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)

Setting up a DHCP server


DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Control Protocol. With this protocol, a new host on the network can issue a request for IP information. The DHCP server will then provide the host with all the necessary information that it needs to communicate on the network, such as its IP address, netmask, the gateway, and the DNS servers that need to be used.

Installing DHCP

Installing a DHCP server under Ubuntu is an easy task, just type the following command and you will get the DHCP server installed:

sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server

Ubuntu DHCP Conventions

It just needs additional configuration to be useful; we will see this in this section:

  • /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf: This is the configuration file for the DHCP server. By default, it is a heavily commented file that should provide plenty of examples for you to work on.

  • /var/lib/dhcp3/dhcpd.leases: This file contains the current list of DHCP leases that your server has handed out. If you are wondering which MAC address got a particular...