Overview of System Administration

• A Brief History of UNIX and Linux
• Linux Distributions
• Online Docs – The man Pages
• Online Docs – The info Pages

User Administration

• What is a “user” in Linux?
• The /etc/passwd File
• Passwords
• The /etc/shadow File
• Groups
• The /etc/group File
• Adding Users
• Deleting Users
• Modifying User Attributes
• The Login Process
• /etc/profile and .profile
• The su Command

File Systems and Files

• Files and Inodes
• Files
• Directories
• Symbolic Links
• Named Pipes and Sockets
• Device Files
• Character and Block Devices
• A File System Tour
• The find Command

Advanced File System Concepts

• File System Concepts
• Traditional UNIX File Systems
• UNIX File System Advances
• The Virtual File System
• ext2 File System Design
• The Superblock
• Extended File Attributes
• Recovery and Journaling
• Third-Generation File Systems

Disk Management

• Partitions and File Systems
• Making a File System
• The fdisk Command
• The mkfs Command
• The mount Command
• The fstab File
• The fsck Command
• The df Command
• The du Command

Archiving Files

• Backup Strategies
• Archiving Tools
• The tar Command
• The cpio Command
• The dump Command
• The zip Utility
• The dd Utility
• Compressing Files
• Backup Strategies

Linux Processes

• Overview of Processes
• Process Space
• The fork/exec Mechanism
• Process Table
• The ps Command
• The /proc File System
• Background Processes
• The kill Command

Job Scheduling

• Scheduling Jobs
• The crond and atd Daemons
• The at Command
• The crontab Command
• Format of cron Files
• System crontab Files

System Startup and Shutdown

• Overview of the Bootup Sequence
• LILO
• GRUB
• Kernel Startup
• The init Daemon
• /etc/inittab
• The init Command
• The rc Scripts
• The chkconfig Command
• Single-User Mode
• The shutdown Command
• Communicating with Users:The Wall Command