apt-file is a command line tool for searching packages in Debian/Ubuntu repositories.
Unlike apt-cache search, apt-file can find files in uninstalled or can list the content of uninstalled packages.

This tutorial will show how to install apt-file, update and search or list packages and files.

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Filesystems are usually created on a partition. When all your hard drive is already partitioned, creating a new partition can become a pain and creating a new filesystem within another filesystem file can save you a lot of hassles.

This tutorial will show the few steps required to have a new filesystem layout set within another filesystem.

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This tutorial will explain how to create a self-signed certificate that you will be able to use with apache in order to provide ssl support.

A self signed certificate won’t provide as much security guarantees than a CA-signed certificate, but at least you will be able to use encrypted connection to your server.

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LVM (Logical Volume Manager) is a great piece of software which allow you to deal with Logical Volumes. Using LVM along with ext3 filesystem, you are allowed to extend the size of your logical drives which is pretty handy when running out of space.

Distributions like Fedora, Suse and Debian have a LVM aware installer. Unfortunately, at the time this article was written, Ubuntu does not offer such settings with the Desktop Install CD.

This article will cover how to create LVM partitions and how-to generate your partitions from this LVM volume.

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Linux services can be started, stopped and reloaded with the use of scripts stocked in /etc/init.d/.

However, during start up or when changing runlevel, those scripts are searched in /etc/rcX.d/ where X is the runlevel number.

This tutorial will explain how one can activate, deactivate or modify a service start up.

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5. Preseed: Installation automation:

Like Red Hat’s kickstart file, Debian based distribution can use a preseed file. The preseed file will contain the different information that the installer will require in order to proceed with the installation.

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4. PXELinux

PXELinux is a boot loader similar to syslinux. As syslinux is used for booting from a CD, Pxelinux is designed for PXE booting.

To get PXE Boot Loader and anything required to set up a netboot install, you will need to get the archive netboot.tar.gz from ubuntu repositories.

Let’s go to our TFTP server root directory and get PXELinux set up.

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3. TFTP server

There is a couple of tftp server around there. The one chosen for this tutorial is tftpd-hpa does the job.tftpd package could not handle PXE protocol.

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For the purpose of this tutorial, I decided to choose dnsmasq to act as a DNS/DHCP server. The reason behind this is that dnsmasq is simple to configure and does a good job in providing DNS and DHCP services for a small LAN.

2. DHCP server:

The DHCP server is going to be involved twice in this scenario. First, when our client is going to boot on its network interface, the DHCP server is going to provide the client with an IP address to be able to communicate with other servers. Also, on this first contact, the DHCP server is going to supply our client with a filename and a server address where to get the bootloader using TFTP protocol.

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there is many ways of installing Linux. Nowadays, the most common one is probably by using a CD. Download the CD, stick it in your CDRom drive and let’s roll!!!

If you intent to deploy Ubuntu over several computers, this can easily become cumbersome.

This tutorial will explain how to install Ubuntu/Debian through the network using preseed files so you can turn on your computer, walk away and come back later with your fresh install up and running.

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