Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook 4th Edition

Description

As an author, editor, and publisher, I never paid much attention to the competition - except in a few cases. This is one of those cases. The UNIX System Administration Handbook is one of the few books we ever measured ourselves against.

 - From the Foreword by Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media

This book is fun and functional as a desktop reference. If you use UNIX and Linux systems, you need this book in your short-reach library. It covers a bit of the systems' history but doesn't bloviate. It's just straightfoward information delivered in colorful and memorable fashion.

 - Jason A. Nunnelley

This is a comprehensive guide to the care and feeding of UNIX and Linux systems. The authors present the facts along with seasoned advice and real-world examples. Their perspective on the variations among systems is valuable for anyone who runs a heterogeneous computing facility.

 - Pat Parseghian

The twentieth anniversary edition of the world's best-selling UNIX system administration book has been made even better by adding coverage of the leading Linux distributions: Ubuntu, openSUSE, and RHEL.

This book approaches system administration in a practical way and is an invaluable reference for both new administrators and experienced professionals. It details best practices for every facet of system administration, including storage management, network design and administration, email, web hosting, scripting, software configuration management, performance analysis, Windows interoperability, virtualization, DNS, security, management of IT service organizations, and much more. UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, Fourth Edition, reflects the current versions of these operating systems:

Ubuntu Linux
openSUSE Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Oracle America Solaris (formerly Sun Solaris)
HP HP-UX
IBM AIX

CONTENTS:

Foreword xlii

Preface xliv

Acknowledgments xlvi

Section One: Basic Administration

Chapter 1: Where to Start 3

Essential duties of the system administrator 4

Suggested background 6

Friction between UNIX and Linux 7

Linux distributions 9

Example systems used in this book 10

System-specific administration tools 13

Notation and typographical conventions 13

Units 14

Man pages and other on-line documentation 16

Other authoritative documentation 18

Other sources of information 20

Ways to find and install software 21

System administration under duress 26

Recommended reading 27

Exercises 28

Chapter 2: Scripting and the Shell 29

Shell basics 30

bash scripting 37

Regular expressions 48

Perl programming 54

Python scripting 66

Scripting best practices 73

Recommended reading 74

Exercises 76

Chapter 3: Booting and Shutting Down 77

Bootstrapping 78

Booting PCs 82

GRUB: The GRand Unified Boot loader 83

Booting to single-user mode 86

Working with startup scripts 87

Booting Solaris 97

Rebooting and shutting down 100

Exercises 102

Chapter 4: Access Control and Rootly Powers 103

Traditional UNIX access control 104

Modern access control 106

Real-world access control 110

Pseudo-users other than root 118

Exercises 119

Chapter 5: Controlling Processes 120

Components of a process 120

The life cycle of a process 123

Signals 124

kill: send signals 127

Process states 128

nice and renice: influence scheduling priority 129

ps: monitor processes 130

Dynamic monitoring with top, prstat, and topas 133

The /proc filesystem 135

strace, truss, and tusc: trace signals and system calls 136

Runaway processes 138

Recommended reading 139

Exercises 139

Chapter 6: The Filesystem 140

Pathnames 142

Filesystem mounting and unmounting 143

The organization of the file tree 145

File types 147

File attributes 152

Access control lists 159

Exercises 173

Chapter 7: Adding New Users 174

The /etc/passwd file 176

The /etc/shadow and /etc/security/passwd files 183

The /etc/group file 186

Adding users: the basic steps 187

Adding users with useradd 191

Adding users in bulk with newusers (Linux) 197

Removing users 198

Disabling logins 200

Managing users with system-specific tools 201

Reducing risk with PAM 201

Centralizing account management 201

Recommended reading 204

Exercises 205

Chapter 9: Periodic Processes 283

cron: schedule commands 283

cron 288

Chapter 10: Backups 292

dump 307

Chapter 11: Syslog and Log Files 340

logrotate: manage log files 356

Chapter 12: Software Installation and Management 362

Chapter 13: Drivers and the Kernel 415

TCP/IP and its relationship to the Internet 447

Chapter 15: Routing 511

Ethernet: the Swiss Army knife of networking 532

Chapter 17: DNS: The Domain Name System 552

Chapter 18: The Network File System 690

nfsstat: dump NFS statistics 710

Chapter 19: Sharing System Files 719

Chapter 20: Electronic Mail 742

sendmail 775

sendmail configuration 778

sendmail configuration primitives 782

sendmail 795

sendmail performance 802

sendmail testing and debugging 805

Chapter 21: Network Management and Debugging 859

ping: check to see if a host is alive 861

traceroute: trace IP packets 865

netstat: get network statistics 868

Is UNIX secure? 897

chroot 913

Web hosting basics 957

Chapter 24: Virtualization 983

Chapter 25: The X Window System 1011

Chapter 26: Printing 1032

Chapter 27: Data Center Basics 1085

Chapter 28: Green IT 1097

Chapter 29: Performance Analysis 1112

Chapter 30: Cooperating with Windows 1135

Chapter 31: Serial Devices and Terminals 1162

setserial: set serial port parameters under Linux 1169

stty: set terminal options 1178

tset: set options automatically 1178

Chapter 32: Management, Policy, and Politics 1183