Linux System Administration - 3 day course
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Synopsis
This course provides you with the skills to install and maintain your linux desktop and server systems. You'll take control of your system's configuration from the moment you install it. You'll learn how to create and manage file systems using raw disk partitions and logical volumes, and how to mount file systems from remote servers. You will create user accounts and groups and control the ownership and access permissions of files. We'll show you how to set up the networking configuration of your machines and troubleshoot network problems. You'll set up web hosting with a simple "LAMP" stack. You'll discover what happens when linux boots (and how to fix it when it doesn't). You'll learn how to manage services, read their log files, and use tools that help answer "what's going on?" questions. We'll even teach you a little shell scripting, to help automate system adminstration chores. Along the way, you'll learn best practices to keep your systems secure.
The course does not lean heavily towards any specific linux distribution but focuses on tools and utilities that are common to all distributions. Where appropriate, lab activities are dual-tracked and may be performed in a RedHat-style environment (Fedora) or a Debian-style environment (Ubuntu).
The course is designed for anyone with responsibility for installation, management and configuration of linux systems. This might include traditional system administrators, network administrators, DBAs, and first- or second-line support technicians.
Duration
3 days
Cost
£895 plus VAT
Prerequisites
Attendees should be comfortable working with Linux at the command line and have knowledge of core tools such as the bash shell, less, ls, cp, mv, rm, and grep. Impartica's two-day course
Linux: An Accelerated Introduction provides adequate background. A basic knowledge of TCP/IP networking would also be an advantage.
Key skills
At the completion of this course you will be able to:
- * Perform an "intelligent" installation of linux (rather than clicking "Next" each time)
- * Create disk partitions and logical volumes, and build file systems on them
- * Manage user accounts
- * Set up IP configuration, routing, and firewall settings on your network connections
- * Configure network services and control service start-up
- * Monitor usage of disk space, network, memory and CPU
- * Automate system administration tasks by writing simple shell scripts
- * Keep your systems secure using best practices and common sense
Detailed course contents
Intelligent installation
- Choosing a partitioning scheme
- File system layout
- Why partition?
- Automating the installation process
File system management
- Supported file system types
- Native file systems: ext3, ext4, reiser
- Non-native file systems: FAT, NTFS, ISO9660, others
- Network file systems: NFS and CIFS
- Creating file systems
- mke2fs and friends
- Labelling file systems
- Behind the scenes
- inodes, links and directories
- Mounting file systems
- Attaching file systems manually with the mount command
- Adding "permanent" mounts to the /etc/fstab file
- Mounting remote file systems from Linux and Windows servers
- Using Logical volumes
- Benefits of logical volumes
- Preparing physical volumes
- Creating a volume group
- Creating logical volumes
- Extending volume groups and logical volumes
The boot process
- The GRUB2 boot loader
- Grub stages 1, 1.5 and 2
- The grub config file
- The kernel and "initial ram disk" images
- Boot-time service startup
- RedHat-style run levels
- Ubuntu-style upstart jobs
- Trouble-shooting the boot process
- Examining the kernel's message buffer
- Booting single-user
- Rescue booting
User account management
- User account information
- The /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files
- User names and user IDs
- LDAP and other ways to centralise accounts
- Creating accounts
- useradd and adduser
- Graphical account management tools
- Setting passwords
- Enforcing password strength
- Password ageing
- Groups
- Primary groups
- Secondary groups
- How to use groups effectively
Network configuration
- Defining your network settings
- Using the graphical tools
- Underlying configuration files
- Static settings
- Using a DHCP server
- Setting up routes and a default gateway
- Making temporary changes with ifconfig
- Name resolution
- Local files: /etc/hosts
- Naming services: LDAP, DNS
- The nsswitch.conf and resolv.conf files
- Security
- Configuring a simple packet-filtering firewall
- Troubleshooting the network
- Verifying your network settings
- Testing connectivity
- Testing name resolution
- Packet tracing -- a last resort
Monitoring system activity
- Process status
- the ps and pstree commands
- System load (CPU, memory)
- top, vmstat and related commands
- File system usage
- Network activity
- Examine open ports with netstat and lsof
- Network load
- Charting trends in system load
Services
- System services
- The syslogd logging daemon
- Scheduling regular jobs with cron
- Starting and stopping services manually
- Service log files
- Monitoring log files with logwatch
- Network services
- The secure shell
- Apache configuration and virtual hosts
- Server-side scripting with PHP
- Installing the MySQL database
- Putting it together -- a simple web site
- Other services -- file and printer sharing
Shell scripting
- Shell language basics
- Shell variables
- Environment variables
- Creating and running a script
- Passing arguments to scripts
- Loops and branches
- Testing exit status
- Built-in tests
- The foreach loop
- The if/else statement
- Simple scripts
- A resource accounting script
- Running scripts from cron
Can't see a suitable date or location?
Click here to register your interest in this course and we will
keep you informed when any new dates are added.