University of Michigan CAEN Hacks

A bunch of recipes for University of Michigan's CAEN Linux.

• Recipes
  • Change your shell to ZSH
  • Change your shell to CSH
  • Install packages
  • Install Node.js
  • Install Python packages globally with Pip
  • Install new versions of Ruby with RVM
  • Install Golang

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Change your shell to ZSH

CAEN says you can't change your shell from Bash, and you're not allowed to run chsh. But you can run ZSH on CAEN! All you have to do is run ZSH within Bash.

Add the following line to ~/.bashrc:

# Start ZSH and exit when ZSH exits
exec zsh

Then add the following to your ~/.zshrc:

# Tell ZSH not to exit when an error happens; only exit on quit
setopt no_err_exit

That's it!

Change your shell to CSH

Like the above, you can run CSH from within Bash. Add the following line to ~/.bashrc:

# Start CSH and exit when CSH exits
exec csh -l

Install packages

We don't get root access on CAEN computers - so no, we can't use existing package managers such as RPM.

So basically every package you need - compile it yourself and add to path!

I like to approach this by creating a new install location under user's $HOME.

mkdir $HOME/usr

Then add the following to your shell startup script:

export $PATH="$PATH:/home/[uniquename]/usr/bin/"
export $LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/home/[uniquename]/usr/lib/"

When you install a library:

# CMake example:
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/usr [Path to CMake source]
make
make install

# Configure example:
./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
make
make install

Install Node.js

We can install Node.js without root privileges using the Node Version Manager.

First, we'll need to install NVM:

# If you're using Bash...
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.17.3/install.sh | bash

# If you're using ZSH...
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.17.3/install.sh | PROFILE=~/.zshrc bash

Then we'll start it up. You can also do the below by restarting your terminal.

source ~/.nvm/nvm.sh

Next, install your desired version of Node and set it as the default:

nvm install v0.10
nvm alias default v0.10
# You can also install v0.11 or other versions

Now you should be able to use Node, NPM, and more!

Install Python packages globally with Pip

Note: Virtualenv is already installed on CAEN, so unless you need to install packages globally, you don't need to do this.

We can install Pip (and then Python packages) by making a "dummy" virtualenv, because Pip lives inside these virtual environments.

First, create your dummy virtualenv wherever you like:

virtualenv ~/my-dummy-venv  # Feel free to put this somewhere else.

Next, add it to your PATH. Add this to your ~/.bashrc or your ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="~/my-dummy-venv/bin:$PATH"

Restart your terminal or reload your rc file, and then you can install things as you please!

# For example, install Flake8.
pip install flake8
flake8 my_file.py

Install new versions of Ruby with RVM

CAEN comes with Ruby 1.8.7, which is several years old. We can use RVM to install newer versions.

# Install RVM
\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

# Start RVM (you can also do this by restarting your shell)
source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm

# Ignore missing dependencies
rvm autolibs read-only

# Install Ruby 2.1.x! This takes awhile because it has to compile.
rvm install 2.1

Now you'll have the newest Ruby!

ruby --version
gem install rails

Install Golang

First, go to golang.org/dl and download the latest 64-bit Go distribution for Linux. Put it wherever you want, but we'll be adding the folder to your PATH so we can run Go. Then extract it:

cd /path/to/wherever/you/wanna/install/golang
tar xvzf GO_TARBALL.tar.gz

Next, add the following to your ~/.bashrc (or zshrc, or whatever):

export GOROOT=/path/to/wherever/you/wanna/install/golang/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin

Re-source your rc or restart the terminal. Now you'll have the go executable!