Add a Linode
Once you have logged into the Linode Manager pages for the first you need to select the "Add a Linode to this Account" link to create a new Linode slice. This will ask you for the datacentre of your choice. Naturally I chose London as I am UK based.
Deploying a Linux Distribution
Once your Linode is assigned to a datacenter, you'll see the Linode Dashboard. Click the "Distro Wizard" link in the right column or the "Deploy a Linux Distribution" link in the main area to deploy a Linux distribution to your Linode:
You are now presented with the Deploy a Distribution Wizard.
Select the following options:
Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
This is the 32bit version which I would recommend as it will use less RAM than it's 64bit counterpart. This is important on a shared, low memory server.
Deployment Disk Size: 2048MB
I recommend a small disk partition for the system and adding addition disk(s) for data later. This is discussed in detail in the Setup guides.
Swap Disk: 256MB
Enter a root password (don't forget this, you'll need it later), and click "Deploy" to continue.
Booting Your Linode
Once your Linode has a distribution deployed to it, you may click the "Boot" button to start it:
A host job will be issued to start your VPS. This may take a few seconds, but once the job starts your Linode should boot up quickly.
Setting Up Reverse DNS
It is important to have a reverse DNS entry enabled for you server so that it authenticates correctly with services that do reverse DNS lookups.
While your Linode boots for the first time, click the "Network" tab to in the Linode Manager to find your Linode's IP address:
You should now edit you domain host records and add a new host with the IP address of your Linode server. Once this is done you can click the link to set the Reverse DNS:
Next Step…
You'll need to use SSH to log into your newly created Linux distribution (using the root account) and follow the Initial Setup guide.
