install-overview

Introduction

This is a check-point list for setting up new users in our teams. Please add missing points as needed. See also the checklist  for what new users should know. There is some overlap, but this doc is for the sys admin, the other one is for the new user.

People not working in our projects, but using our infrastructure, may look at the shortlist.

Hardware

  • a portable Mac is our standard platform (portable because we do travel, Mac for a number of very good reasons, among them SEE)
    • 8 Gb RAM needed for hfst transducer compilation
    • fast harddisk prefered
  • preferably an external monitor
  • headphone w. mic
  • a backpack or similar for the computer
  • possibly an external HD for TimeMachine/backup purposes (that extra security is definitely worth the money!)

Accounts needed

Services to enable:

  • svn
  • iCal Server & Jabber on XServe

Software to install

Commercial software, local shop

  • MS Office
  • Divvun additions, for testing purposes:
    • Parallels Desktop
    • Windows 10
    • MS Office for Windows

Commercial software, Internet download

  • Versions.app  - commercial GUI front end for Subversion. It makes some operations much easier. If you use this app, please ensure that you also install $GTHOME/gt/src/filemerge-tools/FileMerge_SaveMergedToSecondFile.sh - just run make in that directory. Then select that script as your diff tool in Versions.app's preferences.
  • Unison  for reading news (see below for an open source alternative)

Free or open-source software

Proofing tools to install

  • our latest MS and LO/hunspell tools / lexicons (see our Divvun home page)
  • hunspell  command line tool (use MacPort, see instructions on the OpenXSpell home page)
  • Voikko  - The base for using hfst as spellers

Configurations

  • Unix environment:
    • .bashrc
    • ( .inputrc  - this is only required when setting up old computers running Tiger/MacOS X 10.4.x or older, in Leopard/10.5.x and newer, UTF-8 input/output is working properly in Terminal)
    • .emacs
  • SEE-modes - see $GTHOME/tools/see4/
  • VPN setup - get the config file from your network admin

Other setups

  • check out our svn repository in order to get access to editing of icall, internal documentation, meetings and other topics.
  • set up svn mail, by adding the users' email address to the .forward file under the users' home directory on gtsvn.
  • Zulip
  • Mail
  • separate admin and user accounts on the Mac
    • for security reasons it is better to have a separate admin account
    • which means that the regular user account should be non-admin
    • it is ok that the user knows the admin account name and password, to be able to install software, updates, tweak system settings etc. (the security benefit is that the normal processes, downloads, etc are done in a restricted user space, not in an administrative account; in the case of malware downloads, it will only affect that user, not the whole machine)