Boston University Linux

Linux is an increasingly popular open source Unix-like operating system. These pages aren't intended as a general guide (for that, check out our list of resources) but rather information specific to using Linux here at Boston University, and particularly to using our custom distribution, BU Linux.

BU Linux is based on Fedora  and on CentOS Linux, but specifically tailored for the BU environment. We've added security updates, made modifications to make software work better with the way things are set up here, and added some applications that we think you might like to have. For details, see the FAQ.

The latest release of BU Linux for desktop systems is BU Linux 5.0 (Monde). The latest release for servers is BU Linux 4.5 Server Edition (Zodiac). Currently, Zodiac and Monde are  available for i386 and x86_64 (Opteron, Athlon64, and Intel EM64T).

If you see an error like this: 

/afs/bu.edu/common/IT/matlab-7.1/bin/glnx86/MATLAB:
error while loading shared libraries: libXp.so.6:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

when running Matlab or any other proprietary, binary-only program, check to see if yum (the command-line package management tool used in BU Linux) can find the missing library for you. Type:

sudo yum install libXp.so.6

and yum will search for the library in the BU Linux repository, and if a package can be found that provides it, you will be prompted to install it.

Of course, this can apply to libraries or files other than libXp.so.6 — simply use the appropriate filename in a command similar to the one above.

Although the core of BU Linux is very similar to that of CentOs  or Fedora (any packages written specifically for CentOs/Fedora or Red Hat Linux should work fine), there are many key differences. Among them:

• Network install tailored for the BU environment. The install program asks fewer questions, because it already knows many of the answers.

• Works with centralized BU login names and Kerberos authentication. Users don't need to have local passwords. (Local passwords and NIS will still work if desired.) The new add-bu-user program (or the useradd -K option in previous releases) automatically configures Global UID compliant accounts.

  And, the system-config-users graphical tool also does automatic lookup of BU login names. You can access this program by logging into X as root using the default session, or by logging in as a regular user and choosing it from the System Settings menu.

• Tighter default security, making BU Linux systems safe to run in labs out of the box (when appropriate physical/hardware-access security is in place).

• Essential updates are automatically installed via bulinux-autoupdate. This makes it simple to keep your system up-to-date with the latest security fixes.
  
  You can also yum to install packages which you don't have on your system.

• OpenSSH configured for BU network. This is the preferred method for connecting between systems, replacing the older and much less secure telnet and rsh.

• OpenAFS allows access to campus-licensed programs like Matlab, Mathematica, SPlus, and Maple. (Please check with us for licensing and access details.)

• Local system administrators (in the group wheel) have sudo privileges, allowing secure and logged access to administrative functions.

  Members of wheel will also have sudo-like acceses to the graphical configuration tools.

• Automatic root alias management system attempts to insure that important system messages are delivered to a human being.

• Configured to automatically sync system clocks with our time servers.

• Many small usability tweaks and improvements to programs like less and joe. Several other packages have been updated to their latest versions.

• Added around 300 packages, including:

  • Window Maker desktop environment (including wmweather+ preconfigured for Boston)
  • FluxBox lightweight window manager
  • Dillo web browser (tiny and fast)
  • bash_completion (command-line junkies will wonder how they did without this)
  • Blender, a full-featured 3D graphics creation suite
  • Inkscape SVG vector-drawing program
  • Pybliographer framework for bibliographic databases
  • QCad 2d CAD program
  • PARI/GP number theory-oriented computer algebra system
  • 'R' language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, including R-gnomeGUI.
  • GAP system for computational discrete algebra
    
  • GRASS geographic information analysis system
    
  • LyX document processing system
  • Scribus desktop publishing program
    
  • BU utilities like ph, bkupfile, and flost
  • Audacity and Sweep sound editors
  • Objective Caml compiler and programming environment
  • SQLite self-contained zero-configuration database
  • Programmer's utilities like astyle and c_count
  • Additional libraries — ClanLib, Allegro, and others. This will make it easier for you to build other open source programs, or for us to add them to the distribution at your request
  • Perl modules from CPAN (dozens included; we'll add others on request)
  • many popular Python modules
    
  • Games! BSD games, LinCity, IceBreaker, Heroes, Enigma, SuperTux, TuxKart, Nethack Falcon's Eye, Foobillard, Powermanga, and more.

Up until BU Linux 4.5 (Velouria), we used a program called "APT" to manage RPM packages. (And RPM packages are what BU Linux uses to make installation and remove of software easy — every program, from aalib to zsh, is packaged into an RPM.) APT comes from the Debian distribution and was ported to work with RPM by Brazilian Linux distributor Conectiva.

APT is a very good program, but it doesn't handle an important situation we need for BU Linux 4.5: it won't work on systems with mixed 32- and 64-bit programs, and we need that for our upcoming support of AMD64 and Intel EM64T processors. (These systems work perfectly well in 32-bit mode with the current BU Linux 4.5 release, but will work even better once we have the 64-bit version available later this summer.)

So, we've switched to a new high-level package management tool called "Yum". Like APT, Yum works to manage the RPMs on your system, and keeps track of dependency relationships automatically. In fact, if you're used to APT, you'll find yum very easy to pick up. From an end-user point of view, there are two key differences. First, Yum checks the network for updated information whenever you run it as root (preferably with sudo, of course). With APT, you had to use apt-get update to refresh package information. Second, APT has several different binaries, like apt-get, apt-cache, and apt-config — each with its own functions, like apt-get install packagename or apt-cache search querytext. Yum has just one binary, conveniently named "yum", and you use that do to everything.

You can read the manual page for yum for more information (type man yum), but here are some of the most useful commands:

• sudo yum install packagename
• sudo yum remove packagename

• yum search querytext
• yum info packagename

• yum grouplist
• sudo yum groupinstall 'Group Name'

Another common command is sudo yum update (or the slightly more powerful sudo yum upgrade) but with BU Linux, normally package updates are handled automatically, so you won't need this very often. Of course, if you've disabled automatic updates, you'll want to this whenever the automatic update program tells you that new updates need to be applied.

And speaking of automatic updates: the older APT-based automatic update system, aptomatic, has been replaced with a new Yum-based one called simply bulinux-autoupdate. This new system works almost exactly like the older one, and can be configured by editing /etc/sysconfig/bulinux-autoupdate.