| Description: |
The GNU/Linux systems have reached a significant level of maturity, making them valid for integration into any working environment, whether a PC desktop or the server of a large company. The main aim of this course is to initiate us into the administration of GNU/Linux systems. We will learn how to provide the necessary services for different user environments and machines from GNU/Linux. Systems administration is a vast field (there are many tasks, many problems to deal with, an excellent knowledge of hardware and software is required), and a little psychology is not too much to ask for when dealing with the end users of the systems. The course will not focus on any particular GNU/Linux distribution, although we have selected two for the examples: Debian and Red Hat/Fedora. We will attempt to manage administration from the lowest possible level, normally the command line and the configuration files. If necessary, we will discuss higher-level tools, but we need to take care with these because they often depend very much on the distribution used and sometimes even the version. Moreover, these tools vary a great deal from version to version. Low-level administration is usually much more difficult but we know what we are doing and where we can see the results. It also gives us extra knowledge about the different technologies used. The distributions chosen are: Debian Woody 3.0 and Red Hat 9.0 (or compatible distributions such as Fedora), used when this course was prepared (at the end of 2003). The Debian distribution is a paradigm in the open-source movement because it does not belong to any company and is only developed with contributions from volunteers around the world. Debian is also exclusively developed with free software (and others can be added). Red Hat, on the other hand, is a distribution by one of the most solvent companies on the business scene, which is perhaps the reason why it offers the most business support (through paid services). With Debian, support is obtained from volunteers and the knowledge shared among users. Since systems administration is a very broad-ranging field, this manual only seeks to be an introduction to this passionate – and, naturally, sometimes frustrating – world. We will look at some typical tasks and see how to deal with problematic ones, but administration is something one learns gradually, through day-to-day experiences. We will point out here that this manual is an open publication, with its accuracies and more than likely errors, and it may be expanded on with the comments of (suffering) users. Therefore, any comments or suggestions for improving the materials will be well-received. Finally, the manual contents reflect the status of the distributions and administration tools at the time this course was prepared (end of 2003). |
