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Ubuntu 24.04 server annoyances

Ubuntu 24.04 server annoyances

snapd

Do a minimal install and select no additional packages to install. This will not install any snaps on your system. If you like snaps, skip this step and may god have mercy on your soul. When you run snap list you see something like this:

No snaps are installed yet. Try 'snap install hello-world'.

Congratulations you are snap free. However, Ubuntu still hates you and can still install snaps without you potentially noticing that it happened. To prevent this do the add the following:

sudo vim /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
Package: snapd
Pin: release a=*
Pin-Priority: -10

Run sudo apt info snapd Package: snapd State: not a real package (virtual)

You are safe from snapd being installed and thus any snaps.

man pages

sudo apt install man-db manpages-posix manpages-dev manpages-posix-dev

transmission-daemon

You can install transmission-daemon on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS from the default repo. sudo apt install transmission-daemon. This should install version transmission-daemon 4.0.5 (a6fe2a64aa). The default install configuration of transmission is messed up. If you see error message like below this is the solution.

systemd[1]: Starting transmission-daemon.service - Transmission BitTorrent Daemon...
systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: start operation timed out. Terminating.
transmission-daemon[2780]: Closing transmission session... done.
systemd[1]: transmission-daemon.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.
systemd[1]: Failed to start transmission-daemon.service - Transmission BitTorrent Daemon.

In /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/transmission-daemon.service change the following:

Type=notify

to

Type=simple

systemctl auto-completion

sudo apt install bash-completion

add to ~/.bashrc

source /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/systemctl
alias sct='systemctl'
complete -F _systemctl sct

glances

This does not qualify as an annoyance. I like to have glances running as a web service so I can use glances data on the useful homepage dashboard app.

/etc/systemd/system/glances.service 
[Unit]
Description = Glances in Web Server Mode
After = network.target

[Service]
ExecStart = /usr/bin/glances -w -t 5

[Install]
WantedBy = multi-user.target

Afterwards, get systemd to pickup the changes and then do a proper start.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart glances.service
sudo systemctl status glances.service

Landscape and MOTD

Ubuntu added some really useful feature to the motd but also really awful ones like news and ads. This one is useful.

sudo apt install landscape-common

To test run:

run-parts /etc/update-motd.d/

Get rid of the annoying stuff stored in /etc/update-motd.d/:

sudo chmod -v 666 /etc/update-motd.d/10-help-text
sudo chmod -v 666 /etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news 
sudo chmod -v 666 /etc/update-motd.d/60-unminimize 
sudo chmod -v 666 /etc/update-motd.d/92-unattended-upgrades 

To test run:

run-parts /etc/update-motd.d/

Optional. You cam also disable the services:

sudo systemctl mask apt-news.service
sudo systemctl mask esm-cache.service

PS1

PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[37m\]\u\[\033[00m\]@\[\033[33m\]\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;36m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

Shell History

HISTSIZE=10000
HISTFILESIZE=50000

Optional in ~/.bashrc

# Don't limit the size of the history file
HISTFILESIZE=-1
# Don't limit the size of the in-memory history list
HISTSIZE=-1

In ~/.inputrc add:

# Briefly highlight the corresponding opening symbol when entering a closing symbol
set blink-matching-paren on
# When listing possible completions, color the part that is already typed
set colored-completion-prefix on

Unattended Upgrades

Unattended upgrades performs the equivalent of apt update and apt upgrade. Set these to 0:

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

Disable and/or mask the services.

sudo systemctl disable apt-daily-upgrade.timer
sudo systemctl disable apt-daily.timer
sudo systemctl mask apt-daily-upgrade.service
sudo systemctl mask apt-daily.service
sudo systemctl mask apt-daily.timer
sudo systemctl mask apt-daily-upgrade.timer

Full documentation

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