• Inportant thing that you can NOT plug the new server into public internet until your installation in progress. After that plug the server behind a router (and/or) install a minimal firewall!

• Ubuntu server installation is easy. Internet connection is not necessary, you just go throught the installation steps. I suggest that you make different partitions for:

On typical web server the /var partition is the bigest, and the /home partition is also big enought for backups. For partition types I suggest the reiserfs.

• After installation connect the server into the internet (via router), and update the packages.
  • apt-get update
  • apt-get upgrade

• Some packages what may usefull for you:
  • mc
  • build-essential (this is only needed when you want to compile some program eg. DNS cache)
  • apt-file
  • vim
  • links
  • ngrep
  • bash-static
  • geoip-bin
  • syslog-ng
  • postfix
  • chkrootkit
  • rkhunter
  • shorewall
  • shorewall-doc
  • apparmor-profiles

• You can remove some package:
  • ppp
  • dhcp3-client