Book Image

Mastering Ubuntu Server

By : Jay LaCroix
Book Image

Mastering Ubuntu Server

By: Jay LaCroix

Overview of this book

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system, and has various versions targeted at servers, desktops, phones, tablets and televisions. The Ubuntu Server Edition, also called Ubuntu Server, offers support for several common configurations, and also simplifies common Linux server deployment processes. With this book as their guide, readers will be able to configure and deploy Ubuntu Servers using Ubuntu Server 16.04, with all the skills necessary to manage real servers. The book begins with the concept of user management, group management, as well as file-system permissions. To manage your storage on Ubuntu Server systems, you will learn how to add and format storage and view disk usage. Later, you will also learn how to configure network interfaces, manage IP addresses, deploy Network Manager in order to connect to networks, and manage network interfaces. Furthermore, you will understand how to start and stop services so that you can manage running processes on Linux servers. The book will then demonstrate how to access and share files to or from Ubuntu Servers. You will learn how to create and manage databases using MariaDB and share web content with Apache. To virtualize hosts and applications, you will be shown how to set up KVM/Qemu and Docker and manage virtual machines with virt-manager. Lastly, you will explore best practices and troubleshooting techniques when working with Ubuntu Servers. By the end of the book, you will be an expert Ubuntu Server user well-versed in its advanced concepts.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Ubuntu Server
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding when to use root


In the last chapter, we set up our very own Ubuntu Server installation. During the installation process, we were instructed to create a user account as an administrator of the system. So, at this point, we should have two users on our server. We have the aforementioned administrative user, as well as root. We can certainly create additional user accounts with varying levels of access (and we will do so in this chapter), but before we get to that, some discussion is in order regarding the administrator account you created, as well as the root user that was created for you.

In regards to root, the root user account exists on all Linux distributions and is the most powerful user account on the planet. The root user account can be used to do anything, and I do mean anything. Want to use root to create files and directories virtually anywhere on the file-system? No problem. Want to use root to install software? Again, not a problem. The root account can even be used...