1. Partitioning scheme (some machines may vary!):
   • hda3 / ext3 5gb
   • hda4 /fsys1 ext3 3gb
   • mount but do not format hdc3 as /u1
2. Install package selection: desktop environment only
3. Don't use kernel framebuffer! it doesn't work on these video cards, or at least it didn't used to.
4. X didn't work when we tried to autodetect hardware... it got the timings for the monitor wrong, and also we chose gpmdata for the mouse, but it didn't install gpm, so we had to apt-get install that. Use the attached XF86Config-4 file.
5. gpmconfig to configure the mouse. imps2 may work, but if that and autops2 don't then we may have to figure something else out.
6. Need to install both rsh-client rsh-server, as well as ssh. Ensure that /etc/alternatives/rsh* point to packages named like netkit-rsh. Other followup packages:
   • rcs
   • UNinstall exim4 - we'll install it later from Walter's pkg repository (apt-get remove --purge exim4 exim4-config exim4-base exim4-daemon-light)
   • xterm
   • ethtool (useful for diagnosing network issues)
7. Ensure that lprng is installed and that its commands (lp*) are setuid
8. Configure 32 bit disk access (see attachments)
9. Copy ssh_known_hosts2 from "somewhere" (awk's is sufficient but old right now) to /etc/ssh on the new host
10. Either move /fsys1/.software out of the way, or remove it
11. Upgrade to kernel 2.6

Now the fun begins... xhiering.

1. Ensure the hostname is set correctly - edit /etc/hostname and use the hostname command if necessary
2. /u is a real directory, /u1 we've mounted above; mkdir /u is appropriate if it doesn't already exist
3. /.software links to /fsys1/.software, which is where the real xhier stuff lives
4. /software links to /.software/share, as usual, also create /{vendor,xhbin}
5. userdel saned - we need to figure out what package creates this uid. There's lots of other accounts that get created and thereby piss off accounts as well, like hal and messagebus and plugdev. I've been working around this by simply removing those accounts, which I'm sure will kill us later.
6. Make sure the user Debian-exim4 is gone from both passwd/shadow and group
7. Add "none:x:301:" and "accounts:x:303:" to /etc/group and ensure it's ordered correctly
8. adduser --home /software/accounts/home --shell /bin/csh --no-create-home --uid 300 --gid 303 --disabled-login accounts - then ensure that the passwd entry for accounts has gid=303, not 300!
9. "xh-first-time -v", then clean up complaining from those packages
10. xh-dist2 debian
11. apt-get install exim4 (use Walter's, this will fix up the exim4 user and such so xhier's happy)
12. xh-dist2 accounts and dependencies - likely will want to dist2 accounts_client and setpw by hand

One the machine is xhiered, some tex stuff will break because the stupid scripts assume they can call access without a path. Attached is a script to fix these stupid scripts. My own script is stupid too, but it works. Don't run it twice.

After all is said and done, ownerships on /u* may have to be fixed. Run fixusers.csh to accomplish this.

Other hints:

1. /etc/resolv.conf
2. /etc/securetty
3. /etc/ssh/known_hosts2
4. /etc/ssh/sshd_config
5. /etc/ssh/ssh_config

Todo:

1. We may want to package up acroread somehow. Could be xhier, could be as a deb package. May not be required at all.