Build an Ubuntu Training Server

The purpose of an Ubuntu Training Server is to provide you with a learning device that will allow you to practice skills that you must master for Ubuntu Server Administration. This means that you must be skilled in Linux Server Management and Linux Server Daemons. Linux Server Management is a focus on users, processes, drive configuration, rights, etc. These are skills that are often overlooked by administrators until there are problems. Linux Server Daemons refer to the installation, configuration and monitoring of the services that are typically placed on an Ubuntu server like; mail, web, dns, dhcp, etc. Once of the major skills that is lacking in many administrators is the ability to configure software RAID and the ability to work with the many options of LVM. For a tutorial on Logical Volume Management Click Here. The current tutorial will show you how to perform a VMWare installation so that you may learn these skills on a practice server before you are working on a production server.

Step #1: Download the Ubuntu Server CD
You will use the CD to create a virtual machine that you can use for practice. Place the burned .iso into your CDROM.

Step #2: Download the VMWare Player

The VMWare player is free and will allow you to create virtual machines to work on. Click Here
for a link to the VMWare Player download and instructions on how to use the VMWare player with Linux. You may choose to install the player on a Linux box or on a Windows box.

Step #3: Create a VMX File to Create Your Virtual Machine
Here is a link to a tutorial that will show you how to create a VMX file Click Here. The most important key is that you create two virtual drives so that you have options to create partitions that you may place RAID and LVM on.

Step #4: Build Your Virtual Server
Once you have your virtual machine starting the install follow the process just like a normal install until you get to the drives. You must leave one drive unpartitioned and unused. This will be the drive you can use to practice on while not doing damage to the main installation. When you get to hard drive partitioning choose Manual.

You will need to wipe out everything on this drive, remember it is virtual so it is not the drive on your computer. If you are in doubt DO NOT CONTINUE!

Here you can see it has initialized the virtual disk, sda (SCSI) and you have 4.3 GB of free space. Now you want to place your operating system on that free space. You will leave sdb alone for the install.

Move to the FREE SPACE line and choose Enter and you can create a new partition.

The first partition to create is the /boot partition. It is created large so that you may add several kernels to the system, again, part of the training process.

Make this a primary partition.

There you can see that the /boot partition is set....now make sure you make it bootable by changing the Bootable flag.

Move the the Bootable flag line and hit Enter and it will change to on which will allow it to be bootable.

Now create the other partitions including:

/home

/

SWAP

You want to create a separate /home partition so you can run quotas on it for users. This will allow you to learn how to set up and manage quotas on the system.

The SWAP should be the same size as you indicated in the RAM settings for the virtual machine. In the example we used 512 RAM. Here is what it should look like when you have the partitions correctly set up. Be sure to leave the second virtual drive alone.