9780131480056

The 20th anniversary revision of the classic Unix system administration guide - now covering today's top enterprise Linux distributions! bull; bull;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 bull;System administration for a new generation: virtualization, cloud computing, security, Green IT, and more. bull;Clear, expert guidance for building high-performance, production-grade systems and networks that are easy to maintain, monitor, and control. Long hailed as the all-in-one reference for working system administrators, this book celebrates its 20th anniversary with a totally revamped Fourth Edition that defines Unix/Linux system administration for a whole new generation. As with previous editions, this book delivers clear, from-the-trenches guidance for constructing reliable, high-performance, production-grade systems and networks, and maintaining, monitoring, and controlling them more efficiently. As always, this book goes beyond the 'what' and 'how' to explain the 'why' of system administration - helping professionals address any challenge that comes along. This edition adds extensive new coverage reflecting the realities of today's IT environments, and anticipates tomorrow's. Topics covered in depth include: virtualization; cloud computing; modern security best practices; eco-friendly IT management; web load balancing; LDAP and Active Directory integration; Ruby, PHP, and Python scripting; system administration outsourcing; DTrace; Spacewalk; and much more. The book has also been thoroughly updated to cover today's leading Linux and Unix platforms, including modern versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, openSUSE, and Ubuntu; Solaris and OpenSolaris 11; HP-UX 11i v3, and even AIX 6.1. This is the successor to both Unix Administration Handbook, 3/e, 0130206016, Linux Administration Handbook, 2/e, 0131480049, 10/06.

Evi Nemeth has retired from the Computer Science faculty at the University of Colorado. She is currently exploring the Pacific on her 40-foot sailboat named Wonderland. Garth Snyder has worked at NeXT and Sun and holds a BS in Engineering from Swarthmore College and an MD and an MBA from the University of Rochester. Trent R. Hein is the co-founder of Applied Trust, a company that provides IT infrastructure consulting services. Trent holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado. Ben Whaley is the Director of Enterprise Architecture at Applied Trust. Ben earned a BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado. He is an expert in storage management, virtualization, and web infrastructure.

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