Install

You should get latest eBox Platform installer based on Ubuntu GNU/Linux installer from the download page. #FIXME i386 vs amd64 download

Checking ISO image integrity

When downloading an ISO image you should check that the file you have downloaded is correct before burning the image into a CD or DVD ROM. We need to download the corresponding MD5 file for the ISO file we have. If the md5sum command doesn't match, download again both files.

% ls
ebox_installer-1.0-1.iso  ebox_installer-1.0-1.iso.md5
% md5sum -c ebox_installer-1.0-1.iso.md5
ebox_installer-1.0-1.iso: OK

Now we are ready to burn the image.

Installing eBox Platform

General settings

You should check that your server is configured to boot up from the CD unit otherwise the installer won't start. Most of the times this is the default behaviour but if it doesn't check your hardware vendor documentation.

The first screen that appears let us to choose the installer language. Just press enter to select English or move with the arrows to select the desired language.

On the main screen we can do 5 different actions:

• Install eBox Platform (selected by default, this is the option we should go for)
• Check CD for defects (is the installation failed we can use this options to check that the image was properly burned)
• Rescue a broken system (we will use this option to rescue the system on a fatal error)
• Test memory (the installer includes a memory tester application, we should check our server memory if it does random weird things)
• Boot from first hard disk (we will use this option to boot the system on a bootloader fatal error)

Next step is to choose your system language and localization:

After that we will have to choose the keyboard layout, the installer can autodetect it or we can select it by hand, we prefer to do it this way:

Then the installer begins to load all the components.

Network configuration

And is time for the network configuration. We should select the interface connected to the network which are going to access the server through, usually the internal network, configuration for other interfaces will come later. If we don't have already a DHCP server on our network will ask for the IP address, network mask, gateway and DNS server. Then the installer will ask us for a hostname for the machine.

Partitioning

#FIXME RAID

Probably this is the most complex step and where you have to make more choices but this is very important for your server future. Our install will be using LVM (Linux Volume Manager) and the partition scheme we recommend would be something like:

partition	size	format	mount point	comments
1	8GB	ext3	/	system volumen, fixed size
2 LVM	1GB	swap		virtual memory, dynamic size
3 LVM	20G	XFS	/var	general storage for all the modules but file sharing, dynamic size
4 LVM	20G	XFS	/home	file sharing storage
5 LVM	20G	XFS	/var/vmail	mailboxes storage
				free space on LVM for snapshots

Having a dedicated volume for /home and /var/vmail will depend on your needs but we stronly suggest it if you are going to use eBox as a file sharing server or as a mail server. The other services (Users and Groups databases, Certification Authority, eGroupware, Asterisk voicemail, etc.) and log files and databases are stored in /var so you should choose the partition size for the /var volume acording to your number of users and their needs.

We shouldn't forget to leave some free space on the LVM volume in order to create the snapshots used for safe upgrades. This size usually should be arround 2G but probably you will need more if you want to make snapshots on data partitions volumes, in that case 2G+15% of your other volumes size should be ok.

That's why we will choose Manual partitioning:

Will go over the FREE SPACE with the rows and will press Enter to create a new partition there:

Next steps will be to configure the size as a primary partition at the beginning of the hard disk, the file system and the mount point are selected by default:

And this is the state after creating the system partition:

Now we are going to create a LVM volume on the free space going over FREE SPACE and pressing Enter:

The steps now will be the same than before, creating the partition with the maximum size, but on the last one will have to change the defaults:

Will go over Use as: and will press Enter selecting physical volume for LVM and finishing:

Now with LVM setup in place we can create the logical volumes for every partition we want, probably swap, /var, /home and /var/vmail.

Let's go to the Configure the Logical Volume Manager: