Ubuntu Linux Help

The last post I covered the hardware installation for this project. For this section, we’re going to use Ubuntu Linux (8.04 LTS Server Edition 64-bit) to install the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server. If you don’t have that software available, you can get it using the following venues:

1. Download the iso image from: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and burn it to a CD.

2. Order the CD from https://shipit.ubuntu.com/login-server.

Once you have a copy, make sure the BIOS on the PC is set to boot off the CD drive. Put the CD in the drive and simply restart the unit. It should now boot off the CD and display the “select language” screen as seen below.

After you’ve selected the language, you’ll be presented with the installation menu. Simply select “Install Ubuntu Server”, as seen below.

Remember that this is a server, ideally we’d like to have a static IP address for this server. There is a selectable boot option called “F6 - Other Options” where you could enter the following command to disable DHCP:

netcfg/disable_dhcp=true

At which point you will be required to manually configure the network settings. I am going to include that information below. However, for some reason I was not able to set up the network card after the installation (I could not see it) , so I used this work around instead…

I logged into the router and checked the logs so that I could get the MAC address of the network card. I then configured a DHCP reservation in the LAN/DHCP setting of the router so that the MAC address of the network card would always get the same IP address. Because I did not want to install a DNS server (my ISP made me take the DNS server down last time I set it up), I then, simply added the IP to hostname record, into the host file of each unit I wanted to connect to the web server.

During the installation (just follow the prompts it gives you), you will need to provide the following (among other obvious questions/answers):

1. A hostname for your web server (the hostname is independent of whatever domain name you’re going to use. For example, the hostname of this server is “webbox” and the domain I’ll use to access the web server on it is “local.ubuntulinuxhelp.com”).
2. I selected to use the “Guided - use entire disk” when prompted for the partitioning.
3. A username and password that you are going to remember.

You’ll eventually come to a prompt for the type of server (Software Selection), select LAMP, like the image below.

I chose to install the other components later, because I found out it will reduce some of the tweaking and updating later. During the software installation, you will be asked for a MySQL password. Write it down or don’t forget it! (You’ll need it later to use phpMyAdmin). The remainder is very straight forward, but as I mentioned earlier, here’s the static network configuration information. Remember, your network configuration addresses will probably be different from mine.

Because there is no GUI yet, we’ll be using the command line to configure the network.

Login after rebooting.

You can use a simple text editor like nano, vi, etc.

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

For those who left DHCP enabled, look for this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

and change it to this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static

Under the line that says “iface eth0 inet static”, you’ll enter your network information. An example of mine is:

address 72.138.51.130
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 72.138.51.0
broadcast 72.138.51.255
gateway 72.138.50.1

So the file would look something like this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 72.138.51.130
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 72.138.51.0
broadcast 72.138.51.255
gateway 72.138.50.1

Additionally, I made sure the host file contained the following information:

127.0.0.1 localhost webbox
172.138.51.130 local.ubuntulinuxhelp.com webbox

After configuring the network interface, restart the network using the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

The basic LAMP installation should be complete.