Book Image

Ubuntu Server Essentials

By : Abdelmonam Kouka
Book Image

Ubuntu Server Essentials

By: Abdelmonam Kouka

Overview of this book

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system built on top of the Debian architecture. It is used to make operating systems for multiple platforms, including phones, desktops, TVs and mobiles. It has made some serious progress in the realms of efficiency and user friendliness. With evolving technology trends, demands on software have changed, with more and more skilled users. Over the past few years, services such as Facebook, Twitter, and push notifications on smartphones mean that users are used to being up to date with everything that happens all the time. With SignalR, the applications stay connected and will generate notifications when something happens either from the system or by other users. This provides new opportunities for the system administrators, to enter this new and exciting world of real-time application development. This is a concise and a cost-friendly guide, packed with up-to-date essentials on Ubuntu Server fundamentals. It will guide you through deploying and configuring Ubuntu servers in your office environments. You’ll start by installing Ubuntu Server, then move to the most useful aspect —the command-line interface inside it. You’ll extend your knowledge by learning how to administrate and configure Ubuntu Server. You will also see how to deploy services on Ubuntu Server and find out how to secure it. You’ll get to grips with the virtualization and cloud computing facilities provided by Ubuntu, and finally, you’ll gain some very useful tips.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Performing essential system administration tasks


In this section, we will explore a useful set of Ubuntu Server administration tasks such as monitoring and processes management.

Monitoring resources

For a system administrator, monitoring tasks are the most important because they allow us to keep our system robust and prevent incidents. The Ubuntu Server has a powerful set of monitoring tools that cover CPU usage, hard disks, virtual memory, and so on.

Some tools come with Ubuntu straight out of the box, while others need to be installed. The sysstat package contains some of them. You need to install it by using the command:

sudo apt-get install sysstat

One of the most important resources that an Ubuntu Server administrator should permanently monitor is the memory use, because running out of memory will negatively affect system performance.

You can use the free and top commands to see basic information about the use of your RAM and swap. To get more detailed information about your server memory...