It doesn't make a lot of sense to install a 5 watt device the size of a deck of playing cards then leave it plugged into a keyboard, mouse and monitor. For remote console access I use SSH. Webmin is much like PLesk and while not strictly required, it does come in handy from time to time.

Installing OpenSSH

I won't be using this box to connect to other boxes so I only need to install the OpenSSH server package. You may want to install the client as well.

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server

If you're exposing the box to the Internet it'd be a good idea to read up and do some additional configuration to secure your OpenSSH installation.

Installing Webmin

Webmin is a browser based management tool. To use it from the Ubuntu console you'll need to install the Java plugin.

$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

Now you're ready to install a couple prerequisites and the Webmin package.

$ sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl

$ wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.480_all.deb

$ sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.480_all.deb

$ sudo apt-get install -f

Open Firefox, browse to https://localhost:10000 and verify that everything is working as expected. It should have picked up that OpenSSH has already been installed and you'll see that under the servers group. When you add packages you may need to refresh the module list before they appear in the management interface.

Again, you might want to do some additional configuration to secure the Webmin installation depending on your environment. I usually configure Webmin for scheduled updates. At this point you should be able to unplug the keyboard, mouse and monitor and do the rest remotely.