It may be useful, at step 0, to check out the server and see basic server orientation. Which Linux is it (cat /etc/*-release)? How much ram and disk (htop, df)?

It may be useful, at step 0, to check out the server and see basic server orientation. Which Linux is it (cat /etc/*-release)? How much ram and disk (htop, df)? How is the filesystem setup (mount)? What packages are already installed (dpkg -l)? What processes are running (ps aux, htop)? What did the last root, including me, do (history)? I also like to know where is the box physically, roughly (tracert, run locally).