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 the /etc/fstab file


The /etc/fstab file is a very critical file on your Linux system. As I mentioned in the last section, you can edit this file to call out additional volumes you would like automatically mount at boot time. However, the main purpose of this file is also to mount your main filesystem as well, so if you make a mistake while editing it, your server will not boot. Definitely be careful.

When your system boots, it looks at this file to determine where the root filesystem is. In addition, the location of your swap area is also read from this file and mounted at boot time as well. Your system will also read any other mount points listed in this file, one per line, and mounts them. Basically, just about any kind of storage you can think of can be added to this file and automatically mounted. Even network shares from Windows servers can be added here.

For an example, here is the content of /etc/fstab on one of my servers:

# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID...