Phil Windley's Technometria | Configuring a Linux Server

Configuring a Linux Server

These are things I like to do when I configure a new Linux server. For ideas on setting up software RAID, a serial console, SAMBA, and other things, see my topic guide on setting up a Linux server. You'll note that these are less step-by-step instructions as notes on what to do.

Make sure that the system will boot without a keyboard and that it will come back on after a loss of power. This means testing it without a keyboard and cycling the power. If it doesn't come back on after a power cycle, you need to reconfigure the BIOS.
Set up hostname. I like to edit /etc/sysconfig/network directly, but that's OS specific.
Set up any users. Be sure to set passwords.
Run chkconfig --list |more and turn off anything you don't need. Turn on anything you do.
Set up /etc/sudoers. I can't tell you what to do since that's specific to what you are setting up. The simplest configuration is to use set it up so that anyone in group wheel can be a sudoer. Then add the wheel group to each user who should be able to sudo.
At a minimum set an alias for root in /etc/aliases. Don't forget to run newaliases afterward.
Install, test, and put in the crontab scripts for monitoring your RAID set-up if applicable and rotating any logs. Most recent Linux distros do this for you on standard logs in /var/log; this is mainly applicable to any servers you've installed.
Put an rdate commend (see list of Internet time servers) in root's crontab:
```
   5 1 * * * /usr/bin/rdate -s time-b.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov
  
```
Configure sudo