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Ventana GSS Configuration

Configure a New Server

In September of 2021, we shipped some Stealth servers to Greenseas for them to configure as Ubuntu upgrades so that we could be on their supported stack of computers. They shipped them back and we did a small amount of configuration to align them to the way we want things setup in the control room. Greensea used a default 'mbari' account, but we wanted a 'ventana' account to match how everything else was configured in the control room. So, in consulation with Greensea, I did the following to each machine (bubinga, sapele, cocobolo, tigrillo, and jatoba):

  1. When booted, the system auto-logs into the 'mbari' account
  2. Using the built in application to create users, I created a new user 'ventana' as an Administator and set the desired password
  3. I disabled the 'Automatic Login' on the mbari account so it would not login to that account
  4. I rebooted and logged into the 'ventana' account to make sure I could log in OK.
  5. Logged out and logged in as 'mbari' and opened a terminal
  6. I verified the group 'greensea' existed by running more /etc/group (it did except on bubinga - see IMPORTANT NOTES below)

  7. I got the list of groups the 'mbari' account belonged to by running groups and then added ventana account to all those groups using:

    sudo usermod -a -G greensea ventana
sudo usermod -a -G mbari ventana
sudo usermod -a -G adm ventana
sudo usermod -a -G dialout ventana
sudo usermod -a -G cdrom ventana
sudo usermod -a -G sudo ventana
sudo usermod -a -G dip ventana
sudo usermod -a -G plugdev ventana
sudo usermod -a -G lpdamin ventana
sudo usermod -a -G sambashare ventana

  8. I copied the desktop icon(s) from the 'mbari' account to the 'ventana' desktop and changed permissions to be owned by ventana:ventana.

  9. I rebooted and logged into the Ventana account.
  10. For each Desktop icon that was copied over, I double clicked on it which popped up a warning to which I clicked 'Trust and Launch' and then the icon changed to the GSS icon.
  11. I opened up the 'Users' application again and enable the 'Auto login' on the Ventana account.
  12. I rebooted and the system now auto-logs into the Ventana account with the appropriate Desktop icons on each machine.

IMPORTANT NOTES

  1. There is no 'greensea' group on the machine bubinga so I added the ventana account to the same groups as the mbari account, but did not create a 'greensea' group. That seems odd to me. Seems like if bubinga is a spare server, it should have a 'greensea' group?
  2. The Desktop icons that were copied from mbari account to ventana account were:
    1. bubinga: No desktop icons so nothing was copied over
    2. sapele: 'GSS Co-Pilot Startup'
    3. cocobolo: 'GSS Control Start' and 'GSS Control Stop'
    4. tigrillo: 'GSS Overlay Startup'
    5. jatoba: 'GSS Pilot Startup'

UI Changes

Some aspects of the GSS UI can be configured just by changing the YAML configuration files. In order to make changes, you first need to ssh into the machine where you want the UI changes to exist. For this example, I will document a change to the midwater toolsled light label. Let's say you want to change the label on the UI from "Pwr A" to "Pwr Z". First ssh into the machine (in this example it will be the pilot machine, jatoba)

    ➜  ~ ssh ventana@jatoba.rc.mbari.org
    ventana@jatoba.rc.mbari.org's password:
    Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-91-generic x86_64)

    * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
    * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
    * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

    0 updates can be applied immediately.

    Ubuntu comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by
    applicable law.

    Your Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE) is supported until April 2023.
    Last login: Tue Dec 27 19:21:39 2022 from 134.89.23.14

Once you are logged in, you want to change to the /opt/greensea/ventana/config_files/balefire_workspace/config_components/ directory.

    ventana@JATOBA:~$ cd /opt/greensea/ventana/config_files/balefire_workspace/config_components/
    ventana@JATOBA:/opt/greensea/ventana/config_files/balefire_workspace/config_components$ ll
    total 160K
    drwxr-xr-x 2 ventana greensea 4.0K Dec 13  2021 ./
    drwxr-xr-x 3 ventana greensea 4.0K Aug 31  2022 ../
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea 9.7K Oct 14  2022 ventana_led_grid.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea  11K Oct 14  2022 pilot_control_relays.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea  22K Oct 14  2022 pilot_control_midpage.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea 8.1K Oct 14  2022 pilot_control_main_buttons.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea 4.1K Oct 14  2022 pilot_control_lights.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea  13K Oct 14  2022 pilot_control_core_can.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea 7.1K Oct 14  2022 pilot_control_co2_sled.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea 7.1K Oct 14  2022 pilot_control_benthic_sled.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea  31K Oct 14  2022 midwater_toolsled.yml
    -rw-rw-r-- 1 ventana greensea  18K Oct 14  2022 dof_tuning_tabs.yml

This is a listing of configuration files that are read by the workspace.

Warning

These files are critical to the operation of the vehicle, backup each file before making any changes so you can revert them.

Before editing the file, make a copy for backup in case you need to revert

    cp midwater_toolsled.yml midwater_toolsled.yml.YYYY.MM.DD

where YYYY is the current year, MM is the month and DD is the day so that you have a sense of when the file was backed up. Next edit the config file you want to make changes in:

    vi midwater_toolsled.yml

Find the section you are interested in (in this example is the 'midwater_light_a' section)

    midwater_light_a:
      text: "Pwr A"
      output_channel: VENTANA_PCS_CMD
      output_signal: U_LIGHT_A_ONOFF
      status_channel: VENTANA_PCS_CTRL_STAT
      status_signal: S_LIGHT_A_ONOFF
      predicate: "!VENTANA_PCS_CTRL_STAT:U_LIGHT_A_ISO VENTANA_PCS_CTRL_STAT:S_MW_WAGO_OK"
      mystate_signal: U_LIGHT_A_ONOFF
      control_state_matters: false
      text_size: 12

And change the 'text' field to the new value

    midwater_light_a:
      text: "Pwr Z"
      output_channel: VENTANA_PCS_CMD
      output_signal: U_LIGHT_A_ONOFF
      status_channel: VENTANA_PCS_CTRL_STAT
      status_signal: S_LIGHT_A_ONOFF
      predicate: "!VENTANA_PCS_CTRL_STAT:U_LIGHT_A_ISO VENTANA_PCS_CTRL_STAT:S_MW_WAGO_OK"
      mystate_signal: U_LIGHT_A_ONOFF
      control_state_matters: false
      text_size: 12

Save the file, exit the editor and restart the workspace and the changes should be there.

Note

You will need to make the same changes on other machines if you want  the changes to be consistent across all UIs