Book Image

Mastering Ubuntu Server - Second Edition

By : Jay LaCroix
Book Image

Mastering Ubuntu Server - Second Edition

By: Jay LaCroix

Overview of this book

Ubuntu Server has taken the data centers by storm. Whether you're deploying Ubuntu for a large-scale project or for a small office, it is a stable, customizable, and powerful Linux distribution that leads the way with innovative and cutting-edge features. For both simple and complex server deployments, Ubuntu's flexible nature can be easily adapted to meet to the needs of your organization. With this book as your guide, you will learn all about Ubuntu Server, from initial deployment to creating production-ready resources for your network. The book begins with the concept of user management, group management, and filesystem permissions. Continuing into managing storage volumes, you will learn how to format storage devices, utilize logical volume management, and monitor disk usage. Later, you will learn how to virtualize hosts and applications, which will cover setting up KVM/QEMU, as well as containerization with both Docker and LXD. As the book continues, you will learn how to automate configuration with Ansible, as well as take a look at writing scripts. Lastly, you will explore best practices and troubleshooting techniques when working with Ubuntu Server that are applicable to real-world scenarios. By the end of the book, you will be an expert Ubuntu Server administrator who is well-versed in its advanced concepts.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Installing security updates

Since I've mentioned updating packages several times, let's have a formal conversation about it. Updated packages are made available for Ubuntu quite often, sometimes even daily. These updates mainly include the latest security updates, but may also include new features. Since Ubuntu 18.04 is an LTS release, security updates are much more common than feature updates. Installing the latest updates on your server is a very important practice, but, unfortunately, it's not something that all administrators keep up on for various reasons.

When installed, security updates very rarely make many changes to your server, other than helping to keep it secure against the latest threats. However, it's always possible that a security update that's intended to fix a security issue ends up breaking something else. This is rare, but I've...