Linux System Administration

Course Description

This five-day hands-on course teaches students how set up and perform tasks needed to effectively administer a Linux system.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Set up a Linux system from scratch
• Update and install new software packages
• Create and install online documentation
• Create hard and symbolic links
• Find files, applications and utilities by date, name, owner, type or other criteria
• Create and update a secure database to locate files
• Enable disk quotas
• Monitor system performance and identify performance bottlenecks
• Kill, suspend and alter process priority
• Schedule and reschedule tasks
• Add, modify, and delete users and groups
• Configure user shell environments
• Back up and restore files
• Describe Linux processes
• Identify Linux special files and devices
• Manage passwords
• Protect files and directories from unauthorized access
• Start up and shutdown any Linux computer

Course Benefits

Students will increase their productivity by learning the tools and techniques needed to efficiently and effectively administer a Linux system.

Who Should Attend

This course is valuable for all computer professionals involved with Linux and especially for those who are acquiring system administration responsibilities on a Linux system.

Prerequisite

To ensure your success, we recommend you first take either our Introduction To UNIX course or our Introduction To Linux course, or have the equivalent knowledge. Familiarity with Web browsers, the vi editor, and Linux command line interface is assumed.

Method Of Instruction

Lecture, demonstrations, questions and answers, and numerous hands-on exercises.

Hands-on Exercises

Throughout this course, students perform a series of extensive hands-on exercises including:

• Installing Linux
• Discerning the Linux flavor
• Adding a new manual page
• Setting file permissions
• Creating hard and symbolic links
• Finding files with find and slocate
• Managing file and group ownership
• Setting and changing permission modes with chmod, and umask
• Working with SUID and SGID
• Obtaining process status and changing status priorities
• Scheduling, and rescheduling processes with at, cron, nice, and renice
• Monitoring performance with free, vmstat, ps and top
• Discovering available devices on the Linux system
• Mounting and unmounting file systems
• Booting and rebooting the system
• Understanding the boot process
• Understanding run levels and startup scripts
• Customizing system log files
• Add new users and groups
• Managing passwords
• Making, editing, and deleting a crontab entry
• Using dump, cpio, and tar to back up files
• Enabling disk quotas

Course Outline

Chapter 1: Getting Started

• Linux operating system features
• Flavors of Linux
• Brief History of Linux
• Logging in and using the system
• Defining the root account
• Difference between su and su -
• Accessing and searching the on-line reference manual

Chapter 2: Managing Files

• What is a file
• Setting file properties and permissions
• Creating hard and symbolic links
• Finding files
• Copy, move and remove files

Chapter 3: Processes

• Linux processes
• Using ps
• What are daemons and processes
• Background commands (&)
• Killing processes
• Signals

Chapter 4: The Linux File System

• Devices and special files
• Disk partitioning
• The mount command
• The fstab file

Chapter 5: The Linux Kernel

• What is the kernel
• Kernel responsibilities
• System calls
• Device drivers
• Kernel maintenance
• Customizing the kernel
• Kernel modules

Chapter 6: Starting and Stopping Linux

• Installing Linux
• Overview of the Bootup Sequence
• Run levels
• Single-User Mode
• Understanding init
• The init Daemon
• /etc/inittab
• The init Command
• The rc Scripts
• System Start Up
• System Shutdown

Chapter 7: Users and Groups

• Adding new users and groups
• Password management
• Customizing the user environment

Chapter 8: Monitoring Performance

• Monitoring disk usage
• The top utility
• The vmstat utility
• The free utility
• System logs

Chapter 9: Automating Tasks

• The /etc/cron.d directory
• The cron utility
• Making your own crontab entry
• The at utility
• Controlling access

Chapter 10: Disk Quotas

• Limiting drive access
• Blocks, inodes and quotas
• Setting disk quotas

Chapter 11: Backing Up and Restoring Files

• Planning a backup strategy
• Backing up files with dump
• Backing up files with tar
• The cpio Command
• Restoring files