Thursday, September 07, 2006

Multiseat (II): Let's start

(...comes from step I)



Step by step installation

Requirements

First of all, obviously, we need the hardware. In the prototype here presented, we had this configuration
  • Computer: Pentium IV 2.0GHz, 512MB RAM, 20GB hard disk
  • Graphic card: nVidia GeForce 5200 AGP 8x, 128MB, VGA + DVI + TV outputs (the blue one on the picture)
  • Seat 1: PS/2 keyboard and mouse, 17" CRT monitor (the right one in the photo)
  • Seat 2: USB keyboard and mouse, 15" CRT monitor (the left one)

Additional requirements:
  • Network connection to a second computer, in order to have remote access during the configuration of the system (It is also possible to do without an additional computer, but this option is not recommendable at all).
  • Internet access, to download drivers, additional packages, and (optionally) to keep updated the system.

Standard Ubuntu install

In this step it is not necessary to have all your hardware plugged. If you have only a set of KVM (keyboard, video, mouse), that is enough right now. We used a PS/2 keyboard and a PS/2 mouse, and a VGA monitor plugged in the VGA output of the graphic card. Nothing special at the moment.

Insert the Ubuntu CD. The CD of the 6.06 version is a live one, which offers the possibility of being installed on youy hard drive.

Follow the instructions and Install Ubuntu on your hard drive. Your hard drive will be deleted and its contents will be lost. Any spyware and virus you may previously have there, will be lost.

After the installation if everything was OK, you should have an Ubuntu with the X working properly on one of your monitors.

Before going into the next step, we recommend you to enable the root account. May be this is against the philosophy of Ubuntu, but it can be annoying to type sudo just before each command when you have to change many things at one time, such as in this project. After this step, the next commands will have to be executed as the root user. Otherwise, you will have to prepend sudo to all the commands needing root access.

$ sudo passwd root


If you want to make changes from another computer in your network, you must install a SSH server

# apt-get install openssh-server


The next step is to download the binary drivers from nVidia, because of limitations of the open source ones in graphic cards having more than one output.

# apt-get install nvidia-glx


Multihead install

Now it is time to plug the second monitor and modify your system configuration editing your xorg.conf file

(Continues on step III...)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Before going into the next step, we recommend you to enable the root account. May be this is against the philosophy of Ubuntu, but it can be annoying to type sudo just before each command when you have to change many things at one time, such as in this project.

If you are annoyed of typing 'sudo' before each command, all you need to do is type sudo su once, and you will have a full root shell. Much easier and safer than going against the philosophy ;-).

Depending on the local sudo configuration, you might need to do a 'visudo' first to allow such command in /etc/sudoers file. But that's minor.

Regards,
Lev

Anonymous said...

Instead of "sudo passwd root", try "sudo sh", "sudo bash" or "sudo (insert your favorite shell here)"

Anonymous said...

it's better use "sudo -s" to access a shell as root :p

Anonymous said...

sudo passwd root
is completelly aboidable
instead use
sudo bash

Anonymous said...

sorry
avoidable

Anonymous said...

If you're using gnome terminal inside X you can ALT+F2 and run 'gksudo gnome-terminal'. That's what I do if I get tired of sudoing everything.

Ralph Corderoy said...

"sudo -i" is probably better than "sudo -s". Either is better than giving the root account a password. :-)