Dec
24
(2006)
For a project I’m involved with, we’re setting up a shiny new server to handle hosting of lots (and lots) of Drupal sites in a shared hosting environment. We were able to pick up a decently speced Dell PowerEdge 2950 at a really good price. Dell wanted a tonne of cash to pre-install RedHat on the box. Um, no thanks. So, our friendly neighbourhood colocation provider installed Ubuntu Server on the box for me (I’m about 1000 km from the server, so couldn’t actually do the physical install myself). The PowerEdge is a 2xdual core Xeon, similarly speced as the new Xeon XServes, but not as nicely packaged. This one requires 2U of rackspace, where the XServe is shoehorned into a single 1U slot.
We hit a minor snag with the configuration - the onboard NICs weren’t properly lighting up. Some quick Googling, and I believe the solution was found in this thread, and involved running this:
chroot /target
# fix initrd
echo megaraid_sas >> /etc/mkinitramfs/modules
cp /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-amd64-server /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-amd64-server.old
mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-amd64-server 2.6.15-26-amd64-serverAfter that, everything came up roses. Once I had my admin account, it was pretty trivial to get the rest of the bits set up. I had some minor stumbling when trying to build httrack from source, but a tip from this thread led me to the quick command to install the full developer’s toolkit:
sudo apt-get install build-essentialThe whole apt-get stuff is pretty sweet. It’s what Fink and darwinports on MacOSX aspire to, but don’t quite reach. Want to install emacs? It’s just a quick sudo apt-get install emacs away. Easy peasy. Databases, ImageMagick, etc… All trivially installed and updated.
So far, setting this server up has been absolutely trivial. And it’s so stinky fast that it should serve the project for quite some time. I might need to set up an Ubuntu client or server locally to play a bit more. It’s not quite MacOSX, but from a server perspective, it’s pretty close. Actually, having spent about 6+ years dabbling in MacOSX’s UNIXy innards, running an Ubuntu Server is not much of a stretch. The biggest adjustment is learning where all of the various bits are installed, but that’s easy. I’ll be spending a fair bit of time over the break, getting my feet wet in Ubuntu. Should be fun!
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9 Responses to “On Setting up an Ubuntu Server”
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I love (K)Ubuntu. I started using it about a year ago and haven’t looked back.
Sharlene - haven’t tried Kubuntu. I think it’s pretty safe to say I’ll stay with MacOSX on the desktop, but servers are more agnostic.
VonSkippy - it’s part of a higher-ed/commercial consortium in BC. I’m not sure if it’s been publicly announced, so I won’t break the news here. But they’re running their stuff in Peer1’s Vancouver facility.
Ubuntu is a really good system both for servers and desktops. i also use ubuntu on my home and office computers for around 7-8 months, and once i have understood how to use the ’sudo apt-get install’, i never had any crashes or problems with system.
As I’ve been saying to all my friends, Ubuntu is basically Debian cleaned up for the big time. Apt is a phenominal package management system, and Ubuntu makes good use of it. Everything about Ubuntu is clean. The server install is so spectacularly minimal that I forget to install OpenSSH.
Ubuntu is cool… you should strip the install bare off all the necessary packages with apt-get remove … Also enable the universe and multiverse repos, they come in handy. Cheers!
unnecessary packages even. heh… (yeah just do a apt-get remove * and you’ll be good) hah.
Sami, I ran the
apt-get remove *and then followed up with asudo rm -Rf /to also get rid of unnecessary files.Now, the server sure is lean. 0% resource utilization! Linux rocks!
Care to share your colocation provider?
We’re looking to put use Ubuntu on a VPS, dedicated server, or colocated server for hosting sites for ourselves and our clients, and are looking for a place with good people.
- ben
Agaric Design Collective
Open Source Web Development
http://agaricdesign.com/
People Who Give a Damn
building the infrastructure of a network for everyone
http://pwgd.org/
Benjamin - It’s done through a higher-ed/commercial consortium in Vancouver. The actual hosting facility is at Peer1 Vancouver, but it was one of the consortium partners that did the actual server install. I’m not sure what the consortium’s plans are wrt scaling up hosting - I believe it’s limited to just higher-ed-related projects in BC though.
Peer1 has been pretty solid as the colo facility. I believe they have multiple facilities around the continent - the Vancouver one is nice because it avoids the whole DMCA and Patriot Act issue.