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Linux Desktops Documentation

Release RHEL

University of Southampton

Aug 17, 2018

• 1 Desktop Manager
• 2 Installing software
• 3 Backups
• 4 Local storage
• 5 Network storage
• 6 Printing
• 7 E-Mail
• 8 Installation
• 9 Migration Guide
• 10 Permissions
• 11 Remote access
• 12 Desktop environments
• 13 Virtualisation
• 14 Firewall
• 15 GNOME Extensions
• 16 Environment modules system
• 17 Software collections (SCL)
• 18 Python
• 19 C and C++
• 20 Fortran
• 21 Java
• 22 TeX Live (LaTeX)
• 23 R
• 24 CUDA
• 25 OpenMPI
• 26 Ruby
• 27 Perl
• 28 Index of specialist software
• 29 EPEL
• 30 IUS
• 31 RHDT
• 32 SCL

Linux Desktops Documentation, Release RHEL

Welcome to the documentation for Linux Desktops at the University of Southampton

Basics 1

CHAPTER 1

Desktop Manager

You can manage your desktop using the Desktop Manager tool. Log in to your desktop computer, open a web browser and go to the following location:

https://deskctl

You can also open the Desktop Manager tool within GNOME by press the Start button and searching for “Desktop Manager” and then selecting the resulting entry for the tool.

Desktop manager allows you to:

• Install software, including University provided software
• Manage permissions (change who can do what)
• Check the status of backups
• Start a backup on demand
• Check the software update status
• Check the health of the system
• View the system hardware information
• Open this documentation

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4 Chapter 1. Desktop Manager

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sudo yum remove <package-name>

6 Chapter 2. Installing software

CHAPTER 3

Backups

Your home directory is backed up automatically at least once a day.

3.1 When are backups taken?

Your workstation will attempt to back up all the data in /home between 11pm and 12am. If your computer is switched off at this time do not worry, the next time you start your computer a backup will be attempted then instead.

3.2 Do I need to keep my computer on overnight?

You do not need to leave your computer on overnight. If you prefer to keep your computer turned off then backups will still take place. Whenever your computer starts up it determines if a backup should be taken and then initiates a backup if required.

3.3 How long are backups kept for?

Backups of each workstation are kept for 30 days after the backup was taken.

If your machine is not switched on, or otherwise unavailable, for 30 days, then all backup data will be deleted. To ensure you always have a copy of data in case of hardware failure please ensure your computer takes at least one backup a month.

3.4 How can I check the backups are working?

You can use Desktop Manager to check the status of the last backup attempt.

You can also run the following command in a terminal:

CHAPTER 4

Local storage

4.1 Your home directory

• Location: /home/$username/
• Backed up: Yes

Your home directory is stored on the computer’s local drive. This data is backed up every day - see Backups for details. You are not limited by a quota but the /home partition/drive is only 50GB in size. If you expect your computer to be used by multiple people please be considerate and don’t use all the space on the partition.

You can check the usage of the drive in Desktop Manager

4.2 Local scratch space

• Location: /local/scratch/$username/
• Backed up: No

If you need space for large amounts of data you should store this within your local scratch space. This space is however not backed up, so don’t store anything important there!

The scratch space is stored within the /local partition, thus this is only limited by the size of the drive within your computer.

You can check the usage of the drive in Desktop Manager

4.3 Other locations

Some computers have multiple drives installed, in which case an iSolutions technician will have set up the second drive at /data. Directories are not automatically created within this location. Any data stored there is not backed up.

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• Linux friendly semantics: Yes

Many research groups and departments have access to shared storage locations specifically designed for use from Linux systems. These are available at the above location. Data stored here is backed up. You can also access data stored here via Filestore Web Access.

5.1.4 Other Shared Filestore

• Location: smb://filestore.soton.ac.uk/$sharename/
• Protocol: SMB1, SMB
• Linux friendly semantics: No

Many other shared locations exist, such as the “J: drive” shared storage locations. These are available at the above location. Data stored here is backed up. You can also access data stored here via Filestore Web Access.

These locations are unfortunately designed for use by Windows users. You will not be able to set or view file/directory permissions, create symbolic links or use any other POSIX (Linux/UNIX) features.

5.2 How to connect

There are various methods of connecting to network storage:

5.2.1 via the file browser

If you’re using GNOME (the default), XFCE, MATE or KDE then you can simply open the file browser and enter the location you want to connect to by pressing Ctrl+L or clicking Connect to server in the menu. You will be prompted for a username and password as necessary.

We strongly recommend you use this mechanism to connect to network storage. You can also access the connected storage from other applications and the command line. Once connected they are available via the normal file system here:

/run/user/$uid/gvfs/

5.2.2 via FUSE (SSH only)

If you prefer to connect to networked storage on the command line only, you can do so using the sshfs command. We strongly recommend you use the above mechanism (the file browser) instead since that can also be accessed from the command line.

If you do want to use sshfs directly then run the command like so:

sshfs [user@]host:[dir] mountpoint

For example, here is how to connect to your personal filestore as testuser:

mkdir ~/personalfs sshfs testuser @ssh .soton.ac.uk:/home/testuser/ ~/personalfs

You can then later disconnect with:

12 Chapter 5. Network storage

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fusermount -u ~/personalfs

5.2.3 via the mount command

You can also instruct the kernel to mount network storage if you desire. This can however be quite complicated and this documentation only covers the basics.

You can use the mount command via sudo if you are in the sys group (see Permissions for more information). You can thus use the command like so:

sudo mount

Here is an example of how to mount personal filestore via the cifs driver with the example username testuser:

mkdir ~/personalfs sudo mount -t cifs -o username=testuser,password=,domain=soton.ac.uk // ˓→filestore.soton.ac.uk/users/testuser/ /home/testuser/personalfs/

5.2. How to connect 13

CHAPTER 6

Printing

The university uses a ‘follow me’ printing service where you can submit a print job from your desktop and then print from any multi-function printer (MFD) on the university network.

There are two default printer queues set up for this on your Linux desktop which you can use ‘out of the box’. The queues are called mono and colour. The first time you print to either of them you will be prompted to enter your university username and password. Sadly owing to limitations in CUPS (the Linux printing system) we cannot automatically authenticate you. Instead you can opt to save your username and password, and the password is stored in your GNOME keyring (where it is encrypted).

If you have administrator rights granted to you on your desktop (i.e. you are in the sys group), you can add and edit printers. You may want to add a new printer if you are in a lab which has a printer other than the normal University MFDs.

To add such a printer:

1. Open the GNOME Settings application (Applications -> System Tools -> Settings) and then choose Printers. Note that you may also find Print Settings, which is a separate method of adding a printer and not documented here.
2. Choose Unlock and, if prompted, enter your username and password to authenticate.
3. Next, click the plus (+) button that’s underneath the list of printers and the Add a New Printer dialog will appear.
4. In the text box at the bottom of the dialog, enter: smb://servername/, where servername should be listed on the label on the printer you wish to add. servername will often be something like server1. printing.soton.ac.uk.
5. As you enter this you will be prompted to authenticate to the print server, after which, you should be given a list of printers.
6. Double-click on your printer from the list - it should match the name that is on the label on the printer, e.g. PR_B12_R3456_P
7. Next, the Select Printer Driver dialog should appear. Choose Generic from the list on the left and then Generic PostScript Printer from the list on the right.
8. Press the Select button.

Linux Desktops Documentation, Release RHEL

9. The printer is now added to the system, and you should now be able to print to it
10. Note that you can’t set a system-wide default printer here as that is managed by system policy (and if you manage to change it, it will get reverted), however you can change the default printer for your account on your desktop using the documentation below.

To change the default printer:

1. Open the Print Settings application
2. Right-click the printer you wish to make the default for you
3. Choose Set as Default from the menu
4. Choose Set as my personal default printer
5. Click OK

16 Chapter 6. Printing