Ubuntu Server Installation

[Chris Bennett <..hidden..>]

I thought I'd try some other OS installs since I have a free hard drive 
and work is slow.

I am working on an Ubuntu Server Install Page right now. But I am far 
from an Ubuntu (or for that matter Linux) expert.
When I decided to move away from the windows world, I had to make a 
choice between a wide range of OS's.

I'm happy I chose OpenBSD to concentrate on, but every choice has its 
pluses and minuses!
Installing Ubuntu server is a very different experience than OpenBSD 
(which is very command-line oriented, but gives total control)

I found it very difficult to find and install the correct perl modules. 
CPAN failed, and apt-cache search was very clumsy, but finally showed me 
everything I needed.

I'm used to complete security control, so the instant sudo access 
pattern to root (I tried Ubuntu desktop a few years ago, lower security 
on a desktop seems something more forgivable to me)
and the lack of a pre-defined password for the PostgreSQL superuser 
postgres seems startling to me.

LedgerSMB REALLY needs clear installation instructions for this. If I 
hadn't spent the last couple of months working on a project learning 
PostgreSQL, I couldn't have gotten past the invalid postgres password 
error I got. With that experience, the problem seemed obvious and 
relatively easy to fix after a quick search for the right SQL to use.

Three questions.

1. PostgreSQL defaults to UTF-8 encoding instead of SQL-ASCII as in 
OpenBSD. Is this a problem? On either side?

2. I noticed that there was no lsmbdata database created as happens with 
OpenBSD. Is this correct? The program seems to function OK at first glance.

3. I couldn't get the command  createdb -U ledgersmb -O ledgersmb 
ledgersmb  to work unless I created a Unix user ledgersmb first.
    Is there some other solution to that problem I'm not seeing?

Chris Bennett