There is a new version of this tutorial available for Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish).

How to install a Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) Minimal Server

This tutorial shows the installation of a Ubuntu 16.10 minimal server in detail with many screenshots. The purpose of the guide is to show the basic installation of Ubuntu Yakkety Yak that can be used as a basis for the other Ubuntu tutorials here at howtoforge like our perfect server guides.

1. Requirements

To install a Ubuntu Server, you will need the following prerequisites:

2. Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.1.100 and the gateway 192.168.1.1 These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

In many cases, you might not need the latest software for a server but prefer to get updates for a longer time. In that case, use the Ubuntu LTS version instead of the latest Ubuntu release. You can find this tutorial for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS here.

3. The Base System

Insert your Ubuntu install CD into your system and boot from it. When you install the OS in a virtual machine like I do it here, then you should be able to select the downloaded ISO file as source for the CD/DVD drive in VMWare and Virtualbox without burning it on CD first.

The first screen will show the language selector. Plese select your language for the installation process:

Select the language for the Ubuntu 16.10 installation process.

Then choose the option Install Ubuntu Server:

Start the Ubuntu installation.

Select your language again, this time the language is for the installed Ubuntu OS:

Select the language that is used for the OS

Then choose your location. The location settings are important for the keyboard layout, locale and timezone of your server:

Choose the server location.

Select your country.

Select the server locale.

Choose a keyboard layout: You have the option to let the Ubuntu installer detect the keyboard layout automatically by choosing "yes" here. I prefer to select the right keyboard from a list and therefore, I choose No & keyboard layout as German:

Select the keyboard layout manually.

Select the country for the Ubuntu keyboard locale.

Select the keyboard layout.


The installer checks the installation CD, your hardware, and configures the network with DHCP if there is a DHCP server in the network:

The installer scans the CD image for packages.

Enter the hostname of the system. In this example, my server is named server1.example.com, so I enter server1.example.com:

Set the server hostname.


Ubuntu does not let you log in as root user directly. Therefore, we create a new system user here for the initial login. I will create a user with the name Administrator and user name administrator (don't use the user name admin as it is a reserved name on Ubuntu Linux):

Set the full name of the user.

Set a username.

Choose a password:

Choose a password

Repeat the password

I don't need an encrypted private directory, so I choose No here:

Encryption of the home directory is not required here

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By: Pete
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People deploying production systems shouldn't use this release unless absolutely mandatory. It will only have 6-9 months of support.  Stay with the LTS releases (14.04/16.04) if you need longer support periods.

There are exceptions, of course. That is mainly for extremely new hardware which hasn't been back-ported to 16.04 or other extremely new software that will only be available in the newer release.

By: till
Reply  

Yes, that's what I mentioned in chapter 2. You can find the link to the LTS version of this tutorial there as well.

By: thctlo
Reply  

hai, thanks for the setup, just one thing. the hostname is NOT hostname-server.example.tld thats only hostname-server

as the ubuntu installer tell, its a single word.

By: till
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I know what the Ubuntu installer suggests and I suggest to enter the full hostname as this causes less problems later when you install additional software. But you are free to follow the Ubuntu recommendation of course.

By: thctlo
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I suggest you dont install the standard system utils, it just slowdown your server and then its really a minimal install.

Also please dont show the examples with user Administrator.

main reason for this is that due to this use, you CAN NOT use this for a samba 4 AD DC setup. in that case you may not have Administrator as local user on the system, since its proviced in the provisioning of samba.

 

By: till
Reply  

You can leave out the standard utils but then a lot of basic commands will be missing. So for most users, it is better to install the standard utils right away. I never had a problem with username administrator, but I don't run a Samba AD server here, so there can be a samba specific issue with that username.

By: Jeff
Reply  

Thank you, very easy to follow. This is my first experience with linux and this is making it enjoyable to learn.

Thanks again