Installing a small footprint version of Ubuntu Desktop for Ubuntu Server

When I install a Linux server like Ubuntu Server, I occasionally do require a desktop but I don't want all the additional software that comes with the gui like LibreOffice, Thunderbird, etc.  Don't get me wrong, this is all great software for a client desktop but it isn't something that one might want on a server.  To achieve a small desktop footprint I do the following:

• Get and install updates
  "sudo apt-get install update"
• Get and install upgrades
  "sudo apt-get install upgrades"
• Install lightdm
  "sudo apt-get install lightdm"
• Install Unity
  "sudo apt-get install unity"
• Install ubuntu desktop
  
  *** Important update ****
  When I went to setup a new lite version of ubuntu server when I tried to use the latest version of Ubuntu Server 20.04.02 and ran 
  
  "sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends ubuntu-desktop"
  
  I got the following error
  
  "Command line option --no-install-recommends is not understood in combination with other options"
  
  In previous versions of Ubuntu the command works fine such as in 16.04.07 but in Ubuntu 20.04.02 I had to use
  
  "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop-minimal"
  
  So please note this important change if you are trying to create a minimal version of a linux desktop; this may also affect other distros.
  
  Then continue with the other installs
  
  "sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager"
  "sudo apt-get install firefox"
  "sudo apt-get install net-tools"

If you want to pin the terminal application to the launcher, but the launcher won't show up in your applications though the gui.

To add the terminal to the launcher is to right click on the desktop and open the terminal

Once the terminal is open right click on the terminal in the launcher and lock to launcher

Setting up and configuring wol and rpc remote shutdown for windows clients

If your looking for an inexpensive way to setup an automatic turning on and shutting off of your windows computer systems, using WOL and RPC are an excellent way to do that, you can even setup a Linux server for controlling the timing for turning the systems on/off and it isn’t too difficult to manage. I will do a post soon about setting up a linux server to run WOL and RPC Shutdown scripts. If your looking to set one up the quick and dirty version is:

Requirements SAMBA, Windows Admin and Password, Linux Admin and Password

Put startup/shutdown scripts in /etc/cron.daily

Startup
sudo -i -u $linuxAdminUser -p $password wakeonlan -i $IPADDRESS $MACADDRESS

Shutdown
sudo -i -u $linuxAdminUser -p $password net rpc shutdown -I $IPADDRESS -U $WindowsADM%$password -t 1 -f

Use Crontab to setup scheduling

Crontab schedule

For more information about crontab, you can visit this link about crontab

Here are the break down of the examples above

00 12 * * 5 user command

at minute 00, hour 12, * - no value (day of the month), * - no value (month), 5  the fifth day of the week (friday), user to run the script and script to run.

So the following example "00 12 * * 5 root /etc/cron.daily/shutdown.sh"

at minute 00, at 12 pm, on friday run as root the script shutdown in /etc/cron.daily

Setting up the Windows 10 Client

For setting up WOL/RPC shutdown, you have to have your windows clients prepped with the proper firewall rules and user accounts for privileged access.

• An administrator account (not called administrator as windows 10 upgrades disables this with each update)
• RPC and Remote Access Firewall Rules Allowing (I also allow ICMP and Ping) for remote management with services such as lansweeper and FOG
• Updated Intel network driver

One thing I have noticed recently is that the manufacturer driver doesn’t seem to work with WOL.  Working with some Lenovo m93 and m900 series and and HP {put hp model here} doing a full windows reinstall/reset breaks WOL.  Even getting an up-to-date manufacturer driver WOL doesn’t seem to work which is extremely odd. A major difference I can account for this is the update to the intel proset tools for their network driver which brings a GUI interface back to add and remove VLANs to Windows 10.

Nic Driver settings to enable WOL in Windows 10

Enable WOL in Windows 10.  In Windows 7 unchecking the computer to turn off the device would leave the device on but in windows 10 it disables all power management and turns it off.  For WOL to work you have to enable "Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer option"

Wake on Link Settings - Disabled

Wake on Magic Packet - Endabled

Wake on Pattern Match - Enabled

Wait for Link - Auto

Even with these settings being enabled and no errors WOL would not go.  I had S3, S4 and S5 enabled in the bios, which would enable WOL to work, but when I send the WOL packet the system stays off.

So I downloaded and installed the latest intel driver which comes with proset tools and this seemed to resolve the issue (Version 25 as of this post)

Version 25 of the Intel network driver and proset tools

Intel Proset software and drivers

Adapter driver Options

Teaming and Vlans

Once I updated the driver to version 25 WOL started working for my windows client.

RPC shutdown from Linux

sudo -i -u $linuxAdminUser -p $password net rpc shutdown -I $IPADDRESS -U $WindowsADM%$password -t 1 -f

RPC SHUTDOWN ERROR

To fix this issue

Manual Registry Hack

Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then navigate down to the following key, creating a new key if it doesn’t exist.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Change the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy to 1

On the right-hand side, add a new 32-bit DWORD value named LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy and set the value to 1.

To remove this tweak you can set the value to 0 or just delete the key.

With this setup you will be able to startup and shutdown any pc you have listed in your startup and shutdown scripts.

If your interested I had done a post which you can use powershell to add/remove VLANs to Windows 10, and the reason I had done the post is because the Intel VLAN driver no longer worked with Windows 10.

References

https://helpdeskgeek.com/networking/how-to-connect-to-a-remote-registry-windows-7-10/

https://blog.sip2serve.com/post/155565656901/shutdown-windows-10-remotely