Welcome to Ubuntu Server Cookbook, a step-by-step guide to your own Ubuntu server.
Ubuntu is an open source operating system, or rather, I should say that Ubuntu is a mission to provide quality software to everybody without any cost. As mentioned on the official site, the meaning of the word Ubuntu is I am, cause we are and Ubuntu is working hard towards their mission by being more than just a free operating system.
Ubuntu is based on Debian, a well-established Linux distribution. However, Debian is kind of limited to geeks. Ubuntu added an easy user interface named Unity that made it popular with various desktop users. One answer on Ask Ubuntu compares Ubuntu and Debian to a local restaurant and a farmer, respectively. Ubuntu carefully selects the best things from Debian and adds its own flavors to make it easy and more enjoyable for the end users. It's still Debian at base, but it more easier to use and more stable with frequent updates and a definite release cycle.
Users can choose an Ubuntu operating system from nine different flavors, starting with lightweight desktop to a fully loaded multimedia editing system. In addition to desktop systems, Ubuntu provides separate editions for various server platforms, cloud systems, mobile devices, and tablets. The new versions are released every six months with a major release in April and updates in October. All security updates are released throughout the year, as and when necessary. Every new version released in an even year (2014, 2016, and so on) are tagged for Long Term Support (LTS). These versions receive extended support period of five years and are generally used in production environments.
At the time of writing, Ubuntu has already taken a major share in the server market and has already become a default choice of millions of cloud users. According to an article by Dustin Kirkland, a member of the product team at Canonical, "November 2015 has seen over 2 million cloud instances being launched with Ubuntu Server. That's nearly one instance per second" and these are just the numbers from cloud services. Ubuntu is being used in Desktop systems, laptops, mobiles, routers, and even to control your cars, drones, and countless Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Docker hub, a popular container repository reports more than 40 million pulls of official Ubuntu image.
The purpose of this book is to provide step-by-step solutions using the Ubuntu server. We will focus on common, server-related tasks such as user management, installing various packages for web servers, database, some low hanging fruits in performance and security, and many more. The book also covers the latest development in the container world with LXD and Docker. All recipes are based on the Ubuntu server, Xenial Xerus (version 16.04), the latest LTS release of Ubuntu.
The book is divided into multiple chapters, covering details of specific tasks.
Chapter 1, Managing Users and Groups, covers common user management tasks such as adding or removing user accounts, creating separate groups, assigning access rights, and setting user-level resource limits.
Chapter 2, Networking, explore the various network management functions, including network configuration, setting up DNS and DHCP servers, installing network proxy, and VPN setup. It also includes performance tuning tips and firewall setup.
Chapter 3, Working with Web Servers, provides a detailed configuration of web servers. This chapter covers both Apache and Nginx. You will also find some advance topics such as reverse proxy and load balancing using Nginx.
Chapter 4, Working with Mail Servers, explains the installation and configuration of your e-mail server.
Chapter 5, Handling Databases, discusses the popular relational database server, MySQL. It also covers MongoDB as a NoSQL database system, which is quite a hot technology in recent days.
Chapter 6, Network Storage, explains how to set up the good old Samba server along with FTP and Rsync details. Additionally, it includes the basics of NFS.
Chapter 7, Cloud Computing, includes details on virtualization with the Ubuntu server and some advance tools from Ubuntu to set up your own cloud system with OpenStack and Juju.
Chapter 8, Working with Containers, introduces Linux containers (LXC) and a container management tool by Ubuntu, LXD. This chapter also covers another hot topic, Docker.
Chapter 9, Streaming with Ampache, helps you to set up your own streaming server. We will take a quick look at Ampache, an open source web application for media streaming.
Chapter 10, Communication Server with XMPP, covers the installation of XMPP-based chat server, Ejabberd.
Chapter 11, Git Hosting, covers basic work flow of version control system Git and an open source web-based repository management tool GitLab.
Chapter 12, Collaboration Tools, explores more open source tools for your team and also covers the various tools to help your team stay connected.
Chapter 13, Performance Monitoring, introduces various monitoring tools that can help you optimize the performance of your Ubuntu server.
Chapter 14, Centralized Authentication Service, saves some efforts by introducing LDAP. This chapter covers the LDAP-based centralized authentication and authorization.
The book is written with the help of Ubuntu server 16.04 and few virtual machines with VirtualBox. The recipes should work fine with Ubuntu version 14.04 and higher. For most of the recipes, a minimum hardware configuration of 512 MB memory with single CPU is enough. However, a few recipes such as OpenStack installation require additional hardware resources. The specific requirements are given in the respective recipes, if any.
Feel free to use any virtualization tool of your choice. Also, you can skip the local set up and use cloud servers. Many cloud providers give free introductory service for limited period. You can use these services to test your setup.
Ubuntu Server Cookbook is intended for system administrators with a basic understanding of Linux operating system. If you are a software developer or a newbie system administrator and want to setup your own servers, this book is an ideal guide for you. You are not required to have an in-depth knowledge or hands-on experience with Ubuntu, but you should know the basic commands for directory navigation, file management, and file editing tool. An understanding of computer networks and Internet is advisable.
In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it…, How it works…, There's more…, and See also).
To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:
This section tells you what to expect in the recipe, and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.
This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.
This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make the reader more knowledgeable about the recipe.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "You can check other log files like /var/log/mail.err and /var/log/upstart/dovecot.log "
A block of code is set as follows:
disable_plaintext_auth = yes
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
$ sudo adduser bob
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "You can access the Inbox panel on port 7071."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
You can download the example code files for this book from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.
You can download the code files by following these steps:
Log in or register to our website using your e-mail address and password.
Hover the mouse pointer on the SUPPORT tab at the top.
Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
Enter the name of the book in the Search box.
Select the book for which you're looking to download the code files.
Choose from the drop-down menu where you purchased this book from.
Click on Code Download.
You can also download the code files by clicking on the Code Files button on the book's webpage at the Packt Publishing website. This page can be accessed by entering the book's name in the Search box. Please note that you need to be logged in to your Packt account.
Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:
WinRAR / 7-Zip for Windows
Zipeg / iZip / UnRarX for Mac
7-Zip / PeaZip for Linux
The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Ubuntu-Server-Cookbook. We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/UbuntuServerCookbook_ColorImages.pdf.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>, and we will do our best to address the problem.