Learn how to set up a local repository for .deb packages you’ve built or downloaded, and deploy it to production servers with minimal interference. PHP 5.3.3 packages backported to Ubuntu 10.04 are used as an example.

However lean and streamlined have operating system installation procedures become in recent years, it is always desirable to reduce the amounts of time and user interaction required, especially when you need to conduct a series of (nearly) identical installations. Virtual machine cloning comes to the rescue. This post show how to install a baseline Ubuntu Server on a VirtualBox VM for subsequent cloning.

When you install Ubuntu on a virtual machine, you may notice that the console redraws very slowly, if it was a 300 baud terminal. This post describes solutions to this problem that worked well for me when installing Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on VirtualBox.