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Ubuntu Server

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Download Installer

• New releases only support 64-bit systems
• Download the latest LTS release from https://releases.ubuntu.com
  • Select the Server install image after choosing a release
• Current server install image: https://releases.ubuntu.com/noble/ubuntu-24.04-live-server-amd64.iso

Installation

• Boot the installation media and wait for the installer to finish loading
• Proceed through the setup prompts until you reach the “Choose type of install” page
  • Leave Ubuntu Server selected
• Guided storage configuration
  • You can leave this at the default settings and then fix the hard disk later if you want
  • Otherwise you can specify that the install actually use the entire disk
  • Select Custom storage layout
  • Highlight Free space and press Enter
  • Select Add GPT Partition
  • Leave “Size” blank and select Create, this will use the entire disk properly
• Proceed through the setup prompts until you reach the “SSH Setup” page
  • Check Install OpenSSH server
• On the “Featured Server Snaps” page, leave everything unchecked and select Done
• Wait for the install to finish
• When the orange top bar reads “Install complete!”, select Reboot Now
• Press Enter to reboot the system
• Wait for the system to finish booting up and login
• Get the IP of your server using ip a and connect using putty or another SSH client

Updates

• Make a script that can be launched as ~/update-system.sh to install system updates

  echo 'sudo sh -c "export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive; apt update; apt upgrade -y; apt autoremove --purge -y;"' > $HOME/update-system.sh; chmod u+x $HOME/update-system.sh
  

• Make a script to cleanup old kernels when necessary

  echo 'bash -c "$(wget -qLO - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rockz1152/Ubuntu/main/kernel-clean.sh)"' > $HOME/kernel-clean.sh && chmod u+x $HOME/kernel-clean.sh
  

Timezone

• The timezone is set to Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, by default
• It needs to be localized after the install
  • We can do this by either running a command for a specific timezone
  • Or run an interactive prompt to select the timezone

Commands

• Eastern Standard Time

  sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York; echo $(timedatectl | grep "Time zone"); date
  

• Central Standard Time

  sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Chicago; echo $(timedatectl | grep "Time zone"); date
  

• Mountain Standard Time

  sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Denver; echo $(timedatectl | grep "Time zone"); date
  

• Arizona Time

  sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Phoenix; echo $(timedatectl | grep "Time zone"); date
  

• Pacific Standard Time

  sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Los_Angeles; echo $(timedatectl | grep "Time zone"); date
  

Interactive

• Or you can set the timezone interactively

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
  

Software Packages

Run the automated script

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rockz1152/Ubuntu/main/ubuntu_setup.sh | sudo /bin/bash

Manual steps for the script above

• Turn off Message-of-the-Day on login

  sudo sed -i 's/session    optional     pam_motd.so/# session    optional     pam_motd.so/g' /etc/pam.d/sshd
  sudo sed -i 's/PrintMotd yes/PrintMotd no/g' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  

• Disable “Ubuntu Pro” advertisement in apt

  sudo dpkg-divert --divert /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20apt-esm-hook.conf.bak --rename --local /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20apt-esm-hook.conf
  

• Remove unneeded server packages

  sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt autoremove --purge -y cloud-init multipath-tools snapd landscape-common; sudo rm -rf /etc/cloud
  

• Install package updates

  sudo apt update; sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt full-upgrade -y
  

• Install additional software packages

  sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt install -y ncdu zstd zip unzip p7zip-full unrar-free neofetch
  

• Install guest agents if you are running the server in a VM
  • VMWare

    sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt install -y open-vm-tools
    

  • Proxmox

    sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt install -y qemu-guest-agent
    

• Reboot server

  sudo reboot
  

Networking

• Run ip link first to retrieve the name of your network interface and make note of it
• Edit netplan’s config file

  sudo nano /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml
  

• Add the network configuration in YAML format as below:

  network:
    version: 2
    renderer: networkd
    ethernets:
      ens18:
        dhcp4: no
        addresses:
          - 192.168.0.XX/24
        nameservers:
          addresses: [1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8]
        routes:
          - to: default
            via: 192.168.0.1
  

  • *When editing Yaml files, make sure you follow the YAML code indent standards.
  • *If the syntax is not correct, the changes will not be applied.
• Be sure to update the following:
  • Under “ethernets” update ens18 with the name of your network interface
  • Under “addresses” update 192.168.0.XX with your preferred host IP address
  • Under “routes” update 192.168.0.1 to your default gateway
• Apply and verify the changes by running:

  sudo netplan apply; ip a
  

Disable IPv6 (Optional)

• Make the change in the GRUB config

  sudo sed -i 's!GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""!GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="ipv6.disable=1"!' /etc/default/grub
  

• Update GRUB and reboot

  sudo update-grub && sudo reboot
  

Cockpit (Optional)

• Cockpit allows you to manage the server through a web page
• For new users this may be a more friendly interface to manage their server with
• Install cockpit

  sudo apt install cockpit cockpit-pcp -y
  

• Cockpit requires NetworkManager to function properly so we’ll make the changes to use it

  sudo sed -i 's!renderer: networkd!renderer: NetworkManager!g' /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml
  

• Update services

  sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service
  sudo systemctl start NetworkManager.service
  sudo systemctl disable systemd-networkd.service
  sudo systemctl stop systemd-networkd.service
  

• Run netplan to check for errors

  sudo netplan apply
  

• Reboot the system

  sudo reboot
  

• Login and verify services

  systemctl status NetworkManager | grep Active:
  systemctl status systemd-networkd | grep Active:
  

• Login to your server using the web address: <Server IP>:9090

Release Upgrade

• Release upgrades are the process of upgrading Ubuntu to a newer version.
• Canonical, the company that maintains Ubuntu, has two update channels
  • Standard which releases a new version every 6 months
  • LTS (Long Term Support) which releases a new version every 2 years
  • LTS releases are recommended for server installs since they are supported for 5 years
• To perform a release upgrade, simply run this command

  sudo do-release-upgrade
  

• Follow the prompts, a restart is required at the end

Reclaim Disk Space

• If during the install you didn’t allocate the entire disk to the root partition and have no intention of using LVM snapshots or other features, you can reclaim the missing hard disk space

  sudo lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv
  

• Expand the filesystem

  sudo resize2fs /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv
  

• Verify free space with df -h