages.

    <alias>
        <family>serif</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Bitstream Vera Serif</family>
            <family>DejaVu Serif</family>
            <family>SimSun</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>
    <alias>
        <family>sans-serif</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Bitstream Vera Sans</family>
            <family>DejaVu Sans</family>
            <family>SimSun</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>
    <alias>
        <family>monospace</family>
        <prefer>
            <family>Bitstream Vera Sans Mono</family>
            <family>DejaVu Sans Mono</family>
            <family>SimSun</family>
        </prefer>
    </alias>

5. Setup fonts for GNOME, open menu Menu System -> Preference -> Appearence -> Fonts.

Application/Document/Desktop font: Tahoma(10)
Window Title font: Tahoma Bold(10)
Fixed Width font: Courier New(10)

Rendering: Monochrome

6. Restart X(Ctrl + Alt + Backspace) to make all setup take effect.

D. Install a Compact theme for GNOME

The GNOME theme always takes too much space for any single control. Not as compact as Windows, especially on small screens.
It is obviously take up too much space and leave working area too small.
After hunting around, I found a very compact GNOME theme.

http://martin.ankerl.com/2007/11/04/clearlooks-compact-gnome-theme/
Download & install it here: http://martin.ankerl.com/files/ClearlooksCompact.tar.bz2

Thanks Martin Ankerl's great work!

E. Install & Setup Firewall - GuardDog

1. Install GuardDog

$ sudo apt-get install guarddog

2. Open GuardDog, it may report missing file when open it for the first time, leave it.

$ gksudo guarddog

3. GuardDog default has no rule, you must know exactly which rules you need, here is some guide.

Open tab Protocol, select Internet Zone, generally we need protocols like: DNS, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP for internet connection; POP3, SMTP for mail client; NTP to synchronize time; SSH for secure remote control; Jabber, MSN for IM; etc.
Open tab Advanced, check 'Enable DHCP on Interfaces'.

4. Add New Protocol for QQ(the most widely used IM client in China)

Open tab Advanced, press new protocol to create a new one, Name: QQ, Type: UDP, Ports: 4000-8000.
Open tab Protocol, enable QQ protocol.

5. Press apply to take effect

F. Install IME - SCIM

1. To install the languages you plan to use along with their input method engines go to:

System -> Administration -> Language Support

and select the languages you need.

2. If you want scim to work with programs that use Qt you need to install scim-qtimm:

$ sudo apt-get install scim-qtimm

$ sudo gedit /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim

Find:

GTK_IM_MODULE=”scim”
QT_IM_MODULE=”scim”

Replace with:

GTK_IM_MODULE=”xim”
QT_IM_MODULE=”xim”

3. Set scim as default input method

$ im-switch -s scim

4. To enable the new configuration by press 'Ctrl + Alt + Backspace'.

G. Play Real media

1. Download and install.

$ wget http://www.debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/r/realplay/realplayer_10.0.9-0.1_i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i realplayer_10.0.9-0.1_i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -r realplayer

2. If RealPlayer freezes or playback is jerky, you should install alsa-oss and setup RealPlayer

$ sudo apt-get install alsa-oss

If failed to install alsa-oss, reboot as recovery mode and install(run dhclient to get an ip)

$ sudo gedit /usr/bin/realplay  or  $ sudo gedit /usr/bin/realplayer  or  $ sudo gedit /opt/RealPlayer

Find lines:

if [ -n "$LD_PRELOAD" ]; then
    echo "Warning: LD_PRELOAD=/"$LD_PRELOAD/""
fi

and add these after them:

LD_PRELOAD="$LDPRELOAD:/usr/lib/libaoss.so"
export LD_PRELOAD

H. Using the Desktop / LiveCD and Overwriting the Windows bootloader

Using the Desktop/LiveCD and Overwriting the Windows bootloader

Boot from a Live CD and open a terminal. You'll need to run a few commands as root so you can use sudo -i to get a root shell and run them normally instead of using sudo on each of them. Be extra careful when running a root shell, especially for typos !

We'll need to find which partition your Ubuntu system is installed on. Type the command fdisk -l. It will output a list of all your partitions, for example :

$ sudo fdisk -l 

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1           8       64228+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2               9        1224     9767520   83  Linux
/dev/hda3   *        1225        2440     9767520   a5  FreeBSD
/dev/hda4            2441       14593    97618972+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5           14532       14593      498015   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda6            2441       14530    97112862   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Here I have three Linux partitions. /dev/hda2 is my root partition, /dev/hda1 is my /boot partition and /dev/hda6 is my /home partitoins. If you only have one, obviously this is the one your Ubuntu system is installed on. If you have more than one and you don't know which one your Ubuntu is installed on, we'll look for it later. First, create a mountpoint for your partition, for example :

$ mkdir /mnt/root

Then mount your partition in it. If you don't know which one it is, then mount any of them, we'll se if it's the correct one.

$ mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt/root

Of course, replace /dev/hda2 with the correct name of your partition. You can check if it's the correct one by running ls /mnt/root, which should output something like this :

bin    dev      home        lib    mnt   root     srv  usr 
boot   etc      initrd      lib64  opt   sbin     sys  var
cdrom  initrd.img  media  proc  selinux  tmp  vmlinuz

If what you have looks not at all like this, you didn't mount the correct partition. Do umount /mnt/root to unmount it and try another one. You also need to mount your /boot partition if you made one, like this :

$ mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/root/boot

To make sure it was the correct one, run ls /mnt/root/boot, which sould output something like this :

config-2.6.18-3-686      initrd.img-2.6.18-3-686.bak  System.map-2.6.18-3-686 
grub                     lost+found                   vmlinuz-2.6.18-3-686
initrd.img-2.6.18-3-686  memtest86+.bin

Once again, if what you have doesn't fit, unmount it and try another partition.

Now that everything is mounted, we just need to reinstall GRUB :

$ grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/root /dev/hda

If you got BIOS warnings try:

$ grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/root /dev/hda --recheck

Of course, replace /dev/hda with the location you want to install GRUB on. If all went well, you should see something like this :

Installation finished. No error reported.

This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.

Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,

fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0) /dev/hda

Now you can reboot and the GRUB menu should appear. If you see a warning message regarding XFS filesystem, you can ignore it.