[Nottingham] Running Ubuntu at Nottingham Uni

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Hi guys, sorry I'm a bit late to the party, but just got back to work this 
morning, after being on hols in Berlin--

On Tue, 22 May 2012, Louise Brown wrote:

> Hi Martin and Mike,
>
> Thanks very much!  My new computer's ubuntu is installing updates as I write.
>
> One more question - it also tells me that a new release 12.04 LTS is 
> available.  Is it preferable to upgrade?  If I hit the upgrade button 
> will it just sort itself out?  Will this be ok on my dual boot machine? 
> If the upgrade seems worth doing then I guess it's maybe worth going for 
> it before I start transferring files onto the new computer.  Also I 
> suppose I may as well get used to the new version as the 11.10 currently 
> installed.  Any thoughts/advice?

Upgrading in Linux shouldn't harm or rearrange anything in your bootloader 
(although the same can't always be said for Windows installations!) so 
moving to a newer long term support version should be good.  I think 
Barry's just advised a fresh install rather than an in place upgrade 
though, and I have to admit I'm curious what sort of issues he's 
encountered with upgrading.

The only distro that is remotely "standard" in IS terms in the University 
is CentOS, and that's mostly because Dave Parkin (the IS support person in 
Maths and Physics) has put the most effort into standardising and 
documenting the use of Linux in his area.  He has created a PXE boot 
installation, if you don't mind letting it build itself, and you don't 
necessarily need a .deb tree versus an .rpm tree distribution. Dave's a 
very nice chap who has recently become a RHCE (knows his stuff when it 
comes to Linux!), so if you end up using Linux much at all, I'd strongly 
suggest befriending him!

If you wish to try the CentOS distro he's set up, the "Boot Method" 
setting must be changed to "Linux PXE Maths" in the University's System 
Registrtation (sysreg) database.  I or anyone in your local support team 
(Engineering) can do this given your machine's registered name.

> From: Mike Haber [mailto:Mike.Haber at nottingham.ac.uk]
>
> Hi Louise, The automatic proxy.pac file will just work for firefox. You 
> also need a proxy for bash, and for other software. You can set the bash 
> proxy in ~/.bashrc EXPORT http_proxy=http://proxy.nottingham.ac.uk:8080

We usually use "http://mainproxy.nottingham.ac.uk:8080" here, but there 
seems to be a pointer from "proxy" as well.

Incidentally,

http://wwwcache.nottingham.ac.uk/proxy.pac

is still valid for anything which is capable of using a .pac file instead 
of just the hostname/port combination.

Also sorry to hear your call hasn't received a response in a week-- I find 
it rather embarrassing that you've had to resort to the wider Linux 
community to get timely local help!

Feel free to contact me direct, (Stefnee Lindberg in Outlook-- I'm based 
in the Science IT Support team) and I'll try to help in whatever way I 
can.

Cheers,

-Stef