Last week Ubuntu released Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. This article will cover how to upgrade your server from Ubuntu 8.10 to Ubuntu 9.04.
1. Update your package list
# sudo aptitude update
2. Install the upgrade manager
# sudo aptitude install update-manager-core -y

The Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination which was used to restart X was disabled by default in Ubuntu 9.04. In order to re-enable this key combo, run the following command in your terminal window:
sudo aptitude install dontzap && sudo dontzap –d
Please note: I had to install the program “dontzap” prior to this command working, so I have added that to the line of code above to make life easier for you!

A change to the Update Manager in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) makes it to where you are no longer notified about software updates in the system tray on a daily basis. In Ubuntu 8.10 you were notified on a daily basis of any software updates. In 9.04 you will be notified on a daily basis if there are security updates, however, you will only be notified on a weekly basis for non security updates.
Ubuntu 9.04 introduces a change to the handling of package updates, launching update-manager directly instead of displaying …

With Ubuntu 9.04 being released yesterday, I am going to show you how to get prepared to upgrade your 8.10 install.
Before you upgrade:

Backup your data – Please, please, please backup all of your data in case something happens that the upgrade doesn’t happen as it’s supposed to. Don’t blame me if you loose something because you have been warned!
Apply all current updates – Before you upgrade you need to apply all of the updates for your current version. There are two ways to do this, either through the update …

I have wanted to switch from Apache to Lighttpd for my web server for quite a while. In this article I am going to go over my installation of Lighttpd, MySQL with phpmyadmin, and PHP5 on Ubuntu 8.10. In a future article I will go over setting up my sites to run on Lighttpd. I am running a 256mb ‘slice’ from Slicehost. For the basic setup of my slice I followed Slicehost’s Ubuntu Intrepid Setup Tutorial.

Have you had trouble setting a static IP address on Ubuntu 8.10? If so this is due to a bug with the Gnome Network Manager. The easiest way to fix this is to uninstall the network manager, and edit your configuration files yourself. To remove the network manager type the following into your terminal:
sudo apt-get remove –purge network-manager