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)

Preparation before the installation


In this section, we will take a quick look at the latest Ubuntu Server release news and then, we will make a list of all the system requirements.

The latest Ubuntu release

Canonical, the company that produces Ubuntu, releases a new version every 6 months. Each release has a code with a YY.ZZ pattern, where YY is the year and ZZ is the month.

I started writing this book just after Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) was released on April 23, 2015. Currently, there are two major releases—the LTS one that was released last year (LTS stands for long-term support), which is version 14.04, and the latest version 15.04. It is not a big deal if you choose either of these two versions to perform the tasks in the coming chapters, since it will make no difference. So, we decided to use the latest version as a reference for our samples, especially because the next LTS release will be based on it. (Note that only the LTS releases are supported for 5 years by Canonical, and the non-LTS releases have a support of only 9 months. That's why we normally choose the LTS versions for Ubuntu Server deployments.) When there is a notable difference between these two versions, we will mention it.

Now, let's take a look at some information related to the latest version:

  • It uses Linux kernel 3.19, which brings a lot of improvements in terms of performance as well as network facilities for both servers and cloud.

  • 15.04 is the first Ubuntu version that features LXD.

  • It uses the latest versions of OpenStack, LXC (Linux Containers), LXD, Juju, libvirt, QEMU, Open vSwitch, Ceph, cloud-init, Docker, and HA-related package updates.

  • It replaced the service manager and the standard boot upstart with systemd.

Note

The upstart boot still exists under Ubuntu. You can use it by opening the GRUB boot menu, choosing Advanced options for Ubuntu, and then clicking on Ubuntu, with Linux (upstart).

If you would like to switch permanently to the upstart boot, you can install the upstart-sysv package, which will remove ubuntu-standard and systemd-sysv.

System requirements

System requirements depend on the services that may need to be deployed in the future and installed on the server. For demonstration/test purposes, we need a minimal configuration of 300 MHz CPU, 192 MB of RAM, and a 1.5 GB hard disk. This light configuration allows us to deploy Ubuntu Server on an old computer or even a little virtual machine. This limited footprint is basically due to the absence of the X Windows System (graphic interface), which is not needed in a server environment.

In a production environment, you should be careful about your actual needs in terms of resources (the CPU, RAM, and hard disk) and the estimation growth of those needs. To do this, you need to make a good measure of dimensions based on the services that you are going to deploy.

In the case of the samples in this book, we will use the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Server 15.04, and we will install it on a virtual box machine that has 1 GB of RAM and 2 TB of hard disk.

Tip

Note that if you are using a used computer/server, you should back up your data before installing or upgrading Ubuntu. Partitioning tools used in the installation process are reliable and can be used for many years without any problems in general, but sometimes, they can perform catastrophic actions.

Additional resources

This book comprises only the essentials. It contains exactly what you need to know to perform a specific task. If you need more information about and an in-depth understanding of Ubuntu, you can have a look at the official documentation by visiting https://help.ubuntu.com.

You should download the CD image according to your system architecture. The whole list exists at http://releases.ubuntu.com/15.04/.