Today I start my work as a system administrator for a new IT company.
My first duties include configuration and installation of some usual programs
used in everyday's sys admin job.
In that manner of thoughts I have long ago realized there is a common group of
tools and software I had to install on almost each and every new configured
Debian GNU / Linux running Server.
Here is a list of packages I usually install on new Debian systems,
even though this exact commands are expected to be executed on Debian (5.0) Lenny
I believe they are quite accurate for Debian Testing and Debian Testing/Unstable,
bleeding edge distributions.
Before I show you the apt-get lines with all the packages, I would advice you to install
and use netselect-apt to select the fastest Debian package mirror near you
So to install and use run the following commands;
aptitude install netselect-apt
netselect-apt -n lenny
Now as netselect-apt would have tested for the fastest mirror and created sources.list
file in your current directory, open the sources.list file and decide what should enter your
official /etc/apt/sources.list file or in other words merge the two files as you like.
Good, now as we have a fast mirror to download our packages let's continue further with the
packages to install.
Excecute the following command to install some of the basic tools and packages:
# install some basic required tools, software and header files
debian-server:~# apt-get install tcpdump mc ncurses-dev htop iftop iptraf nmap tcpdump apache2 apachetop
mysql-server-5.0 phpmyadmin vnstat rsync traceroute tcptrace e2fsprogs hddtemp finger mtr-tiny
netcat screen imagemagick flex snort mysql-server-5.0 sysstat lm-sensors alien rar unrar util-linux curl
vim lynx links elinks sudo autoconf gcc build-essential dpkg-dev webalizer awstats
Herein I'll explain just a few of the installed package and their install
purpose,as they could be unknown to some of the people out there.
apachetop - monitors apache log file in real time similar to gnu top
iftop - display bandwidth usage on selected interface interactively
vnstat - show inbound & outbound traffic usage on selected network interfaces
e2fsprogs - some general tools for creation of ext2 file systems etc.
hddtemp - Utility to monitor hard drive temperature
mtr-tiny - matt's traceroute great traceroute proggie
netcat - TCP/IP swiss army knife, quite helpful for network maintance tasks
snort - an Intrusion Detecting System
build-essential - installs basic stuff required for most applications compiled from source code
sysstat - generates statistics about server load each and every ten minutes, check man for more
lm-sensors - enables you to track your system hardware sensors information and warn in CPU heatups etc.
I believe the rest of them are no need to be explained, if you're not familiar with them check the manuals.
So far so good but this is not all I had to install, as you probably know most Apache webservers nowadays
are running PHP and are using a dozen of PHP libraries / extensions not originally bundled with PHP install
Therefore here are some more packages related to php to install that would install some more php goodies.
# install some packages required for many php enabled applications
debian-esrver:~# apt-get install php-http php-db php-mail php-net-smtp php-net-socket php-pear php-xml-parser
php5-curl php5-gd php5-imagick php5-mysql php5-odbc php5-recode php5-sybase php5-xmlrpc php5-dev
As I said that is mostly the basic stuff that is a must have on most of the Debian servers I have
configured this days, of course this is not applicable to all situations, however I hope
this would be of use to somebody out there.
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Tags: basic, debian server, essential packages and tools for fresh debian gnu linux installation, header files, Installing, libraries, list, mirror, must have packages on debian after install, network interfaces, packages to install on freshly installed debian linux, php, use
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.2+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/531.2+ Debian/squeeze (2.30.6-1) Epiphany/2.30.6
PS.
I have a little error in the list of suggested packages to be installed the correct list would exclude few packages which couldn not be installed straight like rar and unrar here is the correct apt-get command.
debian:~# apt-get install tcpdump mc ncurses-dev htop iftop iptraf nmap tcpdump apache2 apachetop mysql-server-5.0 phpmyadmin vnstat rsync traceroute tcptrace e2fsprogs hddtemp finger mtr-tiny netcat screen imagemagick flex snort mysql-server-5.0 sysstat lm-sensors alien util-linux curl vim lynx links elinks sudo autoconf gcc build-essential dpkg-dev dstat webalizer awstats
The following extra packages will be installed:
automake autotools-dev debhelper djvulibre-desktop elinks-data esound-clients esound-common fontconfig gamin gettext ghostscript gnuplot
gnuplot-nox gnuplot-x11 gs-common gsfonts hicolor-icon-theme html2text intltool-debian libadns1 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libaudiofile0
libbeecrypt6 libcairo2 libcompress-raw-zlib-perl libcompress-zlib-perl libcroco3 libcups2 libcupsimage2 libcurl3 libdatrie0
libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdrm2 libesd0 libfile-remove-perl libfontenc1 libfsplib0 libgamin0 libgl1-mesa-glx libglib2.0-0
libglib2.0-data libglu1-mesa libgraphviz4 libgs8 libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin libgtk2.0-common libice6
libilmbase6 libio-compress-base-perl libio-compress-zlib-perl libio-stringy-perl libjasper1 liblcms1 liblua50 liblualib50 libmagick10
libmail-box-perl libmail-sendmail-perl libmailtools-perl libmcrypt4 libmime-types-perl libncurses5-dev libneon27
libobject-realize-later-perl libopenexr6 libpango1.0-0 libpango1.0-common libpaper-utils libpaper1 libpcap0.8 libpixman-1-0 libprelude2
librpm4.4 librsvg2-2 libsensors4 libsm6 libssh2-1 libsysfs2 libt1-5 libthai-data libthai0 libtiff4 libts-0.0-0 libuser-identity-perl
libwmf0.2-7 libwxbase2.6-0 libwxgtk2.6-0 libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-render0 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3
libxfont1 libxft2 libxi6 libxinerama1 libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxt6 libxxf86vm1 lynx-cur oinkmaster php5-gd php5-mcrypt po-debconf
psfontmgr rpm snort-common snort-common-libraries snort-rules-default vim-runtime x-ttcidfont-conf xfonts-encodings xfonts-utils
Suggested packages:
lsb-rpm lintian autobook autoconf-archive autoconf-doc autoconf2.13 gnu-standards libtool dh-make djview4 djvu-viewer evince elinks-doc
bison cvs gettext-doc ghostscript-x hpijs gnuplot-doc ksensors adns-tools cups-common esound librsvg2-common libjasper-runtime
liblcms-utils libwmf-bin html2ps libmime-tools-perl libhtml-format-perl libmail-imapclient-perl libmcrypt-dev mcrypt ttf-kochi-gothic
ttf-kochi-mincho ttf-thryomanes ttf-baekmuk ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gkai00mp ttf-arphic-bkai00mp librsvg2-bin
libgnomeprintui2.2-0 sensord read-edid i2c-tools lynx-cur-wrapper arj xpdf dbview odt2txt snort-doc isag ctags vim-doc vim-scripts
The following NEW packages will be installed
alien apachetop autoconf automake autotools-dev curl debhelper djvulibre-desktop elinks elinks-data esound-clients esound-common finger
flex fontconfig gamin gettext ghostscript gnuplot gnuplot-nox gnuplot-x11 gs-common gsfonts hddtemp hicolor-icon-theme html2text htop iftop
imagemagick intltool-debian iptraf libadns1 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libaudiofile0 libbeecrypt6 libcairo2 libcompress-raw-zlib-perl
libcompress-zlib-perl libcroco3 libcups2 libcupsimage2 libcurl3 libdatrie0 libdirectfb-1.0-0 libdjvulibre21 libdrm2 libesd0
libfile-remove-perl libfontenc1 libfsplib0 libgamin0 libgl1-mesa-glx libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libglu1-mesa libgraphviz4 libgs8
libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin libgtk2.0-common libice6 libilmbase6 libio-compress-base-perl
libio-compress-zlib-perl libio-stringy-perl libjasper1 liblcms1 liblua50 liblualib50 libmagick10 libmail-box-perl libmail-sendmail-perl
libmailtools-perl libmcrypt4 libmime-types-perl libncurses5-dev libneon27 libobject-realize-later-perl libopenexr6 libpango1.0-0
libpango1.0-common libpaper-utils libpaper1 libpcap0.8 libpixman-1-0 libprelude2 librpm4.4 librsvg2-2 libsensors4 libsm6 libssh2-1
libsysfs2 libt1-5 libthai-data libthai0 libtiff4 libts-0.0-0 libuser-identity-perl libwmf0.2-7 libwxbase2.6-0 libwxgtk2.6-0
libxcb-render-util0 libxcb-render0 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxfont1 libxft2 libxi6 libxinerama1
libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxt6 libxxf86vm1 links lm-sensors lynx lynx-cur mc mtr-tiny netcat nmap oinkmaster php5-gd php5-mcrypt phpmyadmin
po-debconf psfontmgr rpm rsync screen snort snort-common snort-common-libraries snort-rules-default sudo sysstat tcpdump tcptrace vim
vim-runtime vnstat x-ttcidfont-conf xfonts-encodings xfonts-utils
Check out the suggested packages you might want to install some of the suggested ones as well
View CommentView CommentMozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.2+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/531.2+ Debian/squeeze (2.30.6-1) Epiphany/2.30.6
Few other helpful things to install I forgot to mention:
apt-get install sudo iotop mytop phpmyadmin unzip imagemagick watchdog saidar rsync pyzor razor hdparm expect ntp ntpdate ncftp gnupg
View CommentView CommentOpera/9.80 (X11; Linux x86_64; U; en) Presto/2.7.62 Version/11.00
For Debian Squeeze, the aptitude commands to check for fastest mirror should be:
# aptitude install netselect-apt
View CommentView Comment# netselect-apt -n squeeze