Part II) Install Ubuntu Linux Server (in a dual-boot system)
I have used Debian for over a year and it is the largest, best Linux community, in my opinion. It has the most modules easily available, and I can usually customize it to do almost anything, with a bit of work.
It focuses on completely non-proprietary, fully open source and free modules, but, like all Linux systems, you can also add in other modules as you desire.
I stick to the stable distributions, because rapidly changing operating systems tend to have glitches more often. Debian's major releases tend to be somewhat rather slow, though (the last one now having been 2 years ago.)
Ubuntu Linux is based on Debian. The graphical user interface (GUI) has been honed, however, so that it looks and feels much more like a Mac. The default applications have been whittled down so that it is only distributed with the most commonly used applications, presenting the user with fewer confusing choices. The components for most tasks, such as networking, that have been selected for the Ubuntu distribution also seem to work better "out of the box" without an extensive need for fiddling. Ubuntu also has a somewhat more frequent release cycle.
For these reasons, once I installed Ubuntu, I have almost never switched back to any another operating system. Really.
Some criticisms of Ubuntu is that it is not completely free open source. It includes some proprietary components that, while they are distributed freely, are not free to be used, changed, and redistributed in the pure open source meaning. This is in contrast to Debian, which insists on truly free and open source standards in all of its components.
However, to make Linux systems interoperable with other operating systems these days, sometimes it is necessary to use proprietary components. RealPlayer formats, some multimedia codecs used by Windows, many fonts, and even the mp3 standard are all proprietary. It is often a necessary evil to use these proprietary components. So while Debian's aim is admirable, for someone trying to co-exist in today's business climate, it is sometimes impracticable.
Canonical, Ubuntu's corporate sponsor, oversees the distribution decisions and chooses which proprietary modules to accept. It also provides an Enterprise edition (much like the Red Hat/Fedora relationship), in which presumably more propretary modules are licensed for use.
A business may find the existence of an Ubuntu Enterprise edition quite desirable. Not every business has its own operating system guru in house, and commercial support through an Enterprise edition subscription can fill the gaps. With both an open source edition and an enterprise edition, there is a lot of flexibility about how a business utilises the operating system. In the end, this arrangement is far more robust than a purely proprietary operating system (like the one Microsoft offers), or than a purely open source operating system (such as many older Linux distributions that have fallen by the wayside).
On balance, then, I recommend Ubuntu as the Linux distribution of choice. I will therefore direct most of my instructions towards Ubuntu, then.
Installing Ubuntu Server LTS
The first time I set up my system, I used the LTS Dapper Drake version of Ubuntu. That worked ok, but the Feisty Fawn version is much better. I was able to set up a fresh install of Feisty Fawn in less than a day (it took me a week to tweak all my settings in Dapper Drake).
You will want both the server and the desktop. (In Debian you can install both at the same time, but in Ubuntu you must do it in stages.)
First, we want to install the Ubuntu Server. [It is far easier to install the server first then add the desktop second, rather than the other way round.]
The first step, then, is to obtain the Ubuntu server installation software and burn it onto a CD-ROM.
If you didn't install Windows in step I, you will need another computer to download the installation CD image file.
At http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download choose the latest server edition and the apporpriate operating system (for most people the standard personal computer). At the time of this writing, Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) was the most current.
Choose the download mirror site closest to you (e.g. United States).
Start the download.
You will download a file called something like "ubuntu-7.04-server.i386.iso" to your hard drive. This will be between 400 and 700 Mb. This is an image file that is meant to be burned directly to a CD.
When the download has completed, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto for instructions on burning this to a CD-ROM. [In short, for Windows you can use an open source utility called InfraRecorder to do the job. It works easily and well. Tip: Use a burning speed of 4-8x, or you might get burning errors.] Now you have a working Ubuntu Server Installation CD. You can use this on multiple computers, or give it to a friend later.
Ok, now, make sure that your computer's BIOS setup menu (accessed by pressing either F2, or F10, or Del, or ESC during powerup) lists the CD-ROM as the first bootup device. (If the hard drive is selected as the first bootup device, then you will simply boot into Windows, bypassing the CD-ROM altogether.)
[In one instance I had to list the CD-ROM drive as the only bootup device. This was because my older CD-ROM drive couldn't read the newly burned CD very easily and had to make multiple attempts before it finally succeeded. Every time it failed, it would just go to hard drive bootup (which was listed as the second bootup device and only contained the Windows operating system at that point). When I removed the hard drive from the bootup option list, the computer was forced to try and try to bootup from the Ubuntu installation CD repeatedly until it finally read it properly. Once Ubuntu was installed, I changed the BIOS menu back so that it included the hard drive as a bootup device again.]
Now pop the Ubuntu Server Installation CD into your CD-ROM drive and restart your computer.
Select "Install a LAMP server."
Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl (LAMP) are the most commonly used components of the majority of Linux servers in the world. Apache is the server program itself, MySQL is a database, and Perl is a scripting language. Ubuntu has put together a well integrated server package that includes all these components and pre-configured them to work together. It's much harder to install the pieces individually and then get them to work together.
(See http://www.debianadmin.com/ubuntu-lamp-server-installation-with-screenshots.html )
The initial basic option choices are obvious.
When it is time to choose a server name, be creative. Do make this somewhat descriptive, because it is used everywhere on the network and on every login. Use a description that is not similar to any Windows servers, drives, or volume names you use, and not similar to any other server or computer likely to be on your network. Do not use a generic word such as "lamp" or "ubuntu" or "work". Make sure you have a number at the end, in case you eventually have multiple similar servers. So, for example, let's say you want to use this box as your Vista Office EHR server. You could call it "vistaserv1", for example.
Ok, now once again we must make hard drive partitioning choices. Ubuntu uses an automatic partitioner (based on Gparted) during installation.
For most uses, the Windows partition, the Linux partition, and possibly an additional FAT32 partition for sharing files between the two systems should be sufficient. Now is the opportunity to further customize the system, however.
http://psychocats.net/ubuntu/partitioning gives an interesting comparison of common Linux partitioning schemes, and is very easy to understand. You will see I am basically using one of the outlined schemes, the one most recommended in the Linux community over the past few years.
However,
http://rhosgobel.blogspot.com/2006/06/installing-ubuntu-comparison-of-ubuntu.html
makes some very good points. It is oriented toward someone interested in the most robust partitioning scheme.
After reading both I actually took the advice and repartitioned the drive on my "testing" computer (the computer I use most often) using the latter web site's recommended scheme. This involved using one ext3 partition for the root (/) of each Linux distribution (one for Debian and one for Ubuntu) that I installed. The operating system for each Linux distribution goes in the root folders. Then a separate partition was created and mounted with a folder named /data. The /home directories contain user files and data (kind of like /Documents and Settings in Windows XP). The /home directory and subdirectories from each distribution were then moved to this partition, into the /data folder, after the installation of each operating system had been completed. The /home folder with the files from each distribution was then placed into its own subdirectory (e.g. /debianhome and /ubuntuhome) on the /data partition. That way I was able to keep all my user and data files from each respective Linux distribution on a protected /data partition, but was also able to keep them separate from each other as well. (I don't want to mix Debian user settings files with Ubuntu user settings files, for example). Since this /data partition is also completely separate from each actual operating system itself (since each resides on its own partition), I could then upgrade each Linux operating system (or even switch to a new Linux distribution altogether) without having to move any of the user settings files and data contained in the /home directories and without having to fear their loss.
Since I use this computer to evaluate different operating systems and configurations, it is ideal for me. But for the average user, placing the Ubuntu operating system (in the root (/) directory) and all the user files and data files (in the /home directories) together on the same single, large (ext3) Linux partition should be just fine. In fact, that's just how the automatic installer will install the partition if you let it. It creates just one large ext3 partition (and one small /swap partition). So let's stick with that default scheme.
But be careful. Don't put the automatic installer on auto-pilot just yet, unless you didn't bother with installing Windows in Step I. If you let the automatic installer have its way with your entire hard disk, it will wipe out your Windows partition and create a single Linux partition. If that's your intent, go ahead. But we're trying to have a dual-boot system.
So, for a dual-boot system, you should always choose the "Manually edit partition table."
You should then see a list of the existing partitions created during Windows installation. There should be at least one primary FAT32 partition, which is the 20 Gb Windows operating system partition. There is, if you created one, an additional extended 32 Gb FAT32 partition (and more if you created them). Lastly, there should be a FREE SPACE listing. It's the FREE SPACE in which we're interested.
Highlight the FREE SPACE listing and hit enter.
Now, I always like at least a few Gb of extra FREE SPACE left over on my computer for unforeseen future uses. Perhaps I'll need another shared-files partition later, or a protected storage area for web site files, or even space for yet another operating system.
Of course you might choose to devote all the remaining free space to your Linux installation, and that would be just fine.
So, after subtracting out any FREE SPACE you want to keep in reserve, determine the remaining FREE SPACE to be used for your Linux partition. On one system, I had 100 Gb of FREE SPACE available after installing Windows. I decided to reserve 20 Gb FREE SPACE for future uses and therefore used 80Gb for the Linux partition.
Now "Create new partition"
For the example above of one large Linux partition of 80 Gb, enter "80.0Gb" and save your settings.
Type for the new partition: "Primary"
Location for the new partition: "Beginning" (that is, the new partition will go at the beginning of the free space).
Write the changes to the disk.
Now, you can let the partition manager automatically divide this partition (only) into sub-partitions usable by your Linux system. The FREE SPACE left over (if you left any) will be untouched and can be used in the future for more partitions as you need them.
I would accept the automatic installer's default options at this point.
Use as: ext3 journaling file system
Mount point: /
Mount options: default
label: none
reserved blocks: 5%
Typical usage: standard
Bootable flag: off
Size: 80 Gb
and click "Done setting up the partition."
Now if you now want to add another partition of any type in the remaining FREE SPACE, you can do so. This time, instead of using the automatic installer, you can manually change the Use as: option to either FAT32 or can keep it as ext3. (There is also a newer, more secure file system called reiserfs, but stick to ext3 or FAT32 for now.) You can also choose a different mount point descriptor, such as /data (as described earlier), or /www-files (if you want a partition only for a web server). If you are not sure about all the options, just leave the FREE SPACE space as it is. You can always create additional partitions using GParted, once you later figure out your needs.
When you are all done, you may be asked to "Finish partitioning and write changes to disk."
Now choose an administrator name. Please don't use "administrator" or "admin". Hackers love that. Use a name that you can remember, but not easily guessed. If you need to, write down the name and the password on a piece of tape and tape it to the bottom of the computer, so it will never be lost. (Few hackers look on the bottom of the computer.) I wouldn't use your real full name, but perhaps something like "Vista Office EHR Administrator". This name will be used on email servers in the From: field when mail is sent to/from the administrator, you keep this in mind when choosing this name.
But let's say, as an example let's say you chose the Administrator Full Name: "FidoAdministrator".
Then choose the administrator Username for your account. You have to type this a lot, so choose something short, and all lowercase. For our examples we'll use fido.
Now choose a password. Be safe. Use letters, numbers, and characters. You have to type it a lot as well, so don't make it too long or difficult to type. Never use a plain english language word, forwards or backwards (they are too easy to hack.) Don't use any personal information about anyone you know, as that is also usually easily guessed. If you don't have any ideas, look out your window and fixate on something nearby (fountain, movies). Now add in some numbers and characters (fountain2468, foun@$^*tain, fountain!!2468!!). Remember, you could always tape the username and password to the bottom of your computer. For our examples we'll use fountain2468.
Installation should finish shortly.
You will then be prompted to remove the install disk and remove it from the computer.
Then re-start the computer. If for any reason you removed the hard drive from the BIOS menu's BOOTUP device list, make sure you add it back to the list now.
Your system should then start up. You should see the GRUB boot loader, which will list the operating systems available:
----------------------------------------------------
Ubuntu 7.04 Server
Ubuntu 7.04 Server (recovery)
Memtest 386+
Other operating systems:
Windows XP
-------------------------------------------------------
This screen will be displayed for 5-10 seconds, during which time you can arrow up or down to choose the operating system you want to start. After 5-10 seconds it will load the operating system at the top of the list by default, if you don't select one.
[The order of the listed operating systems, the default operating system to start, and the time delay can all be adjusted in the GRUB boot loader settings later, from within Ubuntu Linux.]
Congratulations, you now have a dual-boot Windows / Ubuntu Linux LAMP server system.
In the next section we will add a desktop, so the Ubuntu Linux server will look and feel more like a Mac or Windows.
| Home page
| Introduction
| Chapter I: Installing Windows on a dual-boot computer
| Chapter II: Installing Ubuntu Linux Server on a dual-boot computer
| Chapter III: Adding the Ubuntu Desktop on a dual-boot computer
| Chapter IV: Spiffing up Ubuntu Linux
| Chapter V: Ubuntu/Windows shared networks
| Chapter VI: Setting up a Web Site on Ubuntu
| Chapter VII: Ubuntu/Apache Virtual Hosts (Multiple web sites, single server)
| Chapter VIII: Installing Drupal Content Managment System
| Chapter IX: Installing Vista Office EHR
| Chapter X: Installing an Office Surveillance Security System with Ubuntu
| Chapter XI: Installing an open source Groupware Server
| Chapter XII: Installing a non-linear video editor for presentations
|