Ubuntu Server Tips

[Mark van Harmelen]

Hi there

Dave Walker wrote:
> ...  Personally i'm finding it quite
> tricky to think of things that perhaps a novice server user would find
> useful, and i suspect the rest of you will agree.  Many of the tips seem
> "obvious", until you actually think about them.

Some thoughts to try and grow the collection from a onetime unix user,
not an ubuntu server user follow

Are there things that experienced server users can remember as being
perplexing 'how do I do that?' problems from earlier in their career?
Perhaps things that have a short 'use this' answer.

Here are some suggestions for hints, and maybe the grouping I've done
might be useful, eg 'what advice can i give in that category?',
'what's the lifesaver do I use in this area of server use?' (with a
when/what for scenario), 'what's missed out under that section?',
'what other kinds of sections are there?'

-networking-
how to set server, DNS gateway IP address explicitly,
turn dhcp on/off
run a dhcp service
add a second network interface
comment at https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu-server-tips/+bug/414618
ssh, scp

-web server-
starting and stopping apache

-storage-
add a drive, exercise it for a few days, and then check it (is this
paranoid?I think not)
know about drive naming conventions
encounter an already setup server, and identify the mount points that
the physical drives use
using an iscsi device
mounting nas

-startup-
ubuntu rc files or whatever it uses, where to find them (does a noob
serv usr have to know this?)
controlling what processes start at startup

-process termination, shutdown, reboot-
ps and kill
init
clean shutdown and reboot

-backup-
do you guys use dd? how?
use of tar, why and how

-system runtime characteristics, performance-
monitor cpu use, physical and virtual memory use, paging
detect bottlenecks of various kinds (Ok maybe a bit specialist here :)
I dont know)

-when setting up other ubuntu servers-
if a manual partitioning is being done, what is good partitionwise, eg
with respect to later backup regime, the paging partition size (cf
recent thread on this list)
how to add a wndow manager to ub srv, I have fond its easier to add
apache, php, mysql to a workstation image


-resources to help-
hardware compatibility resources
forums, this list and their respective purposes
any wikis


-shell techniques-
I'll do one on execute a command or pipeline on found files using
(sudo) find -exec, how to check what commands will run before doing
this
there is some way of  watching additions to a log file live, I seem to recall
man, apropos (if ubuntu has this), which

-subsystems-
easiest way to set up a mail service for programs which use email
programmatically

-security/hardening-
some ppl run servers on than sanitary networks

OK that's all I can think of, maybe there are more categories
regards
mark