Welcome to this new series of articles focused on getting some “power user” knowledge of Ubuntu GNU/Linux. It's kinda focused on system administration and it's going to be a series of articles where you'll have to get familiar with the console, it won't be as Advanced as some other sysadmin topics I've been talking about in this website, but it will be more advanced than the regular activities of an average user.

Overall, we are going to learn:

- Ubuntu Alternate Distribution: A customizable Ubuntu distribution
- Installing Ubuntu: LVM + Software Raid (asked by LifN) – includes advanced partitioning
- Securing the system (Basic security topics you should have in mind when installing an Internet-Faced Ubuntu server.)
- Adding capabilities to our Ubuntu Alternate installation: Aptitude and the “tasks”
- Ubuntu as a file server for a mixed environment (Mac/Win/Linux/Unixes)
- Performance monitoring: detecting bottlenecks and fixing them
- Health monitoring: detecting hardware failures and malfunctions
- Backing up our server: strategies (full,incremental,tape,staging,snapshots...) and tools

At the end of the series I'll publish the PDF with all the content, so you can download it, print it, pass it to friends, and so.
In case that you read something you think may be wrong or inaccurate, don't hesitate to put it in the comments, I'm also human! and I like to be corrected!

Ubuntu Alternate Distribution: A customizable Ubuntu

Canonical has several releases of Ubuntu: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and so on. The main difference between Desktop and Server versions is the kernel, which is tuned differently for each version, and the fact that the server version has no graphical environment, by default.
Also, the server version uses the debian text-based installer, rather than the graphical assistant that you can find in the Desktop versions.
Tha bad side of this approach is that each time you need several copies of the same distribution if you want to have media to install desktops or servers. Truth is that you don't need that many media, you can do everything with just one media: the Ubuntu Alternate Distribution. Oh, by the way, it doesn't have the LiveCD environment but it allows you to create customized installations (in case you have a company and want to perform several installations following a pattern, i.e.)
The funny thing is that RedHat family (RHEL, CentOS, Fedora), have the “Alternate Behavior” by default (yes, I know, I <3 Redhat)

Where do you get the Ubuntu Alternate Media?

To get the Ubuntu Alternate Media, you just have to go to the same place where you download the ubuntu desktop/server iso (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download) and check the “ Check here if you need the alternate desktop CD. This CD does not include the Live CD, instead it uses a text-based installer.” tick.
Just burn it as you do with the rest of ISOs, and you'll have a bootable disk ready to be installed.

See you on next article!

Some times a sysadmin faces situations where his/her knowledge is far away from what's needed. Or maybe he/she may need to get into a topic suddenly because of a new application, new requirement, and so on.

One may go the classical way of seeking for a book, googleing around and getting disperse info. I prefer to go another way: getting subscriptions to services that may provide information fast and on the go.

In my case, I'm a member of SAGE, a group of system administrators sponsored by SAGE, the subscription is $45 / year and you get access to a mailing list where you can ask and give help on different sysadmin topics, and also you get access to "mini books" covering topocs like: oracle administration, centralized system administration, and so on. If you want more info, have a look at: http://www.usenix.org/membership/classes.html#sage

I'm also paying a monthly subscription to Safari, an online bookshelf from O'Reilly, where you can get online versions of O'Reilly books, and also online versions of books from other vendors. By $22/month you get a bookshelf with ten slots (most books use 1 slot only) and 5 pdf generation token, so you can rende up to 5 chapters monthly. I've been using the service for 4 months now and still haven't used all the tokens (they are cumulative, if you don't spend them in one month, you keep them for the next one.)

Taking in account the cost of the printed books ($30-$60), the transportation to Barcelona (add another $15) and depending on availability, I'm really happy of having the chance of getting instant access to all this media, and being able to get PDF renders at a reasonable price.