Quick start xubuntu 12.04

My Ubuntu 10.10 distro went out of support. After ignoring the problem for months, I decided today (2012 12 22) to give myself a holiday present and upgrade. I bought another 64GB SSD for the root directory (except /home and /opt, which I keep on another physical disk). I bought the second SSD, so I could get back to work using the one holding Ubuntu 10.10 if everything went wrong.

I spent several day getting my xorg.conf file working with my 3 monitors (two X screens, one with two monitors). I didn't want to spend several more days trying to get xubuntu happy.

Installing Xubuntu

Downloaded 64 bit Xubuntu 12.04 ISO from http:www.xubuntu.org and did a default install, selecting installing non Open Source packages. Updated to the latest version.

sudo apt-get upgrade

When I started Xubuntu 12.04, one monitor was black and the other two were mirrored - ugh. I checked the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file only to find none existed. I installed the nvidia drivers (I have two nvidia cards), copied over the Ubuntu 10.04 xorg.conf file, crossed my fingers, and reboot. Yeah! two X screens one with two monitors and a separate one for IM on the third monitor. The only issue I have to work out is why everything looks grayed out on the IM monitor. But I can ignore that for now and instead focus on getting Xubuntu ready for embedded Linux development.

terminator, my new friend

When I was doing some peer programming with the RidgeRun engineers, I noticed all of them use terminator for their terminal windows. I figured now was a good time to try out terminator, so I did a

sudo apt-get install terminator
nohup terminator &

Then I closed the default terminal (/usr/bin/xfce4-terminal) and hope it is the last time I use it.

sudo, my best friend

I don't want sudo to ask me for a password all the time, so I run:

sudo sh -c "echo '%admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' >> /etc/sudoers"

Capturing packages installed on desktop PC

I have been using the same desktop PC, with Ubuntu installed, for several years. The simple way to make sure my Xubuntu desktop would have what I needed while on the road was to install the same packages I have installed on my desktop.

With Ubuntu 10.10 running, I executed:

INSTALLED_PACKAGES=`aptitude search '[a-z]*'  | grep ^i | cut -c5-36`
for PACKAGE in $INSTALLED_PACKAGES ; do echo apt-get -y install $PACKAGE ; done > /tmp/get-packages.sh

Installing packages on xubuntu

I used /tmp/get-packages.sh to install the set of packages I have used in the past:

time sudo sh -x $HOME/Desktop/get-packages.sh

The only problem with this approach is when I stop using a package, I still carry it around. It also took around XXX hours to download and install. If I would have put all the packages on one command line it would have been much faster.

Tuning bash startup script

echo "alias h='history 100'" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo "alias e='\`make env || echo ERROR: not in a top level development directory 1>&2\`'" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/sbin' >> $HOME/.bashrc

When you're ready you can source the file:

source $HOME/.bashrc

SDK downloads

I use /opt/ridgerun/downloads to hold all the packages and tarballs downloaded by the SDK. To reduce the network downloads (allowing me to work on an airplane) I copied all contents to my laptop. The downside is wasted disk space for older versions that the SDK doesn't use anymore

On my desktop I ran:

cd /opt/ridgerun
tar -cf /tmp/opt.ridgerun.downloads.tar downloads

Then copied over /tmp/opt.ridgerun.downloads.tar from my desktop to ~/Desktop on my laptop.

To install the pre-filled downloads directory on the laptop:

cd /opt
sudo mkdir ridgerun
sudo chmod ugo+rwx ridgerun
cd ridgerun
tar -xf ~/Desktop/opt.ridgerun.downloads.tar

Check out, configure, and build RidgeRun SDK

To see if I had everything I needed installed on my laptop, I checked out one of RidgeRun's SDKs and built the target hardware images.

cd
mkdir -p work
cd work
svn co $SDK_URL dm368sdk
cd dm368sdk
make config
make

Odds and ends

This is my first go at Unity, I found I had to install

• CompizConfig Settings Manager

to configure auto-raise like I am used to.

• I have many helper scripts (svndiff, qdiff, finds, etc) in my ~/help directory, so I copied all of them over

• I customized my ~/.basrc and ~/.emacs, so I copied them over too.

• I like to watch the CPU load in the top bar, so used Ubuntu Software Center to install system-monitor.

• Switch shell from dash to bash

sudo rm /bin/sh
sudo ln -s /bin/bash /bin/sh

• Installed toolchain to /opt/codesourcery/arm-2009q1

• Installed TI DVSDK required by the RidgeRun SDK