Your one-stop resource to learn, configure and use Ubuntu 22.04 for your day-to-day operations and deployments. Ubuntu Server is taking the server world by storm - and for a good reason! The server-focused spin of Ubuntu is a stable, flexible, and powerful enterprise-class distribution of Linux with a focus on running servers both small and large. Mastering Ubuntu Server is a book that will teach you everything you need to know in order to manage real Ubuntu-based servers in actual production deployments. This book will take you from initial installation to deploying production-ready solutions to empower your small office network, or even a full data center. You'll see examples of running an Ubuntu Server in the cloud, be walked through set up popular applications (such as Nextcloud), host your own websites, and deploy network resources such as DHCP, DNS, and others. You'll also see how to containerize applications via LXD to maximize efficiency and learn how to build Kubernetes clusters. This new fourth edition updates the popular book to cover Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, which takes advantage of the latest in Linux-based technologies. By the end of this Ubuntu book, you will have gained all the knowledge you need in order to work on real-life Ubuntu Server deployments and become an expert Ubuntu Server administrator who is well versed in its feature set.

• Cover
• CopyRight Page
• Contributors
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Deploying Ubuntu Server
  • Technical requirements
  • Determining your server’s role
  • Choosing a device for our server
    • Physical server
    • Physical desktop
    • Laptop
    • Virtual machine
    • Virtual private server
    • Raspberry Pi
  • Obtaining installation media
  • Creating a bootable flash drive
    • Planning the partitioning layout
  • Installing Ubuntu Server
  • Installing Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi
  • Summary
  • Relevant tutorials
• Chapter 2: Managing Users and Permissions
  • Understanding the purpose of users and groups
  • Understanding when to use root
    • Using sudo to run privileged commands
  • Creating and removing users
    • Using useradd
    • Using adduser
    • Removing users
  • Understanding the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files
    • Understanding the /etc/passwd file
    • Understanding the /etc/shadow file
  • Distributing default configuration files with /etc/skel
  • Switching users
  • Managing groups
  • Managing passwords and password policies
    • Locking and unlocking user accounts
    • Setting password expiration information
    • Setting a password policy
  • Configuring administrator access with sudo
  • Setting permissions on files and directories
    • Viewing permissions
    • Changing permissions
    • Changing the ownership of objects
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 3: Managing Software Packages
  • Understanding Linux package management
  • Understanding the differences between Debian and Snap packages
    • Debian packages
    • Snap packages
  • Installing and removing software
    • Managing Debian packages with apt
    • Managing Snap packages with snap
  • Searching for packages
  • Managing package repositories
    • Adding additional repositories
    • Adding Personal Package Archives
  • Backing up and restoring Debian packages
  • Cleaning up orphaned apt packages
  • Taking advantage of hardware enablement updates
  • Summary
  • Relevant video
  • Further reading
• Chapter 4: Navigating and Essential Commands
  • Learning essential Linux commands
  • Understanding the Linux filesystem layout
  • Viewing the contents of files
  • Viewing application log files
  • Summary
  • Relevant video
  • Further reading
• Chapter 5: Managing Files and Directories
  • Copying, moving, and renaming files and directories
  • Editing files with the Nano and Vim text editors
    • Editing with Nano
    • Editing with Vim
  • Input and output streams
  • Using symbolic and hard links
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
• Chapter 6: Boosting Your Command-line Efficiency
  • Understanding the Linux shell
  • Understanding Bash history
  • Learning some useful command-line tricks
  • Understanding variables
  • Writing simple scripts
  • Putting it all together – Writing an rsync backup script
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 7: Controlling and Managing Processes
  • Managing jobs
  • Understanding the ps command
    • Viewing running processes with ps
    • Configuring arguments to ps
  • Changing the priority of processes
  • Dealing with misbehaving processes
  • Managing system processes
  • Scheduling tasks with cron
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 8: Monitoring System Resources
  • Viewing disk usage
    • Using df
    • Diving deeper into disk usage
  • Monitoring memory usage
    • Understanding server memory
    • Managing swap
  • Understanding load average
  • Viewing resource usage with htop
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 9: Managing Storage Volumes
  • Adding additional storage volumes
  • Formatting and partitioning storage devices
    • Creating a partition
    • Formatting partitions
  • Mounting and unmounting volumes
  • Understanding the /etc/fstab file
    • Analyzing the contents of /etc/fstab
    • Adding to the /etc/fstab file
  • Backing up and restoring volumes
  • Utilizing LVM
    • Getting started with LVM
    • Formatting logical volumes
    • Removing volumes with LVM
    • Understanding LVM snapshots
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 10: Connecting to Networks
  • Setting the hostname
  • Managing network interfaces
  • Assigning static IP addresses
  • Understanding Linux name resolution
  • Getting started with OpenSSH
    • Installing OpenSSH
    • Issuing commands with OpenSSH
  • Getting started with SSH key management
    • Generating public and private keys
    • Copying your public key to a remote server
    • Utilizing an SSH agent
    • Changing the passphrase of an OpenSSH key
  • Simplifying SSH connections with a config file
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 11: Setting Up Network Services
  • Planning your IP address scheme
  • Setting up a DHCP server for serving IP addresses
  • Adding a DNS server
    • Setting up external DNS with bind
    • Setting up internal DNS and adding hosts
  • Setting up an internet gateway
  • Summary
  • Further reading
• Chapter 12: Sharing and Transferring Files
  • File server considerations
  • Sharing files with Windows users via Samba
  • Setting up NFS shares
  • Transferring files with rsync
  • Transferring files with SCP
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 13: Managing Databases
  • Preparations for setting up a database server
  • Installing MariaDB
  • Understanding the MariaDB configuration files
  • Managing MariaDB databases
  • Setting up a secondary database server
  • Summary
  • Further reading
• Chapter 14: Serving Web Content
  • Installing and configuring Apache
  • Installing additional Apache modules
  • Securing Apache with TLS
  • Installing and configuring NGINX
  • Setting up and configuring Nextcloud
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 15: Automating Server Configuration with Ansible
  • Understanding the need for configuration management
  • Why Ansible?
  • Creating a Git repository
  • Getting started with Ansible
  • Making your servers do your bidding
    • Setting up an inventory file and configuring Ansible settings
    • Configuring client servers
  • Putting it all together – automating web server deployment
  • Using Ansible’s pull method
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 16: Virtualization
  • Prerequisites and considerations
  • Setting up a virtual machine server
  • Creating virtual machines
  • Bridging the virtual machine network
  • Simplifying virtual machine creation with cloning
  • Managing virtual machines via the command line
  • Summary
  • Relevant video
  • Further reading
• Chapter 17: Running Containers
  • What is containerization?
  • Understanding the differences between Docker and LXD
  • Installing Docker
  • Managing Docker containers
  • Automating Docker image creation with Dockerfiles
  • Managing LXD containers
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 18: Container Orchestration
  • Container orchestration
  • Preparing a lab environment for Kubernetes testing
  • Utilizing MicroK8s
    • Installing MicroK8s on Linux
    • Installing MicroK8s on macOS
    • Installing MicroK8s on Windows
    • Interacting with MicroK8s
  • Setting up a Kubernetes cluster
    • Preliminary setup
    • Installing Kubernetes
  • Deploying containers via Kubernetes
  • Summary
  • Relevant videos
  • Further reading
• Chapter 19: Deploying Ubuntu in the Cloud
  • Understanding the difference between on-premises and cloud infrastructure
  • Important considerations when considering cloud computing as a potential solution
  • Becoming familiar with some basic AWS concepts
  • Creating an AWS account
    • Signing up for AWS
    • Implementing basic user security
  • Choosing a region
  • Deploying Ubuntu as an AWS EC2 instance
    • Setting up an IAM role for Session Manager
    • Creating an Ubuntu Server instance in AWS
  • Creating and deploying Ubuntu AMIs
  • Automatically scaling Ubuntu EC2 deployments with Auto Scaling
    • Creating a launch template
    • Creating an Auto Scaling group
  • Keeping costs down: understanding how to save money and make cost-effective decisions
    • Viewing billing information
    • Adding a billing alert
    • Removing unneeded backups
    • Running EC2 instances only when they’re needed
    • Stopping or terminating unneeded EC2 instances
  • Taking the cloud further: additional resources to grow your knowledge
    • Online training and labs
    • Certification
    • Keep experimenting and learning
    • AWS documentation
  • Summary
  • Further reading
• Chapter 20: Automating Cloud Deployments with Terraform
  • Why it’s important to automate your infrastructure
  • Introduction to Terraform and how it can fit within your workflow
  • Installing Terraform
  • Automating an EC2 instance deployment
  • Managing security groups with Terraform
  • Using Terraform to destroy unused resources
  • Combining Ansible with Terraform for a full deployment solution
  • Summary
• Chapter 21: Securing Your Server
  • Lowering your attack surface
  • Understanding and responding to CVEs
  • Installing security updates
  • Automatically installing patches with the Canonical Livepatch service
  • Securing OpenSSH
  • Installing and configuring Fail2ban
  • MariaDB best practices for secure database servers
  • Setting up a firewall
  • Encrypting and decrypting disks with LUKS
  • Locking down sudo
  • Summary
  • Further reading
• Chapter 22: Troubleshooting Ubuntu Servers
  • Evaluating the scope
  • Conducting a root cause analysis
  • Viewing system logs
  • Tracing network issues
  • Troubleshooting resource issues
  • Diagnosing defective RAM
  • Summary
  • Further reading
• Chapter 23: Preventing Disasters
  • Preventing disasters
  • Utilizing Git for configuration management
  • Implementing a backup plan
  • Utilizing bootable recovery media
  • Summary
  • Further reading
• Other Books You May Enjoy
• Index