Preamble to UNIX Administration
Course introduction
- UNIX system administration issues and goals UNIX origins and vendors
- Working as root
- System administration shells
- On-line help and resources
OS Installation and Software Management
- Preparing for installation
- Installation methods and sources
- Identify software release
- Manipulating software packages
- Applying software patches
UNIX Devices
- The /dev directory; logical and physical device names
- Major and minor device numbers and device naming conventions
- Block and character devices
- Removable media
- Disk slicing information
- Exploring and configuring hardware
Files and Directories
- Directory structure: file system concepts, inodes and links
- Permission bits and access control, including SUID, SGID and sticky bit
- Configuring 'shared group' directory attributes
- Introduction to ACL (Access Control List)
Processes
- Processes & daemons
- Processes interrogation tools (e.g. ps, top)
- Communicating with processes: signals and traps
- Postponing tasks with at and batch
- Long term scheduling with crontab
Monitoring and Logging
- What to monitor & why
- Monitoring with sar
- Auditing and logging
- Basic UNIX log files
- Simple touch, tail, tail -f, grep for working with logs
- Syslog daemon; rotating logs
Generic Startup and Shutdown
- Bootstrap procedure
- Single and multi-user run levels
- System startup files (rc files)
- The init process and the /etc/inittab file
- Clean shutdown procedure
- Appendix: Bootstrapping in specific versions
Filesystems
- Disk terminology
- File system overview: structure and types
- Making filesystem with mkfs command
- Mounting disks with mount
- Maintaining and troubleshooting filesystems
- Filesystem utilities; fsck, sync, df, du, quotas
Storage Management
- Overview of disk partitioning
- Using fdisk to create physical partitions
- LVM structure
- Creating, formatting and mounting logical volumes
- Appendix: RAID 0, 1, 3 and 5
User Accounts
- Requirements for a user account
- Main configuration files: /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /etc/shadow
- Managing user accounts
- Adding, modifying and deleting users with useradd, usermod and userdel
- Managing passwords with passwd
- Secure User Considerations
- User types and their accounts
- The sudo utility
- Testing account usage and activity: lastlog, last, lastb
- Additional user security files: securetty, usertty
TCP/IP Networking
- The TCP/IP protocol suite: protocols and services
- Basic TCP/IP configuration
- IP, netmask and broadcast addresses, hostname
- TCP/IP daemons and configuration files: inetd and /etc/inetd.conf
- inetd under SMF
- Remote logins: telnet, ftp and 'r' commands vs. SSH set of tools
DFS
- DFS concepts
- Setting up NFS
- Mounting and sharing NFS directories
- Security issues
- NFS v2 vs. NFS v4
- Appendix: Sharing with Samba
Backup and Restore
- Why have backups; backup terminology and media
- Tape device names
- Using mt to manipulate tapes
- Backup utilities: ufsdump, tar, dd, cpio
- Compression tools
Printing
- Print spooler model
- Adding printers
- Enabling and disabling printers
- Network printing
- Appendix: Introduction to CUPS
SVR4 vs. BSD features
Certification
Although this course is not part of any particular certification programme, it will assist those delegates who might in future seek several vendor certifications.