Installing Kubuntu

So basically I want to run KDE Plasma under Ubuntu and this can be called Kubuntu.

This article is a little bit cargo-clutish. I.e. “I did this and it seemed to work.” and “I don’t do this because it didn’t seem to work.”

I have a pretty heavy reliance on Salt Stack for system configuration. My salt config is all built around Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

When I need to install a Kubuntu desktop, this is how I do it:

  1. install Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS from live installer
  2. apt update && apt dist-upgrade && apt autoremove && reboot
  3. apt install kubuntu-desktop && reboot
  4. apt install virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11 && reboot
  5. apt install salt-minion
  6. vim /etc/salt/minion_id
  7. vim /etc/salt/minion.d/minion.conf
    • master: salt.staticmagic.net
  8. service salt-minion restart
  9. salt-call state.highstate

Note that if your Kubuntu install is a VirtualBox guest you need to start it with a normal start if you want the shared clipboard to work. If you start headless or detachable the shared clipboard will not work (in my experience).

If your Kubuntu install is not a VirtualBox guest you can skip the virtualbox-guest-* package installation above.

Running Apache as ME!

On my development machine I want Apache to run under my user id so I can automatically generate files (and have permission to write them).

I configured Apache like this:

root@mercy:/etc/apache2# grep -R www-data .
./envvars:export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data
./envvars:export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data

root@mercy:/etc/apache2# vim envvars 

export APACHE_RUN_USER=jj5
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=jj5

root@mercy:/etc/apache2# apache2ctl graceful
/var/lock/apache2 already exists but is not a directory owned by jj5.
Please fix manually. Aborting.

root@mercy:/etc/apache2# chown jj5:jj5 /var/lock/apache2

root@mercy:/etc/apache2# apache2ctl graceful

Easy-peasy!

Wait… that didn’t work. The problem was apache2ctl graceful didn’t pick up the new envvars file, this fixed it:

root@mercy:/etc/apache2# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart