Dealing with Locales Ubuntu.

Installed brand new Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit on Hetzner server. Right after install tried to execute apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade. Getting following error nearly on all apt-get operation

export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 
dpkg-reconfigure locales

depending on your countries locales.

Securing the server using private and public keys

There is a way to generate private and public certificates.

The process is as follows: click here

It might be worthwhile to use the challenge password that you will remember

All important, but non-free updates and drivers

There are important updates that must be installed. to do this,

1. apt-get update

Ensure that locale is correctly set

export LC_ALL="en_ZA.UTF-8" export LC_CTYPE="en_ZA.UTF-8"    o make clipboard copy and paste - CTRL+V work normally use this one command:   echo -n "*VT100.translations: #override Meta <KeyPress> V: insert-selection(PRIMARY, CUT_BUFFER0)" >> ~/.Xdefaults

WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!

ssh-keygen -R hostname

Installing Ubuntu-server GUI

While the command line for ubuntu is intuitive, it requires that you practise using it. If you need to get the job done and do not have the time to practise, it will be worth your while to install a gui, while learning some of the key commands

Here are lists of the commands.

1. SSH cheat list
2. Easy to use  cheat list

the command to install the desktop is

apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

This is the simplest commonly used desktop.

The desktop is 2GB big, so make sure you have enough disk space.

Implementing a firewall on Ubuntu

This process involves securing the server against hacking.

A firewall called ufw is used for that purpose

The instructions are as follows:

This site gives a very clear guidance on how to configure the firewall. Click here

Changing ubuntu root password

From command line,

passwd root

The system will ask for your new password, 

type the new password, and confirm by typing it again.