[Mashiro]

Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS Installation in SolusVM via ISO

Hello Post4VPS Community

I'm going to make this opening paragraph brief this time. This guide will simply show the basic installation process of Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS via a ISO file in the VPS control panel SolusVM. I'm making this guide because it has been requested by staff. This guide is basic only. I will not cover how to perform the installation with a custom partition layout and similar other customizations that can be performed during installation. I'm also making a basic installation because I don't have much free time thanks to SARS-CoV-2 and my real job at which we have a lot stuff to do in order to make things like home office work and get things ready for the worst case scenario.

Let's get the ball rollin.

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The Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS ISO has to be available in your SolusVM control panel! If it is NOT ask your provider or rather said if it is for a VPS from here open a support thread. If it is NOT available there is no point in following this guide at this time.


Step 1

Open the SolusVM control panel of your VPS and login with your user account.

Once you're in select the VPS which you want to manage and click the "Manage" button which will lead you to a overview of the VPS stats and options.


Step 2

At the main page with all your VPS stats and options open the "Settings" tab in the lower part of the page.
- Make sure "VNC" is set to "On".
- After that change "Boot Order" to "(1) CD ROM (2) Hard Disk".

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Now open the "CDROM" tab in the lower part of the page.
- Select the Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS ISO.
- Click on the "Mount" button to mount the ISO.

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Now click on the "Reboot" button in the middle part of the page where all control buttons are such as "Shutdown", "Boot" and etc.

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You will see a message asking if you really want to reboot. Answer this question with "Yes". Your VPS will now reboot with the new settings for the boot order and with the Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS ISO mounted to boot from it as per boot order. Once the VPS has rebooted you will see a message saying that the reboot process has been completed.


Step 3

Quickly after the reboot process has been finished click on the "VNC" button in the middle part of the page.

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At the VNC page click on "HTML5 Client VNC SSL" (the green button).

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A new popup window should open with the screen content of your VPS being visible like you would be setting infront of it with a monitor connected to it. If the popup windows doesn't open make sure you allow popups on the SolusVM page of your provider.

Now your VPS is booted into the Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS installation ISO and you are connected to it via VNC provided by SolusVM without the need for an external applications such as a VNC client or Java for the Java VNC client.


Step 4

The first part of the installation is the language selection. Select your language using the UP/DOWN arrow keys and press ENTER to continue.

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At the next screen you can configure which keyboard layout you want to use. This is only important when you access the VPS by means of this VNC. I will leave it as it is at the Englisch (US) keyboard. Beware that keys might not match your layout if you don't change this option. You can change it using the UP/DOWN arrow keys and the ENTER key. Once done move the cursor to the "Done" option at the bottom and hit the ENTER key to proceed.

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Now you will be at a screen where you can select to simply install Ubuntu Server or install it in some specific configurations for Cloud hosting and similar. Here simply select "Install Ubuntu" and hit the ENTER key to continue.

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At the next step you can configure the network adapter of your VPS. You can either leave it on DHCP if you see the correct address. If it displays a wrong IP address you have to change it to "Manual" and configure the network adapter with your VPS IP address and network information.

This information can be obtained in SolusVM. Click on the "Network" tab and then click on your IP address. A small popup window will open with your IP address, your gateway and the netmask. You can use this information to configure the network adapter.

I will not cover this any further as it would make this tutorial to long and would basically require a whole lesson about network, netmask and how to convert netmasks to CIDR.

A netmask to CIDR table is available here: https://kb.wisc.edu/page.php?id=3493

You can find out your IP network with the help of your IP and the netmask in CIDR using this site: http://jodies.de/ipcalc

Example:
IP address: 123.123.95.34
Netmask in CIDR: 27 (/27)

That means that your network is actually 123.123.95.32/27 as the subnet your IP address is in begins with the address 123.123.95.32. This is the network address and cannot be assigned to any device. The next first and usable IP address would be 123.123.95.33 which in most cases would be the gateway of your network.

Use the sites I provided and you will get all necessary information. Actually, I think one can expect that from people who have been here for years and had the interest in computers and VPSs... that they know how to get and understand such information or find sites that can help you with that.

I also cannot show how to configure this because the VPS I use has been given to me to make the guide but it is not mine and I cannot make the IP information public. Sorry.

Once you configured your network go down to the "Done" option and hit your ENTER key to continue.

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Now you will be presented with a screen asking for a proxy configuration. Do not fill anything out here. Just select "Done" at the bottom and hit ENTER to continue.

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On the next screen you can change the mirror from which the packages for the installation and later on all packages in the installed Ubuntu Server will be used. You can leave this at the default or change it if you know what you are doing and have a different mirror.

Once you're done with changing it or have left it on the default simply select "Done" at the bottom and hit ENTER to proceed.

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At this stage you will now see a screen where you can select partitions and how your Ubuntu Server should be installed. Since we will not cover any customizations on this part and only do the basics just select "Use An Entire Disk" and hit the ENTER key.

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What will happen now is that the installer will automatically create all partitions needed for you. This is called "guided partitioning".

At the next screen select the virtual disk of your VPS and hit ENTER to continue.

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On the next screen you will see a overview of which partitions will be created and now. Just select "Done" at the bottom and hit ENTER to proceed.

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You will be asked if you really want to continue. Answer this question with "Continue".


After that the installation will already start in the background. You will see a screen where you can now configure a user, hostname and password for that user. This user will be by default in the sudoers group. By default Ubuntu doesn't allow to configure the root account if done via the real ISO installation. OS templates are a different thing and there root is enabled by default but not if you install Ubuntu Server normally yourself via the ISO.

Fill out the page with all needed information and go down to "Done" and hit ENTER to continue.

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Once that is done you will be at the "Featured Server Snaps" page. Server Snaps are basically prebuild application bundles that can be installed. We don't want to install anything. So use the TAB key to go to the "Done" option at the bottom and hit ENTER to continue.

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Now wait until the installation is finished. Once the installation is finished you will have to options. 1) will be "View full log" and 2) will be "Reboot Now". And at the top you will see "Finished install!". Once this is visible and you see these two options your installation is done.

Select the "Reboot Now" option and hit ENTER to continue.

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The installer will now exit. You will see a message saying "Please remove the installation medium, then press ENTER:". At this stage simply press the ENTER key to continue.

You can now close the VNC window.


Step 5

In SolusVM go back to the "CDROM" tab and hit the blue "Unmount" button to eject the Ubuntu ISO.

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After that go to the "Settings" tab and change "Boot Order" back to "(1) Hard Disk (2) CD ROM)".

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In the controls area click on the "Reboot" button and answer the question about whether you want to reboot with "Yes". Wait for the reboot to finish. After that you can login via SSH and the username and password you created during the installation process.

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With that the installation is done. I would recommend to run the following commands right after accessing SSH for the first time to update the server:

Code: (Select All)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove -y
sudo reboot

That's it folks.