Introduction
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution with excellent support and a broad user community. Many technical projects use this distribution as their target platform. Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux. The package management tools are therefore dpkg and apt-get.
Setting up WLAN in a Headless Installation
If you are on a headless Ubuntu installation (i.e., no GUI) you can set up WLAN access via the command line.
In the /etc/netplan folder, find the network configuration definition file (most likely 50-cloud-init.yaml). Open the file in an editor. You should find an existing ethernet configuration:
network:
ethernets:
eth0:
dhcp4: true
optional: true
version: 2
where eth0 is an example ethernet interface. To add a WiFi configuration, add the lines
wifis:
<wlan>:
optional: true
access-points:
"<ssid>":
password: "<password>"
dhcp4: true
where <wlan> is usually wlan0, and <ssid> and <password> need to be replaced with the actual WiFi SSID and password.
As this is a YAML file, make sure that indentation levels are correct and only whitespace (no tab characters) is used.
Now activate the new configuration via
sudo netplan apply
and check with
ip a
Determining the Version of Ubuntu Running
Use the lsb_release command to view version information about the running LSB-compliant Linux system.
sudo apt install lsb-release lsb_release -a
generates the example output
No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS Release: 22.04 Codename: jammy
Upgrading To A New Release
First of all, check you current version by typing
lsb_release -a
To upgrade to a new major release (for example, 16.04 to 16.10) type the command
do-release-upgrade
If there is no major release available but a point release has been issued, you can upgrade by typing
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Working With Repositories
Repository Sources
Third-party repositories can be added to the list of source repositories with the command
sudo apt-add-repository <repository URL>
Source repositories that are provided by Ubuntu can be found in the file /etc/apt/sources.list. Third-party repositories that have been added afterwards can be found in the directory /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.
Querying Installed Packages
To find out which package a given file belongs to:
apt contains <file path>
To find out which files are included in a package use the Debian utility dpgk:
dpkg -L <package name>
SSH Logins Without Typing The Password
If you connect to a remote computer via ssh or copy files via scp frequently, you should consider using ssh-agent, which saves you from typing your login password each time.
First, you create an RSA public/private key pair that identifies your local machine. You may already have created such a key in your SSH keychain. It is good security practice, however, to use a separate key for each device you want to connect to. Let us assume you want to connect to a Raspberry Pi. The command to create a new SSH key would be
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -C "for Raspberry Pi"
where '-b 2048' specifies the key length in bits. You will be prompted to enter the path and name of the file in which the key will be saved. Choose a name that makes it clear that it was created for connecting to the Raspberry Pi. Next, you will be prompted for a password. Just press the Enter key for no password.
Now that the SSH key is created, you need to copy the generated key (public) into the folder /home/pi/.ssh/ on the Raspberry Pi:
scp ~/.ssh/for-raspberry-pi_rsa.pub pi@192.168.1.10:/home/pi/.ssh/authorized_keys
The copied file is renamed to authorized_keys, which is the expected file name for the SSH server to look up the public keys of trusted clients.
If authorized_keys is to hold multiple keys, you should use ssh-copy-id instead of scp:
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/for-raspberry-pi_rsa.pub pi@192.168.1.10
Now use ssh-agent on your local machine to start a special shell session that uses the new SSH key to automatically authenticate any SSH connection from your machine to the Raspberry Pi:
eval "$(ssh-agent -s)" # starting a new shell session ssh-add ~/.ssh/for-raspberry-pi_rsa
Done! This was the last time you had to enter the password for user pi.
By the way, you can list all the keys that were added to the SSH agent by entering
ssh-add -l
Message of the Day (MOTD)
If a Ubuntu system is used in a hardware setup without a connected display (e.g., embedded in a robot) it is usually still accessible through a terminal session. To help the user successfully juggle multiple terminal sessions to multiple devices, you can set a custom message of the day, or MOTD, that will be shown at each login. Have a look at the files in /etc/update-motd.d/. This is where you can edit the parts of the dynamically generated MOTD. The files are shell scripts which are executed in alphabetical order. The output of the shell commands form the MOTD. The names of the script files start with a number between 1 and 99, which makes ordering of the scripts immediately visible. You can edit the scripts to customize their output. You can delete a script file or flip its execution bit via chmod in order to disable it. You can also add a new script file to insert your custom message between two existing MOTD items. Please refer to the Internet knowledge for the details.
Additionally you can create the file /etc/motd whose static contents will be appended to the dynamically generated MOTD. You can embellish your MOTD with ASCII art, for example, like the Robo.Fish logo below
.';cldxxkkkxxdolc;,..
.;oOXWWMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWWXKOxo:,.
'o0WMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWX0xl:'.
.;xXMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWWWNNXXKKK0kd:.
.:ONMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWXKOxdoc:;;,'..........
. 'o0WMMMMMMMMMMMMMMWN0xl:,..
Xx:. .:kXWMMMMMMMMMMMMMN0d:'.
MMWKxc'. .'cxXWMMMMMMMMMMMMNOo:,.
MMMMMMN0xc,. .,cd0NWMMMMMMMMMMMMN0o,.
MMMMMMWWNX0d:;ckKNWMMMMMMMMMMWN0xl,.
lllcc:;,'.. ..,;:clloollc:,..
The MOTD can be previewed without needing to start a new shell session:
sudo run-parts /etc/update-motd.d/
Switching to GUI-less (Multi-user) Mode
Ubuntu uses systemd to control whether the graphical user interface is loaded and shown. To turn off the graphical desktop immediately enter
sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target
To prevent the GUI from being loaded during the system startup, type
sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
To return to the graphical desktop, type
sudo systemctl isolate graphical.target
and to make the graphical desktop the default again, type
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target
Setting the Screen Resolution for GUI-less Mode
- Restart the machine to the Grub boot menu.
- Press 'c' to get into the Grub command console.
- Run the command 'vbeinfo' to list possible resolutions.
- Note down the desired resolution. For example, 1024x768x32, where 32 is the color mode.
- Type exit to return to the Grub boot menu and boot into Ubuntu.
- Open /etc/default/grub in an editor to add the line
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=1024x768x32
- Optionally, add the line
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768
to set the screen resolution for the GRUB boot menu itself.
- Finally, run the Grub updater
sudo update-grub
NFS (Network File System)
Setting up an NFS Server
sudo apt install nfs-kernel-server
then edit /etc/exports to add lines in the following format:
<directory> <hostname>(<options>) [<hostname>(<options>)]*
where <directory> is the directory that you want to make available over NFS, followed by one or more pairs of client host names and access options. <hostname> can be an IP address, a domain name with wildcards, or a subnet. of the allowed client machine, <options> is a list of options that determine whether the directory is, e.g., writable. The file format is better explained in this article. Examples are
/home/james/photos 192.168.178.62(r,async) 192.168.178.55(r, async) /mnt/storage2 192.168.178.0/24(rw,sync,no_subtree_check)
After editing /etc/exports, apply the NFS configuration via /usr/sbin/exportfs:
sudo exportfs -ar
Installing NVIDIA Drivers
Follow the instructions from Ubuntu to install device drivers for NVIDIA graphics cards and configure for your system. There are also instructions for manually installing a driver downloaded from NVIDIA, which is not recommended.
Alternative packages with newer drivers are available via Launchpad after adding the graphics-drivers repository by typing
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa sudo apt update
If your monitor cable (HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.) is connected to the output of the integrated graphics solution of your computer (e.g., Intel Skylake Graphics) you should shut down your computer and your monitor, unplug the monitor cable from the integrated graphics port and plug it into one of the ports of the NVIDIA card. Restart your computer, boot into the BIOS utility provided by your motherboard and check that Secure Boot is disabled, otherwise it will prevent kernel modules from being loaded.
Make sure nvidia-prime is installed and use it to select the NVIDIA card as the prime graphics output:
sudo apt install nvidia-prime sudo prime-select nvidia
This modifies /etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu_GL.conf and /etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu_EGL.conf to use the latest installed nvidia driver. To check the status of the graphics card and the driver assigned to it you can enter
inxi -G
The output should look like this:
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA Device 1b81
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
Resolution: 3840x2160@60.00hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 1070/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 370.28
Note that nvidia is the selected driver in the line that starts with Display Server:.
You may have to add the string nomodeset to the line that starts with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= in the file /etc/default/grub. For example,
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
where quiet and splash were the default options on my system. Be sure to run
sudo update-grub
so that the change to /etc/default/grub has an effect on /boot/grub/grub.cfg. Beware, however, that adding nomodeset will also prevent your display mode from being detected and set automatically if anything should go wrong. Finally, if your boot disk contains multiple bootable Linux system partitions, make sure that the bootloader that you just updated is the one installed in the Master Boot Record (MBR). You can install a Grub bootloader in the MBR via
$ sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/boot /dev/sda $ sudo update-grub
where /dev/sda is an example and needs to be replaced with your specific boot disk device file.
Other useful commands to check the device status are:
ubuntu-drivers devices
for showing a list of packages from the Ubuntu repository that are drivers for the installed hardware,
sudo lshw -c display
for showing information about installed hardware in the display category,
lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 vga
for showing information about graphics cards connected to the PCI bus, and
xrandr
for showing a list of possible display modes in which the connected screen can operate.