Ubuntu stuff

Currently this home page is just for posting a couple of useful documents:
Installation Guide
User Guide
Automated Backup
Home to PSC's Page

Installing Ubuntu

Here are some simple notes I took during some installations. While they appear to make the process look complicated, in fact it is pretty easy. I will try to update the guide at some point and to have some scripting option. They cover the following topics:

Preparing a Windows PC for dual-boot installation, basically checking its disk/file-system is OK.
Preparing a boot-able CD with Ubuntu on it, then trying it "live" to see if your PC works.
Printers? Tricky sometimes but look here for LINUX printer compatibility
Install Ubuntu with the first account, typically keep this for administration work as you can add more accounts later.
Get all system patches & updates.
Configure time keeping with NTP
Use the package manager to add useful stuff (Adblock plus, flash, Thunderbird for email, gparted for disk administration, etc)
Get the non-free things for playing DVDs and other restricted media.
Miscellaneous stuff to check.

In reality, if you install Windows from disk you end up doing much the same if not more...

Here is a setting up text file that I typically edit and use for quickly instailling things. You can save this, edit it and then change to be executable, then run it as root (e.g. sudo ./install_linux_ubuntu.txt) to do all of the steps. Please, read and understand it before doing so!

End User Manual

Having suffered the repeated tedium of fixing family & friend's Windows PC following infestations, I gave them Ubuntu and wrote the Embracing The Penguin guide (PDF format document) to help them get the most out of their PCs. It started as a few pages, but as with most things it grew as I incorporated answers to specific questions they asked. It was initially just for my sister, so generally it will not read as a non-personal style of document.

Updated with section on Google & privacy, but major update planned once Ubuntu 10.04 (long term support) version is released and tested soon.

Automated Backup

Here are some backup scripts I wrote to automate the backing up of user data on an Ubuntu PC.

The MD5 hash is 87ce054f547bda4c22e7d4f5d37c19c2 automatic_backup-25-Nov-2011.tar.gz

The scripts were intended to provide a simple hands-off backup for the average users who simply won't (or can't) do it manually with any degree of reliability. Like myself. They offer easy back-up, running each time the PC is shut down, but require a level of 'system administrator' skill to recover the data. For disaster recovery of the typical home PC, this seemed sufficient.

To make use of the scripts you need to address the following point:

Download the scripts (above) in to a dedicated directory and unpack them.
Prepare a backup destination device. This should be physically different media from your main drive(s), such as an external USB hard disk or Network Attached Storage device, to protect against hardware failure.
Edit the configuration files to suit your application.
Run the install script with the sudo ./install.sh command in the unpacked directory (note: this gives warning with Ubuntu 9.10 and later, but seems to work OK).
Do a test run of the backup to see it works OK and that you have no problems. You can do this with the command sudo run_pbackup -D but be prepared for a long wait depending on the PC's speed and volume of data to backup (I typically see 5-20MB/sec depending on the system and settings, so around 4 minutes per GB).
Try shutting down your system and see if it runs the 'day' backup(s) OK.
Restart the PC, then open the log viewer program System → Administration → Log File Viewer and then File → Open and choose pbackupd.log and see if it looks OK.

Finally, you should check that you have no errors in the backups using the command run_prestore -V and also that you can indeed restore some data should it ever be needed!

There is another page providing a full and tedious explanation to assist with the above points, along with a more detailed guide to command line usage.

Finally note that the backups are not encrypted, so you should protect them with the same care as your primary valuable data. If you need encryption, the simple solution is to use TrueCrypt volume or a hardware encrypted external disk for storage.