Suggestions solicited, server bring up

[Šarūnas]

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Bruce Labitt wrote:
> In the pursuit of more computation power, I've been promised a server 
> class machine to 'play' with.  I believe it is a Dell 2950.  Yes, it is 
> already obsolete, but it was free and has double the amount of memory I 
> have on my desktop.  Anyways, I'd like to install Ubuntu 9.04LTS on it.  

9.04 is not an LTS release. If you really need LTS, then it's 8.04LTS.

> I've never done a server install before, what is recommended?  What 
> baseline packages are in Ubuntu Server?  I believe there is hardware 
> raid on the 2950, can Ubuntu server deal with this?  Any other gotchas I 
> should be aware of?

2950 can be equipped with different RAID hardware. I have 8.04 running
on several 2950, mostly with 3ware RAID, which I added myself, while one
has the original LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 1078 (rev 04).
All work fine. You can always test with a live Ubuntu CD beforehand.

> Incredibly naive question:  Since there is no GUI installed in Ubuntu 
> Server (I believe), how does one easily search for packages to install?  
> I can, of course, do this on my desktop first and then write stuff down, 
> waddle down to the server room and do this, umm, but that gets rather 
> tedious after a couple times...

Installer CDs for Ubuntu desktop and server are preseeded differently,
but software *repositories are the same*. So it's still the same
apt-cache search ...
apt-get install ...

And nothing prohibits installing GUI on the "server" either, for example:
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
apt-get install xbuntu-desktop
... ... ...
(will pull in gdm/kdm, Gnome/KDE/XFCE/... and tons of other software).

If you want something lean, try Ubuntu JeOS ("just enough OS"). That
install doesn't take more than 10 minutes on 2950. Then do the rest over
ssh. Much depends on what are you up to "playing" with...

Šarūnas Burdulis

Systems Administrator
Department of Mathematics, Dartmouth College
http://math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas

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