Package selection
If the provider offers a “minimal” default installation of “Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat)”, this can be taken as base system. Further package deinstallation is more trouble than it’s worth. Independent from the provider also exists a minimalistic Ubuntu server distribution as base to install: Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS
If “Ubuntu Server 24.04” is installed directly from the image itself, do not choose the “minimized” variant. If remote access to the server is desired later, tick the “Install OpenSSH server” option. None of the “Featured server snaps” are required.
Integrate package repositories
(To deepen see also: Wiki)
It is recommended to use a mirror server in the area instead of the Canonical server, since mostly the connection is faster, and cost and bandwidth for the main server will be reduced. The example server chosen here is located in Germany (Aachen), making it suitable for central Europe.
Hint: Many Ubuntu installations use the command sudo to get administrator permissions. In this case in front of the commands mentioned here, the word sudo must be typed. In the next tutorial part „User + SSH“ we will configure a fully-fledged root account, and sudo will become obsolete.
Actual list of official mirror servers: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors
Enter repositories: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources (Wiki: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/CommandLine)
URIs: http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/ubuntu/
After changing the repositories, the new selection must be loaded again into the package manager:
apt-get update
Install Software Packages
Most likely in the new choosen repositories updates are available for some packages. These should be installed first of all:
apt-get upgrade
Install the following packages (and their dependencies) with:
apt-get install mariadb-server tmux
Remark: On very minimalistic Ubuntu installations probably the package “vim” must be installed if you want to use the “vi” command (as in the examples here).
For OpenSim up to version 9.2 additionally install Mono:
apt-get install mono-complete
For OpenSim version 9.3, instead .NET 6.0 is required. If only the runtime and not the SDK is installed, libgdiplus must also be installed.
add-apt-repository ppa:dotnet/backports
apt-get update
apt-get install dotnet-runtime-6.0 libgdiplus
Continued: Manage user accounts and hardening SSH