Step 3: Essential Configuration

Essential Configuration

Most default settings are acceptable and we should leave them unless we have a reason to make a change.

We should set the timezone of the VPS to our local area, which is Asia/Almaty, Then we can test it using the date command.

  1. Enter these commands one at a time into the terminal window.

    timedatectl set-timezone

    Tells the OS to set a specific timezone of the system. You can use any timezone from this list of available zones.

    date

    Displays the current date and time.

    sudo timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Almaty
date

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    root@vps298933:~# timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Almaty
root@vps298933:~# date
Sun Mar 10 20:16:31 +06 2019

Install Common Packages

Next, we will install some common/security packages using apt. We will install more packages later, but this list provides some essential packages that we might need.

  1. Install these applications

    zip and unzip

    Compress and decompress .zip files

    fail2ban

    An intrusion prevention software framework that protects computer servers from brute-force attacks

    ufw

    Uncomplicated Firewall is an easy-to-use firewall application

    htop

    A utility to view the running processes

    sudo apt -y install zip unzip fail2ban ufw htop

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    root@vps298933:~#
root@vps298933:~# sudo apt -y install zip unzip fail2ban ufw htop
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
htop is already the newest version (2.1.0-3).
ufw is already the newest version (0.35-5).
Suggested packages:
mailx monit sqlite3 python-pyinotify-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
fail2ban python3-pyinotify unzip whois zip
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 732 kB of archives.
After this operation, 3,306 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 fail2ban all 0.10.2-2 [329 kB]
Get:2 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 python3-pyinotify all 0.9.6-1 [24.7 kB]
Get:3 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 unzip amd64 6.0-21ubuntu1 [167 kB]
Get:4 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 whois amd64 5.3.0 [43.7 kB]
Get:5 http://nova.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 zip amd64 3.0-11build1 [167 kB]
Fetched 732 kB in 0s (2,738 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package fail2ban.
(Reading database ... 98638 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../fail2ban_0.10.2-2_all.deb ...
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