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)

Troubleshooting tips


In this section, you will find advanced tips related to the troubleshooting of tasks. They are a must for most Ubuntu Server administrators.

Customizing log rotation on Ubuntu Server

The best starting point for troubleshooting a problem is reading the related service log. Logs are not saved infinitely; they are kept on the system and they follow a specific policy. After a span of time, the oldest logs are dropped. Thus, we keep only some of the latest log files. This is called log rotation; it is done on Ubuntu Server on two levels. The generic policy is configured in the /etc/logrotate.conf file, and a specific policy is configured for some services in a specific file under the /etc/logrotate.d/ directory.

This specific file, named /etc/logrotate.d/* is not commented, but the /etc/logrotate.conf generic file is very expressive and well commented and has a syntax that is the same as that of the specific file. There is also good documentation about this on the man page,...