Alright, let me spill the beans about this whole “man’s virginity” thing. You know, the software kind, not… well, you get it.
It all started when I was tasked with setting up a brand new server, completely from scratch. Think of it like building a house from the foundation up – no previous configurations, no legacy code, just a clean slate. Virgin territory, if you will.
First things first, I grabbed the OS. Went with Ubuntu Server, latest LTS version. Downloaded the ISO, burned it onto a USB drive, and booted the server. The installation process was pretty straightforward – chose the language, set the timezone, created a user account. Nothing too crazy yet.
Next up: hardening. This is where the fun began. Changed the default SSH port. Disabled password authentication for SSH and only allowed key-based authentication. That’s a must, folks. Fail2ban was installed and configured to block any brute-force attempts. UFW firewall was enabled and locked down to only allow necessary ports. Seriously, don’t skip the security steps!
Then I moved on to setting up the basic services I needed. I wanted to host a simple website, so I installed Nginx. Got it configured to serve a static HTML page. Tested it, made sure it worked. Easy peasy.
But I also needed a database. So, I installed PostgreSQL. Set up a user and a database for my application. I secured PostgreSQL by only allowing connections from localhost. This is where I started feeling like I was really building something.
After that, I deployed my application. It’s a simple Python application using Flask. I used Gunicorn to serve the application and configured Nginx as a reverse proxy. I used a virtual environment to isolate the application dependencies. Keeping your dependencies clean is super important.
I set up systemd to manage the Gunicorn process, so it would automatically restart if it crashed. I also configured log rotation to keep the logs from filling up the disk.
Finally, I set up automatic backups. Used `rsync` to back up the entire server to an external drive. Created a cron job to run the backup script every night. Backups are your best friend. Don’t forget them.
The whole process took me a few days, but it was totally worth it. I ended up with a secure, reliable server that I built from the ground up. It’s a great feeling, knowing that you’re in control of everything.
So, yeah, that’s my story about popping a server’s cherry. Hope it was helpful!
