Ubuntu Tips, Tricks and Notes

Post-Installation

Make the output of the df command more friendly and less cluttered by creating a system-wide alias for it:

echo "alias df='df -h -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs'" >> /etc/profile.d/aliases.sh

Make sure to set the “always_set_home” variable in the sudoers file (using visudo)

Disable IPv6

To disable IPv6 on Ubuntu during boot time, open the /etc/default/grub file using your favorite text editor with root privileges and change/add:

FROM:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
TO:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="ipv6.disable=1"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="ipv6.disable=1"

Once you have made the above change within the /etc/default/grub file execute the following command to apply the GRUB changes:

sudo update-grub

Reboot the system afterwards.

Enable console screen blanking

Edit the /etc/default/grub file using your favorite text editor with root privileges and add the string consoleblank=600 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX lines for a 10-minute timeout.

Once you have made the above change within the /etc/default/grub file execute the following command to apply the GRUB changes:

sudo update-grub

Reboot the system afterwards.

To install Samba:

sudo apt-get install samba cifs-utils

To install NFS:

sudo apt-get install nfs-common nfs-kernel-server

To install mysql:

sudo apt install mysql-server
sudo mysql_secure_installation

Customizing the MOTD

Put any customization data into /etc/motd

Installing apache and php

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2
sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php
sudo apt install php-mysql php-gd php-xml
sudo apt install phpmyadmin php-mbstring php-gettext

Install phpmyadmin

sudo apt update
sudo apt install phpmyadmin
mysql
mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY '<password>';

Installing Portainer to manage Docker containers

sudo docker run -d -p 9443:9443 -p 8000:8000 --name portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce:latest

Disable interactive restart prompt while upgrading packages with apt

The trouble in this case is with the needrestart command, which is part of the apt-get upgrade process in Ubuntu now. By default this is set to “interactive” mode which causes the interruption of scripts.

To change this behavior, we can edit the /etc/needrestart/needrestart.conf file, changing the line:

#$nrconf{restart} = 'i';

to

$nrconf{restart} = 'a'; (if we want to restart the services automatically) or $nrconf{restart} = 'l'; to simply list the services that need restart.