Zentyal installation

Installation

Generally speaking, Zentyal is meant to be installed exclusively on one (real or virtual) machine.However, this does not prevent you from installing other applications, that are not managed through the Zentyal interface. These applications must be manually installed and configured.

Zentyal runs on top of Ubuntu [1] server edition, always on LTS (Long Term Support) [2] versions. LTS has longer support periods: five years instead of three,

You can install Zentyal in two different ways:

1, using the Zentyal installer (recommended option),
2,using an existing Ubuntu Server Edition installation.

In the second case the official Zentyal repositories must be added and installation continued by installing the modules you are interested in [3]

However, in the first case the installation and deployment process is easier as all dependencies reside on a single CD or USB. Another benefit of using the CD or USB is to have a graphical environment that allows the use of a web interface from the server itself.

Ubuntu’s official documentation includes a brief introduction to installing and configuring Zentyal [4]

1, Ubuntu is a Linux distribution developed by Canonical and the community, focused on laptops, PCs and servers: http://www.ubuntu.com/.

2, For a detailed description about the publication of Ubuntu versions it is recommended you consult the Ubuntu guide: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases.

3,  https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/zentyal.html

4, For more information about installing from the repository please go to

Zentyal installer

The Zentyal installer is based on the Ubuntu Server installer. Those already familiar with this installer will also find the installation process very similar.

To start with, you choose the installation language, in this example English is chosen.

Selection of the language

You can install Zentyal by using the default mode which deletes all disk contents and creates the partitions required by Zentyal by using LVM [5] or you can choose the expert mode which allows customised partitioning. Most users should choose the default option unless they are installing on a server with RAID software or they want to create special partitioning according to specific requirements

Installer start

In the next step choose the language for your system interface. To set the language, you are asked for your country, in this example the United States is chosen.

Geographical location

You can use automatic detection for setting the keyboard: a few questions are asked to ensure the model you are using is correct. Otherwise, you can select the model manually by choosing No.

Keyboard configuration 1

Keyboard configuration 2

Keyboard configuration 3

If you have multiple network adapters, the installer will ask you for your primary one , the one that will be used to access the Internet during the installation. The installer will try to auto configure it using DHCP. If you only have one interface, you will not see this question

Select primary network interface

Now choose a name for your server: this name is important for host identification within the network. The DNS service will automatically register this name. Samba will also use this domain name, as you will see later.

Hostname

Next, the installer will ask you for the administrator account. This user will have administration privileges and in addition, the same user will be used to access the Zentyal interface.

System username

In the next step you are asked for the user password. It is important to note that the user defined earlier, can access, using the same password, both system (via SSH or local login) and the Zentyal web interface. Therefore you must be really careful to choose a secure password (more than 12 characters including letters, numbers and symbols).

Password

Here, insert the password again to verify it.

Confirm password

In the next step you are asked for your time zone. It is automatically configured depending on the location chosen earlier, but you can modify it in case this is incorrect.

Time zone

The installation progress bar will now appear. You must wait for the basic system to install. This process can take approximately 20 minutes, depending on the server.

Installation of the base system

Once installation of the base system is completed, you can eject the installation CD and restart the server.

Restart

Now your Zentyal system is installed! A graphical interface in a web browser is started and you are able to access the administrative interface. The first boot will take an extra time while it configures core Zentyal modules. After the first restart, the graphical environment was automatically started, from now on you must authenticate before it begins.

Graphical environment with administrative interface

To start configuring Zentyal profiles or modules, you must insert the username and password indicated during the installation process. Any user you add later to the sudo group can access the Zentyal interface and has sudo privileges in the system.

LVM is the logical volume manager in Linux, you can find an introduction to LVM management in http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_lvm.