Horta - CIF-Rochester/wiki GitHub Wiki
Horta was formally BZesD, which in turn was previously Monitor05, from The Collective. It presently has an Install of CIF_OS (A custom distribute of Archlinux we made a while back) on it. It is set up as a standard lab machine, kerberized, and with many of the utilities you would expect.
Hardware
| Component | Specs |
|---|---|
| System | OptiPlex 7450 AIO |
| CPU | Intel i7-6700 @ 4.0GHz |
| Cores/Threads | 8/16 |
| RAM | 16 GB, DDR4 |
| Storage | 250GB SSD (Samsung 850 EVO) |
| IPs | eno1: $$$.$$$.2.102 |
| GPU | Intel HD Graphics 530 |
| OS | CIF_OS (Arch linux) |
Installation
- OS installer
- Standard cifadmin account
If you've never installed Arch Linux before, Good luck!. It's not terribly hard to do it, and an install script does exist for CIF_OS to make it easier on you (Albeit that script has to be modified somewhat to make it work for your purposes, namely removing the auto login and auto running of the script to forward audio). If you need help, I'd recommend looking at this page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide
Once Arch is installed, you'll need to add a GUI. CIF tends to prefer KDE/Plasma for all it's linux devices, and has done for some time now. To install KDE/Plasma (And the applications it comes with), run the following commands:
sudo pacman -Syy
sudo pacman -S plasma
sudo pacman -S kde-applications
sudo pacman -S sddm
You will then need to start SDDM (And enable it), to allow for users to log in graphically.
sudo systemctl enable sddm
sudo systemctl start sddm
Once here, log in as the cifadmin account, and set up SDDM how you would like it to be displayed. You can do this graphically with the system settings.
Eventually, you will want to add the Arch linux Machine to FreeIPA, kerberizing it, and allowing for user logins. There is a script in the AUR that will do this automatically, though you can also do it manually. The script can be found here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/freeipa-client, whilst the instructions to do so manually can be found here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/FreeIPA.
The basic jist is as follows: Clone the repository, attempt to make the package, find out which packages you need to install before building the FreeIPA-client packages, clone the packages pacman doesn't have in it's repository, try and build those packages, then build any packages that those sub packages may need.
In other words,
https://aur.archlinux.org/freeipa.git
cd freeipa
makepkg -si
it will tall you a bunch of packages to install, find the repository by searching up "Package_name Archlinux", and it should take you to an AUR page. Clone that repostory, change directories, then make the package in the same way you would with the larger package.
This is a bit of a tedious process, and you will have to build many packages. The good news here, of course, is that you only really have to do it once! (Or at least, you'll only have to do it again when it breaks).
Once it's installed, simply run the freeipa-client-install --mkhomedir command, like you would on any other distribution. Once this succeeds, you'll be all set! I'd recommend you restart your computer and attempt logging into your user account to make sure it works properly.
In order to add the home directories, simply edit the fstab file
Namely, append the following to the end of the /etc/fstab file:
lal.cif.rochester.edu /home nfs defaults 0 0
Then, of course, restart the computer again. All of the home directories should have mounted to the home directory, like they do any other lab machine. Of note here, is that CIF_OS, by default, partitions its own dedicated /home directory. You will have to comment out the line that mounts that in the /fstab file if you used that install script.