Configuring Ubuntu Linux After Installation

Category:

Tutorials > Operating Systems > Linux > Configuration

This tutorial assumes that you have already installed Ubuntu Linux Server on your computer. Ubuntu version used for this tutorial is Ubuntu Linux Server 6.06.1 (Dapper Drake).

After installation, you should have a user that gets root privileges by pre pending "sudo" (super user do) with all commands requiring root privileges. Let’s say you want to run the following command, "nano /etc/apt/sources.list". But, in order to get root privileges (for modification) you’ll run the same command as follows: "sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list".

How to get rid of "sudo":

sudo is used for better security. Google "sudo" for more info. Although, I do not recommend so, but, in case, you want to get rid of sudo and use your Ubuntu Linux Server machine the old-fashioned way then give password to the root user. Do the following:

sudo passwd

You’ll be prompted for password and confirmation. Enter root’s password here. When you’re done, run the following.

su -

You'll be prompted for root’s password. Enter the password that you had entered before. If the password is correct you'll be given access to root’s account.

root@<hostname>:~#

You'll see something like above, where,<hostname> is the hostname of your computer. If you see a "$" instead of "#" that means you still don’t have root access. Please repeat the steps above.

 

Configuring "apt" - Package Manager

If you want to use the Internet to download software you should now comment out the CDROM section by adding a "#" (w/o quotes) at the beginning of the line that reads "deb cdrom: ..." in /etc/apt/sources.list. Do the following, to open up /etc/apt/sources.list in a text editor.

With sudo, 
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Without sudo, 
nano /etc/apt/sources.list

 

Updating and Upgrading Ubuntu Linux Server

After running the command above, you’ll run the following commands for updates and upgrades.

With sudo, 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Without sudo,

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

 

Installing GCC tools

Now, you’ll install the very essential packages by running the following command. This package installs compilers and related libraries and programs required for compilation and installation of software from source code. See http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper/devel/build-essential, for a list of softwares that come with this package.

With sudo, 
sudo apt-get install build-essential
Without sudo, 
apt-get install build-essential

Run the update command again.

With sudo, 
sudo apt-get update
Without sudo, 
apt-get update

 

Installing OpenSSH on Ubuntu Linux Server

If you want remote access to your server (recommended) then you need to install openssh-server package too.

With sudo, 
sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Without sudo,

apt-get install openssh-server

Commands above install and run the Open SSH Server on Ubuntu. Now, you can access your Linux machine from a remote computer using an SSH client, such as, PuTTY (for Windows).

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Please feel free to use the comments form below if you have any questions or need more explanation on anything. I do not guarantee a response.

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Comments (write a comment):

When I type sudo apt-get update
following error is coming
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/


Pls help me.. Posted by: Shreenivas on Jul 15, 2014

@Shreenivas: you may need to run the command as root user or with sudo:

sudo apt-get update Posted by: shahryar on Sep 02, 2014

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