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Managing Ubuntu with Canonical Landscape

Landscape Gardener

Article from ADMIN 30/2015

By Sandro Lucifora

Canonical's Landscape management environment is an admin's friend when Ubuntu systems need patching, updating, and provisioning.

Canonical implemented a management solution for its Ubuntu operating systems at an early stage and integrated it deeply within the system. After all, most Ubuntu devices run without direct intervention in data centers. However, the freely available Ubuntu desktop is also very popular. To manage all of your devices – whether servers or desktop systems – you need a solution that helps when patching the operating system and when updating software. Landscape [1] fits the bill.

As a Service

The Ubuntu Advantage packages, which target enterprise users, include Landscape, a proprietary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) management solution from Canonical. You need an Ubuntu One account for the cloud service (i.e., a user account for access to all Ubuntu services).

For use in larger environments and, in particular, for provisioning, delivering, and setting up new machines, Canonical also offers a Metal-as-a-Service (MaaS) implementation, in which Landscape runs on a dedicated server that accesses the same network as the computers you need to set up.

In this article, I look at the SaaS solution. To create an account, you only need an email address, which is verified by the system. After registering with Ubuntu One, you can register your Ubuntu Advantage pack, which then gives you access to Landscape.

Safe Access with Access Keys

The next step is to set up and register the computers you want to manage. To safeguard logging in to your Landscape account with a computer, you first need to create an access key in your account settings. Without this key, any Landscape client that knows your account name could log in to your account. To begin, log into an Ubuntu Server, which needs an Internet connection, and update the packages (

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