Unix System Administration Course

The objective of this course is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the administrative aspects of the Unix operating system. At the end of the course delegates will have the skills required to administer a Unix system, including user management, file management, backing up procedures, reconfiguration and handling peripheral devices.

The course is designed to support most BSD and AT&T based flavours.

Delegates should be competent in the skills covered by the PTR Unix Fundamentals course

Topics covered on the 3 day Unix System Administration course

Introduction

• Duties of the Administrator, Administration tools, Where to get help, Overview of permissions.

Processes

• Process status, Killing processes, process priority.

Starting Up & Shutting Down

• Peripherals, Kernel loading, Console, The scheduler, init and the inittab file, Run-levels, Run level scripts, Altering defaults and initialisation scripts, Shutting down, changing run level and halting systems.

Managing User Accounts

• Principles, passwd file, Password security, Shadow file, Groups and the group file, Shells, restricted shells, user management commands, homes and permissions, default files, profiles, locking accounts, setting passwords, Switching user, Switching group, Removing users.

Managing the UNIX Filesystem

• Partitions, Swap space, Device files, Raw and Block files, Formatting disks, Making filesystems, Superblock, I-nodes, Filesystem checker, Mounting filesystems, Logical Volumes, Network Filesystems, Boot disks.

Backing Up

• Types, Paths, Peripherals, Media, Tape commands, Sequential flat filesystems, Default devices, devices, tar creating, checking, extracting and appending to archives, cpio archives, Using standard in with cpio, Dump, Restore.

Printer Administration

• The scheduler, Device files, lpstat, Models, Adding printers, Modifying printers, Removing printers, Creating classes, The spooler, Controlling the queue, Controlling the printer, Printing priorities, Moving queues.

Terminal Administration

• Device files, gettys, SAF, Enabling lines, Gettydefs, tty types, termcap files, terminfo files, tty settings.

Job Scheduling & Job Control

• at, control files, cron, control files, logs, background jobs, nohup.

System Accounting

• Setting up, Report files, Holidays, Stopping.