[ubuntu-za] Server Hosting

[Morgan Collett]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 22:20, Charl Wentzel
<charl.wentzel at vodamail.co.za> wrote:

> My only issue now is that their Ubuntu server images are "very bare".
> This makes is small and light-weight but with with some security
> implications.  The normal sudoers admin group is not installed and they
> are forcing you to use the root user instead.  This is quite a deviation
> from teh normal Ubuntu way.  Do they require this for some reason?

I don't use Linode, but our dedicated servers at Hetzner are installed
with no users set up, just root with ssh enabled. Perhaps that's the
way these companies are used to provisioning servers. First thing we
do is add users, then "adduser <username> admin" to give them sudo
access, then disable root ssh access.

Beware that if you disable root's account entirely on Hardy you can't
add new users because of this bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shadow/+bug/238755

I'm personally a fan of getting a bare server setup without any
services running (except like sshd) because I'd prefer to know exactly
what is running on the machine, and set things up as I need them. For
example, we use nginx on most sites not apache, so there's no point in
having apache installed.

Some years ago I ordered a bunch of servers from Dell in the US, and
selected RedHat to be preloaded (RH 6 or 7, I can't remember) because
then I'd know Debian ought to work... The servers arrived with a full
desktop installation of RedHat, complete with games.

Solitaire. On a rackmounted Dell 2450. I was going to wipe it anyway
but that's another reason I don't like getting servers with anything
preloaded that isn't necessary!

Regards
Morgan