Build a VPS Host in 24 Hours: Ubuntu Server Setup (Page 1)

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You'll need a computer to serve as your VPS host. Any reasonably modern computer will work, although at minimum I recommend a dual-core processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a lot of hard disk space. The machine I'll be using as an example is actually a bit weaker than these specifications; it's a whitebox PC that used to serve as my desktop. It has a single core AMD64 processor, 2 GB RAM, and a total of 160 GB drive space split between two drives. Even with these relatively modest specs, the machine happily runs several virtual machines simultaneously, as will be demonstrated later.

Once you've chosen a computer to serve as your host server, you'll need to obtain a copy of Ubuntu Server 8.04. Download the ISO image appropriate for your CPU architecture (either i386 or AMD64, the latter works with Intel 64-bit processors as well) and burn it to a CD using your favorite burner application. Be sure to actually use whatever function is built into your application to write the CD directly from the ISO image; simply burning the downloaded file to a data CD will not work.

When your install CD is ready, pop it into your server and boot the machine. You may need to adjust your BIOS settings to have the server boot from the CD/DVD-ROM drive first. Typically, pressing the "Del", "F2", or "F10" key when the computer is first booting up will give you access to the BIOS setup program. Once you're booted off the CD, follow the screen captures and instructions below to install the base operating system. Please note that these instructions were created by installing Ubuntu into a virtual machine in VirtualBox, so some steps will appear slightly different for you.

First, you'll be greeted by the Ubuntu language selection screen:

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