UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, 4th Edition

About

Features

• The 20th anniversary revision of the classic Unix system administration guide - now covering today's top enterprise Linux distributions!
• The #1 sysadmin's guide - now fully updated for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, openSUSE, Ubuntu, Solaris/OpenSolaris 11,HP-UX, 11i v3 and AIX 6.1
• System administration for a new generation: virtualization, cloud computing, modern security, Green IT, and more
• Clear, expert guidance for building high-performance, production-grade systems and networks that are easy to maintain, monitor, and control
• Chapter Powerpoint slides available for academic course use.

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Description

• Copyright 2011
• Dimensions: 7" x 9-1/8"
• Pages: 1344
• Edition: 4th

• Book
• ISBN-10: 0-13-148005-7
• ISBN-13: 978-0-13-148005-6

“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®

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Sample Content

Table of 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

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