VladGh.com

In order to configure your network adapter with the static ip provided, you have to modify the following file:

vi /etc/network/interfaces

And add/modify the following lines:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address YOUR.EXTENAL.IP.ADDRESS
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        gateway YOUR.GATEWAY

Setup you host name:

vi /etc/hosts

Sould contain:

127.0.0.1 localhost 
YOUR.EXTERNAL.IP.ADDRESS   subdomain.yourdomain.com   subdomain

Setup the hostname:

echo "subdomain" > /etc/hostname
hostname -F /etc/hostname

Reconfigure Dash:

dpkg-reconfigure dash

When asked to "Install dash as /bin/sh?", answer No. Add the following line to your .bashrc. I added it to both the root and the jdoe user.

vi ~/.bashrc

export PS1='\[\033[0;35m\]\h\[\033[0;33m\] \w\[\033[00m\]: '

Also you can add the following aliases in order to speed things up:

alias free="free -m"
alias update="sudo aptitude update"
alias install="sudo aptitude install"
alias upgrade="sudo aptitude safe-upgrade"
alias remove="sudo aptitude remove"

Make the changes permanent with:

source ~/.bashrc

I repeat, the conficuration above is for the root user. You can copy the file to whatever user you have:

cp ~/.bashrc /home/jdoe/

The next step is to install updates. Make sure that all your lines for universe repositories are uncommented in your /etc/apt/sources.list file After that

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Install a few programs:

apt-get -y install vim-nox htop binutils cpp flex gcc libarchive-zip-perl libc6-dev libcompress-zlib-perl m4 libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpopt-dev lynx make perl perl-modules openssl unzip zip autoconf gnu-standards automake libtool bison build-essential zlib1g-dev ntp ntpdate autotools-dev g++ bc subversion psmisc libssl-dev

Also update your sever's time zone:

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
update-locale

You can now safely reboot your server. You are prepared for the next step.