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The Omniverse: Unveiling the endless tapestry of topics.

Checklist of things to do on a new VPS server

Posted on Aug 13, 2023

Update the system

From this moment, we’ll assume you’re still logged in as root. After all, this is a fresh install of Linux, right?

apt update
apt upgrade -y

Install essential utilities

apt install sudo htop curl nano wget net-tools

Change root password

This is just in case you don’t think the assigned root password is not complex enough for your liking:

passwd

Then enter you new password twice.

Update Timezone

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Add non-root user

Add user

Change username with the username of your choice:

adduser username

Add user to sudoers group

usermod -aG sudo username

So, the non-root user is ready. From this moment on, we’ll assume you’re logged as that non-root user.

Change the hostname

Edit /etc/hostname

sudo nano /etc/hostname

And change accordingly.

Edit /etc/hosts

sudo nano /etc/hosts

And change accordingly.

Reboot

sudo reboot

Install Docker and Docker Compose

Install Docker

Follow the instructions applicable for your system from the official Docker documentation. My favorite systems are Ubuntu and Debian, and I actually prefer to use the install using the repository method:

Set up Docker’s Apt repository

For Ubuntu
# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
  "deb [arch="$(dpkg --print-architecture)" signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  "$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")" stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
For Debian
# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
  "deb [arch="$(dpkg --print-architecture)" signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \
  "$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")" stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

Install the Docker packages

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Install Docker Compose

sudo apt install docker-compose

Add user to the Docker group

Create a network bridge for Docker Containers

From now on, the instructions here is if you plan to expose your applications via Cloudflare Tunnel.

docker network create -d bridge cloudflared

Install Cloudflare Tunnel

Then paste the following:

version: "3.3"
services:
  tunnel:
    container_name: cloudflared-tunnel
    image: cloudflare/cloudflared
    restart: unless-stopped
    command: tunnel --no-autoupdate run
    environment:
      - TUNNEL_TOKEN=[paste_here_your_actual_token]
    networks:
      - cloudflared

networks:
  cloudflared:
    external: true

Don’t forget to paste your actual token that will be generated when you create a new tunnel in Cloudflare.

Install Portainer

Via Docker Compose

Same as above, mkdir for portainer, then create the docker-compose.yml file:

version: '3'

services:
  portainer:
    image: portainer/portainer-ce:latest
    container_name: portainer
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Asia/Manila
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - ./data:/data
#    ports:
#      - 9000:9000
#      - 8000:8000
#      - 9443:9443
    networks:
      - cloudflared
networks:
    cloudflared:
      external: true

Note that I commented out the ports portion of the docker-compose.yml because we’re not exposing the ports to the internet. Instead, we’re using Cloudflare Tunnel to expose the apps.

Install Duplicati

All these efforts you do to set up Docker containers will go to waste if you don’t do a proper backup of your config and data files.

version: "2.1"
services:
  duplicati:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/duplicati:latest
    container_name: duplicati
    environment:
      - PUID=0
      - PGID=0
      - TZ=America/Denver
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
      - ./backups:/backups
      - /home/username:/source
#    ports:
#      - 8200:8200
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - cloudflared

networks:
    cloudflared:
      external: true

I prefer to run Duplicati as root so I won’t have to deal with read permission issues in the future, so I set PUID and PGID to 0. Needless to say, you have to change your TZ and your source folder to map to the container.