Ubuntu 14.

04 Server Installation Guide and Setup

LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
With

the

release

of

all Ubuntu

2014 including Ubuntu for Phoneand Tablet products,

14.04 flavors
Canonical,

the

on April
company

17
behind

Ubuntu, had also released Server,Cloud and Server Core Editions with a five years long term
support guaranteed on software and updates until April 2019.

Step 1: Installing Ubuntu 14.04 Server

1. Create a bootable CD/USB image. After system booting sequence choose your media
bootable type from BIOS options ( CD/DVD or USB drive ). On the first prompt choose
yourLanguage end hit Enter.

Select Language

2. On next screen choose Install Ubuntu Server and hit Enter.

Install Ubuntu Server

3. Next select your System default Language and also Installation process Language.

Choose Language

4. If your country is nor listed in

yourContinent and then your Country.

Select Your Location

default

Location

options

choose Other,

select

Select Continent

Select Country

5. Next select your locales, Try choosing a general one like UTF-8 encoding so later you wont
have problems with keyboard.

Select Locals

6. On next prompt configure your Keyboard again on servers you should choose a general
keyboard Language. Also in this stage the installer can automatically detect your
keyboardLayout by pressing a series of keys so be advised to choose No and setup English as
default language.

Select Keyboard

Select Keyboard Language

Select Keyboard Layout

7. After some additional software components are loaded for the installation process to
continue. if your server is connected to network, and you run a DHCP server on your directly
connected network the installer automatically configures network settings with ones provided
from the DHCP server.
Because a server offers public or private network services, the network setting (especially the IP
address) must always be static configured.

Loading Additional Components

Configuring DHCP Network

8. If you get the same result on network hostname prompt press Tab key, choose Go Backand
then Configure network manually.

Enter Hostname

Configure Network

9. On next prompt series enter your network interface settings: IP address, netmask, gateway
and DNS name servers.

Enter IP Address

Enter Netmask

Enter Gateway

Enter Name Server

10. Setup your system hostname you can also enter your FQDN. Be advised to choose your
system hostname wisely and unique because some programs highly depend on this.

Enter Network Hostname

11. Now is time to setup your administrative user. On Ubuntu this user replaces
the rootaccount and has all root account powers by employing sudo. Enter
your username and hit on Continue.

Enter Full Name

Enter User Name

12. Enter your password twice and for security reasons you should always choose a strong one
on servers ( at least 12 characters including upper, lower, numerical and special).

Enter Password

Re-enter Password

In case you used a weak password the installer will alert you. If you are on a test server then
choose Yes and continue further.

Password Verification

13. If your server contains sensitive, secret or important data on Users home partition the next
screen offers the option to secure all data by Encrypting home directory. If this is not the case
choose No and hit Enter.

Encrypt Home Directory

14. If while installer runs and your network interface card has Internet connectivity the installer
will automatically detect your Location and setup your correct time zone. If the provided time

is not correctly setup you have the option to choose it manually from a list else choose Yes and
press Enter.

Configure Time Zone

15. The hard-disks Partition table is one of the most sensitive subjects involving a server
because here you have a lot of tweaking to do depending on your server final destination type
web server, databases, file sharing NFS, Samba, application server etc.
o
For example if redundancy, fail-over and high-availability is needed you can setup RAID
1, if your space grows fast you can setup RAID 0 and LVM and so on.
o
For a more general use you can just use the Guided option with LVM, which is a
customized option made by developers.
o
For a production environment you probably should have LVM, software or
hardware RAIDand
separate
partitions
for /
(root), /home, /boot and /var ( the /var partition has the most fast growing rate on a
production server because here are logs, databeses, applications meta info, servers caches
and others located.
So on Partition Disks choose Guided user entire disk and set up LVM -> select your disk to
partition and accept partition table.

Partition Disks

Select Disk Partition

Write Changes to Disks

16. After the partition table has been written to disk the installer once again prompts you with a
partition review. Accept the Partition Table and hit Yes.

Confirm Write Changes to Disks

If you like to make some changes to this Partition Table you can select No and edit your
partitions.

Partition Overview

17. After all hard-disk partitions had been written to disk the installer starts copying data
software to disk and then reaches HTTP proxy option. If you dont access Internet through a
proxy leave it blank and Continue.

Installing System

Configure Package Manager

18. Next the installer scans the CD image for software packages and reaches Updatesoptions.
Choose No automatic updates because on servers you should try manual update the system.

Configure Apt

Configure Tasksel

19. Now the base system is installed but the installer invokes tasksel package which helps you
to install some server packs before finishing. For a better control over your server choose
only OpenSSH server by pressing Space bar key while others will be installed and configured
later and choose Continue.

Software Selection

20. The selected packages are being installed while the last option is displayed on your monitor
demanding to Install GRUB to MRB. Because the system cant boot on his self without GRUB,
choose Yes.

Install GRUB

21. Once the GRUB boot loader is installed the installation process reaches its end. Remove
your media installation drive (CD/DVD,UDB) and hit Continue to reboot.

Finish Installation

GRUB Boot Menu

Congratulations! Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server edition is now installed and ready to rock on your
brand new metal or virtual machine.

Step 2: Basic Network Configurations

For now only the Core server packages are installed and you cant really offer network services
for your network.
In order to install software login to your server console for now and verify some basic
configurations like network connectivity, settings, startup daemons, software sources, updates
and others by running a series of Linux commands.

22. View system load and basic information After login with your credentials this information
is presented by default MOTD. Also top and htop commands are useful.

Login Screen

23. Verify network IP addresses using following command.

#ifconfiga

Verify IP Address

24. Verify internet connectivity: run ping command against a domain name ( this will test TCP/IP
stack and DNS ).

#pingc4google.ro
If you get unknown host message, edit your /etc/resolv.conf file and add the following.

nameserveryour_name_servers_IP

Add Name Servers

Confirm Name Servers

For permanent changes edit /etc/network/interfaces file and add dns-nameserver directive.

Add Network Details

25. Verify machine hostname using following command.

#cat/etc/hostname
#cat/etc/hosts
#hostname

#hostnamef

Verify Hostname

26. To enable or disable init daemons on run-levels install and run sysv-rc-conf utility which
replaces chkconfig package.

$sudoaptgetinstallsysvrcconf
$sudosysvrcconf

Services

27. To start, stop or verify a service (daemon) run the following commands.

#sudoservicesshrestart

#sudo/etc/init.d/service_namestart|stop|restart|status
28. See server processes, open connections ( listen state ).

$psaux|grepservicename
$sudonetstattulpn
$sudoslofi
29. To edit software repositories, open /etc/apt/sources.list file.

Edit Repositories

Import new repositories keys with the command.

#sudoaptkeyadvkeyserverkeyserver.ubuntu.comrecv
keyskey_hash
30. Update system.

#sudoaptgetupdate&&sudoaptgetupgrade

Step 3: Install LAMP Stack

LAMP acronym stands for Linux OS, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB
databases, Php, Perl or Python programming languages used for generating dynamic
webpages. All of this components are free and Open-Source software and are suitable for
building dynamic websites or other web applications and are the most used platforms on
Internet today (Last year Apache was estimated to serve over 54% of all active websites).
31. LAMP can be installed step by step or using just one single command.

$sudoaptgetinstallapache2php5php5mysqlmysqlclient
mysqlserver

While is installing enter and confirm mysql databse password.

Enter New MySQL Password

Repeat Password

32. To confirm php status create a info.php file in /var/www/html server path with the
following content.

<?phpphpinfo();?>
33. Then open a browser and enter your server IP address orhttp://server_address/info.php.

Apache Default Page

PHP Information

Ubuntu 14.04 and LAMP is an excellent platform to deliver network services, develop all kind
of dynamic or static websites, complex web applications with the help of Apache CGI, all of this
made with a minimum financial impact using Free and Open Source software and the latest
technologies.