Installing Ubuntu on Your Dev Box

Why do it this way?

You are about to sit down in front of your mini computer with a keyboard and a monitor and install an operating system. This is the most technical-sounding thing in this entire chapter and it is also the last time it will feel this way. After today you nwill never sit in front of this machine again. Everything else happens over the network from the comfort of your own workstation.

That is worth pausing on. The monitor and keyboard you are connecting right now are temporary. This is their one job. When the installation is finished and the network address is sorted you will unplug them both and put them away. The machine will sit quietly on a shelf or under a desk and you will talk to it through a terminal window like every systems administrator talks to every server everywhere. That is not an advanced technique. That is just how servers work. You are learning the right habit from the very beginning.

Every decision you make in this installer is a decision you would make on a production server. The screens look the same. The options are the same. The nervous builder who gets through this install has, without quite meaning to, learned how to provision a Linux server. That skill transfers directly to every server you will ever touch.

How to do it:

Before you boot

Plug an ethernet cable directly from your mini computer into your router. This machine lives on a wired connection — not wifi, not ever. A server that drops off the network because someone's wifi hiccupped is a problem you don't need. Plug in your USB drive, connect a monitor and keyboard, and power the machine on.

Getting into the installer

The moment the machine powers on, start tapping a key to get into the boot menu. Try F2 first, then F10, then F7, maybe F11 (you might have a suggestion in the hand book that did not come with the machine) — start tapping repeatedly from the moment you press the power button. Don't wait to see what happens on screen. I can assure you the first one you try will be the wrong one - as soon as the machine is booted up enough to restart - restart it and try another key. One of those keys will open the boot menu. Once you see a boot menu that looks like a computer from 1980 - Select your USB drive and press Enter. If none of this works as expected - talk to you AI friend and see what they have to say

Navigating the installer

The Ubuntu server installer has its own navigation logic that has nothing to do with what you're used to on Windows. Three keys do everything:

- Tab — moves between elements on the screen

- Space — selects or deselects an option (this is what puts the X in the checkbox)

- Enter — confirms and moves forward to the next screen, but only when the green bar at the bottom of the screen is highlighting Done

If nothing seems to be responding, check where the green bar is. Tab to Done first, then Enter.

Walking through the screens

The installer will walk you through a series of decisions. Here is what to do at each one:

- Network / wifi — skip it. You're on ethernet.

- Proxy address — leave it blank. Move on.

- Disk setup — use the entire disk.

- LVM group — accept the default. Yes.

- Software RAID — no.

- Your name, server name, username, password — take your time here. Choose a server name that means something.

I used to work in an IT department that named all our servers after Alaskan Glaciers - there is a glacier named Mother Goose - that was my web development server.

Pick a username you'll remember and a password you will write down somewhere physical right now. Not a sticky note on the monitor. Somewhere real. If you lose this password you know how to wipe and reinstall the operating system ;-)

- Ubuntu Pro — skip it. The free version has everything you need.

- OpenSSH server — install this. Tab to it and press Space to put the X in the box. This is what lets you connect to the machine from your workstation. It is not optional.

- SSH key — skip it. We'll handle authentication the simple way for now.

- Snap packages — nothing on this list is needed. Move on.

Now the installer runs. This takes a few minutes. When it finishes it will ask you to reboot. Pull the USB drive out when prompted and let the machine restart.

Don't unplug the monitor yet

You have one more task before this machine goes headless. You need to give it a permanent network address so you can always find it. That's the next page.

SUMMARY:

You will sit in front of this machine exactly once. Get through this install and the monitor goes in the closet — everything else happens from your workstation over SSH.

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