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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

The recommend method to disable IPv6 on Ubuntu 18.04 after reboot is to configure the GRUB boot loader to pass kernel parameter during the boot time.

To do so 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 commands to apply the GRUB changes:

sudo update-grub

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. Save the file and apply the GRUB changes:

sudo update-grub

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.