🔗 Setting up Rootless GoboLinux in a VPS running Ubuntu

These are some steps usually I follow to make myself comfortable when I have to work with Debian-based distributions. The exact commands were written for Ubuntu 10.10, and they assume you have powers to run “sudo”. Most of this should be possible as well if you don’t, but the order of things switch around a bit (eg, you’d have to install ZSH using Compile). Steps 1-4 describe a minimal set. The remaining steps relate to some of my preferences.

Step 1: Download the Rootless Installer

wget http://svn.gobolinux.org/tools/trunk/Scripts/bin/CreateRootlessEnvironment

Step 2: Run it

chmod +x CreateRootlessEnvironment
./CreateRootlessEnvironment

Answer “y” when asked to recompile binaries; answer “u” (use new) when asked about settings files. Answer “y” when asked about adding the Rootless launcher to your profile files (bash_profile, zshrc, and so on).

Step 3: Switch to ZSH

You may need to install zsh first in the host system:

sudo apt-get install zsh

Now you can switch:

chsh -s /bin/zsh
echo "prompt lode cyan" >> ~/.zshrc

It’s easiest to just log out and back in to make sure your environment variables are sane.

Step 4: Fix some settings

The current version of Scripts refers to outdated mirror URLs. Edit ~/Programs/Scripts/Settings/Scripts/GetAvailable.conf and replace all references to “kundor.org/gobo/” with “gobolinux.org/”:

sed -i 's,kundor.org/gobo,gobolinux.org/,g' ~/Programs/Scripts/Settings/Scripts/GetAvailable.conf

Step 5: Install Compile

InstallPackage Compile

Choose “sa” to skip all dependencies. Your host system already has everything that’s needed.

Step 6: Install Mtail

Mtail gives us nice colorized outputs for a number of scripts.

Compile mtail

Step 6: Install Dit

Dit is my text editor.

You may need to install Subversion, Autoconf and Lua first in the host system:

sudo apt-get install subversion autoconf liblua5.1-dev lua5.1

(It should be possible to install these packages and all its dependencies in your home using Compile, but if you can, it’s easier to simply install it in the host system.)

Now let’s build Dit. Since Debian packages use a nonstandard suffix for the Lua libraries, we need to pass an extra option during build.

Compile dit --configure-options --with-lua-suffix=5.1

Again, use “sa” to skip all dependencies it may ask for.