Category: Ubuntu

Install and make GNU GCC 10 default in Ubuntu 20.04 Focal

The best way to install and use GNU GCC 10 is to install first, build-essential package, which will pull in the GNU GCC 9.2, and then install the GNU GCC 10. In fact, it is possible to install only GNU GCC 10 packages, but build-essential brings with it many additional packages, which are mandatory for the configuration and compiling stages.
GNU GCC is included in the official Ubuntu Focal repository! It just needs to be installed and made to be the default compiler.

Install build-essential ensures all generic packages to be installed, which are involved in the building process of a software product.

There are three steps to install and use GNU GCC 10 under Ubuntu 20.04:

  1. Install build-essential package.
  2. Install gcc-10 packages (g++, too).
  3. Make GNU GCC 10 default compiler – use update-alternatives to point the GNU GCC 10 as the default compiler

Four simple lines and the third is a little bit more complex:

apt update -y
apt upgrade -y
apt install -y build-essential
apt install -y gcc-10 g++-10 cpp-10
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-10 100 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-10 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-10

Always update and upgrade before installing new software. Use sudo before each command, if installation is performed by a user other than root:

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y build-essential
sudo apt install -y gcc-10 g++-10 cpp-10
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-10 100 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-10 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-10

It is a good idea to install cmake package, in addition to the above, because cmake is not included in build-essential:

apt install -y cmake

The apt output of installing GNU GCC 10

Many additional packages like multiple perl modules, libraries and make are installed.
Keep on reading!

Easy install the latest docker-compose with pip3 under Ubuntu

At present, the latest docker-compose version, which could be installed under Ubuntu 18, 20, and 21 is the 1.25 and 1.27 versions. There may be significant changes included in the latest versions and if one wants to install it there are two options:

For example, depends_on.service.condition: service_healthy is added with version 1.28. Using this new feature it is fairly easy to implement waiting for a docker container (service) before starting another docker.

Here is how easy it is to install and to have the latest stable docker-compose version, which is 1.29.2 at the writing of this article:

STEP 1) Update and upgrade.

Do this step always before installing new software.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

STEP 2) Install pip3 and docker.

pip 3 is the package installer for Python 3. When using docker-compose it is supposed to have the very Docker software, too.

apt install python3-pip docker
systemctl start docker

STEP 3) Install docker-compose using pip3.

pip3 install docker-compose

And here is what a version command prints:

root@srv:~# docker-compose version
docker-compose version 1.29.2, build unknown
docker-py version: 5.0.2
CPython version: 3.8.10
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1f  31 Mar 2020

Just to note, installing packages using other programs other than apt may lead to future conflicts!

The whole console output of the pip3 installing docker-compose

root@srv:~# apt update
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease [265 kB]
Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease [114 kB]              
Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [101 kB]
Get:4 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [114 kB]
Get:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/multiverse amd64 Packages [177 kB]
Get:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/restricted amd64 Packages [33.4 kB]
Get:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/universe amd64 Packages [11.3 MB]
Get:8 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages [1275 kB]                  
Get:9 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 Packages [1514 kB]        
Get:10 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/multiverse amd64 Packages [33.3 kB]
Get:11 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/universe amd64 Packages [1069 kB]
Get:12 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/restricted amd64 Packages [575 kB]
Get:13 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports/universe amd64 Packages [6324 B]
Get:14 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports/main amd64 Packages [2668 B]
Get:15 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/main amd64 Packages [1070 kB]
Get:16 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/universe amd64 Packages [790 kB]
Get:17 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/multiverse amd64 Packages [30.1 kB]
Get:18 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/restricted amd64 Packages [525 kB]
Fetched 19.0 MB in 1s (16.7 MB/s)                          
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
root@srv:~# apt upgrade -y
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root@srv:~# apt install -y python3-pip docker
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  binutils binutils-common binutils-x86-64-linux-gnu build-essential ca-certificates cpp cpp-9 dirmngr dpkg-dev fakeroot file g++ g++-9 gcc gcc-9 gcc-9-base gnupg gnupg-l10n gnupg-utils
  gpg gpg-agent gpg-wks-client gpg-wks-server gpgconf gpgsm libalgorithm-diff-perl libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libalgorithm-merge-perl libasan5 libasn1-8-heimdal libassuan0 libatomic1
  libbinutils libbsd0 libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libcc1-0 libcrypt-dev libctf-nobfd0 libctf0 libdpkg-perl libexpat1 libexpat1-dev libfakeroot libfile-fcntllock-perl libgcc-9-dev
  libgdbm-compat4 libgdbm6 libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libgomp1 libgssapi3-heimdal libhcrypto4-heimdal libheimbase1-heimdal libheimntlm0-heimdal libhx509-5-heimdal libicu66 libisl22
  libitm1 libkrb5-26-heimdal libksba8 libldap-2.4-2 libldap-common liblocale-gettext-perl liblsan0 libmagic-mgc libmagic1 libmpc3 libmpdec2 libmpfr6 libnpth0 libperl5.30 libpython3-dev
  libpython3-stdlib libpython3.8 libpython3.8-dev libpython3.8-minimal libpython3.8-stdlib libquadmath0 libreadline8 libroken18-heimdal libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules libsasl2-modules-db
  libsqlite3-0 libssl1.1 libstdc++-9-dev libtsan0 libubsan1 libwind0-heimdal libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxml2 linux-libc-dev make manpages manpages-dev mime-support
  netbase openssl patch perl perl-modules-5.30 pinentry-curses python-pip-whl python3 python3-dev python3-distutils python3-lib2to3 python3-minimal python3-pkg-resources
  python3-setuptools python3-wheel python3.8 python3.8-dev python3.8-minimal readline-common shared-mime-info tzdata wmdocker xdg-user-dirs xz-utils zlib1g-dev
Suggested packages:
  binutils-doc cpp-doc gcc-9-locales dbus-user-session libpam-systemd pinentry-gnome3 tor debian-keyring g++-multilib g++-9-multilib gcc-9-doc gcc-multilib autoconf automake libtool flex
  bison gdb gcc-doc gcc-9-multilib parcimonie xloadimage scdaemon glibc-doc git bzr gdbm-l10n libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit | libsasl2-modules-gssapi-heimdal libsasl2-modules-ldap
  libsasl2-modules-otp libsasl2-modules-sql libstdc++-9-doc make-doc man-browser ed diffutils-doc perl-doc libterm-readline-gnu-perl | libterm-readline-perl-perl libb-debug-perl
  liblocale-codes-perl pinentry-doc python3-doc python3-tk python3-venv python-setuptools-doc python3.8-venv python3.8-doc binfmt-support readline-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  binutils binutils-common binutils-x86-64-linux-gnu build-essential ca-certificates cpp cpp-9 dirmngr docker dpkg-dev fakeroot file g++ g++-9 gcc gcc-9 gcc-9-base gnupg gnupg-l10n
  gnupg-utils gpg gpg-agent gpg-wks-client gpg-wks-server gpgconf gpgsm libalgorithm-diff-perl libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libalgorithm-merge-perl libasan5 libasn1-8-heimdal libassuan0
  libatomic1 libbinutils libbsd0 libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libcc1-0 libcrypt-dev libctf-nobfd0 libctf0 libdpkg-perl libexpat1 libexpat1-dev libfakeroot libfile-fcntllock-perl libgcc-9-dev
  libgdbm-compat4 libgdbm6 libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libgomp1 libgssapi3-heimdal libhcrypto4-heimdal libheimbase1-heimdal libheimntlm0-heimdal libhx509-5-heimdal libicu66 libisl22
  libitm1 libkrb5-26-heimdal libksba8 libldap-2.4-2 libldap-common liblocale-gettext-perl liblsan0 libmagic-mgc libmagic1 libmpc3 libmpdec2 libmpfr6 libnpth0 libperl5.30 libpython3-dev
  libpython3-stdlib libpython3.8 libpython3.8-dev libpython3.8-minimal libpython3.8-stdlib libquadmath0 libreadline8 libroken18-heimdal libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules libsasl2-modules-db
  libsqlite3-0 libssl1.1 libstdc++-9-dev libtsan0 libubsan1 libwind0-heimdal libx11-6 libx11-data libxau6 libxcb1 libxdmcp6 libxml2 linux-libc-dev make manpages manpages-dev mime-support
  netbase openssl patch perl perl-modules-5.30 pinentry-curses python-pip-whl python3 python3-dev python3-distutils python3-lib2to3 python3-minimal python3-pip python3-pkg-resources
  python3-setuptools python3-wheel python3.8 python3.8-dev python3.8-minimal readline-common shared-mime-info tzdata wmdocker xdg-user-dirs xz-utils zlib1g-dev
.....
.....
0 upgraded, 128 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 84.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 370 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Processing triggers for ca-certificates (20210119~20.04.1) ...
Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs...
0 added, 0 removed; done.
Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d...
done.
root@srv:~# pip3 install docker-compose
Collecting docker-compose
  Downloading docker_compose-1.29.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (114 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 114 kB 12.4 MB/s 
Collecting requests<3,>=2.20.0
  Downloading requests-2.26.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (62 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 62 kB 355 kB/s 
Collecting jsonschema<4,>=2.5.1
  Downloading jsonschema-3.2.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (56 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 56 kB 3.4 MB/s 
Collecting websocket-client<1,>=0.32.0
  Downloading websocket_client-0.59.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (67 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 67 kB 3.3 MB/s 
Collecting texttable<2,>=0.9.0
  Downloading texttable-1.6.4-py2.py3-none-any.whl (10 kB)
Collecting PyYAML<6,>=3.10
  Downloading PyYAML-5.4.1-cp38-cp38-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (662 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 662 kB 76.9 MB/s 
Collecting dockerpty<1,>=0.4.1
  Downloading dockerpty-0.4.1.tar.gz (13 kB)
Collecting docker[ssh]>=5
  Downloading docker-5.0.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (145 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 145 kB 119.5 MB/s 
Collecting distro<2,>=1.5.0
  Downloading distro-1.6.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (19 kB)
Collecting docopt<1,>=0.6.1
  Downloading docopt-0.6.2.tar.gz (25 kB)
Collecting python-dotenv<1,>=0.13.0
  Downloading python_dotenv-0.19.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (17 kB)
Collecting urllib3<1.27,>=1.21.1
  Downloading urllib3-1.26.6-py2.py3-none-any.whl (138 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 138 kB 141.1 MB/s 
Collecting charset-normalizer~=2.0.0; python_version >= "3"
  Downloading charset_normalizer-2.0.4-py3-none-any.whl (36 kB)
Collecting certifi>=2017.4.17
  Downloading certifi-2021.5.30-py2.py3-none-any.whl (145 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 145 kB 133.3 MB/s 
Collecting idna<4,>=2.5; python_version >= "3"
  Downloading idna-3.2-py3-none-any.whl (59 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 59 kB 1.6 MB/s 
Collecting pyrsistent>=0.14.0
  Downloading pyrsistent-0.18.0-cp38-cp38-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (118 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 118 kB 131.3 MB/s 
Requirement already satisfied: setuptools in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (from jsonschema<4,>=2.5.1->docker-compose) (45.2.0)
Collecting six>=1.11.0
  Downloading six-1.16.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (11 kB)
Collecting attrs>=17.4.0
  Downloading attrs-21.2.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (53 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 53 kB 899 kB/s 
Collecting paramiko>=2.4.2; extra == "ssh"
  Downloading paramiko-2.7.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (206 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 206 kB 147.7 MB/s 
Collecting cryptography>=2.5
  Downloading cryptography-3.4.8-cp36-abi3-manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl (3.2 MB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 3.2 MB 147.4 MB/s 
Collecting bcrypt>=3.1.3
  Downloading bcrypt-3.2.0-cp36-abi3-manylinux2010_x86_64.whl (63 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 63 kB 1.4 MB/s 
Collecting pynacl>=1.0.1
  Downloading PyNaCl-1.4.0-cp35-abi3-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (961 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 961 kB 139.4 MB/s 
Collecting cffi>=1.12
  Downloading cffi-1.14.6-cp38-cp38-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (411 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 411 kB 84.0 MB/s 
Collecting pycparser
  Downloading pycparser-2.20-py2.py3-none-any.whl (112 kB)
     |████████████████████████████████| 112 kB 140.9 MB/s 
Building wheels for collected packages: dockerpty, docopt
  Building wheel for dockerpty (setup.py) ... done
  Created wheel for dockerpty: filename=dockerpty-0.4.1-py3-none-any.whl size=16604 sha256=d6f2d3d74bad523b1a308a952176a1db84cb604611235c1a5ae1c936cefe7889
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/1a/58/0d/9916bf3c72e224e038beb88f669f68b61d2f274df498ff87c6
  Building wheel for docopt (setup.py) ... done
  Created wheel for docopt: filename=docopt-0.6.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl size=13704 sha256=f8c389703e63ff7ec3734b240ba8d62c8f8bd99f3b05ccdcb0de1397aa523655
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/56/ea/58/ead137b087d9e326852a851351d1debf4ada529b6ac0ec4e8c
Successfully built dockerpty docopt
Installing collected packages: urllib3, charset-normalizer, certifi, idna, requests, pyrsistent, six, attrs, jsonschema, websocket-client, texttable, PyYAML, dockerpty, pycparser, cffi, cryptography, bcrypt, pynacl, paramiko, docker, distro, docopt, python-dotenv, docker-compose
Successfully installed PyYAML-5.4.1 attrs-21.2.0 bcrypt-3.2.0 certifi-2021.5.30 cffi-1.14.6 charset-normalizer-2.0.4 cryptography-3.4.8 distro-1.6.0 docker-5.0.2 docker-compose-1.29.2 dockerpty-0.4.1 docopt-0.6.2 idna-3.2 jsonschema-3.2.0 paramiko-2.7.2 pycparser-2.20 pynacl-1.4.0 pyrsistent-0.18.0 python-dotenv-0.19.0 requests-2.26.0 six-1.16.0 texttable-1.6.4 urllib3-1.26.6 websocket-client-0.59.0

Upgrading Ubuntu 18 to Ubuntu 20 – software versions upgrade table – head to head

In the following article a comparison between two LTS version of Ubuntu is presented – Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic) versus Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal). The latest version of Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 (17.06.2020) is used to generate the software versions below.

In the Desktop world upgrading to the new and latest version of a Linux distribution is almost mandatory, but in the server world, upgrading is more complicated. The first step in updating a server is to check what software versions come with the new distribution version and then check whether the running custom (application) software supports the software versions. For example, updating to a new distribution version, which comes with PHP 7.4, but the current application supports only 7.2 is not very wise and in addition, the current version may have years with support in the future.

Having a head to head version comparison to check is the main target of this article – a fast check what version the user could expect from the new (aka latest) Linux distribution.

SoftwareUbuntu 20.04Ubuntu 18.04
Linux kernel



5.4.0
5.6.0		4.15.0
4.18.0
5.0.0
5.3.0
5.4.0
libc2.312.27
OpenSSL
1.1.1f		1.0.2n
1.1.1
GNU GCC


7.5.0
8.4.0
9.3.0
10-20200411		4.8.5
5.5.0
6.5.0
7.5.0
8.4.0
PHP7.47.2
Python2.7.17
3.8.2		2.7.15
3.6.7
Perl5.30.05.26.1
Ruby2.72.5.1
OpenJDK8u252-b09
11.0.7
13.0.3
14.0.1		8u252-b09
11.0.7
Go lang1.13.8
1.14.2		1.8
1.9
1.10
Rust1.41.01.41.0
llvm



6.0.1
7.0.1
8.0.1
9.0.1
10.0.0		3.7.1
3.9.1
4.0.1
5.0.1
6.0
7
8
9
10.0.0
nodejs10.19.08.10.0
Subversion1.131.9.7
Git2.25.22.17.1
Apache2.4.412.4.29
Nginx1.17.101.14.0
MySQL server8.0.205.7.30
MariaDB10.3.2210.1.44
PostgreSQL12.210.12
SQLite3.22.03.31.1
Xorg X server1.20.81.19.6
Gnome Shell3.36.23.28.4

Chromium browser in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS without snap to use in docker container

Ubuntu team has its own vision for the snap (https://snapcraft.io/) service and that’s why they have moved the really big and difficult to maintain Chromium browser package in the snap package. Unfortunately, the snap has many issues with docker containers and in short, it is way difficult to run snap in a docker container. The user may just want not to mess with snap packages (despite this is the future according to the Ubuntu team) or like most developers they all need a browser for their tests executed in a container.
Whether you are a developer or an ordinary user this article is for you, who wants Chromium browser installed not from the snap service under Ubuntu 20.04 LTS!
There are multiple options, which could end up with a Chromium browser installed on the system, not from the snap service:

  1. Using Debian package and Debian repository. The problem here is that using simultaneously Ubuntu and Debian repository on one machine is not a good idea! Despite the hack, Debian packages are with low priority – https://askubuntu.com/questions/1204571/chromium-without-snap/1206153#1206153
  2. Using Google Chrome – https://www.google.com/chrome/?platform=linux. It is just a single Debian package, which provides Chromium-like browser and all dependencies requesting the Chromium browser package are fulfilled.
  3. Using Chromium team dev or beta PPA (https://launchpad.net/~chromium-team) for the nearest version if still missing Ubuntu packages for Focal (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS).
  4. more options available?

This article will show how to use Ubuntu 18 (Bionic) Chromium browser package from Chromium team beta PPA under Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal). Bionic package from the very same repository of Ubuntu Chromium team may be used, too.

All dependencies will be downloaded from the Ubuntu 20.04 and just several Chromium-* packages will be downloaded from the Chromium team PPA Ubuntu 19 repository. The chances to break something are really small compared to the options 1 above, which uses the Debian packages and repositories. Hope, soon we are going to have focal (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) packages in the Ubuntu Chromium team PPA!

Dockerfile

An example of a Dockerfile installing Chromium (and python3 selenium for automating web browser interactions)

RUN apt-key adv --fetch-keys "https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xea6e302dc78cc4b087cfc3570ebea9b02842f111" \
&& echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-team/beta/ubuntu bionic main ' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chromium-team-beta.list \
&& apt update
RUN export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive \
&& export DEBCONF_NONINTERACTIVE_SEEN=true \
&& apt-get -y install chromium-browser
RUN apt-get -y install python3-selenium

First command adds the repository key and the repository to the Ubuntu source lists. Note we are adding the “bionic main”, not “focal main”.
From the all dependencies of the Bionic chromium-browser only three packages are pulled from the Bionic repository and all other are from the Ubuntu 20 (Focal):

.....
Get:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-team/beta/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra amd64 84.0.4147.38-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 [1174 kB]
.....
Get:5 http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-team/beta/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 chromium-browser amd64 84.0.4147.38-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 [67.8 MB]
.....
Get:187 http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-team/beta/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 chromium-browser-l10n all 84.0.4147.38-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 [3429 kB]
.....

Here is the whole Dockerfile sample file:

#
#   Docker file for the image "chromium brower without snap"
#
FROM ubuntu:20.04
MAINTAINER myuser@example.com

#chromium browser
#original PPA repository, use if our local fails
RUN echo "tzdata tzdata/Areas select Etc" | debconf-set-selections && echo "tzdata tzdata/Zones/Etc select UTC" | debconf-set-selections
RUN export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive && export DEBCONF_NONINTERACTIVE_SEEN=true
RUN apt-get -y update && apt-get -y upgrade
RUN apt-get -y install gnupg2 apt-utils wget
#RUN wget -O /root/chromium-team-beta.pub "https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xea6e302dc78cc4b087cfc3570ebea9b02842f111" && apt-key add /root/chromium-team-beta.pub
RUN apt-key adv --fetch-keys "https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xea6e302dc78cc4b087cfc3570ebea9b02842f111" && echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-team/beta/ubuntu bionic main ' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chromium-team-beta.list && apt update
RUN export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive && export DEBCONF_NONINTERACTIVE_SEEN=true && apt-get -y install chromium-browser
RUN apt-get -y install python3-selenium

Desktop install

The desktop installation is almost the same as the Dockerfile above. Just execute the following lines:
Keep on reading!

Software and technical overview of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server edition

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server edition offers the following software and versions:

Software

  • linux kernel – 5.4.0 – 5.4.0-29-generic
  • System
    • linux-firmware – 1.187
    • libc – 2.31 – 2.31-0ubuntu9
    • GNU GCC – multiple versions available – 7.5.0, 8.4.0, 9.3.0 and 10-20200411. The exact versions – 7.5.0-6ubuntu2, 8.4.0-3ubuntu2, 9.3.0-10ubuntu2 and 10-20200411-0ubuntu1
    • OpenSSL – 1.1.1f – 1.1.1f-1ubuntu2
    • coreutils – 8.308.30-3ubuntu2
    • apt – 2.0.2ubuntu0.1
    • rsyslog – 8.2001.0 – 8.2001.0-1ubuntu1
  • Servers
    • Apache – 2.4.41 – 2.4.41-4ubuntu3
    • Nginx – 1.17.10 – 1.17.10-0ubuntu1
    • MySQL server – 8.0.208.0.20-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
    • MariaDB server – 10.3.22 – 10.3.22-1ubuntu1
    • PostgreSQL – 12.2-4
  • Programming
      LTS the user may install

    • PHP – 7.4 – 7.4.3-4ubuntu1.1
    • python – 3.8.2 (3.8.2-0ubuntu2) and also includes 2.7.17 (2.7.17-2ubuntu4)
    • perl – 5.30.0 and also includes perl 6 6.d-2
    • ruby – 2.7 – 2.7+1
    • OpenJDK – includes multiple versions – 8, 11, 13 and 14. The exact versions are 8u252-b09-1ubuntu1, 11.0.7+10-3ubuntu1, 13.0.3+3-1ubuntu2 and 14.0.1+7-1ubuntu1
    • Go lang – multiple versions – 1.13.8 and 1.14.2. The exact versions – 1.13.8-1ubuntu1 and 1.14.2-1ubuntu1
    • Rust – 1.41.0 – 1.41.0+dfsg1+llvm-0ubuntu2
    • Subversion – 1.13.0 – 1.13.0-3
    • Git – 2.25.1 – 2.25.1-1ubuntu3
    • llvm – multiple versions – 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. The exact versions – 6.0.1-14, 7.0.1-12, 8.0.1-9, 9.0.1-12, 10.0-50~exp1
  • Graphical User Interface
    • Xorg X server – 1.20.8 – 1.20.8-2ubuntu2
    • GNOME (the GUI) – 3.36.x – Gnome Shell – 3.36.1

Note: Not all of the above software comes installed by default. The versions above are valid for the intial release so in fact, these are the minimal versions you get with Ubuntu 20 LTS and installing and updating it after the initial date may update some of the above packages with new versions. Installed packages are 582 occupying 11G space.

During the installation wizard you may want to install the following snap software environments. Of course, this software is available after the installation setup, too.

The test server is equipped with “Threadripper 1950X AMD“, which is 16 cores CPU.
Check out Minimal installation of Ubuntu server 20.04 LTS, too.

Keep on reading!

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

Minimal installation of Ubuntu server 20.04 LTS

This tutorial will show you the simple steps of installing a modern Linux Distribution – Ubuntu server 20.04 LTS edition. Following most of the default options during the setup configuration for simplicity.

Here are some basic data from the default installation setup settings:

  1. Installed packages – ~582 occupying 11G of space.
  2. 3 partitions when using automatic patition layout – boot efi, swap and root.
  3. ext4 used for the root parition.

We used the following ISO for the installation process – Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa):

http://releases.ubuntu.com/focal/ubuntu-20.04-live-server-amd64.iso

It is a LIVE image so you can try it before installing it. The easiest way is just to download the image and burn it to a DVD disk and then follow the installation below:

SCREENSHOT 1) Boot from the disk or USB – whatever you made after downloading the ISO file from Ubuntu official source.

On the image here the DVD is used to boot in UEFI mode installation.

main menu
boot uefi dvd

Keep on reading!

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Mirror a PPA repositories using aptly – PHP (ppa:ondrej/php)

This is a simple example of how to mirror a PPA repository to a local server. The Ubuntu PPA to mirror is ppa:ondrej/php, which offers the user different PHP version generally not available in the Ubuntu installation. Of course, the user should be very careful about adding PPA repositories, because they are exactly what the abbreviation stands for Personal Package Archives.

If you want to know how to install and a brief description of what is aptly you may want to read our previous article – Install aptly under Ubuntu 18 LTS with Nginx serving the packages and the first steps

What we are going to do – this is what you need to have a mirror of an external application repository:

  1. Install aptly in Ubuntu 18 LTS
  2. Create a mirror in aptly
  3. Create a snapshot of the mirror created before
  4. Publish the snapshot to be used in other servers.

and at the last step there is an example how to use the mirror in your local machines.

STEP 1) Install aptly in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

As mentioned already you may follow our article on the subject – Install aptly under Ubuntu 18 LTS with Nginx serving the packages and the first steps. The following steps are based on this installation!
The aptly home directory is in “/srv/aptly”. We use the “aptly” user and change to it to manipulate the aptly installation.
Change the user to aptly, because under this user the mirror process will happen.

root@srv ~ # su - aptly
aptly@srv:~$

STEP 2) Create a mirror in aptly.

Prepare the keys (aptly needs to have the Ubuntu keys in its trustedkeys keyring):

aptly@srv:~$ gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring trustedkeys.gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys 4F4EA0AAE5267A6C
gpg: requesting key E5267A6C from hkp server pool.sks-keyservers.net
gpg: key E5267A6C: public key "Launchpad PPA for Ond\xc5\x99ej Sur�" imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1  (RSA: 1)

Here we’ve used the method to obtain the key from a GPG KEY server, but the key can be downloaded directrly from the original repository as suggested in the error message below.
If you are not sure where to download the key you could always just try to create the mirror ( in fact, this is in STEP 3) ) and get the error for missing key and how to obtain the key:
Keep on reading!

Debug Ubuntu preseed failure – select and install software

Preparing the preseed for unattended installation sometimes could be challenging. This article presents the right way to analyze an installation failure in one of the main steps – “select and install software”.
There is a ubuntu installation preseed file for our Bionic unattended installation, which uses the “pkgsel” to install first packages in the new system:

d-i pkgsel/include string openssh-server wget vim git python gpg ntp
d-i pkgsel/upgrade select full-upgrade
d-i pkgsel/update-policy select unattended-upgrades

When an installation step in the preseed of a unattended installation fails the setup stops with a “Continue” confirmation.

main menu
“select and install software” – step failed

Here is what you can do to check what exactly fails in step “select and install software”:

  1. Start a shell in the current installation boot. Press “Ctrl+Alt+F2” to start the shell. You may use “Ctrl+Alt+F3” and “Ctrl+Alt+F4” for two more consoles and “Ctrl+Alt+F1” to return to the installation wizard.
  2. Check the /var/log/syslog, in which file the debconf writes the logging information.
  3. Find the lines where the step “select and install software” starts and look for errors after that. In this file, you can see all the step titles during, which the setup passes and they are named the same way the windows’ titles during the installation wizard.

Here is the real world output

Presing the “CTRL+ALT+F2” to start the BusyBox built-in shell, which is ash not bash!

Be careful there are some difference between ash and bash.

main menu
Installation wizard – BusyBox built-in shell (ash)

Last 20 lines shows the problem – pkgsel failed to install packages in step “select and install software”.

The installation wizard stops.

main menu
debconf logging using syslog – pkgsel

The problem is in the package “ntp”, the setup cannot install the “ntp” package because of unmet dependencies.

Because it is not so important to install ntp at this stage we added the package to the script executed in “preseed/late_command” and removed the package from the pkgsel line in the preseed file. In general, our problem was because we set local repositories for the bionic packages, but the setup cannot update list of available packages when the you set Bionic mirror to be unofficial local repository.

main menu
Package because of unmet dependencies

Save iptables rules over reboots on Ubuntu 16 and Ubuntu 18 – persistent iptables rules

Moving towards the firewalld software and especially the systemd some good old init scripts got missing! For example, one of those good scripts is the init script for iptables firewall, which allows saving iptables rules and during boot, it loads them again. With the init iptables script we have persistence of the iptables rules. Meanwhile, we can always call the init script with “save” argument to update the currently saved rules. Many different Linux distributions have this init script – “/etc/init.d/iptables”, but in systemd world, it has been removed and replaced with nothing (probably, because you are encouraged to use firewalld, which is not a bad thing!).

There are two packages “iptables-persistent” and “netfilter-persistent”, which work together to have iptables persistence over reboots. The rules are saved and restored automatically during system startup.

First, install “iptables-persistent” and “netfilter-persistent” with

sudo apt install netfilter-persistent iptables-persistent

During the iptables–persistent installation the setup asks the user to save the current iptables rules. Hit “Yes” if you want to save the current iptables rules, which will be automatically loaded the next time the system starts up.

main menu
Configuring iptables-persistent setup

So it is safe to install it on a live system – the current iptables rules won’t be deleted.
Second, ensure the boot script to restore the iptables rules is enabled

sudo systemctl enable netfilter-persistent

Additional information

Saving the current state of the iptables rules:

myuser@myubuntupc:~$ sudo /usr/sbin/netfilter-persistent save
run-parts: executing /usr/share/netfilter-persistent/plugins.d/15-ip4tables save
run-parts: executing /usr/share/netfilter-persistent/plugins.d/25-ip6tables save

Restore the original state of the iptables rules:

sudo systemctl restart netfilter-persistent

And all commands you can do – start, stop, restart, reload, flush, save. You can use the script directly (it is not mandatory to use systemctl to restart, i.e. restore rules and etc.)

myuser@myubuntupc:~$ sudo /usr/sbin/netfilter-persistent
Usage: /usr/sbin/netfilter-persistent (start|stop|restart|reload|flush|save)

The script netfilter-persistent executes 2 other scripts as plugins:

/usr/share/netfilter-persistent/plugins.d/15-ip4tables
/usr/share/netfilter-persistent/plugins.d/25-ip6tables

The iptables rules are saved respectively in files

/etc/iptables/rules.v4
/etc/iptables/rules.v6

And you can always edit them manually or save/restore with iptables-save and iptables-restore redirecting the output to the above files.

It’s normal the state of the “active (exited)”. The service is “enabled” as you can see (by default the setup automatically enables the service on Ubuntu, but always check it to be sure, it’s the firewall!).

myuser@myubuntupc:~$ sudo systemctl status netfilter-persistent
● netfilter-persistent.service - netfilter persistent configuration
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/netfilter-persistent.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Thu 2019-01-17 20:44:08 EST; 14min ago
 Main PID: 666 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   CGroup: /system.slice/netfilter-persistent.service

Jan 17 20:44:08 myubuntupc systemd[1]: Starting netfilter persistent configuration...
Jan 17 20:44:08 myubuntupc netfilter-persistent[666]: run-parts: executing /usr/share/netfilter-persistent/plugins.d/15-ip4tables start
Jan 17 20:44:08 myubuntupc netfilter-persistent[666]: run-parts: executing /usr/share/netfilter-persistent/plugins.d/25-ip6tables start
Jan 17 20:44:08 myubuntupc systemd[1]: Started netfilter persistent configuration.

Ubuntu with PHP 7.2 and mcrypt module

As mentioned in our previous article PHP 7.2 or PHP 7.3 with mcrypt – manual build the PHP versions 7.2 and 7.3 do not include PHP mcrypt module. The mcrypt module was part of PHP 5 till 7.1, in which it was deprecated and removed in 7.2.
In this article we show how to build mcrypt module for Ubuntu based on our previous article showed above. Because of the great popularity of Ubuntu and it has no PHP mcrypt package in Ubuntu package system unlike other Linux distributions (like Gentoo, which created a package) we decided to make this article.

For our purpose we use Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS and here is what the steps to have the mcrypt PHP module:

STEP 1) Update and install mcrypt library and header development packet

sudo apt update -y
sudo apt install -y libmcrypt-dev

STEP 2) Install the GNU GCC build utility and the PHP dev packet

This is the compiler to build the module.

sudo apt install -y build-essential
sudo apt install -y php7.2-dev

STEP 3) Download the PHP mcrypt module and build it.

cd
mkdir mcrypt-php-module-manual
cd mcrypt-php-module-manual
wget https://pecl.php.net/get/mcrypt-1.0.2.tgz
tar xzf mcrypt-1.0.2.tgz
cd mcrypt-1.0.2
phpize
aclocal
libtoolize --force
autoheader
autoconf
./configure
make
sudo make install

STEP 4) Load the module in the PHP configuration (we use PHP-FPM and PHP-CLI) and block future PHP versions to be installed when apt update is used.

Because we compile the PHP mcrypt module for the specific currently installed PHP we do not want to upgrade our PHP when there is an update and the mcrypt module to fail to load. Each change of the PHP version (upgrade) would require a recompile against the current PHP version. To see more for holding and unholding Ubuntu packages – apt-mark – upgrade with the exception of certain packages Of course, if there is an update for PHP you must install it just recompile the mcrypt package, too!

echo "extension=mcrypt.so" > 20-mcrypt.ini
sudo cp 20-mcrypt.ini /etc/php/7.2/cli/conf.d/20-mcrypt.ini
sudo cp 20-mcrypt.ini /etc/php/7.2/fpm/conf.d/20-mcrypt.ini
sudo apt-mark hold php-cli php7.2-cli php-fpm php7.2-fpm

Keep on reading!