debian-setup

Cleanup

Package Source File

If not done alreay, edit package sources sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list, comment out the line that starts with deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux ....

Single-User Mode

Disable single-user mode to lock down the box.

1. Edit /etc/default/grub
2. Uncomment the line GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
3. sudo update-grub

Shell Profile

cp ~/Workspace/debian-setup/scripts/.bash_profile ~/

The emulated terminals, GNOME terminal or LXTerminal, are non-login shells. The start-up script is ~/.bashrc, not ~/.bash_profile. If we want to modify the PATH variable for the emulated GNOME terminal, for example, it should be modified in ~/.bashrc.

On the other hand, ~/.bash_profile is read by login shells. To go to a login shell, type Ctrl+Alt+F1 to swich to tty1, for example. The desktop usually runs at tty3, you can switch back by Ctrl+Alt+F3.

There is also ~/.profile, which is for the generic shell sh (bash is a specific implementation of sh). Its documentation says “~/.profile: executed by the command interpreter for login shells. This file is not read by bash(1), if ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bash_login exists.”

To get a consistent environment across the login shells and the non-login shells, include ~/.bashrc in ~/.bash_profile. Also include ~/.profile in ~/.bash_profile. Here is what ~/.bash_profile looks like:

if [ -r "${HOME}/.profile" ]; then
    . "${HOME}/.profile"
fi

if [ -r "${HOME}/.bashrc" ]; then
    . "${HOME}/.bashrc"
fi

See Debian Wiki of Environment Variables for more details.

Vim

cp ~/Workspace/debian-setup/scripts/.vimrc ~/

There are 3 types of vim packages:

1. vim-tiny
2. vim
3. vim-gtk3

The package vim-tiny installs the vi binary.

Vim is improved vi. The package vim installs a vanilla vim without GUI.

The package vim-gtk3 installs vim with the GTK3 GUI and many other features. The feature I want is the syntax highlighting of Python 3 among other languages.

If you run vi --version or vim --version, you will see a list of enabled, disabled features. For example, the one below shows python3 is not enabled:

...
-cryptv         -libcall        -python         -viminfo
-cscope         -linebreak      -python3        -vreplace
-cursorbind     -lispindent     -quickfix       +wildignore
...

If the ones you want are not enabled, upgrade to the vim package with more features.

The dev bootstrap script esstentially installs the vim-gtk3 package:

sudo apt-get purge   vim
sudo apt-get purge   vim-tiny
sudo apt-get install vim-gtk3

Conda

echo "source /opt/conda/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" > ~/.bashrc

To make conda activate available.

Network Manager

To let Network Manager manage wired connections, edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf. Change to true

[ifupdown]
managed=true

sudo service NetworkManager restart

Wireless has no internet connection. Again edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and comment out the following like so:

# The primary network interface
# allow-hotplug eth0
# iface eth0 inet dhcp

sudo service NetworkManager restart

To configure VPN, install the following:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome

Upgrade Kernel via Backports (optional)

Kernel upgrade better be done at a early stage of the installation. The earlier the better. Otherwise, recommend backing up the system before the upgrade.

If you want newer versions of NVIDIA software, you may want to upgrade the kernel, as NVIDIA installs into the kernel tree. But double-check NVIDIA does have the compatible versions for the upgraded kernel.

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get -t bullseye-backports upgrade

Or, more aggressively, do dist-upgrade which replaces old dependencies with new ones.

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get -t bullseye-backports dist-upgrade

Tune SSD (optional)

• I/O scheduler (optional, especially the hard disk letter sequence sdx is not 100% reliable)
  1. cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler should show CFQ as the scheduler
  2. sudo vi /etc/rc.local and add this line echo noop > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
• swappiness (only if we are swapping on the SSD; even better set up swap on a spinning disk)
  1. cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness should show the default value of 60
  2. cat /proc/sys/vm/vfs_cache_pressure should show the default value of 100
  3. Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and set vm.swappiness=30 and vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

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