The Linux System Administrator's Guide
Version 0.8
Table of Contents
Source and pre-formatted versions available
1.
Introduction
2.
About This Book
Acknowledgments
Joanna's acknowledgments
Stephen's acknowledgments
Alex's Acknowledgments
Typographical Conventions
3.
Overview of a Linux System
Various parts of an operating system
Important parts of the kernel
Major services in a UNIX system
init
Logins from terminals
Syslog
Periodic command execution:
cron
and
at
Graphical user interface
Networking
Network logins
Network file systems
Mail
Printing
The filesystem layout
4.
Overview of the Directory Tree
Background
The root filesystem
The
/etc
directory
The
/dev
directory
The
/usr
filesystem
The
/var
filesystem
The
/proc
filesystem
5.
Device Files
The
MAKEDEV
Script
The
mknod
command
Device List
6.
Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Two kinds of devices
Hard disks
Floppies
CD-ROMs
Tapes
Formatting
Partitions
The MBR, boot sectors and partition table
Extended and logical partitions
Partition types
Partitioning a hard disk
Device files and partitions
Filesystems
What are filesystems?
Filesystems galore
Which filesystem should be used?
Creating a filesystem
Mounting and unmounting
Checking filesystem integrity with
fsck
Checking for disk errors with
badblocks
Fighting fragmentation
Other tools for all filesystems
Other tools for the ext2/ext3 filesystem
Disks without filesystems
Allocating disk space
Partitioning schemes
Space requirements
Examples of hard disk allocation
Adding more disk space for Linux
Tips for saving disk space
7.
Memory Management
What is virtual memory?
Creating a swap space
Using a swap space
Sharing swap spaces with other operating systems
Allocating swap space
The buffer cache
8.
Boots And Shutdowns
An overview of boots and shutdowns
The boot process in closer look
More about shutdowns
Rebooting
Single user mode
Emergency boot floppies
9.
init
init
comes first
Configuring
init
to start
getty
: the
/etc/inittab
file
Run levels
Special configuration in
/etc/inittab
Booting in single user mode
10.
Logging In And Out
Logins via terminals
Logins via the network
What
login
does
X and xdm
Access control
Shell startup
11.
Managing user accounts
What's an account?
Creating a user
/etc/passwd
and other informative files
Picking numeric user and group ids
Initial environment:
/etc/skel
Creating a user by hand
Changing user properties
Removing a user
Disabling a user temporarily
12.
Backups
On the importance of being backed up
Selecting the backup medium
Selecting the backup tool
Simple backups
Making backups with
tar
Restoring files with
tar
Multilevel backups
What to back up
Compressed backups
13.
Keeping Time
The concept of localtime
The hardware and software clocks
Showing and setting time
When the clock is wrong
NTP - Network Time Protocol
Basic NTP configuration
NTP Toolkit
Some known NTP servers
NTP Links
14.
Finding Help
Newsgroups and Mailing Lists
Finding The Right Forum
Before You Post
Writing Your Post
Formatting Your Post
Follow Up
More Information
IRC
Colours
Be Polite
Type Properly, in English
Port scanning
Keep it in the Channel
Stay On Topic
CTCPs
Hacking, Cracking, Phreaking, Warezing
Round Up
Further Reading
A.
GNU Free Documentation License
0.
PREAMBLE
1.
APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
2.
VERBATIM COPYING
3.
COPYING IN QUANTITY
4.
MODIFICATIONS
5.
COMBINING DOCUMENTS
6.
COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
7.
AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
8.
TRANSLATION
9.
TERMINATION
10.
FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
How to use this License for your documents
Glossary (DRAFT, but not for long hopefully)
List of Tables
6-1.
Partition types (from the Linux
fdisk
program).
9-1.
Run level numbers
12-1.
Efficient backup scheme using many backup levels
List of Figures
3-1.
Some of the more important parts of the Linux kernel
4-1.
Parts of a Unix directory tree. Dashed lines indicate partition limits.
6-1.
A schematic picture of a hard disk.
6-2.
A sample hard disk partitioning.
6-3.
Three separate filesystems.
6-4.
/home
and
/usr
have been mounted.
6-5.
Sample output from
dumpe2fs
10-1.
Logins via terminals: the interaction of
init
,
getty
,
login
, and the shell.
12-1.
A sample multilevel backup schedule.
Next
Source and pre-formatted versions available