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Installation of customized Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 64-bit on Generic HFDR field machines

These master instructions are for installing a system from custom ubuntu 20.04 iso image, which contains all the configurations required, using the Cubic toolbox. We recommend to always perform installation through this customized image. We also recommend installing Cubic on the lab reference machine for creating additional customizations.

The hardware should consist of a low power i5 PC with at least four cores and 4 Mb cache, 32 Gb memory, 256 Gb SSD system drive and 2 Tb HDD data drive, 1 Gbs ethernet (to switch), USB-3 (for backup disks).

We recommend Intel NUC-8PNH PC as optimum. The i7 dissipates too much heat, and the i3 is too slow.

A 1Gbit/s ethernet switch is used to interconnect NUC PC, Dtacq, Pi, through the LAN port of a router/gateway to the outside internet. The router should be configured to isolate the local network from the outside world and should have dhcp enabled. If router does not have dhcp, the NUC can be configured as a dhcp server. Gateway is assumed to be 192.168.1.254 as seen from the internal private network relayed by the switch. If another private net is used, 192.168.1 has to be updated in all the instructions.

0. First, configure BIOS:

• Click on keyboard key DEL or F2 to enter BIOS setup
• Click "Power" tab
• Click "Balanced performance" tab
• Click "Secondary Power Settings"
• Scroll down to "After Power Failure" and select "Power On"
• Click "Boot" tab
• Click "Enable USB" tab
• Click "Boot USB first" tab
• Disable all "Network boot" tabs
• Click on F10 to Save and Exit, click OK
• Attach USB boot key
• Power cycle NUC to rescan USB devices
• If does not find iso boot partition, may need to enable "Legacy" boot instead of UFI
• a USB key connected to a USB-3 port (blue) may not be recognized at boot, always use a USB-2 port (black).

The behavior of the BIOS is highly dependent on BIOS type and revision. Trial and error may be needed.

2. Prepare a USB key with the customized Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS 64-bit radlab desktop version; from an ubuntu laptop:

• download customized ubuntu 20.04 iso image
• Applications->System tools->Administration->Startup Disk Creator
• shutdown laptop and plug USB key on the target NUC to be installed.
• start machine and select "Install Ubuntu".

3. Select icon "Install Ubuntu 20.04". Choose "Normal installation", then "Erase disk and install ubuntu". Verify that the SSD disk is partitioned with a small UEFI/fat32 boot partition, and a single ext4 partition:

 Device       Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
 /dev/sda1     2048   1050623   1048576   512M EFI System
 /dev/sda2  1050624 488396799 487346176 232.4G Linux filesystem

4. Define user ruser (1000) (group ruser(1000) will be automatically created) and set password (defaut ruser), enable automatic login.

5. Define computer name as radlab-xxxx, the 4 letters of the site name (four letters are preferred by the international network). Some processing scripts assumes that the site name is exactly radlab- followed by 4 letters and may break if another number of characters is used.

6. Set time zone to any US time zone.

Do not use another country time zone even if you set up from another country, because this will enable a non-English local setting, altering the date format, and several scripts as well as crontab may break down. Chose any US time zone now, and reset ttzdata to UTC later.

7. Computer will ask to restart when installation is complete; remove the USB key; reboot into the new installation and login as ruser.

8. Setup access to the Internet.

• Using the graphical NetworkManager, setup as a dhcp client, and create a fixed IP in the router, based on the MAC address of the PC recorded by the router.
• If using dhcp from the router/gateway, the IP number of the name resolver is provided

automatically, ping www.google.com to verify that name serving works.

Skip all instructions 9 to 18 from the standard installations instructions, except:

10. Add local hosts:

• edit everywhere the subnet IP 192.168.1 to your chosen local network (the iso install erases the /etc/hosts file, so the configured one is stored in /etc/hosts.bck):

 root# cp /etc/hosts.bck /etc/hosts
 root# vi /etc/hosts 

11. Set the proper time/clock and locale:

 root# dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

and set timezone to "None of above" then "UTC" through the menus (use TAB then ENTER to go through the menus); this will ensure that the crontabs run on UTC, not local time. It is important to do this now to avoid irreparable confusion in the data files time-tags.

If you installed the PC being outside the US, the installer may have outsmarted you by setting the default language based on where your IP is located, and you may see day/month in tagalog, mandarin, spanish or french (this affects date, and any script that would use date, which are many).

 root# vi /etc/default/locale

and change back all entries to "en_US.UTF-8", deleting any other language. In some instances it may be necessary to run

 root# dpkg-reconfigure locales

unselecting any other language, and to add LANG=en_US.UTF-8 to /etc/environment. Correcting a wrongly set locale can be frustrating.

15. Enable firewall:

• edit everywhere subnet IP 192.168.1 to your chosen local network.
  root# vi /root/ufw.config
• activate firewall with
  root# sh /root/ufw.config
• make sure that the router firewall does not have more stringent restrictions

16. Network time servers:

• edit everywhere subnet IP 192.168.1 to your chosen local network.

 root# vi /etc/ntp.conf

• restart ntp client and verify synchronization:

 root# service ntp restart
 root# ntptrace

• answer should be something like

 localhost: stratum 2, offset 0.000139, synch distance 0.004383

18. Enable password-less login:

See standard instructions. Password-less login is already enabled in the customized iso distribution.

19. Configure the D-Tacq

Follow the separate instructions.

20. Setting up CS-studio on the NUC:

CS-studio is pre-loaded on the customized iso distribution. Follow the separate instructions, step 5.

21. Format archive disk

See standard instructions

22. Cloning system disk

See standard instructions

23. Configure DHCPD (optional)

See standard instructions

24. Set-up APC UPS daemon

See standard instructions