Installing Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS

Please note: This instruction was created for my personal use. Feel free to follow it, but I am not responsible for any problems or data loss!

Download the Ubuntun 12.04 Server LTS install CD from: http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/precise/ubuntu-12.04.4-server-amd64.iso. Check the MD5 sum by running md5sum on ubuntu-12.04.4-server-amd64.iso and compare the result to the MD5 sums at: http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/precise/MD5SUMS.

Boot from the install CD.

Select to boot in English and select Install Ubuntu Server.

• Use English to use during the installation
• Select Country: other; Europe; Netherlands
• Select Country Locale Settings: United States (en_US.UTF-8)
• Detect keyboard layout: No
• Country for the keyboard: English (US)
• Keyboard layout: English (US)
• Select the correct network interface to use for Internet access
• Enter the desired hostname
• Enter the full name for the user to be created
• Enter the new user username
• Enter the password for the new user (twice)
• Choose whether to encrypt the home directory
• A timezone has been select, based on your location. Check whether it is set correctly
• Select Manaul Partitioning
• You may be asked to create a new partition table on the disk, select: Yes
• Create a primary partition for the OS (/), using ext4 and enable the "noatime" option (under mount options), set the Bootable flag to On
• Create a primate partition for swap space (create a swap partition as large as the amount of memory you have)
• Write changes to disk: Yes
• Enter your proxy information to configure the Package Manager (when needed, otherwise, leave empty)
• Select: No automatic updates
• At the Software selection screen, select: OpenSSH server
• Wait for the installation to finish
• Install the GRUB bootloader to the master boot record: Yes
• Reboot the machine and remove the install CD

• Log in to the system using the user you created and become root using: sudo su -
• Set a password for the root user, using: passwd root. You should now be able to log in as root
• Check the network settings in /etc/network/interfaces. Activate any new interfaces by running: ifup
• Make sure root cannot log in via ssh by changing /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
  • PermitRootLogin without-password
  • This will disable logging in as root, via ssh, but it is still possible to log in as root using SSH public key authentication.
• Uncomment the following line in /etc/default/grub: GRUB_TERMINAL=console
• Update the GRUB configuration file by running: update-grub
• Edit /etc/rc.local and add the following line: /usr/bin/setterm -blank 0 This will prevent the screen from going black, which may be helpful in case of a kernel problem.
• Add the following line to the end of /etc/profile:

export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim

• uncomment the following line in /etc/vim/vimrc: set background=dark
• Disable console-setup by running: update-rc.d -f console-setup remove
• Change the following lines in /etc/default/console-setup:

FONTFACE=""
FONTSIZE=""

• Update the system by running: apt-get update && apt-get -u dist-upgrade
• Install a number of extra packages:

apt-get install iotop sysstat ntp iptraf apt-file

• Fetch the packages index for apt-file, by running: apt-file update
• Remove the following installed packages:

dpkg --purge bash-completion command-not-found command-not-found-data

• Reboot the system to activate all changes

-- Ivo van Geel - 12 Feb 2014