Univ-RX : Installation

About this document

This document describes the Univ-RX user environment installation procedure

How does it work ?

Univ-RX user environment is mainly based on two products, Firefox and KDE :

  • A modified version of the Firefox web browser is used to launch the GUI in the back (which will be called LCMS).
  • A Kiosk-oriented configuration of KDE is used.

For more informations about Univ-RX environment architecture, please consider reading Univ-RX : User environment architecture?.

Requirements - prerequisites

  • KDE : kdebase kde-i18n-xx (where xx is your language) kdeartwork-theme-window kdeartwork-style (in order to have the "Plastik" window-decoration and theme) packages
  • GTK : libgtk2.0-0 package
  • Java (in case Java has to be used in LCMS interface) : j2re1.4 or later
  • Firefox (used for web browsing)
  • The time command (time package)
  • The wget command (wget package)
  • The sh shell
  • Fonts :
    • For the flash plugin : gsfonts gsfonts-x11
    • In order to have "Microsoft" fonts : msttcorefonts
    • In order to have antialiased fonts with Java AWT : xfonts-100dpi xfonts-100dpi-transcoded xfonts-75dpi xfonts-75dpi-transcoded xfonts-scalable

Context

Our modified firefox has to be installed in /opt. This procedure has to be done as root.

Procedure

User interface installation

  1. Download our modified firefox.
  2. If firefox is already installed in /opt, delete it : rm -rf /opt/firefox
  3. Uncompress the archive : cd /opt ; tar xzvf firefox0.8-univ-x.tgz
  4. Make a symbolic link somewhere in the PATH (like /usr/bin) pointing to the firefox binary and named firefox-univ-x : ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox-univ-x
  5. In order to activate Java in our modified firefox (considering java is installed in /usr/local/j2sdk1.4.2_05) : ln -s /usr/local/j2sdk1.4.2_05/jre/plugin/i386/ns610-gcc32/libjavaplugin.so /opt/firefox/plugins/

Notes :

  • Depending on which version of Java you use, the exemple given before might need to be adapted.
  • You may ensure that the modified firefox works *before* installing Java for it.

System modification

  1. Install univrx-kde package (sourcelist : deb http://univ-rx.u-strasbg.fr/debian univrx main contrib non-free)

LCMS start configuration

LCMS start depending on system and LDAP user groups. You can modify the LDAP query in /usr/local/univ-x/demarre.sh to fit your needs. In order to launch a specific LCMS, two values have to be set in the configuration file /usr/local/univ-x/univrx.conf. They have to be shaped like this : univrx_group_url and univrx_group_dsc.

Example : If you would like that users belonging to "bob" group launch the LCMS called "Bob's LCMS" at URL "http://www.example.com/bob", you would write : 

univrx_bob_url="http://www.example.com/bob";
univrx_bob_dsc="Bob's LCMS";

If a given user belongs to several groups corresponding to various LCMS', a dialog box will let him choose at session start.