The Linux System Administrator's Guide

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/index.html

The Linux System Administrator's Guide

Version 0.9

Lars Wirzenius

<Email address removed by request>

Joanna Oja

<Current email address unknown>

Stephen Stafford

<stephen@clothcat.demon.co.uk.NOSPAM>

Alex Weeks

<draxeman@gmail.com.NOSPAM>

An introduction to system administration of a Linux system for novices.

Legal Notice

Table of Contents About This Book
1.
Acknowledgments 2.
Revision History 3.
Source and pre-formatted versions available 4.
Typographical Conventions
1.
Introduction
1.1.
Linux or GNU/Linux, that is the question. 1.2.
Trademarks
2.
Overview of a Linux System
2.1.
Various parts of an operating system 2.2.
Important parts of the kernel 2.3.
Major services in a UNIX system
3.
Overview of the Directory Tree
3.1.
Background 3.2.
The root filesystem 3.3.
The/etc directory 3.4.
The/dev directory 3.5.
The/usr filesystem. 3.6.
The/var filesystem 3.7.
The /proc filesystem
4.
Hardware, Devices, and Tools
4.1.
Hardware Utilities 4.2.
Kernel Modules
5.
Using Disks and Other Storage Media
5.1.
Two kinds of devices 5.2.
Hard disks 5.3.
Storage Area Networks - Draft5.4.
Network Attached Storage - Draft 5.5.
Floppies 5.6.
CD-ROMs5.7.
Tapes5.8.
Formatting 5.9.
Partitions 5.10.
Filesystems 5.11.
Disks without filesystems 5.12.
Allocating disk space
6.
Memory Management
6.1.
What is virtual memory? 6.2.
Creating a swap space 6.3.
Using a swap space 6.4.
Sharing swap spaces with other operating systems 6.5.
Allocating swap space 6.6.
The buffer cache
7.
System Monitoring
7.1.
System Resources 7.2.
Filesystem Usage 7.3.
Monitoring Users
8.
Boots And Shutdowns
8.1.
An overview of boots and shutdowns 8.2.
The boot process in closer look 8.3.
More about shutdowns 8.4.
Rebooting 8.5.
Single user mode 8.6.
Emergency boot floppies
9.
init
9.1.
init comes first 9.2.
Configuring init to start
getty: the /etc/inittab file 9.3.
Run levels 9.4.
Special configuration in /etc/inittab 9.5.
Booting in single user mode
10.
Logging In And Out
10.1.
Logins via terminals 10.2.
Logins via the network 10.3.
What login does 10.4.
X and xdm10.5.
Access control 10.6.
Shell startup
11.
Managing user accounts
11.1.
What's an account? 11.2.
Creating a user 11.3.
Changing user properties 11.4.
Removing a user 11.5.
Disabling a user temporarily
12.
Backups
12.1.
On the importance of being backed up 12.2.
Selecting the backup medium 12.3.
Selecting the backup tool 12.4.
Simple backups 12.5.
Multilevel backups 12.6.
What to back up 12.7.
Compressed backups
13.
Task Automation --To Be Added 14.
Keeping Time
14.1.
The concept of localtime 14.2.
The hardware and software clocks 14.3.
Showing and setting time 14.4.
When the clock is wrong 14.5.
NTP - Network Time Protocol14.6.
Basic NTP configuration 14.7.
NTP Toolkit 14.8.
Some known NTP servers 14.9.
NTP Links
15.
System Logs --To Be Added 16.
System Updates --To Be Added 17.
The Linux Kernel Source18.
Finding Help
18.1.
Newsgroups and Mailing Lists 18.2.
IRC
A.
GNU Free Documentation License
A.1.
PREAMBLE A.2.
APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONSA.3.
VERBATIM COPYINGA.4.
COPYING IN QUANTITYA.5.
MODIFICATIONSA.6.
COMBINING DOCUMENTSA.7.
COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTSA.8.
AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKSA.9.
TRANSLATIONA.10.
TERMINATION A.11.
FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE A.12.
ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
Glossary (DRAFT, but not for long hopefully)Index-Draft

List of Tables 5-1.
Comparing Filesystem Features 5-2.
Sizes 5-3.
My Partitions 9-1.
Run level numbers 12-1.
Efficient backup scheme using many backup levels

List of Figures 2-1.
Some of the more important parts of the Linux kernel 3-1.
Parts of a Unix directory tree. Dashed lines indicate partition limits. 5-1.
A schematic picture of a hard disk. 5-2.
A sample hard disk partitioning. 5-3.
Three separate filesystems. 5-4.
/home and /usr have been mounted.10-1.
Logins via terminals: the interaction of init,
getty, login, and the shell. 12-1.
A sample multilevel backup schedule.

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