Maintenance

Greg and I have been working on a way to automate adding an OS X workstation's binding to UVic's LDAP server. This would avoid the very finicky GUI application Directory Utility, which is frankly poorly designed and time consuming.

The goal

Auto magically do the following:

Bind to UVic's ldap server at ldap1p.uvic.ca with the following search base suffix:

• ou=People,dc=uvic,dc=ca

Configure Search and Mapping setting with the following customization from a modified RFC2307 template:

• Users > NFSHomeDirectory > #/Users/Netlink/$uid$
• Users > UserShell > #/bin/bash

Current Progress:

So the script found here and then modified by removing the plist for installs older OS X 10.7 partially works. It binds to ldap1p.uvic.ca but does not configure the search and mappings listed above. The Record Types and Attributes remain blank.

Moving forward we believe that dscl likely holds the key for completing the script and adding the necessary customization to the .plist.

This post will be updated as I move forward.

Connecting to UVic's eduroam wireless network using Ubuntu 18.04

Security: WPA2 Enterprise
Authentication: PEAP
CA Certificate: /etc/ssl/certs/GlobalSign_Root_CA_-_R3.pem
PEAP Version: Automatic
Inner Authentication: MSCHAPv2
Username: netlink@uvic.ca

Note that the cert above may be a symlink to
/usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/GlobalSign_Root_CA_-_R3.crt

Whatever file you point to, the md5sum of the cert that works is
221eb05e63024bb1b6420f8606d0c092

In anticipation of getting rid of the iMacs in the lab, I was considering how to provide decent non-English character maps. The little applet I have doesn't allow you to insert combinations, so it's ultimately not the tool we need.

A little research turned up two very useful things: KeyboardLayoutEditor and LanguageGeek's keyboard layouts.

With them we should be able to construct custom keyboards that address the needs of projects like the Moses dictionary. Alternatively, and perhaps more forward-looking, we could write some xslt to convert MacOS .keylayout files to xkb format. MacOS keyboards are easier to find (e.g. languagegeek.com has MacOS keyboards for all listed languages), and written in XML, so it should be relatively easy-ish.

I've noticed some auth.log entries that suggest that lab machines are constantly connected to the ldap server and other entries that suggest that there is a problem with the apparmor configuration (entries that include apparmor=DENIED and refer to mkdor and telepathy). I believe I've sorted it out, though.

In the first case I've discovered that nslcd DOES stay connected to the server. So, I've added a line to /etc/nslcd.conf that says:

idle_timelimit 60

which should close the ldap connection after 60 seconds. There are other timeouts in the same class that I may need to use, but this looks like the best first choice.

In the second case, there are 'tunables' in apparmor that should be adjusted in cases like ours - specifically, using non-standard home directory locations. In the file '/etc/apparmor.d/tunables/home' I've edited the line that looks like this:

@{HOMEDIRS}=/home/

to look like this:

It appears that both problems have gone away, at least so far. Fingers croseed.

@{HOMEDIRS}=/home/ /home/netlink/

refs:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingApparmor#Adjusting_Tunables
http://arthurdejong.org/nss-pam-ldapd/nslcd.conf.5

Per-profile settings for Java in LibreOffice can be provided by adding a file here: /etc/skel/.config/libreoffice/4/user/config/javasettings_Linux_X86_64.xml

The file should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<java xmlns="http://openoffice.org/2004/java/framework/1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<enabled xsi:nil="true"/>
<userClassPath xsi:nil="true"/>
<vmParameters xsi:nil="true"/>
<jreLocations xsi:nil="true"/>
<javaInfo xsi:nil="false" vendorUpdate="2013-05-02" autoSelect="true">
<vendor>Oracle Corporation</vendor>
<location>file:///usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre</location>
<version>1.7.0_25</version>
<features>0</features>
<requirements>1</requirements>
<vendorData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vendorData>
</javaInfo>
</java>

When a new user profile is created it will generate this preference file in the user's home directory/.config...

To create a visualization with gource (on Linux), first install gource (it's in the Ubuntu repo), then:

cd [the SVN directory you want to work on]

svn log -r 11019:11452 --xml --verbose --quiet > svnlog.xml
[Choose the revision numbers you want.]

gource -1280x720 -o - svnlog.xml | ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -crf 1 -threads 0 -bf 0 video.mp4

The Colonist crew needed a reliable backup.
I've got TSM installed in their VM and configured to only back up their stuff.
For future reference
1) The opt file that you get from the helpdesk is intended to provide complete backup for an entire machine. We only wanted to back up a single user's directory. I edited the opt file to accommodate this requirement.
2) If TSM is installed by an admin, but the backup application is going to be run by a non-admin, the app will complain that the non-admin user cannot write to the error log, and the app won't run unless the error log is writeable. So, move the error log.
3) Some files cannot be backed up while the user is logged in. Fortunately we don't care about backing up such things as NTUSER and so forth. Remove them.

Note: includes and excludes can be managed in the preferences editor in TSM. You can also edit the dsm.opt file directly (it's in the 'baclient' folder of TSM's install directory.
I removed all of the end user settings provided by the helpdesk's file and replaced it with this:

* ==== END USER SETTINGS ============================================
SKIPNTSECURITYCRC YES
SKIPNTPERMISSIONS YES
ERRORLOGNAME "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\tsmerror.log"
EXCLUDE "*:\...\*"
INCLUDE "C:\Documents and Settings\WorkerBee\...\*"
Exclude "C:\Documents and Settings\WorkerBee\NTUSER.DAT"
Exclude "C:\Documents and Settings\WorkerBee\NTUSER.DAT.LOG"
Exclude.Dir "C:\Documents and Settings\WorkerBee\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft"

The edits should be self-explanatory.

Some notes on how to configure Gnome 3, in preparation for trying to roll it out to the lab machines:

• Install gnome-tweak-tool.
• Get buttons on window title bars: gnome-tweak-tool / Shell / Arrangement of buttons in the title bar / All.
• My installed extensions:

  advanced-settings-in-usermenu@nuware.ru              places-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  apps-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com  RecentItems@bananenfisch.net
  force-quit@xtranophilist                             Shut_Down_Menu@rmy.pobox.com
  nohotcorner@azuri.free.fr                            panel-docklet@quina.at
  workspace-indicator@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
  

  These are in ~.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions.
• Settings also seem to be stored in ~/.gconf.
• Showing date on Gnome 3 panel:

  gsettings set org.gnome.shell.clock show-date true

Having built the Macs from a 32bit image I find that they are running in 32 bit mode. No surprise, but it *is* reversible. Run this in the terminal sudo nvram boot-args="arch=x86_64" and reboot. The machine should run in 64 bit mode from now on.

SM working on MoL has been seeing LibreOffice Writer crash frequently when editing a complex document with comments. I've worked with similar documents without problems, though.

I looked around for alternative word-processors, but neither Calligra Words nor AbiWord handle comments. Noting that Writer works fine for me on Precise + Gnome 3, and fine for CB with Gnome 2, I've now installed Gnome Shell on Radish, and we'll see if that solves the problem. Never liked Unity anyway.

In the process of doing this, I noticed that an HCMC style deb is failing to update itself when doing apt-get upgrade.