Step-by-step Install Guide for Ubuntu

What you need to start

• Ubuntu 6.06 LTS server CD
• A test x86 desktop computer, keyboard, monitor, mouse, and firewalled internet connection.
• One hour of time. (seriously!)

Directions

Install Ubuntu

Start computer and use F12 to boot from CD.

Select Install to hard drive.

Select your language, country, and keyboard layout (i.e. English, United States, American English)

Select manually configure and set an IP address (or autoconfig if you don't know).

Enter your servername (i.e. moodletest)

Select to manually edit the partition table. I’m doing my testing on a standard 40GB harddrive and will modify these sizes for production.

/boot	ext3	200MB	bootable	(may need to be under cylinder 1024 on your harddrive to be bootable)
/	ext3	10GB		(files are relatively static)
swap		4GB		(4xRAM if you don't have much memory, down to 1xRAM if you have gobs of memory)
/var	ext3	26GB		(variable content – uses rest of the drive)

Select your timezone. (i.e. Central)

Set clock to Universal Time.

Enter Administrators full name. (i.e. Joe Smith)

Enter account name. (i.e. joesmith)

Enter a secure password. (‘abcde’ is not a good one!)

Let the computer restart.

Log in your account.

Edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file. Remove the # mark on lines 22 and 38 to enable access to the universe package source and universe security updates. You will need to re-enter your account password when sudo asks for it.

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list  

Now to get all the security updates.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

Normally you would just use sudo apt-get upgrade.

And reboot to run on the new kernel!

sudo reboot

Install MySQL

At this point we'll need to log in again to the server and type:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Press Y to continue the install.

Replace the following string NewRootDatabasePassword with a secure password of your own choosing.

mysqladmin –u root password NewRootDatabasePassword

mysqladmin -u root -h localhost password NewRootDatabasePassword -pNewRootDatabasePassword

Notice that you have to enter your database password twice. There is no space between the -p and the password.

Install Apache

On the command line, type:

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-gd php5-mysqli 

Press Y to continue the install.

It's that simple!

Install other software

On the command line, type:

sudo apt-get install ntp ntp-simple openssh-server unattended-upgrades

sudo apt-get install clamav unzip zip aspell-en
sudo apt-get install clamav

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-security php5-ldap php5-odbc

Press Y to continue the install after each of these apt-get commands.

The clamav package will support virus checking on file uploads into Moodle. May have to run it again to configure properly.

Additional languages are available for aspell.

The LDAP and ODBC packages will help our Moodle authenticate via Active Directory and enroll via an Oracle database.

Install Moodle

On the command line, type:

cd /var/www

sudo wget http://download.moodle.org/stable17/moodle-latest-17.tgz

sudo tar –zxf moodle-latest-17.tgz

sudo mkdir /var/moodledata

sudo chown –R www-data.www-data /var/moodledata /var/www/moodle

We now need to edit the location of the default web site. On lines four and nine, replace /var/www with /var/www/moodle. Restart Apache.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default  

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Finally, we need to create the Moodle database and Moodle user in MySQL.

Enter your RootDatabasePassword at the prompt and replace NewMoodleDatabasePassword with a secure password of your own choosing.

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE moodle;
GRANT ALL ON moodle.* TO moodle@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'NewMoodleDatabasePassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT;

Configure Moodle website

ifconfig (look for your server’s ip address on the 2nd line)

On another computer open a web browser and put in your server address

Complete the Moodle install using a secure username and password

Go to a bar for a few hours.

Come back and tell your boss that you FINALLY got the test server running.

Other Resources

• Ubuntu 6.06 Server Guide - HTML PDF
• Ubuntu - 1 2 security
• Debian - 1 2 security
• Linux - 1 2 3 security
• MySQL - 1 2 security
• Apache - 1 2 security
• Modsecurity apache2 module
• Another Ubuntu and Moodle install document
• Moodle Security