Debian Ubuntu Linux Solutions Blog

Purpose: Most of you must have heard about the term “Cloud Computing”.  Some say that this is going to be the future of software and operating system too whereas some say that it is just a “buzz” word which will fade away soon. However in this post we are not going to debate whether “Cloud Computing” is here to stay or not, rather we will learn how to install and configure eyeOS – a part of Cloud Computing. eyeOS is an online Operating System (a.k.a OS) which you can access it over Internet just like you access your Gmail or Yahoo mailbox.

Background: The way these online Operating Systems work is that you first install it on a server type of machine – typically a high-end machine. Once you successfully install it then users can access this Operating System from anywhere in the world through Internet. All they need is a decent computer with a fully functional web-browser which is pretty much common these days on any computer. No matter if you are on a Mac, Windows, Unix or a Linux machine – you can pretty much access the OS from any of these type of machine. In short, the whole Operating System is delivered to you via the Internet.

Step 1: Designate a machine to install EyeOS

For this tutorial I am going to assume that you are running a Debian 5.0 (Lenny) machine. In general any Linux distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, etc.) should work just fine. Make sure that Apache server is configured and works fine. If you are not sure how to do that then please refer to the Step 3 of this post.

Step 2: Download eyeOS

The next step is to download eyeOS from here.

At this time of writing the version was 1.8.5.0-3. Suppose you download the tarball in /root/projects folder. Now simply extract the tarball:

# tar -xvvzf eyeOS_1.8.5.0-3.tar.gz

This will create a directory called eyeOS. Go to the directory and just get a feel of the contents that are there inside:

# cd eyeOS
# ls
index.html  installer  license.txt  package.eyepackage  README.txt
#

Step 3: Configure  eyeOS

Now simply copy the entire EyeOS directory into your /var/www folder which is usually your web server hosting directory.

# cd /root/projects
# cp -ar eyeOS /var/www/
# ls /var/www/eyeOS

You should be able to see an “eyeOS” directory in your /var/www folder.

Step 4: Install eyeOS

Now simply open your favorite browser like IceWeasel or Firefox and type in the following the address bar:

http://localhost/eyeOS

and you should be able to see the following screen:

eyeOS Configuration

Now just enter your desired “root” password and the hostname of your machine. Now simply click on the “Install eyeOS!” If the installation is successful you should get the following screen:

eyeOS Successful installation

Step 5: Create a new user

You are done configuring eyeOS on your server machine. Now go to any other machine on your local network and type the following the address bar of the browser:

# http://192.168.0.1/eyeOS

where 192.168.0.1 = IP address of your Debian server

and you can now see that you are getting a similar interface as shown in the above image on your other computer also (typically called as client machine).

Now simply click on the “New User” link and create a new user:

eyeOS Create New User

and then hit “Create Account”.

Step 6: Start Accessing eyeOS

Now as soon as you hit the “Create Account” button you will be logged into eyeOS desktop just if as you log into any other operating system like Windows XP/Vista or Linux. Here is a screenshot of how the desktop looks like:

eyeOS Desktop

Now just play around for a while and check out all the necessary applications that are present in the eyeOS. Now you can create, store documents in your “home” folder and you can access it from any part of the world as long as your server machine has a reachable IP address. Here is a screenshot with some of the standard applications that comes with eyeOS:

eyeOS Applications

As you can see it has a calendar, word processor, address book and lots of useful applications. Of course, it does not have an Internet browser…why…because you are already using it over an Internet browser..;)

Happy Cloud Computing!

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