"As this book shows, Linux systems are just as functional, secure, and reliable as their proprietary counterparts. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of thousands of Linux developers, Linux is more ready than ever for deployment at the frontlines of the real world. The authors of this book know that terrain well, and I am happy to leave you in their most capable hands." - Linus Torvalds. "The most successful sysadmin book of all time - because it works!" - Rik Farrow, editor of ";login:". "This book clearly explains current technology with the perspective of decades of experience in large-scale system administration. Unique and highly recommended." - Jonathan Corbet, cofounder, LWN.net. "Nemeth et al. is the overall winner for Linux administration: it's intelligent, full of insights, and looks at the implementation of concepts." - Peter Salus, editorial director, Matrix.net. Since 2001, "Linux[registered] Administration Handbook" has been the definitive resource for every Linux system administrator who must efficiently solve technical problems and maximize the reliability and performance of a production environment.;Now, the authors have systematically updated this classic guide to address today's most important Linux distributions and most powerful new administrative tools. The authors spell out detailed best practices for every facet of system administration, including storage management, network design and administration, web hosting, software configuration management, performance analysis, Windows interoperability, and much more. Sysadmins will especially appreciate the thorough and up-to-date discussions of such difficult topics such as DNS, LDAP, security, and the management of IT service organizations. "Linux[registered] Administration Handbook, Second Edition" reflects the current versions of these leading distributions: Red Hat[registered] Enterprise Linux[registered]; Fedora' Core; SUSE[registered] Linux Enterprise; Debian[registered] GNU/Linux; Ubuntu[registered] Linux. Sharing their war stories and hard-won insights, the authors capture the behavior of Linux systems in the real world, not just in ideal environments. They explain complex tasks in detail and illustrate these tasks with examples drawn from their extensive hands-on experience.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the First Edition xxxiiiPreface xxxivAcknowledgments xxxviiSection One: Basic Administration 1 Chapter 1: Where to Start 3 Suggested background 4 Linux's relationship to UNIX 4 Linux in historical context 5 Linux distributions 6 Notation and typographical conventions 9 Where to go for information 11 How to find and install software 14 Essential tasks of the system administrator 16 System administration under duress 18 Recommended reading 19 Exercises 20 Chapter 2: Booting and Shutting Down 21 Bootstrapping 21 Booting PCs 25 Using boot loaders: LILO and GRUB 26 Booting single-user mode 31 Working with startup scripts 32 Rebooting and shutting down 40 Exercises 43 Chapter 3: Rootly Powers 44 Ownership of files and processes 44 The superuser 46 Choosing a root password 47 Becoming root 48 Other pseudo-users 51 Exercises 52 Chapter 4: Controlling Processes 53 Components of a process 53 The life cycle of a process 56 Signals 57kill and killall: send signals 60 Process states 60nice and renice: influence scheduling priority 61ps: monitor processes 62top: monitor processes even better 65 The /proc filesystem 65strace: trace signals and system calls 66 Runaway processes 67 Recommended reading 69 Exercises 69 Chapter 5: The Filesystem 70 Pathnames 72 Filesystem mounting and unmounting 73 The organization of the file tree 75 File types 76 File attributes 81 Access control lists 88 Exercises 92 Chapter 6: Adding New Users 93 The /etc/passwd file 93 The /etc/shadow file 99 The /etc/group file 101 Adding users 102 Removing users 107 Disabling logins 108 Managing accounts 108 Exercises 110 Chapter 7: Adding a Disk 111 Disk interfaces 111 Disk geometry 119 Linux filesystems 120 An overview of the disk installation procedure 122hdparm: set IDE interface parameters 129fsck: check and repair filesystems 131 Adding a disk: a step-by-step guide 133 Advanced disk management: RAID and LVM 138 Mounting USB drives 147 Exercises 148 Chapter 8: Periodic Processes 150cron: schedule commands 150 The format of crontab files 151 Crontab management 153 Some common uses for cron 154 Other schedulers: anacron and fcron 156 Exercises 157 Chapter 9: Backups 158 Motherhood and apple pie 159 Backup devices and media 163 Setting up an incremental backup regime with dump 169 Restoring from dumps with restore 173 Dumping and restoring for upgrades 176 Using other archiving programs 177 Using multiple files on a single tape 178 Bacula 179 Commercial backup products 197 Recommended reading 198 Exercises 198 Chapter 10: Syslog and Log Files 201 Logging policies 201 Linux log files 204logrotate: manage log files 208 Syslog: the system event logger 209 Condensing log files to useful information 220 Exercises 222 Chapter 11: Software and Configuration Management 223 Basic Linux installation 223 Diskless clients 232 Package management 234 High-level package management systems 237 Revision control 247 Localization and configuration 255 Configuration management tools 260 Sharing sof