Installation¶

The server will be running Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS 64-bit in headless mode, meaning that no DE or WM will be used. The installation is quick and assisted by its own install wizard. For better performance, you should install the minimal version which does not include any graphical interface other than the command line. Additionally, no packages were installed from the install wizard.

Post-Installation¶

As a general rule of thumb, after installing the OS it is recommended to update the sources and packages:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Configuring Date and Time¶

By default, the OS will be installed with GMT+0 as the timezone. We'll change this to conform with our real timezone which is GMT-5.

sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Guayaquil

Packages¶

Here's a list of packages I like to have on the server, you may choose not to install them since they're not crucial.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client net-tools neofetch nload progress nano iputils-ping htop

Firewall¶

UFW is a friendly frontend for iptables that makes it a lot easier to add connection rules to your firewall. One of the many wonders of UFW is the fact that rules are automatically saved when set, which is not generally true for iptables.

We'll need to install UFW and set it up.

sudo apt-get install ufw
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw enable

The commands should be pretty self-explanatory but, just in case, these default the firewall to allow any connections going from the server to the Internet and deny any incoming connections from the Internet to the server. Make sure to also enable the ssh ports, otherwise you may get locked out of your system remotely and may need to physically configure the firewall to allow SSH connections.

Usage¶

A very good command to check UFW's status (if it's enabled or disabled) and see all the custom rules added and active is:

sudo ufw status

You can add a new rule by using:

sudo ufw allow <PORT_RANGE>/<PROTOCOL>

Git¶

By default, git does not have a credential store configured, so make sure you run the following command to allow git operations in protected repos:

git config --global credential.helper store