Using the VirtualBox Linux guest

The Linux guest is just a regular Linux machine! We have detailed below only a few technical details

Becoming root

Do not use the root account or privileges if you don't really know what you are doing!

Depending on what you need to do:

run a single command with the root access rights
sudo command

become root in a terminal
sudo su -

use the root password when a program asks for it. Be sure the programs has legitimate reasons to ask for the root password!

login as root

Creating a new account

login with the root account or an existing account

change the system and root account language to English, if it's not already the case:

Menu => Administration => Langue => English (USA)

Menu => Préférences => Langues => English, United States

reboot

create the new account:
Menu => Administration => Users and Groups (the second one if you are using the Cinnamon window manager!). The system will ask you for your password or the root password, if you are not using the root account

Add User:

Warning, make sure the user's home directory will be created in /homel and not the default /home!

Choose /bin/tcsh instead of the default bash if that's the users's shell

Unselect Create a private group for the user

If the user has a LSCE account, you can specify the LSCE used ID in Specify user ID manually (type id user_login on an LSCE server and check the value of uid)

add the new johndoe account to the people who can use the sudo command:
echo -e 'johndoe\tALL=(ALL)\tALL' > /etc/sudoers.d/johndoe

Logout from the account used to create the new account, login with the new account, and get some basic configuration files: .cshrc, .login and .emacs

Installing new programs with yum

Note: you have to be root to install a program on the command line with yum!

nco operators

nco web site: http://nco.sf.net

At LSCE: yum install nco

Outside LSCE: yum --disablerepo lsce install nco

Installing programs with the Graphical User Interface

Installing other useful (for LSCE) programs

cdo

Web site: https://code.zmaw.de/projects/cdo

ferret + FAST

FAST Installation Guide

ifort

UV-CDAT

The following steps can be used to copy the UV-CDAT installed on asterix to a desktop/laptop with a similar linux installation

Create the top directory where the UV-CDAT versions will be installed (make sure there is enough space available, a few Gb...):
mkdir /homel/cdat
chown jypeter:lsce /homel/cdat

Create a link from where UV-CDAT thinks it is installed, to where it is actually installed (just in case some paths are hard-coded, you never know...):
mkdir -p /usr/local/install
cd /usr/local/install
ln -s /homel/cdat cdat

Use rsync to send the UV-CDAT binaries from a machine where it is installed, to the new machine:
rsync -avzW --delete /usr/local/install/cdat/ jypeter@lsceNNNN:/homel/cdat/

Use the following to initialize UV-CDAT:

Version 1.5

*sh: source /usr/local/install/cdat/versions/cdat_install_uv-1.5.1_x86_64_gcc4_VB_10/bin/setup_runtime.sh

tcsh: source /usr/local/install/cdat/versions/cdat_install_uv-1.5.1_x86_64_gcc4_VB_10/bin/setup_runtime.csh

Version 2.1.0

*sh: source /usr/local/install/cdat/versions/cdat_install_uv-2.1.0_x86_64_gcc4_VB_13/bin/setup_runtime.sh

tcsh: source /usr/local/install/cdat/versions/cdat_install_uv-2.1.0_x86_64_gcc4_VB_13/bin/setup_runtime.csh

Updating Linux

This is detailed in... the Update section

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