Best of all, I upgraded the entire OS remotely using SSH. Upgrading your OS remotely is usually not a good idea, but if you know what you’re doing, go for it! Ensure you backup any custom/modified configuration files just in case you press a wrong key during the upgrade! The upgrade worked well, with the exception of recompiling eAccelerator (to work with PHP 5.2.2) and updating a line (see below) of code in WordPress to make everything work smoothly.

Immediately following the upgrade, I noticed that my WordPress blog was loading very slowly and I also noticed random strings of hexadecimal characters at the top of the main blog page.

If you upgrade your server to Ubuntu Server 7.04 and run WordPress 2.1.x, ensure that you change line 832 in wp-includes/functions.php to the following (all on one line):

@header($_SERVER["SERVER_PROTOCOL"].” “.$header.” “.$text, true, $header);

Once you make the above change, your blog should load normally.

Update (5.15.2007):

With WordPress 2.2 (released today), the aforementioned WordPress fix is now irrelevant.

If you installed from a CD-ROM and have a working network connection to your Ubuntu system, you should update the sources.list file used by apt-get so that your system won’t prompt you to insert the Ubuntu CD-ROM each time you install a new package:

1. Log in to your system via the console.
2. Run the following command: sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
3. Add a # before the following line (use cursor keys to put cursor in front of the line and then press i, followed by #) :

deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 6.06.1 _Dapper … restricted

4. Save sources.list by pressing ‘Esc’, followed by the following sequence of characters to write the file and exit: :wq

Next, update your system with the latest Ubuntu packages. Having the latest packages ensures that your system remains secure.

Run sudo apt-get update, followed by sudo apt-get upgrade. It may take awhile to download updated packages for your installation, depending on your Internet connection.

If you want to admin your server remotely, or via another box on your home network, type the following to install SSH: sudo apt-get install ssh.

Ensure that the date on your server is correct by running date:

you@yourserver:~$ date
Wed Sep 20 14:12:54 PDT 2006

Correct time zone, wrong time. If the time zone is incorrect, you will need to run the tzconfig utility.

Check to see if the system is set to use UTC or not.

you@yourserver:~$ cat /etc/default/rcS | grep “UTC”
# Set UTC=yes if your system clock is set to UTC (GMT), and UTC=no if not.
UTC=yes

Since you probably want the server to return the time in your local time zone, change the line to read: UTC=no

One more step. You’ll probably want to synchronize the system clock using an official source, provided that your time zone was set during installation. If so, simply execute the following:

you@yourserver:~$ sudo apt-get install ntp-simple ntp-server

Ensure that your firewall permits communication over UDP port 123 and you’re set!

Check back in a couple of days for some more tips.