Linux with ubuntu server

Ubuntu server tutorial for beginners

Most people probably know of Ubuntu as a desktop operating system. But Ubuntu’s massive popularity and strong footing in the Linux community have allowed Canonical to produce a very viable server edition and still maintain their desktop release. Ubuntu Server is a great choice if you are looking for an operating system for your production servers such as web servers, database servers, file servers, etc. It is free, stable, scalable, and has optional support plans.

After downloading Ubuntu Server and installing the operating system, there is some initial setup and configuration that administrators should do. In this tutorial, we will guide you through some of the most common tasks that beginners should know about, so you can get your Ubuntu Server up and running smoothly.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to keep Ubuntu server up to date
• How to enable and secure SSH
• How to install and enable a firewall
• How to install necessary services
• How to enable the root user
• How to configure network settings

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions

Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Ubuntu Linux
Software	N/A
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions	# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Ubuntu server tutorial for beginners

Below we have outlined several major things for administrators to do when first getting started with Ubuntu Server.

Keep Ubuntu Server Up to Date

Security patches and critical updates are being released all of the time for Ubuntu and the installed applications or services. On a weekly basis, an administrator should check for and install updates by using the following commands:

$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt full-upgrade

NOTE
apt full-upgrade will also upgrade the system kernel (if an update is available) and will require a restart. If you want to update all packages except for the kernel, then just use apt upgrade instead.

Afterwards, you can remove the left over packages that Ubuntu no longer needs:

Enable and Secure SSH

SSH is the primary method of remote access and administration for Ubuntu Server. Using SSH to remotely log into Ubuntu Server will give you a command line terminal that you can fully access as if you were physically in front of the machine. This is a very convenient way to manage your server.

To install SSH server on Ubuntu Server:

$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install ssh

Afterwards, see our other tutorial on How to secure SSH best practices for different ways that you can harden your SSH service in order to keep unintended users and hackers from gaining entry to your system.

Install and Enable Firewall

It is best practice to block all incoming connections to your server, other than those on certain ports. For example, a web server may want to allow incoming connections on HTTP port 80, and HTTPS port 443, but then should block connection attempts that are trying to access other ports. The best way to do this on Ubuntu is with the ufw firewall.

$ sudo apt install ufw $ sudo apt enable ufw $ sudo apt start ufw

$ sudo ufw allow ssh $ sudo ufw allow http etc.

Install Necessary Services

Most servers only fulfill one purpose. For example, a web server hosts a web site. It would not be common practice to also use a web server as a file server or backup server. These are separate jobs that should be delegated to separate servers. With this in mind, what do you plan on doing with your server? Depending on the purpose of your server, you will need to install the pertinent services. Here are some examples:

Install a database (MariaDB / MySQL):

$ sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client $ sudo mysql_secure_installation

Install an Apache web server with PHP support:

$ sudo apt install apache2 php libapache2-mod-php

Install an NGINX web server:

Enable the Root User

This one is completely optional, but Ubuntu does not give the root account a password, and instead expects you to use a normal user account and gain administrator privileges through sudo . This convention is cumbersome for some administrators, so they may wish to enable direct access to the root account. Here is how to do it:

After giving the root account a password (make sure it is a very secure one) you can log in to the root acount through the usual method:

Configure Network Settings

Servers ordinarily have a reserved IP address. This makes your services always accessible at a predictable place. You can easily check your IP information on Ubuntu, or configure a static IP address, DNS info, default gateway, etc.

In case you need to configure a static IP address, check out our guide on Ubuntu Static IP configuration.

Closing Thoughts

In this tutorial, we saw how to get started with basic tasks on an Ubuntu Server Linux system. Ubuntu Server is easy to use and you can breeze through the installation to get up and running in no time, but the hints in our tutorial will give you a good starting point after the installation is done.

Related Linux Tutorials:

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Scale out with Ubuntu Server

Ubuntu Server brings economic and technical scalability to your datacentre, public or private. Whether you want to deploy an OpenStack cloud, a Kubernetes cluster or a 50,000-node render farm, Ubuntu Server delivers the best value scale-out performance available.

What’s new in Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS

• Supported by Canonical for 10 years until 2032
• Cloud images for AWS, Azure and GCP with hardening, compliance programmes, Kernel Livepatch and more with Ubuntu Pro
• Kafka, Grafana and Loki joined the growing portfolio of trusted OCI images, Ubuntu-based and maintained by Canonical
• OpenSSL 3.0 for modern, general-purpose cryptography and secure communication
• Native host and guest drivers for NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) software 14
• Network acceleration improvements with SmartNIC support in Netplan
• General support for GlusterFS, FRRouting and realmd/adcli under the Ubuntu main component
• Runs on all major architectures: x86-64, ARM v7, ARM64, POWER9/POWER10, IBM zSystems and LinuxONE (s390x) and RISC-V
• The latest long-term Linux 5.15 kernel for the recent hardware and security updates
• Updates to QEMU (v6.2), libvirt (v8.0), PHP (v8.1), Ruby (v3.0), GCC (V11.2), Python (v3.10.1), MySQL (v8.0.28), OpenLDAP (v.2.5.11), Samba 4.15.5

Performance and versatility

Agile, secure, deploy-anywhere technology for fast-moving companies

It doesn’t matter whether you want to deploy a NoSQL database, web farm or cloud. Certified by leading hardware OEMs and with comprehensive deployment tools, so you can get the most from your infrastructure.

Our regular release cycle means access to the latest and most performant open source. A lean initial installation along with integrated deployment and application modelling technologies make Ubuntu Server a great solution for simple deployment and management at scale.

Works with all your hardware and software

A release schedule you can depend on

Stay up-to-date with regular updates and upgrades

Long-term support (LTS) releases of Ubuntu Server receive standard security updates for around 2,500 packages in the Ubuntu Main repository for five years by default. Every six months, interim releases bring new features, while hardware enablement updates add support for the latest machines to all supported LTS releases. All Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure subscriptions include Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM) increasing the support life-cycle to up to 10 years.

Ubuntu Pro subscriptions expands security maintenance to over 30,000 packages for 10 years and provides optional, enteprise-grade phone and ticket support by Canonical.

Released	End of Life	Expanded security maintenance
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS	April 2022	April 2027
Ubuntu 21.10	October 2021	July 2022
Ubuntu 21.04	April 2021	January 2022
Ubuntu 20.10	October 2020	July 2021
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS	April 2020	April 2025	April 2030
Ubuntu 19.10	October 2019	July 2020
Ubuntu 19.04	April 2019	January 2020
Ubuntu 18.10	October 2018	July 2019
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS	April 2018	April 2023	April 2028
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS	April 2016	April 2021	April 2024
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS	April 2014	April 2019	April 2022
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS	April 2012	April 2017	April 2019
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS	April 2010	April 2015

Infrastructure and applications foundation

From public clouds to data centres to devices

Ubuntu is the most popular guest operating system on public clouds, the foundation for private cloud implementation and the platform of choice of developers according to the 2020 HackerEarth Developer Survey.

Multi-cloud orchestration

With the option of a command line or browser-based interface, Juju enables you to design and deploy entire workloads in just a few clicks. It works on public clouds like AWS and Microsoft Azure, private clouds built on OpenStack and even directly on bare metal, via MAAS.

MAAS — bare metal provisioning

MAAS is a time-saving provisioning system that makes it quick and easy to set up the physical hardware to deploy complex services, like Ubuntu’s OpenStack cloud infrastructure. Just plug in your servers, connect them to the network and let MAAS do the rest.

LXD — machine containers

Economics are directly tied to compute density. LXD, the Linux container hypervisor, merges the speed and density of containers with the manageability and security of traditional virtual machines.

Ubuntu Pro

Ubuntu Pro offers a single, per-node packaging of the most comprehensive software, hardening and security in the industry. With the Base OS, OpenStack, Kubernetes and Applications security maintanance included, Ubuntu Pro delivers everything you need to future-proof your data centre.

Furthermore, you can add support for the Base OS, Infrastructure and Applications.

Get in touch

Speak to our technical support team about your support requirements.

A thriving community

Exchange expertise and ideas with thousands of other IT professionals.

Want to talk to other Ubuntu users straightaway? Share ideas and get advice and help from our large, active community of IT professionals. As a community, we set high standards for friendliness and tolerance, we welcome your questions and contributions!

Download

Whether you want to configure a simple file server or build a fifty thousand-node cloud, you can rely on Ubuntu Server and its five years of guaranteed free upgrades.

Ubuntu Pro for business

Get professional support for Ubuntu Server from Canonical.

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