uCertify

UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook

(UNIX-LINUX-ADM.AB1)/ISBN:978-1-64459-476-6

This course includes
Lessons
TestPrep
Hands-On Labs
AI Tutor (Add-on)
UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook

Gain a solid understanding of the fundamental principles of UNIX and Linux systems. This course is designed to provide you with practical knowledge and hands-on experience in managing UNIX and Linux systems. By the end of this course, you'll be equipped with the skills and confidence to effectively manage UNIX and Linux systems, troubleshoot issues and implement best practices in system administration.

Lessons

32+ Lessons | 90+ Exercises | 405+ Quizzes | 195+ Flashcards | 195+ Glossary of terms

TestPrep

Hands-On Labs

43+ LiveLab | 43+ Video tutorials | 01:09+ Hours

Need guidance and support? Click here to check our Instructor Led Course.

Here's what you will learn

Download Course Outline

Lessons 1: Introduction

  • The Organization of this course

Lessons 2: Where to Start

  • Essential duties of a system administrator
  • Suggested background
  • Linux distributions
  • Example systems used in this course
  • Notation and typographical conventions
  • Units
  • Man pages and other on-line documentation
  • Other authoritative documentation
  • Other sources of information
  • Ways to find and install software
  • Where to host
  • Specialization and adjacent disciplines
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 3: Booting and System Management Daemons

  • Boot process overview
  • System firmware
  • Boot loaders
  • GRUB: the GRand Unified Boot loader
  • The FreeBSD boot process
  • System management daemons
  • systemd in detail
  • FreeBSD init and startup scripts
  • Reboot and shutdown procedures
  • Stratagems for a nonbooting system

Lessons 4: Access Control and Rootly Powers

  • Standard UNIX access control
  • Management of the root account
  • Extensions to the standard access control model
  • Modern access control
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 5: Process Control

  • Components of a process
  • The life cycle of a process
  • ps: monitor processes
  • Interactive monitoring with top
  • nice and renice: influence scheduling priority
  • The /proc filesystem
  • strace and truss: trace signals and system calls
  • Runaway processes
  • Periodic processes

Lessons 6: The Filesystem

  • Pathnames
  • Filesystem mounting and unmounting
  • Organization of the file tree
  • File types
  • File attributes
  • Access control lists

Lessons 7: Software Installation and Management

  • Operating system installation
  • Managing packages
  • Linux package management systems
  • High-level Linux package management systems
  • FreeBSD software management
  • Software localization and configuration
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 8: Scripting and the Shell

  • Scripting philosophy
  • Shell basics
  • sh scripting
  • Regular expressions
  • Python programming
  • Ruby programming
  • Library and environment management for Python and Ruby
  • Revision control with Git
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 9: User Management

  • Account mechanics
  • The /etc/passwd file
  • The Linux /etc/shadow file
  • FreeBSD's /etc/master.passwd and /etc/login.conf files
  • The /etc/group file
  • Manual steps for adding users
  • Scripts for adding users: useradd, adduser, and newusers
  • Safe removal of a user’s account and files
  • User login lockout
  • Risk reduction with PAM
  • Centralized account management

Lessons 10: Cloud Computing

  • The cloud in context
  • Cloud platform choices
  • Cloud service fundamentals
  • Clouds: VPS quick start by platform
  • Cost control
  • Recommended Reading

Lessons 11: Logging

  • Log locations
  • The systemd journal
  • Syslog
  • Kernel and boot-time logging
  • Management and rotation of log files
  • Management of logs at scale
  • Logging policies

Lessons 12: Drivers and the Kernel

  • Kernel chores for system administrators
  • Kernel version numbering
  • Devices and their drivers
  • Linux kernel configuration
  • FreeBSD kernel configuration
  • Loadable kernel modules
  • Booting
  • Booting alternate kernels in the cloud
  • Kernel errors
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 13: Printing

  • CUPS printing
  • CUPS server administration
  • Troubleshooting tips
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 14: TCP/IP Networking

  • TCP/IP and its relationship to the Internet
  • Networking basics
  • Packet addressing
  • IP addresses: the gory details
  • Routing
  • IPv4 ARP and IPv6 neighbor discovery
  • DHCP: the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
  • Security issues
  • Basic network configuration
  • Linux networking
  • FreeBSD networking
  • Network troubleshooting
  • Network monitoring
  • Firewalls and NAT
  • Cloud networking
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 15: Physical Networking

  • Ethernet: the Swiss Army knife of networking
  • Wireless: Ethernet for nomads
  • SDN: software-defined networking
  • Network testing and debugging
  • Building wiring
  • Network design issues
  • Management issues
  • Recommended vendors
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 16: IP Routing

  • Packet forwarding: a closer look
  • Routing daemons and routing protocols
  • Protocols on parade
  • Routing protocol multicast coordination
  • Routing strategy selection criteria
  • Routing daemons
  • Cisco routers
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 17: DNS: The Domain Name System

  • DNS architecture
  • DNS for lookups
  • The DNS namespace
  • How DNS works
  • The DNS database
  • The BIND software
  • Split DNS and the view statement
  • BIND configuration examples
  • Zone file updating
  • DNS security issues
  • BIND debugging
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 18: Single Sign-On

  • Core SSO elements
  • LDAP: “lightweight” directory services
  • Using directory services for login
  • Alternative approaches
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 19: Electronic Mail

  • Mail system architecture
  • Anatomy of a mail message
  • The SMTP protocol
  • Spam and malware
  • Message privacy and encryption
  • Mail aliases
  • Email configuration
  • sendmail
  • Exim
  • Postfix
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 20: Web Hosting

  • HTTP: the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
  • Web software basics
  • Web hosting in the cloud
  • Apache httpd
  • NGINX
  • HAProxy
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 21: Storage

  • I just want to add a disk!
  • Storage hardware
  • Storage hardware interfaces
  • Attachment and low-level management of drives
  • The software side of storage: peeling the onion
  • Disk partitioning
  • Logical volume management
  • RAID: redundant arrays of inexpensive disks
  • Filesystems
  • Traditional filesystems: UFS, ext4, and XFS
  • Next-generation filesystems: ZFS and Btrfs
  • ZFS: all your storage problems solved
  • Btrfs: “ZFS lite” for Linux
  • Data backup strategy
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 22: The Network File System

  • Meet network file services
  • The NFS approach
  • Server-side NFS
  • Client-side NFS
  • Identity mapping for NFS version 4
  • nfsstat: dump NFS statistics
  • Dedicated NFS file servers
  • Automatic mounting
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 23: SMB

  • Samba: SMB server for UNIX
  • Installing and configuring Samba
  • Mounting SMB file shares
  • Browsing SMB file shares
  • Ensuring Samba security
  • Debugging Samba
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 24: Configuration Management

  • Configuration management in a nutshell
  • Dangers of configuration management
  • Elements of configuration management
  • Popular CM systems compared
  • Introduction to Ansible
  • Introduction to Salt
  • Ansible and Salt compared
  • Best practices
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 25: Virtualization

  • Virtual vernacular
  • Virtualization with Linux
  • FreeBSD bhyve
  • VMware
  • VirtualBox
  • Packer
  • Vagrant
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 26: Containers

  • Background and core concepts
  • Docker: the open source container engine
  • Containers in practice
  • Container clustering and management
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 27: Continuous Integration and Delivery

  • CI/CD essentials
  • Pipelines
  • Jenkins: the open source automation server
  • CI/CD in practice
  • Containers and CI/CD
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 28: Security

  • Elements of security
  • How security is compromised
  • Basic security measures
  • Passwords and user accounts
  • Security power tools
  • Cryptography primer
  • SSH, the Secure SHell
  • Firewalls
  • Virtual private networks (VPNs)
  • Certifications and standards
  • Sources of security information
  • When your site has been attacked
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 29: Monitoring

  • An overview of monitoring
  • The monitoring culture
  • The monitoring platforms
  • Data collection
  • Network monitoring
  • Systems monitoring
  • Application monitoring
  • Security monitoring
  • SNMP: the Simple Network Management Protocol
  • Tips and tricks for monitoring
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 30: Performance Analysis

  • Performance tuning philosophy
  • Ways to improve performance
  • Factors that affect performance
  • Stolen CPU cycles
  • Analysis of performance problems
  • System performance checkup
  • Help! My server just got really slow!
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 31: Data Center Basics

  • Racks
  • Power
  • Cooling and environment
  • Data center reliability tiers
  • Data center security
  • Tools
  • Recommended reading

Lessons 32: Methodology, Policy, and Politics

  • The grand unified theory: DevOps
  • Ticketing and task management systems
  • Local documentation maintenance
  • Environment separation
  • Disaster management
  • IT policies and procedures
  • Service level agreements
  • Compliance: regulations and standards
  • Legal issues
  • Organizations, conferences, and other resources
  • Recommended reading

Hands-on LAB Activities

Where to Start

  • Building Software from Source Code

Booting and System Management Daemons

  • Using systemd Commands

Process Control

  • Using ps Commands
  • Creating a cron Job

The Filesystem

  • Using the chmod Command

Scripting and the Shell

  • Working with Arithmetic Operations and Loops
  • Executing the sh Script

Cloud Computing

  • Creating an Instance in GCP
  • Creating an EC2 Auto Scaling Group

Logging

  • Using journalctl Commands

TCP/IP Networking

  • Obtaining the IP Route Information from the IP Routing Table
  • Capturing Network Packets Using tcpdump
  • Capturing a Packet Using tshark
  • Creating a VPC

Physical Networking

  • Using Commands for Wireless Connectivity

IP Routing

  • Configuring OSPF
  • Configuring BGP Redistribution
  • Configuring EIGRP

DNS: The Domain Name System

  • Performing Zone Transfer Using dig
  • Signing a Zone

Single Sign-On

  • Examining Kerberos Settings

Web Hosting

  • Using the curl Command
  • Creating a Load Balancer in GCP

Storage

  • Partitioning a Disk

The Network File System

  • Configuring NFS Server

SMB

  • Configuring Samba
  • Creating an SMB File Share

Configuration Management

  • Using the Ansible Tool
  • Using Ansible Vault
  • Creating Ansible Roles
  • Creating an Ansible Configuration File

Virtualization

  • Checking Hyper-V Compatibility

Containers

  • Running Docker daemon Commands
  • Using Docker

Security

  • Using Social Engineering Techniques to Plan an Attack
  • Simulating the DDoS Attack
  • Performing Nmap Port Scanning
  • Cracking a Linux Password Using John the Ripper
  • Generating a Symmetric Key
  • Generating an Asymmetric Key
  • Examining Asymmetric Encryption
  • Performing Symmetric Encryption

Performance Analysis

  • Using Performance Analysis Commands