Mastering Ubuntu Server: Explore the versatile, powerful Linux Server distribution Ubuntu 22.04 with this comprehensive guide

Mastering Ubuntu Server

Fourth Edition

Explore the versatile, powerful Linux Server distribution Ubuntu 22.04 with this comprehensive guide

Jay LaCroix

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Mastering Ubuntu Server

Fourth Edition

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Contributors

About the author

Based in Michigan, Jay LaCroix is an educator and technologist, specializing in Linux. After a successful tech career, Jay recently stepped away from corporate IT in order to launch his own company, LearnLinuxTV. There, Jay has produced hundreds of Linux-related training videos that are viewed by a half million people per month on average. In addition, Jay also writes books on Linux, with this one being a recent example.

Outside of technology, Jay also enjoys retro-gaming and martial arts.

I would like to thank all of my readers and subscribers for making all of this possible. It’s an amazing honor that you’ve chosen me to lead you on your Linux journey! Also thanks to Tom Lawrence for encouraging me and giving me lots of advice. Last (but by no means least), thanks to my partner Alan, my sons, and all of my family and friends.

About the reviewers

Paride Legovini is a core Ubuntu developer, a Debian developer, and currently an Ubuntu Server software engineer at Canonical. He does packaging, Quality Assurance, and maintains the testing and continuous integration infrastructure of team-developed projects, like cloud-init and the Ubuntu Advantage tools, which includes automated integration testing done on all the major clouds. He has also joined the release engineering team for all the new Ubuntu releases since 2019, being responsible for the quality of Ubuntu Server.

His professional past is in academia, with an MSc in Physics, a Ph.D. in Geophysics, and his professional roles often been at the intersection between science and IT in different research institutions.

He spent 2014 in Antarctica, where he was in charge of maintenance and data acquisition, storage, backup, and transmission for several international scientific projects at the Concordia research station during the polar winter. The role leveraged Paride’s all-around tinkerer nature, sometimes requiring operating a power tool, a soldering iron, and a Unix shell, not necessarily in that order.

I would like to thank the Debian project for giving the world a universal operating system for anybody to run, study, modify, and share. Debian realized the promise that free software would empower people, and has had a significant impact on my life and career. Thanks also to Canonical for popularizing GNU/Linux and for allowing me to participate in this review, to Jay LaCroix for turning what is clearly genuine passion into such an enjoyable book, and to Packt for inviting me to be a reviewer.

Mario Splivalo’s amazement with computers started back when Commodore 64 dominated the user-space. He took his first steps using BASIC on his dad’s Commodore 64 before quickly shifting to assembler. He gradually moved to PCs where he discovered a great love for programming, systems design, and database administration. He switched to Linux (Knoppix, then Ubuntu) in the early 2000s and never looked back. He continued as a database administrator, programmer, and system administrator.

Mario spent five years with Canonical working mainly as an OpenStack engineer. It was a great experience that helped Mario to see how Ubuntu is created from the inside, and participate in its development.

Currently, Mario works as a consultant dealing with databases extending into modern cloud-based architectures.

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Contents

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Share your thoughts

Deploying Ubuntu Server

Technical requirements

Determining your server’s role

Choosing a device for our server

Physical server

Physical desktop

Laptop

Virtual machine

Virtual private server

Raspberry Pi

Obtaining installation media

Creating a bootable flash drive

Planning the partitioning layout

Installing Ubuntu Server

Installing Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi

Summary

Relevant tutorials

Managing Users and Permissions

Understanding the purpose of users and groups

Understanding when to use root

Using sudo to run privileged commands

Creating and removing users

Using useradd

Using adduser

Removing users

Understanding the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files

Understanding the /etc/passwd file

Understanding the /etc/shadow file

Distributing default configuration files with /etc/skel

Switching users

Managing groups

Managing passwords and password policies

Locking and unlocking user accounts

Setting password expiration information

Setting a password policy

Configuring administrator access with sudo

Setting permissions on files and directories

Viewing permissions

Changing permissions

Changing the ownership of objects

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Managing Software Packages

Understanding Linux package management

Understanding the differences between Debian and Snap packages

Debian packages

Snap packages

Installing and removing software

Managing Debian packages with apt

Managing Snap packages with snap

Searching for packages

Managing package repositories

Adding additional repositories

Adding Personal Package Archives

Backing up and restoring Debian packages

Cleaning up orphaned apt packages

Taking advantage of hardware enablement updates

Summary

Relevant video

Further reading

Navigating and Essential Commands

Learning essential Linux commands

Understanding the Linux filesystem layout

Viewing the contents of files

Viewing application log files

Summary

Relevant video

Further reading

Managing Files and Directories

Copying, moving, and renaming files and directories

Editing files with the Nano and Vim text editors

Editing with Nano

Editing with Vim

Input and output streams

Using symbolic and hard links

Summary

Relevant videos

Boosting Your Command-line Efficiency

Understanding the Linux shell

Understanding Bash history

Learning some useful command-line tricks

Understanding variables

Writing simple scripts

Putting it all together – Writing an rsync backup script

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Controlling and Managing Processes

Managing jobs

Understanding the ps command

Viewing running processes with ps

Configuring arguments to ps

Changing the priority of processes

Dealing with misbehaving processes

Managing system processes

Scheduling tasks with cron

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Monitoring System Resources

Viewing disk usage

Using df

Diving deeper into disk usage

Monitoring memory usage

Understanding server memory

Managing swap

Understanding load average

Viewing resource usage with htop

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Managing Storage Volumes

Adding additional storage volumes

Formatting and partitioning storage devices

Creating a partition

Formatting partitions

Mounting and unmounting volumes

Understanding the /etc/fstab file

Analyzing the contents of /etc/fstab

Adding to the /etc/fstab file

Backing up and restoring volumes

Utilizing LVM

Getting started with LVM

Formatting logical volumes

Removing volumes with LVM

Understanding LVM snapshots

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Connecting to Networks

Setting the hostname

Managing network interfaces

Assigning static IP addresses

Understanding Linux name resolution

Getting started with OpenSSH

Installing OpenSSH

Issuing commands with OpenSSH

Getting started with SSH key management

Generating public and private keys

Copying your public key to a remote server

Utilizing an SSH agent

Changing the passphrase of an OpenSSH key

Simplifying SSH connections with a config file

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Setting Up Network Services

Planning your IP address scheme

Setting up a DHCP server for serving IP addresses

Adding a DNS server

Setting up external DNS with bind

Setting up internal DNS and adding hosts

Setting up an internet gateway

Summary

Further reading

Sharing and Transferring Files

File server considerations

Sharing files with Windows users via Samba

Setting up NFS shares

Transferring files with rsync

Transferring files with SCP

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Managing Databases

Preparations for setting up a database server

Installing MariaDB

Understanding the MariaDB configuration files

Managing MariaDB databases

Setting up a secondary database server

Summary

Further reading

Serving Web Content

Installing and configuring Apache

Installing additional Apache modules

Securing Apache with TLS

Installing and configuring NGINX

Setting up and configuring Nextcloud

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Automating Server Configuration with Ansible

Understanding the need for configuration management

Why Ansible?

Creating a Git repository

Getting started with Ansible

Making your servers do your bidding

Setting up an inventory file and configuring Ansible settings

Configuring client servers

Putting it all together – automating web server deployment

Using Ansible’s pull method

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Virtualization

Prerequisites and considerations

Setting up a virtual machine server

Creating virtual machines

Bridging the virtual machine network

Simplifying virtual machine creation with cloning

Managing virtual machines via the command line

Summary

Relevant video

Further reading

Running Containers

What is containerization?

Understanding the differences between Docker and LXD

Installing Docker

Managing Docker containers

Automating Docker image creation with Dockerfiles

Managing LXD containers

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Container Orchestration

Container orchestration

Preparing a lab environment for Kubernetes testing

Utilizing MicroK8s

Installing MicroK8s on Linux

Installing MicroK8s on macOS

Installing MicroK8s on Windows

Interacting with MicroK8s

Setting up a Kubernetes cluster

Preliminary setup

Installing Kubernetes

Deploying containers via Kubernetes

Summary

Relevant videos

Further reading

Deploying Ubuntu in the Cloud

Understanding the difference between on-premises and cloud infrastructure

Important considerations when considering cloud computing as a potential solution

Becoming familiar with some basic AWS concepts

Creating an AWS account

Signing up for AWS

Implementing basic user security

Choosing a region

Deploying Ubuntu as an AWS EC2 instance

Setting up an IAM role for Session Manager

Creating an Ubuntu Server instance in AWS

Creating and deploying Ubuntu AMIs

Automatically scaling Ubuntu EC2 deployments with Auto Scaling

Creating a launch template

Creating an Auto Scaling group

Keeping costs down: understanding how to save money and make cost-effective decisions

Viewing billing information

Adding a billing alert

Removing unneeded backups

Running EC2 instances only when they’re needed

Stopping or terminating unneeded EC2 instances

Taking the cloud further: additional resources to grow your knowledge

Online training and labs

Certification

Keep experimenting and learning

AWS documentation

Summary

Further reading

Automating Cloud Deployments with Terraform

Why it’s important to automate your infrastructure

Introduction to Terraform and how it can fit within your workflow

Installing Terraform

Automating an EC2 instance deployment

Managing security groups with Terraform

Using Terraform to destroy unused resources

Combining Ansible with Terraform for a full deployment solution

Summary

Securing Your Server

Lowering your attack surface

Understanding and responding to CVEs

Installing security updates

Automatically installing patches with the Canonical Livepatch service

Securing OpenSSH

Installing and configuring Fail2ban

MariaDB best practices for secure database servers

Setting up a firewall

Encrypting and decrypting disks with LUKS

Locking down sudo

Summary

Further reading

Troubleshooting Ubuntu Servers

Evaluating the scope

Conducting a root cause analysis

Viewing system logs

Tracing network issues

Troubleshooting resource issues

Diagnosing defective RAM

Summary

Further reading

Preventing Disasters

Preventing disasters

Utilizing Git for configuration management

Implementing a backup plan

Utilizing bootable recovery media

Summary

Further reading

Other Books You May Enjoy

Index

Landmarks

Cover

Index

Preface

Linux is an exciting platform. You can literally find it everywhere—desktops, laptops, phones, embedded appliances, and especially servers. Linux servers power many famous technologies around the world, and have a massive presence in physical and cloud server environments. Linux servers are scalable, stable, and powerful.

Way back in 1991, a computer science student in Finland, named Linus Torvalds, created a kernel as a school project. He created the Linux kernel. And little did he know at the time, Linux would see us through some of the most exciting innovations in infrastructure design. Things like multicore processors, virtualization, containerization, and cloud computing (to name a few) have transformed data centers all over the world. And Linux has been a part of all of those advancements.

Ubuntu, a popular distribution of Linux, has been a major driving force in the adoption of Linux. Ever since its first release back in 2004, Ubuntu has made Linux more approachable for newcomers, while simultaneously offering powerful features to server administrators. Ubuntu can be found on notebooks and workstations, in addition to servers.

Ubuntu Server enables administrators to create efficient, flexible, and highly available servers that empower organizations with the power of open source. As Ubuntu administrators, we’re in good company—according to W3Techs, Ubuntu is the most widely deployed distribution on the web with regard to Linux. With the release of Ubuntu 22.04, this platform becomes even more exciting!

In this book, we will dive right into Ubuntu Server, and you will learn all the concepts needed to manage your servers and configure them to perform all kinds of neat tasks, such as serving web pages, managing virtual machines, running containers, automating configuration, sharing files with other users, and even running Ubuntu in the cloud.

We’ll start our journey with the first chapter, where we’ll walk through the installation of Ubuntu Server 22.04, which will serve as a foundation for the rest of the book. As we proceed through our journey, we’ll look at managing users, connecting to networks, and controlling processes. Later, we’ll implement important technologies, such as DHCP, DNS, Apache, MariaDB, and more. We’ll even set up our own Nextcloud server along the way.

Finally, the end of the book covers various things we can do to troubleshoot issues, as well as preventing and recovering from disasters.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for readers with intermediate or advanced-beginner Linux skills, who would like to learn all about setting up servers with Ubuntu Server. This book assumes that the reader knows the basics of Linux, such as editing configuration files and running basic commands. In addition, this book assumes a basic understanding of fundamental networking concepts, such as DHCP, DNS, IP Addresses, and so on. Also, this book assumes that the reader understands the purpose of basic network hardware, such as routers, switches, and similar hardware.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Deploying Ubuntu Server, covers the installation process for Ubuntu Server. This chapter walks you through creating bootable media and the installation process.

Chapter 2, Managing Users and Permissions, covers user management in full. Topics here will include creating and removing users, configuring password policies, and using the

sudo

command, as well as group management and switching from one user to another.

Chapter 3, Managing Software Packages, takes the reader through the process of searching for, installing, and managing packages. This will include managing APT repositories and installing packages, and even a look at Snap packages.

Chapter 4, Navigating and Essential Commands, teaches you the essential commands needed necessary for navigating through directory trees, viewing the contents of log files, and perusing log files.

Chapter 5, Managing Files and Directories, expands on the knowledge gained from the previous chapter and rounds out your toolset of essential commands by going over how to edit, copy, move, and rename files.

Chapter 6, Boosting Your Command-line Efficiency, goes over additional tips, tricks, and techniques to enhance the reader’s usage of the command line. Topics here include managing output, investigating Bash history, and more.

Chapter 7, Controlling and Managing Processes, teaches the reader how to manage what is running on the server, as well as how to stop misbehaving processes. This will include having a look at htop, systemd, and managing jobs.

Chapter 8, Monitoring System Resources, goes over how to manage valuable system resources on your server, such as viewing disk and memory usage, as well as understanding load average and how it impacts your CPU.

Chapter 9, Managing Storage Volumes, takes a look at storage volumes. You’ll be shown how to view disk usage, format volumes, manage the

/etc/fstab

file, use LVM, and more. In addition, we’ll look at managing swap.

Chapter 10, Connecting to Networks, takes a look at networking in Ubuntu, specifically how to connect to resources from other nodes. We’ll look at assigning IP addresses, connecting to other nodes via OpenSSH, and name resolution.

Chapter 11, Setting Up Network Services, revisits networking with more advanced concepts. In this chapter, the reader will learn more about the technologies that glue our network together, such as DHCP and DNS. The reader will set up their own DHCP and DNS server, as well as installing NTP.

Chapter 12, Sharing and Transferring Files, is all about sharing files with others. Concepts will include the setup of Samba and NFS network shares, and we will even go over transferring files manually with

rsync

and

scp

.

Chapter 13, Managing Databases, takes the reader through the journey of setting up and managing databases via MariaDB. The reader will learn how to install MariaDB, how to set up databases, and how to create a secondary database server.

Chapter 14, Serving Web Content, takes a look at serving content with Apache. In addition, the reader will be shown how to secure Apache with an SSL certificate, manage modules, and even set up a Nextcloud server by the end of the chapter.

Chapter 15, Automating Server Configuration with Ansible, will show the reader how to set up a Git repository for holding configuration management scripts, how to use the powerful Ansible tool to automate common administrative tasks, and also how to use

ansible-pull

.

Chapter 16, Virtualization, is all about virtualization (unsurprisingly!). The reader will be walked through setting up their very own KVM installation, as well as how to manage virtual machines with virt-manager.

Chapter 17, Running Containers, discusses the subject of containers and shows the reader how to manage containers in both Docker and LXD.

Chapter 18, Container Orchestration, teaches you how to take containers to the next level and manage them with the power of Kubernetes. You’ll not only learn how to install Micro K8s, but also how to build your very own Kubernetes cluster from scratch.

Chapter 19, Deploying Ubuntu in the Cloud, shows you how to spin up Ubuntu servers in the cloud, with an introduction to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Chapter 20, Automating Cloud Deployments with Terraform, goes over the process of automating the process of building cloud infrastructure using Terraform.

Chapter 21, Securing Your Server, takes a look at various things the reader can do to strengthen security on Ubuntu servers. Topics will include lowering the attack surface, securing OpenSSH, setting up a firewall, and more.

Chapter 22, Troubleshooting Ubuntu Servers, consists of topics relating to things we can do when our deployments don’t go according to plan. The reader will also investigate the problem space, view system logs, and trace network issues.

Chapter 23, Preventing Disasters, informs the reader of various strategies that can be used to prevent and recover from disasters. This includes a look at utilizing Git for configuration management, implementing a backup plan, and more.

To get the most out of this book

This book is for readers who already have some experience with Linux, though it doesn’t necessarily have to be with Ubuntu. Preferably, the reader will understand basic Linux command-line skills, such as changing directories, listing contents, and issuing commands as regular users or with root. It’s also preferred that the reader understands foundational networking concepts, such as the purpose of things like DHCP, DNS, as well as IP addressing. Even if you feel as though you need a refresher, you should read this book anyway—the opening chapters will cover many of these concepts.

In this book, we’ll take a look at real-world situations in which we can deploy Ubuntu Server. This will include the installation process, serving web pages, setting up databases, and much more. Specifically, the goal here is to be productive. Each chapter will teach the reader a new and valuable concept, using practical examples that are relative to real organizations. Basically, we focus on getting things done, rather than focusing primarily on theory. Although the theory that goes into Linux and its many distributions is certainly interesting, the goal here is to get you to the point where if a work colleague or client asks you to perform work on an Ubuntu-based server, you’ll be in a good position to get the task done. Therefore, if your goal is to get up and running with Ubuntu Server and learn the concepts that really matter, this book is definitely for you.

To follow along, you’ll either need a server on which to install Ubuntu Server, a virtual Ubuntu instance from a cloud provider, or a laptop or desktop capable of running at least one virtual machine.

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1

Deploying Ubuntu Server

Ubuntu Server is an extremely powerful distribution of Linux for servers and network appliances. Whether you’re setting up a high-end database or a small office file server, the flexible nature of Ubuntu Server will meet and surpass your needs. In this book, we’ll walk through all the common use cases to help you get the most out of this exciting platform. Ubuntu Server features a perfect mix of modern development frameworks and rock-solid stability, and its hardware support enables it to be installed on the latest server hardware.

In this chapter, I’ll guide you through the process of deploying Ubuntu Server from start to finish. We’ll begin with some discussion of best practices, and then we’ll obtain the software and create our installation media. Next, I’ll give you a step-by-step rundown of the entire installation procedure. By the end of this chapter, you’ll have an Ubuntu Server installation of your own to use throughout the remainder of this book. In addition, since Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu) now offers official support for Raspberry Pi, we’ll look at the process of setting that up as well.

In this chapter, we will cover:

Technical requirements

Determining your server’s role

Choosing a device for our server

Obtaining installation media

Creating a bootable flash drive

Installing Ubuntu Server

Installing Ubuntu Server on a Raspberry Pi

To get started, we’ll first take a look at some of the technical requirements for deploying a server with Ubuntu.

Technical requirements

To follow along with the examples in this book, you’ll need an Ubuntu Server installation to work with. In general, the following specifications are the estimated minimums to successfully install Ubuntu Server:

64-bit CPU

1 GB RAM

10-GB hard disk (16 GB or more is recommended)

64-bit CPU support is now a requirement, with the only exception being the Raspberry Pi version. This is because Canonical no longer makes versions of Ubuntu available for 32-bit PC and server processors. While this may seem like a downside, all computers sold today support 64-bit operating systems, and consumer CPUs have been 64-bit capable since at least 2003. Even if you have an older PC lying around that you don’t think is capable of running a 64-bit operating system, you’d be surprised—even the later models of the Pentium IV (which is quite old) support this, so this requirement shouldn’t be hard to meet. Don’t worry about the particulars of this right now, we’ll go through the requirements in more detail later on in this chapter.

Now that we understand the technical requirements of Ubuntu Server, let’s consider the role our server will play in our organization.

Determining your server’s role

You’re excited to set up an Ubuntu Server installation so you can follow along with the examples contained in this book. It is also important to understand how a typical server rollout is performed in the real world. Every server must have a purpose, or role. This role could be that of a database server, web server, file server, and so on. In a nutshell, the role is the value the server adds to you or your organization. Sometimes, servers may be implemented solely for the purpose of testing experimental code. And this is important too—having a test environment is a very common (and worthwhile) practice.

Once you understand the role your server plays within your organization, you can plan for its implementation. Is the system mission critical? How would it affect your organization if for some reason this server malfunctioned? Depending on the answer to this question, you may only need to set up a single server for this task, or you may wish to plan for redundancy such that the server doesn’t become a central point of failure. An example of this may be a DNS server, which would affect your colleagues’ ability to resolve local hostnames and access required resources. It may make sense to add a second DNS server to take over in the event that the primary server becomes unavailable for some reason.

Another item to consider is how confidential the data residing on a server is going to be for your environment. This directly relates to the installation procedure we’re about to perform, because you will be asked whether or not you’d like to utilize encryption. The encryption that Ubuntu Server offers during installation is known as encryption at rest, which refers to the data stored within the internal storage volumes on that server. If your server is destined to store confidential data (accounting information, credit card numbers, employee or client records, and so on), you may want to consider making use of this option.

Encrypting your hard disks is a really good idea to prevent miscreants with local access from stealing data. As long as the attacker doesn’t have your encryption key, they cannot steal this confidential information. However, it’s worth mentioning that anyone with physical access can easily destroy data (encrypted or not), so remember to keep your server room locked!

At this point in the book, I’m definitely not asking you to create a detailed implementation diagram or anything like that, but instead to keep in mind some concepts that should always be part of the conversation when setting up a new server. It needs to have a reason to exist, it should be understood how critical and confidential the server’s data will be, and the server should then be set up accordingly. Once you practice these concepts as well as the installation procedure, you can make up your own server roll-out plan to use within your organization going forward. All in all, understanding the purpose of each component in your infrastructure is a great mindset to adopt.

At this point, we now understand how we might identify a role for our server and how it will fit into our organization. In the next section, we’ll take a look at the process of actually installing Ubuntu Server, so we will have at least one test machine to use for the examples in this book.

Choosing a device for our server

I bet you’re excited to set up your very own installation of Ubuntu Server and dive in. But before we can do that, we have to decide what to actually install it on. For the purposes of this book, there isn’t a specific requirement in terms of hardware. You just need an Ubuntu Server installation of some sort, and it wouldn’t hurt to set up multiple servers if you can—you don’t need them all to be on the same device type. Having multiple servers will help you experiment with networking when we get to that point later on in the book. But for now, it’s only a matter of utilizing whatever you have at your disposal to get an Ubuntu installation going.

In particular, the following list includes the most common devices you can consider for your Ubuntu Server installation:

Physical server

Physical desktop

Laptop

Virtual machine

Virtual private server

Raspberry Pi

Let’s take a look at each of these options in more detail.

Physical server

Nowadays, it’s very easy to find used physical servers for an affordable price. Dell PowerEdge is a very common model, and the R610 and R710 specifically are good choices that are readily available second. These servers are commonly made available in the reseller market after companies upgrade to newer models. The R610 and R710 are a bit old, but their specs are still great for testing purposes. If you’re able to find a newer model (such as the R720) for a reasonable price, even better.

The downside with physical servers is that they take up a lot of room and can often be power-hungry (and noisy). Make sure to shut them down when not in use and look into the cost of electric services in your area—these servers can be very cheap to run or very expensive, depending on your electricity rates.

Physical desktop

If you don’t have access to a physical server, you might consider running Ubuntu Server on a desktop. It’s common for some computer users to hang onto their older PC after upgrading to something new and shiny. So rather than let your old desktop collect dust, why not put it to work? Sure, your older computer may not run today’s high-end games, but that doesn’t matter for our purposes. Ubuntu Server runs very well, even on older hardware. In fact, it’s quite common for home learners to use small form factor PCs, such as the Intel NUC, for this purpose. In addition, using a physical desktop has some advantages over physical servers as well. They often use much less power than server hardware, and they also tend to produce less noise.

When it comes to production servers (installations of Ubuntu Server for use within your organization), desktops are typically not a good pick. Depending on the model, actual server hardware might have additional hardware and features that might not be present with a desktop. For example, true server builds often feature true hardware RAID, Error Correction Code (ECC) memory, multiple processors, and more. Although a desktop tower typically lacks those features, if you install Ubuntu Server on your old PC it’s every bit as valid a server as an actual server chassis would be – though it wouldn’t scale well in a data center. Since we’re just learning though, that doesn’t matter for us for our current use-case.

Laptop

Another option worth considering is to install Ubuntu Server on a laptop. If you have an older laptop lying around that you’re no longer using, it might be a great option for learning Ubuntu Server. If you do decide to use a laptop for this purpose, then the same factors will apply to this as I wrote regarding using a desktop.

However, the reason I decided to give laptops their own section here is because there are some additional benefits with these that you can take advantage of. With a real data center server rack, you’ll typically have access to a Keyboard, Video, and Mouse (KVM). This might mean that you could have a physical monitor, keyboard, and mouse attached to the server, or a special device with all three built in. Servers within data centers will also have an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) that will keep them running for a time, even when your power goes out.

When it comes to a laptop, it has those same features. Laptops have a built-in keyboard, mouse, and display. If the battery that’s installed in the laptop works, then you have a UPS as well. For those reasons, a laptop might even have an advantage over desktops overall.

However, just like desktop computers, laptops aren’t generally acceptable for use in an actual data center. For our use-case though, we only need one or more installations of Ubuntu Server for going through the examples in this book. And for that purpose, dedicating any computers you’re not currently using would be more than adequate.

Virtual machine

If you don’t have access to a physical machine, you might consider a Virtual Machine (VM). Most computers sold nowadays support the ability to run VMs. VirtualBox is a great solution, as it’s easy to use and available for all of the major operating systems. Just like Ubuntu itself, VirtualBox is available for free, so it’s typically the lowest-cost entry-point for getting started. Also, VirtualBox allows you to easily create snapshots of your Ubuntu installation, so you can create a point-in-time backup before going through an example in this book, and then restore it to repeat tasks as often as you’d like. The ability to utilize snapshots alone makes a VM especially attractive for our needs.

The downside to VirtualBox is that you’ll need to be able to dedicate at least 1 GB of RAM to your Ubuntu Server VM, and your CPU will need to support virtualization extensions, which you’ll need to enable in your computer’s settings if your device supports it.

VirtualBox can be downloaded here: https://www.virtualbox.org.

Virtual private server

Services such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Linode, Microsoft Azure, Digital Ocean, and others allow you to set up Ubuntu Server in the cloud for you to connect to and manage via OpenSSH. Choosing the Virtual Private Server (VPS) option has some benefits; you don’t need to find room for a large physical server, and you don’t need to worry about power usage either. Another benefit is that you won’t even need to go through the installation process in this chapter at all; the cloud provider will do that for you when you choose to deploy Ubuntu Server on their platform. The main downside, though, is that VPS instances are not free—you’ll need to look at the costs associated with running Ubuntu on such a server and decide if that cost makes sense. Some VPS services allow you to set up instances for as little as $5 USD per month, which can be lower than the cost of the electricity needed to run a physical server in some areas.

Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi units are quickly becoming a user favorite for server use cases. They are inexpensive (some models are available for less than $40 USD) and they also use very minimal electricity—you can leave them powered on 24/7 with a virtually unnoticeable difference in your power bill. In fact, they use about as much power as it takes to charge a high-end cellphone. Another benefit is that a Raspberry Pi is generally going to be more powerful than an entry-level VPS. The cheapest VPS instances typically have just 1 CPU core and 1 GB of RAM, but modern Raspberry Pis are produced with quad-core CPUs, as well as 2 GB, 4 GB, or 8 GB of RAM depending on which model you purchase. This means that a Raspberry Pi can possibly perform better than cheaper VPS instances. The downside to Raspberry Pi is that some applications are unavailable, since they utilize ARM CPUs instead of x86. This means that some examples in this book will not work on a Pi (although the majority will).

Once you’ve chosen a device to install Ubuntu Server on, we can continue. If you chose to utilize a VPS, you can move on to the next chapter, Chapter 2, Managing Users and Permissions, as you won’t need to walk through the installation process. In the case of the Raspberry Pi, if that’s your chosen platform, you can skip to the end of this chapter for a dedicated section about setting that up. For all other devices, continue reading for a walk-through for the Ubuntu Server Live Installer.

Obtaining installation media

It’s time to get started! If you’ve decided to utilize a physical server, desktop, laptop, or VM as your test server, then you’ll need to go through the installation process to set up Ubuntu. Don’t worry—it’s very easy to do and it might even be easier than you’d think, as there are fewer overall steps in the process when compared to older versions. If you’ve instead opted to use a VPS or Raspberry Pi, you won’t need to go through this process, as VPS providers do this for you and Raspberry Pi has a different setup method altogether (we’ll cover this later in the chapter, in the Installing Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi section).

Assuming that you’ve decided to use a device that does require going through the installer, we’ll need to download Ubuntu Server and then create bootable installation media to install it. How you do this largely depends on your hardware. Does your device have an optical drive? Is it able to boot from USB? Refer to the documentation for your device to find out.

It’s recommended to utilize a flash drive for the installation if you can, preferably one that uses USB 3.0 or higher since you’d benefit from its faster speed compared to USB 2.0. The reason for the preference for using a flash drive is due to the fact that they are typically faster than a DVD.

However, if your device is older, you won’t have a choice, as legacy devices are not able to boot from USB at all. As a general rule, use a flash drive if you can and opt for a DVD only if you have no choice.

In the past, Ubuntu Server ISO images could be used to create either a bootable CD or DVD. Nowadays, writable CDs don’t have enough space to support the download size. Therefore, if you choose to burn to bootable optical media, you’ll need a writable DVD at a minimum.

Unfortunately, the differing age of servers within a typical data center introduces some unpredictability when it comes to how to boot installation media. When I first started with servers, it was commonplace for all standard rack servers to contain a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, and some of the better ones even contained an optical drive. Nowadays, servers typically contain neither. If a server does have an optical drive, it could potentially go unused for an extended period of time and become faulty without anyone knowing until the next time someone goes to use it. Some servers boot from USB, others don’t. To continue, check the documentation for your hardware and plan accordingly. Your server’s capabilities will determine which kind of media you’ll need to create.

Regardless of whether we plan on creating a bootable USB or DVD, we only need to download a single file. Navigate to the following site in your web browser to get started: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server.

From this page, we’re going to download Ubuntu 22.04 LTS by clicking on the Option 2 – Manual server installation button:

Figure 1.1: Ubuntu Server 22.04 download page

Next, you’ll be offered one or more versions of Ubuntu Server for download:

Figure 1.2: Revealing Ubuntu Server 22.04 download options

As of the time this chapter was being written, Ubuntu Server 22.04 is the latest version, and is shown as the primary download option. There may be other versions of Ubuntu Server listed on this page, such as 22.10 and 23.04, depending on when you’re reading this. New releases of Ubuntu are published every six months. However, this book only covers the Long Term Support (LTS) release, due to the fact that it benefits from five years of support.

By comparison, non-LTS versions (or interim releases) are only supported for nine months and are therefore not an appropriate choice for production servers. Organizations don’t typically utilize non-LTS releases at all, except for testing upcoming features prior to general availability, so for our purposes, we’ll stick with the LTS version. Once the download is completed, we’ll end up with an ISO image we can use to create our bootable installation media.

If you’re setting up a VM, then the ISO file you download from the Ubuntu downloads page will be all you need; you won’t need to create a bootable DVD or flash drive. In that scenario, all you should need to do is create a VM, attach the ISO to the virtual optical drive, and boot it. From there, the installer should start, and you can proceed with the installation procedure outlined later in this chapter, in the Installing Ubuntu Server section. Going over the process of booting an ISO image on a VM differs from one virtualization solution to another, so detailing the process with each would be a very difficult task. Thankfully, the process is usually straightforward and you can find the details within the documentation of your hypervisor. In most cases, the process is as simple as attaching the downloaded ISO image to the VM and then starting it up.

If your device does not support booting from USB and you find yourself needing to create a bootable DVD, the process is typically just a matter of downloading the ISO file and then right-clicking on it. In the right-click menu of your operating system, you should have an option to burn to disk or some similar verbiage. This is true of Windows, as well as most graphical desktop environments of Linux where a disk-burning application is installed.

The exact procedure differs from system to system, mainly because there is a vast amount of software combinations at play here. For example, I’ve seen many Windows systems where the right-click option to burn a DVD was removed by an installed CD/DVD-burning application. In that case, you’d have to first open your CD/DVD-burning application and find the option to create media from a downloaded ISO file. As much as I would love to outline the complete process here, no two Windows PCs typically ship with the same CD/DVD-burning application. The best rule of thumb is to try right-clicking on the file to see whether the option is there, and, if not, refer to the documentation for your application. Keep in mind that a data disk is not what you want, so make sure to look for the option to create media from an ISO image or your disk will be useless for our purpose.

At this point, you should have an Ubuntu Server ISO image file downloaded. If you are planning on using a DVD to install Ubuntu, you should have that created as well. In the next section, I’ll outline the process of creating a bootable flash drive that can be used to install Ubuntu Server.

Creating a bootable flash drive

The process of creating a bootable USB flash drive with which to install Ubuntu used to vary greatly between platforms. The steps were very different depending on whether your workstation or laptop was currently running Linux, Windows, or macOS. Thankfully, a much simpler method has come about. Nowadays, I recommend the use of Etcher to create your bootable media. Etcher is fantastic in that it abstracts the method such that it is the same regardless of which operating system you use, and it distills the process to its most simple form.

Another feature I like is that Etcher is safe; it prevents you from destroying your current operating system in the process of mastering your bootable media. In the past, you’d use tools like the

dd

command on Linux to write an ISO file to a flash drive. However, if you set up the

dd

command incorrectly, you could effectively write the ISO file over your current operating system and wipe your entire hard drive. Etcher doesn’t let you do that.

Before continuing, you’ll need a USB flash drive that is either empty or one you don’t mind wiping. This process will completely erase its contents, so make sure the device doesn’t have information on it that you might need. The flash drive should be at least 2 GB or larger. Considering it’s difficult to find a flash drive for sale with less than 4 GB of space nowadays, this should be relatively easy to obtain.

To get started, head on over to https://www.balena.io/etcher/, download the latest version of the application from their site, and open it up. The window will look similar to the following screenshot once it launches:

Figure 1.3: Utilizing Etcher to create a bootable flash drive

At this point, click Flash from file, which will open up a new window that will allow you to select the ISO file you downloaded earlier. Once you select the ISO, click on Open:

Figure 1.4: Selecting an ISO image with Etcher

If your flash drive is already inserted into the computer, Etcher should automatically detect it. In the event that you have more than one flash drive attached, or Etcher selects the wrong one, you can click Change and select the flash drive you wish to use:

Figure 1.5: Selecting a different flash drive with Etcher

Finally, click Continue to get the process started. At this point, the flash drive will be converted into Ubuntu Server installation media that can then be used to start the installation process:

Figure 1.6: Etcher in the process of writing a flash drive

After a few minutes (the length of time varies depending on your hardware), the Flashing process will complete, and you’ll be able to continue and get some installations going. Before we get into that, though, we should have a quick discussion regarding partitioning.

Planning the partitioning layout

Partitioning your disk allows you to divide up your hard disk to dedicate specific storage allocations to individual applications or purposes. For example, you can dedicate a partition for the files that are shared by your Apache web server so changes to other partitions won’t affect it. You can even dedicate a partition for your network file shares—the possibilities are endless. Each partition is mounted (attached) to a specific directory, and any files sent to that directory are thereby sent to that separate partition. The names you create for the directories where your partitions are mounted are arbitrary; it really doesn’t matter what you call them. The flexible nature of storage on Linux systems allows you to be creative with your partitioning as well as your directory naming, since the Linux filesystem gives you more flexibility when it comes to mounting storage devices in specific folders.

Admittedly, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. After all, we’re only just getting started and the point of this chapter is to help you set up a basic Ubuntu Server installation to serve as the foundation for the rest of the chapter. When going through the installation process, we’ll accept the defaults anyway. However, the goal of this section is to give you examples of the options you have for consideration later. At some point, you may want to get creative and play around with the partition layout.

With custom partitioning, you’re able to do some very clever things. For example, with the right configuration, you’ll be able to wipe and reload your distribution while preserving user data, logs, and more. This works because Ubuntu Server allows you to carve up your storage any way you want during installation. If you already have a partition with data on it, you can choose to leave it as is so you can carry it forward into a new install. You simply set the directory path where it’s mounted to be the same as before, restore your configuration files, and your applications will continue working as if nothing happened.

One very common example of custom partitioning in the real world is separating the

/home

directory into its own partition. Since this is where users typically store their files, you can set up your server such that a reload of the distribution won’t disturb their files. When they log in after a server refresh, all their files will be right where they left them. You could even place the files shared by your Apache web server on to their own partition and preserve those too. You can get very creative here.

It probably goes without saying, but when reinstalling Ubuntu, you should back up partitions that have data you don’t want to be wiped (even if you don’t plan on formatting the partitions). The reason being, one wrong move (literally a single checkbox) and you can easily wipe out all the data on that partition. Always back up your data when refreshing a server.

Another reason to utilize separate partitions may be to simply create boundaries or restrictions. If you have an application running on your server that is prone to filling up large amounts of storage, you can point that application to its own partition, limited by size. An example of where this could be useful is an application’s log files. Log files are the bane of any system administrator’s life when it comes to storage.

While helpful if you’re trying to figure out why something crashed, logs can fill up a hard disk very quickly if you’re not careful. In my experience, servers have been known to come to a screeching halt due to log files filling up all the available free space on a server where everything was on a single partition. The only boundary the application had was the entirety of the disk itself.

While there are certainly better ways of handling excessive logging (log rotating, disk quotas, and so on), a separate partition would certainly help. If the application’s log directory was on its own partition, it would be able to fill up that partition, but not the entire drive, which would cause issues but wouldn’t affect the entire server. As an administrator, it’s up to you to weigh the pros and the cons of these strategies to avoid server overload and develop a partitioning scheme that will best serve the needs of your organization.

Success when maintaining a server is a matter of efficiently managing resources, users, and security—a good partitioning scheme is certainly part of that. Sometimes it’s just a matter of making things easier on yourself so that you have less work to do should you need to reload your operating system. For the sake of following along with this book, it really doesn’t matter how you install or partition Ubuntu Server. The trick is simply to get it installed—you can always practice partitioning later. After all, part of learning is setting up a platform, observing any issues that may occur, and then fixing it up.

Here are some basic tips regarding partitioning:

At a minimum, a partition for the root filesystem (designated by a forward slash) is required.

The

/var

directory contains most log files and is therefore a good candidate for separation for the reasons mentioned previously in this section.

The

/home

directory stores all user files. Separating this into a separate partition can be beneficial as it gives you the possibility of having your user files survive a reinstall of Ubuntu.

If you’ve used Linux before, you may be familiar with the concept of a swap partition, which is a special partition that can act as RAM when your memory becomes full. This is no longer necessary—a swap file will be created automatically in newer Ubuntu releases.

When we perform our installation in the next section, we’ll choose the defaults for the partitioning scheme to get you started quickly. However, I recommend you come back to the installation process at some point in the future and experiment with it. You may come up with some clever ways to split up your storage. However, you don’t have to—having everything in one partition is fine too, depending on your needs.

Now that we have an understanding of what partitioning is, we should have all of the essential topics covered to enable us to actually get the installation of Ubuntu Server going. Let’s go ahead and work on that now.

Installing Ubuntu Server

At this point, we should be ready to get an installation of Ubuntu Server going. In the steps that follow, I’ll walk you through the process.

To get started, all you should need to do is insert the installation media into your server or device and follow the onscreen instructions to open the boot menu. The key you press at the beginning of the POST process differs from one machine to another, but it’s quite often F10, F11, or F12. Refer to your documentation if you are unsure, though most computers and servers tell you which key to press at the beginning. You may miss this window of opportunity the first few times, and that’s fine—to this day I still seem to need to restart the machine once or twice to hit the key in time.

Once you successfully boot your device while using your Ubuntu Server installation media, navigating the installer is relatively straightforward. You simply use the arrow keys to move up and down to select different options, and press Enter to confirm choices. The Esc key will allow you to exit from a sub-menu. Moving around within the installer is pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Once the installer starts, you’ll see the first of many selection screens. The first option, Ubuntu Server, allows you to start the Ubuntu Server installer. The second option, Test memory, runs a special program that helps you determine if you have any physical defects with the RAM modules installed inside your device. I always recommend testing the memory of your device once per year at least, and especially before you install an operating system for the first time. Memory issues can be rare, but you’d be surprised. It might be a good idea to test your memory just to be safe.

If you wish to test the memory of your device, you can go ahead and do so. In order to move on though, we’ll need to choose the Ubuntu Server option in order to start the installer:

Figure 1.7: The initial boot screen for the Ubuntu Server installation media

Next, you’ll see a screen allowing you to select your language as in the following screenshot:

Figure 1.8: Language selection at the beginning of the installation process

If your language is anything other than English, you’ll be able to select that here. Once you’re satisfied with the chosen keyboard layout, you continue by selecting Done at the bottom of the screen.

After choosing your language, you’ll be brought to a screen that enables you to set your Keyboard configuration. If the proper keyboard layout wasn’t automatically selected, you can change it here.

Figure 1.9: Setting the layout of your keyboard

Next, we’ll see an option to install Ubuntu Server, or Ubuntu Server (minimized). For this, we’ll choose the first option. Choosing to install a minimized version of Ubuntu Server might be a good fit for creating smaller installations, however for this book, we’re going to focus on the normal installation type.

Figure 1.10: Choosing your installation type

Next, the Ubuntu Server installer will attempt to automatically detect the appropriate parameters for your network card. By default, it should detect the appropriate settings via Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP). We’ll go over DHCP in a future chapter, specifically Chapter 11, Setting Up Network Services. For now, the defaults should be fine. Select Done