I recently signed up for a Dedicated Virtual (dv) server with Media temple, and had to do quite a lot of work to properly configure things. This article is designed to help those in a similar situation. Additional comments and suggestions are welcome. Use this article at your own risk. Backup everything.
Background: I am running a dozen sites with the lowest dv package, allowing for 500mb of ram and 1tb of transfer for $500 a year, as you have to pre-pay the year when using paypal. I need this server to run websites oaun Joomla, WordPress and MagentoCommerce, which requires software like mcrypt and mhash. I also have a home Ubuntu testing server for Flash Media Server 2 and proftpd to run on.