| pc for displaying laboratory status on the hallway monitors | |
| Location | |
|---|---|
| room | FX00.58 |
| Hardware | |
| cpu | 1 |
| memory | 16GB |
| storage | 1TB SSD |
| Details | |
| os | Debian, Windows 11 |
| Software | Cron, Firefox |
| Ethernet device | |
| Location | |
|---|---|
| Room | FX00.58 |
| IP | |
| DNS name | hfmlfelix-entrance.science.ru.nl |
| Network | Office network |
| IP | 131.174.14.57 |
| MAC | 48:21:0b:5f:ed:99 |
| Outlet | FX00.50:101-02-04-17 |
| Switch port | es2-hfml-01-13/1/0/5 |
hfmlfelix-entrance is a physical "server" in the office FX00.58 in use for displaying laboratory status on the hallway monitors. It is an Intel NUC (NUC13ANK) with a Intel Core i7 processor configured to dual boot Windows 11 and Debian 11. After power up, a boot menu is displayed, which automatically boots into the Debian 11 operating system after 10 seconds. It then automatically logs into the KDE Plasma graphical desktop as user 'default-user'. This desktop session is configured to automaticall start a saved session that has the Firefox application open. Firefox starts with two windows, one on each screen, displaying the FELIX and HFML laboratory status Grafana dashboards.
There are two cron jobs in /etc/crontab [1]; The first automatically shuts down the machine on tuesday, wednesday, thursday and friday at 0:30, and wakes the machine up 6 hours and 55 minutes later. The second cron job shuts down the machine on saturday at 0:30, and starts the machine 54 hours and 55 minutes later. The clock is also configured to follow daylight saving changes.
The two 4K screens connected to the nuc power on at 7:15 mon-fri and power off at 0:45 tue-sat. The screens are configured to follow daylight saving times.
Passwords for the user 'default-user' and the root password can be found in KeePass. The system is reachable via ssh and VNC when it runs Debian and via Remote Desktop when it runs Windows. There is a mini remote keyboard/trackpad device available for use from the hallway, it is located in the closet in the fish bowl.
The machine can also be used with Windows 11 and Office, for instance to dispay Power Point presentations. On a boot or reboot the system will display a boot menu for 10 seconds, in which the option "Windows Boot Loader" can be chosen to boot into Windows 11. Log in to the operating system with user felix_beheer, password in Keepass.
BS, todo: the information below is deprecated, though it might be useful in the future because now it seems Firefox doesn't open the dashboards on first try. Perhaps KDE plasma is too fast or something, still testing this.
There are some command line options for the linux kernel configured in grub to make things run smoothly and keep the system from hanging. Here's the applicable line in /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet i915.enable_guc=3 i915.enable_dc=0 i915.enable_psr=0 i915.enable_fbc=0 i915.modeset=1 i915.edp_vswing=2 i915.mitigations=off intel_iommu=off,igfx_off processor.max_cstate=1 intel_idle.max_cstate=1"
This is the script in /home/default-user/Desktop/start-chrome-on-two-screens.sh that starts the two browser sessions:
#!/bin/bash # sleep for 20 seconds before starting the browsers, this gives the desktop time to load on this slow machine sleep 20s # start two chrome sessions, both with their own url, on their correct positions on the desktop, fullscreen, and with a ton of options to make it behave /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --user-data-dir=/home/default-user/Data/chrome-display-1 --window-position=0,0 --no-first-run --disable-restore-session-state --no-default-browser-check --disable-java --disable-translate --disable-infobars --disable-suggestions-service --disable-save-password-bubble --password-store=basic --hide-crash-restore-bubble --enable-logging --v=1 --disable-gpu --disable-background-networking --disable-3d-apis --disable-accelerated-2d-canvas --disable-gpu-rasterization --enable-low-end-device-mode --disable-timeouts-for-profiling --enable-auto-reload --start-fullscreen 'https://felix-archive.science.ru.nl/grafana/d/2fxX91YMz/felix-laboratory-status?orgId=1&refresh=2s&kiosk' & # sleep for another 10 seconds sleep 10s # start the second chrome session /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --user-data-dir=/home/default-user/Data/chrome-display-1 --window-position=3840,0 --no-first-run --disable-restore-session-state --no-default-browser-check --disable-java --disable-translate --disable-infobars --disable-suggestions-service --disable-save-password-bubble --password-store=basic --hide-crash-restore-bubble --enable-logging --v=1 --disable-gpu --disable-background-networking --disable-3d-apis --disable-accelerated-2d-canvas --disable-gpu-rasterization --enable-low-end-device-mode --disable-timeouts-for-profiling --enable-auto-reload --start-fullscreen 'https://felix-archive.science.ru.nl/grafana/d/CfF4CiLnz/hfml-status?orgId=1&refresh=2s&kiosk' & # remove cursor image (mouse pointer) after 5 seconds of idle time unclutter -idle 5 &
If the above command line options for chrome are still not keeping it from crashing now and again feel free to add new ones that you think might work from here-> https://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/
