Python and LEMP stack

Get pip, venv, and git:

sudo apt install python3-pip
apt-get install python3-virtualenv
sudo apt install python-is-python3
sudo apt install git

Set up LEMP stack following this tutorial.

Graphics driver and remote desktop

Regularly I got a ‘white noise’ screen after closing/opening the laptop lid without logging out. Apparently that is a graphics driver issue. Luckily there is a simple way to switch over to the proprietary Nvidia driver.

As I was sitting on the coach I wanted to do this via remote desktop from my Windows computer. Also that was quite straightforward.

Still have to test the new graphics driver, though…

And update, one day later:

OUCH. Restart does not work. Everything dead. Not ssh connection. Reboot aborts. Black screen. Need to re-install everything.

Do the Samba

SMB is the service that sets your Linux box up as a file server.

Quite a bit seems to have changed in Windows security settings and there are quite a lot of outdated howto ages out there.

I found one tutorial that works… almost.

  • Be careful that your Samba user is a Linux user as well, like so.
  • Testing the share locally, the workgroup is not recognized (“SMB1 disabled — no workgroup available”). The recommended solution does not work for me.
  • In the end I did not see my Ubuntu server in the Network tab in Windows Explorer, but I could add it as a Network drive, a bit like here. And that is good enough for now.
  • I don’t have all user rights fully configured, but considering that this is only one folder on a home network, this is not a hot issue.

Enabling SSH from outside home network

First find your public IP address:

curl https://ipinfo.io/ip

That way we know what to connect to.

At this point, SSH from phone on 4G with public IP address does not work, whereas it works over wifi using internal IP address.

Next we need to adjust the firewall, following the relevant part of this tutorial.

But that is still not enough:

To find the right port on the right device behind the Ziggo Connect Box, we need to allow port forwarding.

Out-of-the-box, Ziggo has disabled port forwarding. They need to push an update of the firmware in order to enable this. You can ask via twitter @ZiggoSupport, chat or phone 0900-1884. And they fix it the same day (in my case).

Once that is set-up (Check if port forwarding show under “Geavanceerd > Beveiliging” in het Connect Box menu!) follow this tutorial.

And…. BANG. I can get into my own linux box via 5G using (JuiceSSH on my phone).

By the way, after validating that it worked I have upped firewall protection so that I can only access the server from inside my home network.

Get ssh working

Installed JuiceSSH client on Samsung phone. Following the reco from here.

On Ubuntu box needed to install openssh-server:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

And net-tools also did not come pre-installed:

sudo apt install net-tools

Once that is in place, check the IP address like so:

ifconfig

On the Windos laptop I already had Putty installed.

Just to be sure, I added some security measures, following this guide.

The secret key I generated on the client (windows laptop) using Puttygen as explained here https://www.u.tsukuba.ac.jp/en-puttygen-keypair/.

Next step will be to configure the firewall for external access.

Fixing the Wifi

Day 2 on Ubuntu. Wifi is gone. Apparently a well-known issue on Mac.

Error message when trying to fix:

Errors were encountered while processing:
 bcmwl-kernel-source
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Tried a lot of options. In the end this one worked. Whereas question refers to Ubuntu 16.04 the answer mentions Ubuntu 20.04 explicitly.

Installing Linux

Distribution: Ubuntu 20.04

Hardware: MacBook Pro 15-inch (mid 2010) that was lying around.

The MacBook Pro “Core i5” 2.4 15-Inch (Mid-2010) is powered by a 32 nm, dual-core 2.4 GHz Intel “Core i5” I5-520M (Arrandale) processor, with dedicated 256k level 2 cache for each core and an 3 MB a level 3 cache. This system also supports “Turbo Boost” — which “automatically boosts the processor speed based on workload” up to 2.93 GHz for this model — and “Hyper Threading” — which allows the system to recognize four “virtual cores” or “threads.”

Best guide I found, works like a charm: https://www.wikihow.com/Install-Ubuntu-Linux#Preparing-to-Install

Best thing: I can also boost RAM from 4G to 8G. More about that later.

Worst thing: the CPU is not modern enough for most machine learning tasks (as shown here).