Software Installation

Below are the details of how the extensive array of software was installed efficiently on ten computers.  Initially, we had intended to install each piece of software individually on each machine, but this was before we developed a greater understanding of repositories, packages, and scripting.

Scripts were developed by Adam Kehoe and Walker Weyerhauser, who explained to us the purpose of the script and how it functioned, how to run the script on the machine, and also assisted with troublshooting of the script and of those details that could not be acheived with a script.  We ran into many troubles related to slow mirrors and loss of internet connections leading to installation failures for a number of components, and we appreciate and acknowldege their support.

To Install Software

These directions assume that you are using the reparied script in which the missing “sudo” has been replaced, thus the steps that follow do not include directions on how to modify Buddi’s configuration file to correct the path to Java.

1. Login at lwadmin.
2. Update system by typing in terminal sudo apt-get update
3. Run SCRIPT 1 (from Adam Kehoe) by following directions available at adamkehoe.com/living_word.html
4. Copy files from thumbdrive (all files on thumbdrive except YJC2) to home/lwadmin.
5. Choose the fastest mirror. To do this, go to System → Admin → Software Sources; then under Download From select Other, then Select Best Server, then Choose Server, then OK, then reload.
6. Open terminal. Type pwd (print working directory) to find out what directory you are in. You probably are in your home directory (/home/lwadmin). At the line of the prompt it will saylwadmin@lwadmin-desktop.
7. In terminal at home directory (/home/lwadmin), run SCRIPT 2 by typing sudo ./al_and_w.sh Type “Y” when prompted.
8. Right-click on “Applications” in the top panel and select “Edit Menus” to open the default menu editor. Navigate down to “Sound & Video” in the left pane and click on it to show all those applications in the pane to the right. Scroll down the list of applications displayed until you see “VLC media player”, right-click on it, then click on “Properties” in the context menu to open “Launcher Properties”, and change the launch command to: vlc –volume 512 %m. This will modify the volume that media opening in VLC are played at, as currently it was killing our eardrums.
9. Fix Firefox plugins. See “Review of Lessons Learned” for details.

Details about Alice:

Alice is downloaded from thumbdrive but will be run by script. The script replaces the copy of Alice on the lwuser desktop nightly to prevent user from destroying file. The file needs to be on lwuser desktop, because for whatever reason, Alice does not appear through the application menu, and placing it on Desktop allows users to find it. We tried putting Alice elsewhere and making a shortcut to it, but this did not work, as Alice needs to be able to write files to function, which means it needs to be somewhere where that the lwuser login (a restricted user) can writ.

Detials about SCRIPT 1:

Scritp 1 installs OpenOffice, Audacity, Rhythmbox, Firefox, Kdenlive, Gimp, Java, Google Earth, Marbles, Ktuberling, Kdegames, Gcompris, Childsplay, Tuxmath, Mathwar, Etoy, Tuxpaint, Stellarium, Celestia, Gperiodic, Tuxtype, Ktouch, Kanagram, Pingus, Supertux, Supertuxkart, and Flashplugin.

Script 1 was created by Adam Kehoe, who additionally provided assistance with installation.

Script 1 is attached as “LWScript1.txt”.

Details about SCRIPT 2:

Script 2 installs Picasa (easy photo organizing and editing software), Buddi (Budgeting tools), Alice 2.0 (programming game for HS students), and Little Wizard (programming game for younger users), as well as following the installation directions (found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766683 ) about how to get media working on your Ubuntu machine without a lot of fuss.

Script 2 was created by Walker Weyerhaeuser, who additionally provided assistance with installation.  The below annotated script was written by Allison so that anyone who was intersted could understand what the script did.

Script 2 is attached “LWScript.txt.

Notes about Script 2:

The below annotated script was written by Allison so that anyone who was intersted could understand what the script did.

#!/bin/bash

• “Gedit”, the text editor, recognizes that it is a script base on the words #!/bin/bash, and color codes it. Would not be color coded if opened in other text editor.
• # (means this is a comment) ! (!after# means I’m about to tell you the path to the program that should execute this file) / (means root, the top of the directory hierarchy) bin (bin is short for binary and is the name of directory) bash (is the program that runs the script)

if [ $EUID -ne 0 ]; then
echo “Must run this script as root (did you use sudo?)”
exit 1
fi

• Everything inside of if and fi is a conditional statement testing that you executed the script with sudo. Sudo means “super user do” and gives you elevated privilege to make changes and may ask you for your password.

DESKTOP_USER=lwuser
#this can be adjusted if other groups want to use the script. Don’t make this user a ‘sudoer’
echo -e ‘Using ‘$DESKTOP_USER’ as the non-privileged user account’

• DESKTOP_USER=lwuser sets a variable. Whenever $DESKTOP_USER appears it will mean lwuser. This way, you can just change lwuser and change would be made through whole script.

echo -e ‘\ninstalling picasa\n’
sudo echo -e ‘\n\n#google repo for picasa\ndeb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free’ >> /etc/apt/sources.list && sudo apt-get update

• Telling the package manager about a new repository, then telling it to get the list of packages available from that repository and make it part of the list of things it regularly updates.

sudo apt-get install picasa littlewizard littlewizard-data

• Install picasa and littlwizard. Littlewizard doesn’t require the dance around of Picasa because they are already packages that can be installed.

#http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766683
echo -e ‘\nfollowing instructions from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=766683 for installing multimedia programs\n’
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/`lsb_release -cs`.list –output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list; sudo apt-get -q update; sudo apt-get –yes -q –allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring; sudo apt-get -q update

• The follows the instructions copied and pasted from Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto. Installs another new repository.
  sudo apt-get remove gnash gnash-common libflashsupport mozilla-plugin-gnash swfdec-mozilla && sudo apt-get install alsa-oss faac faad flashplugin-nonfree gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gstreamer0.10-pitfdll libmp3lame0 non-free-codecs sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin unrar

sudo apt-get remove kaffeine-mozilla mozilla-helix-player mozilla-mplayer mozilla-plugin-vlc totem-mozilla xine-plugin

sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libdvdread4 libdvdnav4 vlc realplayer

• Removes some packages, installs new ones.

sudo sed – in-place=original_before_vlc -e ‘s$(x-content/video -)(dvd|s?vcd)=totem\.desktop$\1\2=vlc\.desktop$g’ /etc/gnome/defaults.list
echo ‘\nremember to configure vlc as described in the comments of this script\n’
#grep -e ‘x-content/video’ /etc/gnome/defaults.list
#this changes the default dvd player to vlc from totem
#but you must configure vlc now:

#Right-click on “Applications” in the top panel and select “Edit Menus” to open the default menu editor. Navigate down to “Sound & Video” in the left pane and click on it to show all those applications in the pane to the right. Scroll down the list of applications displayed until you see “VLC media player”, right-click on it, then click on “Properties” in the context menu to open “Launcher Properties”, and change the launch command from “wxvlc %F” to:

#vlc –volume 512 %m

#or to have DVD playback automatically launch in fullscreen:

#vlc –volume 512 –fullscreen %m

#Close the VLC properties dialog and exit the menu editor.

#Note: Remember to enable deinterlacing in “VLC > Video > Deinterlace” if you see any artifacts during playback, or if playback doesn’t work correctly (the same is true with some AVI files also). To exit and enter fullscreen in VLC, just press the “f” key.

• Comments explaining configuration that must be done outside of script.
  echo -e ‘\ninstalling Buddi\n’
  #sudo wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/buddi/files/Buddi%20%28Stable%29/3.2.2.7/Buddi-3.2.2.7.deb/download && sudo dpkg -i Buddi-3.2.2.7.deb
  sudo dpkg -i Buddi-3.2.2.7.deb

#sudo sed –inplace=/usr/bin/buddi -e ‘s$#JAVA=‘/usr’$$’
sudo sed –inplace=original_foss_java -e ‘s$#(JAVA)$\1$’ -e ‘s$(JAVA=`which java`)$#\1$’ -e ‘s$(/usr/)(bin/java)$\1lib/jvm/java-1.6.0.16/\2$’ /usr/bin/buddi

• Installs Buddi, does not add to repository, but installs what was copied from thumbdrive.

echo -e ‘\ninstalling Alice, assuming it is in working directory\n’
sudo tar -xzf Alice-2.0.0.tar.gz && sudo cp -r Alice /etc/skel/Alice

• Installs Alice, does not add to repository, but installs what was copied from thumbdrive.

echo -e ‘\nadding cleandesktop script to /etc/crond.daily/\n’
sudo cp /home/$DESKTOP_USER/* /etc/skel/
sudo echo -e ‘#!/bin/sh\nrm -rf /home/’$DESKTOP_USER’/\ncp -r /etc/skel/ /home/lwuser/\nchown -R lwuser:lwuser /home/’$DESKTOP_USER’/*’ > /etc/cron.daily/cleandesktop
sudo chmod u+x /etc/cron.daily/cleandesktop
echo -e ‘\nthis ensures that the desktop does not accumulate clutter, and a new instance of Alice is copied to /home/lwuser every night\n’

• Creates template for every night rewrite of lwuser account and installs script that will do that rewrite.

echo -e ‘\n done!\nNow, configure vlc as documented in the comments to this script, change the way firefox uses realplayer using instructions at: \nhttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/RealPlayerInstallationMethods\n (search for gconf and /usr/bin/realplay), and check that the various sed instructions worked to change configuration files’

• Prints reminder to go back and do configurations detailed above

exit 0

Software Documentation

See document “Installed Software and Games“, provided to Living Word detailing installed software.