It will be good with a NAS version of Ubuntu server. a Ubuntu version of FreeNAS. The problemet with FreeNAS is that it runs on OpenBSD platform and not Linux. There is no distributions of LINUX with target the NAS marked.

Dynamically Loadable Zones are already in Ubuntu's bind (DNS server) sources but not enabled for the compilation.

This feature is really useful : No bind reloading is required and rules can be simply shared between zones.

If installed manually, it's not hard to activate them (just change --with-dlz-mysql=no to --with-dlz-mysql=yes for mysql), but it needs to be recompiled for each update (And serious administrators update bind at least for each security update ; wich can occur quite often).

The last good point is that databases allow simple backups and synchronisations.

A good explanation of the differences between bind and bind-dlz is at http://bind-dlz.sourceforge.net/

In the server install tasksel menu, include a "Domain Controller" option that allows for a (more or less) "drop-in replacement" for Microsoft Active Directory.

This would greatly reduce time to set up a full-fledged network in SMBs.

It would need to be easily configurable (web interface), and have functionality similar to rickyjone's Samba domain controller tutorial (see link), only automated :)

http://openpanel.com/ has a great admin tool for servers. It's still in Beta but with a little help I see this becoming the de-facto standard for (remote) server/user management.

I'm from a Windows background, and have recently migrated all my home computers across to Ubuntu with varying success. All bar one.

the one yet to be done is my Windows Home Server.

What it does is the following;

1. Central location for storage of data files that can be shared on a users internal LAN, and also with the option for Remote access.

2. Easy configuration of folders and user accounts on the Home server

3. Automated backup of client machines to the server

4. Runs headless (ie once installed, no keyboard, mouse or monitor required as most administrative tasks can be done either via the 'console' one any of the client machines, or via RDP

5. Instalation of a 'connector' onto each client, where you can access the console, set backups.

6. Installs a 'shared folders' icon where you automatically have access to the folders you have rights to

I'm fully aware this IS possible using Ubuntu, but I'm also aware that it involves a LOT of configuration of the different services on both the Server machine as well as EACH client.

Windows Home Server is based on Server 2003, and as part of the installation, disables certain parts which are not required (such as domain controller - is this required within the home ?), and sets the remaining configuration to the Home Server.

The main thing with it, is that it really does just work. Install via the cd/dvd, install the connector software, and thats it.

[....]

I am in the process of replacing all apache2 with nginx on the websites we host. We do this since nginx (with php5-cgi) by far outperforms apache2 (with libapache2-mod-php5).

In this process I install PHP and packages like php5-cgi, squirrelmail, phpmyadmin and others. After installing these I did a "sudo update-rc.d -f apache2 remove" so I didn't have to deal with the dependencies and risking some of them would uninstall partly. Later after I'd upgraded/installed additional packages and rebooted the apache2 service was running again.

It seems like Apache is almost as integrated into Ubuntu as Internet Explorer is into Windows ;-)

It's very common to log in to a remote server using SSH and then performing administrative tasks using sudo. However, the most common usage scenario for sudo is that it asks for a password. Though it is possible to disable the password prompt in sudo, this creates security problems.

It is possible to extend sudo to use the SSH credentials. There is a paper that describes this here: http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa08/tech/full_papers/burnside/burnside_html/inde x.html

It would be a great improvement to those who have to administrate multiple servers to enable this kind of functionality.

Ubuntu Server is an excellent virtualization host platform, but it could be made even better for Windows x64 virtual machines.

KVM provides FOSS paravirtualized drivers for storage and networking in Windows guests, but they aren't signed. Windows x64 OSs (starting with Server 2008) only allow signed drivers to be installed. This means that the paravirtualized KVM devices can't be used, and virtual machine performance suffers (compared to something like Red Hat Enterprise Linux).

PHP packages, e.g., php5-common, do not keep up with the stable releases from php.net.

Im a novice but I've gotten a server up and running without too much know how, thanks to ubuntu server 8.04. My next project was to make the server failure safe by adding features such as, a backup server that would automatically take control when my primary server had fail(High-Availability Clusters). Doing the research I realized this would be a little difficult I decided to post the idea here rather than taking on the difficult task of building a system where only I would benefit. Colleges around the world would greatly benefit from a project like this. Colleges and schools would see once outdated computers being resurrected and place in nodes for purposes such data crunching(animation, scientific research etc..)and easier ways of safe guarding data.

The project should not be limited to being a "High Available Clusters" only but give the user the option to build the latter or a "Load Balancing Cluster".