Tutorial : Installing a dedicated server or a VPS with Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) for Drupal 6.x

Besides its success on the desktop, Ubuntu has become a popular server distribution as well. With the release of Hardy Heron 8.04, Canonical is making this release a Long Term Support (LTS) version, with 5 years support on servers.

Many hosting companies offering dedicted and virtual private servers (VPS) offer Ubuntu as an option. That is not a surprise, because Ubuntu provides all the benefits that Debian provides: community maintained, vast repository of software packages, and superior dependency management, with more up to date packages.

Drupal runs best on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). This article describes how to setup Ubuntu Server 8.04 LTS for use with Drupal, making sure all the required software is configured, with special tweaks for performance and development.

The article assumes that this is either a dedicated server, or a VPS. The usage of the server can be either a live server, or a development machine.

Installing Ubuntu Server

If you are on a VPS provided by a hosting company, they would have installed Ubuntu for you from images they maintain. Therefore, you can skip this section if you are using a VPS.

Install Ubuntu normally using the installation instructions on Ubuntu's web site.

When you reach the stage of selecting a Package Task, only select OpenSSH server. Do not select LAMP server nor Mail server. We will do those manually later, in order to control exactly what gets installed.

Configuring a Static IP address

Note: If you are on a VPS, skip this section. In fact, you can lose access to your server inadverently if you make a mistake here.

When the system reboots, you need to assign a static address to it if it is a live server.

Edit the file /etc/network/interfaces to be as follows. Replace the IP address in the address and gateway with the correct values.

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
  address 192.168.0.240
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 192.168.0.1

Restart the networking stack.

# /etc/init.d/networking restart

If this is a remote server, with no console access, then it is best if you double check the settings and reboot instead of restarting the network.

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Courtesy : http://2bits.com/