Notes on Features of a CentOS 6 Desktop David Morrisette November 28, 2012
Contents 1 Initial Setup 3 1.1 Initial Screen After Logging In................................... 3 1.2 The Terminal............................................. 4 2 Matlab 5 2.1 Matlab Benchmark.......................................... 5 3 Connecting to the Lehigh Virtual Private Network (VPN) 6 4 Windows 7 from the Lehigh Virtual Public Site 8 4.1 Running the Lehigh Public Site Virtual Windows 7...................... 8 4.2 Log In and Select Your Virtual Site................................ 9 4.3 Exchanging Data Between the Linux Desktop and the LTS Virtual Windows 7 Machine 11 4.3.1 Your LTS Virtual Microsoft Machine H Drive..................... 11 4.4 Using Nautilus to Map Your H Drive to Your Linux Desktop................ 12 4.5 How To Print to an ECE Printer................................. 13 4.5.1 Miscellaneous Facts About the Print Servers...................... 13 4.6 Using the Point and Click ECE Print Server.......................... 13 4.6.1 Printer Security....................................... 16 5 Multi-Language Input 17 5.1 Enabling ibus Software....................................... 17 5.2 Adding Input Methods....................................... 19 1
Introduction This document will provide an overview of capabilities of a linux workstation/desktop machine, and some background information as to why, for some users, it now will make sense to use linux as their primary desktop operating system. This document will also show various ways that a linux desktop machine integrate itself with other portions of the Lehigh University computer network. Some students and faculty already run a version of the linux desktop on their computers at work. Many more have an interest in running linux, but because of a need to have access to a Microsoft Windows system, they have not moved to Linux. I have not stongly advocated that the general user move to linux until now. I believe that there has now been some game changing technology that is being provided by LTS that makes the move to linux a more reasonable and attractive option. The new technolgy being provided by LTS is a virtual Microsoft Windows 7 platform, which allows a user to run Windows 7 remotely. Advantages of the linux setup in this document: ˆ ˆ Linux, by its very nature, is a more secure operating system than Windows in terms of being infected with trojans and viruses. http://http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/22/ security_report_windows_vs_linux/ Linux is faster. I have benchmarked Matlab on many machine under both Microsoft Windows and linux. Typically, linux shows a difference of being about one third faster on Matlab benchmarking. ˆ With linux, you have the ability to run jobs that will take a long time in the background. ˆ The setup described in this document refers to a stand alone machine running linux. With a stand alone machine, you can do most of what is in this document on your own, and you do not need the intervention of a Lehigh IT person. You can be the master of you own world, in regards to the running of your operating system, whether on you personal or on a Lehigh owned machine if you run a stand alone version of linux on your machine. Some of the features you will see in this document are available for users running on the Apple Mac platforms. This documentation is written specifically for informational support of linux users within the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at Lehigh University, however any linux user may find the information useful. If there are items that you would like to see in this document, pleas do not hesitate to contact me at dpm3@lehigh.edu. This document is specifically targeted toward users running CentOS 6.0 and CentOS 6.2, which are derivitives of the linux distribution Red Hat 6 and Red Hat 6.2. Page No. 2 of 23
Chapter 1 Initial Setup 1.1 Initial Screen After Logging In Figure 1.1: After logging in - your initial screen After you log in, you will see a screen similar the the screen in Figure 1.1. Don t worry if you do not see all the icons that are present on my desktop. There are a few files that I have saved to my desktop that you may not see yet on your desktop. 3
1.2 The Terminal It is probably easiest to start a lot of programs from the command line. The command line is run from inside the terminal. Therefore, I would recommend that one of the first things you do is make the terminal readily available. You can accomplish making the terminal more readily available by navigating to Applications System Tools Terminal. With your cursor on top of the text Terminal, do a right click and add the Terminal to your panel, and repeat the procedure and add the terminal to your desktop. Figure 1.2: An example of how you put a startmenu item on the panel and/or the desktop Page No. 4 of 23
Chapter 2 Matlab To start Matlab, type matlab & at the $ prompt as shown in Figure??. Notice that there is an & after the matlab command. The & puts the matlab job in the background which permits a $ prompt to return to the terminal screen while Matlab is running. Figure 2.1: Starting Matlab 2.1 Matlab Benchmark After you have typed the matlab & command as shown in Figure 2.1, you will see Matlab Graphical User Interface (GUI) screens as seen in Figure 2.2. Once the Matlab GUI returns, type in the word bench at the Matlab command prompt, and the benchmarking program will run. If you type the word ver in at the Matlab command prompt, you will get a listing of all the available Matlab toolboxes that are present. Figure 2.2: Running the Matlab benchmark function 5
Chapter 3 Connecting to the Lehigh Virtual Private Network (VPN) In order to do some of the items that are in this manual, you will have to either be physically at Lehigh University and be on the Lehigh University network, or you will have to connect into Lehigh University with the Lehigh VPN. This section will provide directions on how to connect to the Lehigh VPN. Figure 3.1: Start Menu Selection for Virtual Windows 7 Figure 3.2: Identify the View Connection Server You can navigate to the Lehigh VPN by selecting Applications rightarrow Internet rightarrow CiscoAnyConnect VPN Client. After making the selections as shown in Figure 3.1, you will see a dialog box like the one in Figure 3.2. In the text box in Figure 3.2, you will want to enter the text sslvpn.lehigh.edu, and then click the button with the text Connect to proceed. 6
In the dialog box, as shown in Figure 3.3, you will indicate what type of group access you want, and you will enter your Lehigh University username and password. The Group field has two possible values: GeneralAccess This is the selection most users will probably use. This slection will put a user on the Lehigh VPN, but does not do the setup to access various library systems. LibraryAccess This is the selection users who need to access various library systems will make. Figure 3.3: Group, Username and Password Dialog Box Figure 3.4: Determining Success Figure 3.5: Under The Hood After you have completed the fields as shown in Figure 3.3 you should see an icon appear in the upper right hand corner of your screen, such as the one shown in Figure 3.4. When you see this icon, with the little lock attached to the icon, it is most likely that you have successfully attached to the Lehigh University VPN. The next figure is specifically for those that want to peek under the hood. In Figure 3.5 you can see a couple of internet addresses. If you see an internet address under the device cscotun0 which has an address that starts with 128.180, such as 128.180.68.245, this is a very strong indication that you are successfully connected to the Lehigh VPN. Perhaps an easier way to verify that you are connected successfully to the Lehigh VPN is to just try to run something that requires Lehigh VPN connectivity, and if it works, you are successfully connected. Page No. 7 of 23
Chapter 4 Windows 7 from the Lehigh Virtual Public Site Well, linux is obviously the best platform for just about everything. However, there are still those rare instances where you may need to run some kind of Windows application. A recent development, the Lehigh University Virtual Public Site, makes running Microsoft Windows 7 from you linux workstation a very easy thing to do. One requirement to duplicate what is in this Lehigh Virtual Public site section of the document is that you must either be physically at Lehigh on the network, or you must be connected to the Lehigh VPN. This section of the document will provide some instructions on how to run the Lehigh University Virtual Public Site. 4.1 Running the Lehigh Public Site Virtual Windows 7 Figure 4.1: Start Menu Selection for Virtual Windows 7 Figure 4.2: Identify the View Connection Server In order to connect to the Lehigh Public Site Virtual Windows 7 machine, the first thing you will want to do is select the VMware View Open Client. You can navigate to the VMware View Open Client by selecting Applications Internet VMware View Open Client, as seen in Figure 4.1. After making you selection as shown in Figure 4.1, you will see a dialog box similar to that shown in Figure 4.2. In the text box in the dialog box, type in the name of the View Connection Server, which is virtualsite.cc.lehigh.edu, and then click on the button with the text Connect to proceed. 8
4.2 Log In and Select Your Virtual Site Figure 4.3: Log in to access your virtual sites Figure 4.4: Select your virtual site As shown in Figure 4.3, you will receive an authentication challenge to access the available virtual machines that you will be able to run. In this dialog box, enter your Lehigh user ID in the Username: field, your Lehigh network password in the Password field, and leave the Domain field as it defaults to the correct value of AD. After authenticating, as shown in Figure 4.3, you will see a screen, such as can be seen in Figure 4.4, where you can select the virtual machine you wish to run. You can see in Figure 4.4 that there is only one choise for a virtual machine, which is Lehigh University virtual public site. Another thing to take note of is that next to the text Display there is a selecton box. I suggest that you click on the Display selection and change it from Full Screen to something else like Large Window. I find the window modes of the virtual machine a bit easier to use than the full screen mode. Page No. 9 of 23
Figure 4.5: The Lehigh Public Windows 7 Virtual Machine In Figure 4.5 you see what the Lehigh University Public Microsoft Windows 7 Virtual Machine will look like once you arrive. The Microsoft Windows 7 machine will run as an application on you linux system. If you chose to run the application as a large or small window, as sugested in 4.2, you will be easily able to run both your linux applications and your Microsoft applications at the same time. There is more information posted on the Lehigh University Library and Technology website regarding the Lehigh University Public Microsoft Windows 7 Virtual Machine. LTS has provided a General Use Overview page at http://www.lehigh.edu/computing/software/virtualsite/vpsdoc.shtml. There is also a web page which shows what software is currently available on the virtual site, and this page is located at http://www.lehigh.edu/computing/software/virtualsite/index.shtml. When exiting the Lehigh Virtual Public Site you will want to Log off the site. If you do not gracefully exit from your Lehigh Virtual Public Site session, you will probably find that your session will be hung and you will not be able to log into the Virtual Public Site again for approximately twenty minutes. Figure 4.6: Determining Success Page No. 10 of 23
4.3 Exchanging Data Between the Linux Desktop and the LTS Virtual Windows 7 Machine 4.3.1 Your LTS Virtual Microsoft Machine H Drive We will examine how you can easily transfer data from your linux desktop to to a shared drive that the LTS Virtual Microsoft Machine can see and use. You will also be able to move data easily from your LTS Virtual Microsoft Machine to your linux desktop. Figure 4.7: screen000132.jpg First we will open Microsoft Windows Explorer on the LTS Virtual Microsoft Machine to take a look at your personal LTS network space, called the H Drive. To see what is on the H Drive, we will do a right click with our mouse on the Start Bubble, which is in the lower left hand corner of the LTS Virtual Microsoft Machine screen, as seen in Figure 4.7. You will then see a small selection list pop up, and then select Open Windows Explorer. Figure 4.8: Microsoft Windows Explorer After selecting Open Windows Explorer, as shown in Figure 4.7, you will see your H Drive files listed, as shown in Figure 4.8. Any files you can see in Windows Explorer on your H Drive, you have complete access to on the LTS Virtual Microsoft Machine. Page No. 11 of 23
4.4 Using Nautilus to Map Your H Drive to Your Linux Desktop We will now open the H Drive on the linux desktop, and we will look at the same data that was seen in the previous section, 4.3.1. The first step will be to open the Nautilus File Browser on the linux desktop. To open the Nautilus File Browser, click on the folder that has the text with your user s home directory associated with it. In the example in Figure 4.9, it would be the folder with the text dpm3 s Home associate with it. After clicking on the folder with the text dpm s Home associated with it, a window will pop up showing your home directory s contents. You will, Figure 4.9: Starting the Nautilus File Browser obviously, not see exactly the same files in your home directory, since this you are looking at my home directory in Figure 4.9. Another point to note is that since this machine is integrated with the CSE/ECE network, the directory you see is a network shared directory. If your machine is integrated with the CSE/ECE network, this network shared directory is not locally on your machine, but resides on a secure file server inside the CSE/ECE server room. Figure 4.10: Select Connect to Server Figure 4.11: Connect To Server In the Nautilus box, navigate to File Connect to Server, as shown in Figure 4.10. After clicking on Connect to Server, you will see a Connect to Server dialog box as shown in Figure 4.11. Page No. 12 of 23
4.5 How To Print to an ECE Printer 4.5.1 Miscellaneous Facts About the Print Servers One of the things that you will want to be able to do from the LTS Windows 7 virtual site is print. We have, in the ECE department, a solution to his need. There is a print server that has been set up that will allow printing to various printers within the ECE department. If you need assistance with any items regarding the print server, please contact either David Morrisette at dpm3@lehigh.edu or Ted Bowen at tlb204@lehigh.edu. The ECE print server is specifically set up to support printing for the LTS Windows 7 Virtual Site. However, if you are running a PC with the Windows 7 64-bit operating system that is connected to the Lehigh Network, I expect you can use the functionality provided by the print server. The print server will currently support only the Windows 7 64-bit operating system. 4.6 Using the Point and Click ECE Print Server Figure 4.12: Right click the start bubble In order to install a printer, you must first navigate to the Windows Explorer window. You can navigate to this window by first doing a right click on the Windows 7 start bubble as seen in Figure 4.12. After doing a right click on the start bubble, you will see the text Open Windows Explorer appear in a drop down list. Click on the text Open Windows Explorer to proceed. Page No. 13 of 23
Figure 4.13: Windows Explorer window After clicking on the text Open Windows Explorer, a Windows Explorer window will appear, similar to what you see in Figure 4.13. Figure 4.14: Enter Printer Server Address in Text Box To bring up the print server shared printers, you will need to enter the text //eceprint.cc.lehigh.edu as shown in Figure 4.14 and replace the text Libraries, as seen in Figure 4.13. Figure 4.15: List of Currently Available Network Printers Page No. 14 of 23
After typing in the name of the ECE Windows 7 Print Server, as shown in Figure 4.14, you will see a list of printers as seen in Figure 4.15. In order to print to one of the listed printers, you only need to click on the printer icon associated with the printer you wish to print to. Figure 4.16: Print Server Will Search To See If You Have a Driver Figure 4.17: Print Server Will Download the Needed Driver Figure 4.18: Print Server Will Install the Needed Driver After clicking on the printer icon, the ECE Windows 7 Print Server will do the following: ˆ ˆ As seen in Figure 4.16, the Print Server will analyze your installation to see if you have the required Windows 7 print driver to work the printer requested. As seen in Figure 4.17, the Print Server will download the appropriate driver if it cannot find the driver on your operating system. ˆ As seen in Figure 4.18, the Print Server will install the appropriate driver for you automatically. Page No. 15 of 23
Figure 4.19: The Installed Network Printer Can Now Be Used Once the printer you selected has installed itself, you can now print to the printer from applications that you might run on the LTS Windows 7 Virtual Site. 4.6.1 Printer Security The printers that are listed when you access the ECE Print Server printer share space will have limited access. In order to print, using the ECE Print Server, to one of the machines listed, the ID of the person requesting to print will have to be an ID that is in the list of IDs that can access the printer. Page No. 16 of 23
Chapter 5 Multi-Language Input One important feature for any desktop environment today is support for various languages. The linux operating system comes with support using a wide range of languages and character sets. The pages that follow will provide a brief introduction on how it is possible to set up for the use of international character sets on applications that will accept typed input. The software that enables input for different international character sets is called ibus, and more details can be found at Wikipedia at the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/intelligent_input_ Bus. 5.1 Enabling ibus Software Figure 5.1: ibus icon means software enabled Figure 5.2: First step in enabling ibus software You must first make sure the ibus software is enabled before you can start adding international characters as input. If you see the icon, as pointed to with the arrow as seen in Figure 5.1, then your ibus software has already been enabled, and you do not need to go through the process of enabling the software. To enable the ibus software, drill down using the path Software Preferences Input Methods, as seen in Figure 5.2 17
Figure 5.3: Not Yet Enabled ibus Software Figure 5.4: Enabled ibus software After clicking on the text Input Method, as shown in Figure 5.2, you will then see a dialog box as seen in Figure 5.3. When the dialog box comes up, if the check box next to the text Enable input method feature is not checked, check this box and it will enable the ibus software. After the ibus software is enabled, various options will become active as can be seen in Figure 5.4. You have a couple of options at this point. One option would be to click on the button with the text Imput Method Preferences and proceed with setting up the language preferences you desire. For illustration purposes, we are going to click on the button with the text Close. Figure 5.5: Nowhere To Insert Text Figure 5.6: No Input Methods Are Yet Activated After clicking on the button with the text Close in Figure 5.4, you will see a dialog box such as seen in Figure 5.5. You should now see a small icon, the ibus icon, in the right hand corner of your screen, such as the icon the little red arrow is pointing to in Figure 5.5. If you do a right click on the ibus icon, and you do not have focus on an application where you can enter some text, you will get the message No input window. If you have proceeded with instructions as written in this document, and you have not yet added any input methods to use with the ibus software, and you have focus on a spot where you can enter text, and you do a right click on the ibus icon, all you will see is a grayed out message that says Turn off input method. Since we have not yet added any input methods, no input methods will yet be listed when we do a right click on the ibus icon. Page No. 18 of 23
5.2 Adding Input Methods Figure 5.7: Click Preferences to Begin Setup Figure 5.8: The IBus Preferences Tabs After setting your focus in a spot on the screen where you can enter some text, and then right clicking the ibus icon, you will see the text Preferences. Click on the text Preferences, and we will proceed with setting up the Input Methods to use with the ibus software. After clicking on the text Preferences, as seen in Figure 5.7, you will see the IBus Preferences Tabs as seen in Figure 5.8. We will just be using the defaults under the General tab, so click on the Input Method tab to move to the section where we will add Input Methods. When the Input Method tab initially comes up, it will appear as what you see in figure 5.9. In order to proceed, click on the drop down box next to the text Select an input method to proceed. Figure 5.9: ibus0000070.jpg Page No. 19 of 23
Figure 5.10: Languages Available from Basic Desktop Install Figure 5.11: Additional Languages Beyond Basic Installation Languages In Figure 5.10, you can see a snapshot of the various options you have for input methods that come on the basic desktop install of CentOS 6.0. There are many more input methods that can be added, and in Figure 5.11 you can see a few. Not only are there more languages that can be added, but many more features or methods are availabe for the individual methods. If you need a particular language, and you do not see it available, contact me and I will see if it is possible to install it. Without comment, I will list a number of various languages and method for their input: Figure 5.12: Gujarati Figure 5.13: Hindi Page No. 20 of 23
Figure 5.14: Korean Figure 5.15: Malayalam Figure 5.16: Punjabk Figure 5.17: Tamil I will do a small demonstration with the Chinese language using the pinyin method of input. You can see here, as shown in Figure 5.18 where I selected the Chinese language and the Pinyin method of input. After clicking on the text for the Pinyin method, proceed on to add the method. Figure 5.18: Chinese - Pinyin Page No. 21 of 23
Figure 5.19: Input Method Selected Figure 5.20: Input Method Added After you have clicked on the text Pinyin, as seen in Figure 5.18, you will arrive at a dialog box as seen in Figure 5.19. Figure 5.19 shows that an input method has been selected, but because the input method is not yet present in the Input Methods box, it has not yet been added. In order to add Pinyin input method, click on the button with the text Add, as can be seen in Figure 5.19. After clicking on the button with the text Add, as seen in Figure 5.19, you will see the text Chinese - Pinyin appear in the Input Methods box, as seen in Figure 5.20. Figure 5.21: Selecting the Chinese Character Input Method for Input The next step in the process of using an input method, in our demonstration case the Chinese - Pinyin method, is to open an application that takes input. For example, open Open Office.org Writer, which you can open by going to Applications - Office - OpenOffice.org Writer. After openning OpenOffice.org Writer, set your focus on the portion of the application where you would be typing your text. After setting your focus on somewhere you can input, for example clicking inside Open Office.org Writer, then right click the ibus icon on the task bar, as shown with an arrow pointing to it in Figure??. Then click and choose the type of input method you would like to use. In our case, we are going to click on the text Chinese - Pinyin. Page No. 22 of 23
Figure 5.22: Entering Chinese Characters Using Pinyin Notice that after Chinese - Pinyin was selected as an input method, that the ibus icon now appears different, as can be seen in Figure 5.22. You can now just type pinyin, which is a phonetic representation of what the characters sound like, and the Chinese characters will present themselves. As there are usually a bunch of Chinese characters for a given sound, compounded by the fact that you will not be entering the pinyin tone marks when you type your pinyin, you will usually be presented with many characters that match a given pinyin phrase. At this point, you will select the character that you want. Figure 5.23: Turning Off Or Switching Between Input Methods Figure 5.24: Mixing An Input Method With Standard Input You can switch between input methods within a document. This may come in handy if you are typing in one language and want to add some input in another language. Page No. 23 of 23