How to get Ubuntu Server installed from Ubuntu Minimal?

Question

Once I install Ubuntu minimal, then I have option to customize it the way I want.

I can either use it as such with the terminal mode,
Make it ubuntu desktop by apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
Make it kubuntu by apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
Make it Lubuntu by apt-get install lubuntu-desktop
and so on....

One can see a difference with the Ubuntu server version, that during installation it gives option to select

• SSH Server
• Tomcat Server
• LAMP
• DNS Server , etc

Now I am looking for a way or a command something like apt-get install ubuntu-server
so that I may install ubuntu-minimal and then proceed with the further process of
making it server in one go.

I don't want to install individual components (like components of LAMP or DNS) one by one. I am looking for an automated way similar to the one present in Ubuntu server distribution.

Solution

That functionality is provided by tasksel (unsurprisingly, it's in the tasksel package):

sudo apt-get install tasksel
sudo tasksel

this will present you with a menu of options, such as:

 [*] OpenSSH server
 [ ] DNS server
 [ ] LAMP server
 [*] Mail server
 [ ] Openstack
 [ ] PostgreSQL database
 [*] Print server

You should then be able to select the ones you want, and tasksel will handle the package installation.

Comments

[Jeremy Kerr]

As of 12.04, the server and desktop kernels have been merged. If you apt-get install linux-image-server, you'll find that you have the -generic kernel flavour, which works great on servers too.