Practical Guide to Red Hat® Linux®, A: Fedora¿ Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux

by Sobell, Mark G.

• ISBN13: 9780132280273
• ISBN10: 0132280272
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback w/Disk
• Copyright: 2007-01-01
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

Best-selling author Mark Sobell is back with a single reference for Red Hat Linux that cannot be beat covering Fedora Core 5 and RHEL4.

Author Biography

Mark G. Sobell is President of Soboll Associates Inc., a UNIX/Linux consulting firm.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xxxv
Welcome to Linux	p. 1
The GNU-Linux Connection	p. 2
The Linux 2.6 Kernel	p. 5
The Heritage of Linux: UNIX	p. 5
What Is So Good About Linux?	p. 6
Overview of Linux	p. 10
Additional Features of Linux	p. 14
Conventions Used in This Book	p. 17
Chapter Summary	p. 19
Exercises	p. 19
Installing Red Hat Linux	p. 21
Installation Overview	p. 23
More Information	p. 24
Planning the Installation	p. 24
How the Installation Works	p. 33
The Medium: Where Is the Source Data?	p. 34
Downloading, Burning, and Installing a CD Set or a DVD (FEDORA)	p. 35
Rescue CD	p. 40
Gathering Information About the System	p. 40
Finding the Installation Manual	p. 41
Chapter Summary	p. 41
Exercises	p. 42
Advanced Exercises	p. 42
Step-by-Step Installation	p. 43
Installing Red Hat Linux	p. 44
Installation Tasks	p. 58
The X Window System	p. 69
Chapter Summary	p. 77
Exercises	p. 78
Advanced Exercises	p. 78
Getting Started with Red Hat Linux	p. 79
Introduction to Red Hat Linux	p. 81
Curbing Your Power: Superuser/root Access	p. 82
A Tour of the Red Hat Linux Desktop	p. 82
Getting the Facts: Where to Find Documentation	p. 102
More About Logging In	p. 111
Controlling Windows: Advanced Operations	p. 119
Chapter Summary	p. 122
Exercises	p. 123
Advanced Exercises	p. 124
The Linux Utilities	p. 125
Special Characters	p. 126
Basic Utilities	p. 127
Working with Files	p. 129
(Pipe): Communicates Between Processes	p. 136
Four More Utilities	p. 137
Compressing and Archiving Files	p. 139
Locating Commands	p. 144
Obtaining User and System Information	p. 146
Communicating with Other Users	p. 150
Email	p. 152
Tutorial: Creating and Editing a File with vim	p. 152
Chapter Summary	p. 159
Exercises	p. 162
Advanced Exercises	p. 163
The Linux Filesystem	p. 165
The Hierarchical Filesystem	p. 166
Directory Files and Ordinary Files	p. 166
Pathnames	p. 171
Directory Commands	p. 173
Working with Directories	p. 178
Access Permissions	p. 180
ACLs: Access Control Lists	p. 185
Links	p. 190
Chapter Summary	p. 196
Exercises	p. 198
Advanced Exercises	p. 200
The Shell	p. 201
The Command Line	p. 202
Standard Input and Standard Output	p. 208
Running a Program in the Background	p. 219
Filename Generation/Pathname Expansion	p. 221
Builtins	p. 225
Chapter Summary	p. 226
Exercises	p. 227
Advanced Exercises	p. 228
Digging into Red Hat Linux	p. 231
Linux GUIs: X, GNOME, and KDE	p. 233
X Window System	p. 234Using GNOME
Using KDE	p. 252
Chapter Summary	p. 262
Exercises	p. 264
Advanced Exercises	p. 264
The Bourne Again Shell	p. 265
Background	p. 266
Shell Basics	p. 267
Parameters and Variables	p. 285
Special Characters	p. 299
Processes	p. 300
History	p. 302
Aliases	p. 318
Functions	p. 321
Controlling bash Features and Options	p. 324
Processing the Command Line	p. 328
Chapter Summary	p. 337
Exercises	p. 339
Advanced Exercises	p. 341
Networking and the Internet	p. 343
Types of Networks and How They Work	p. 345
Communicate Over a Network	p. 360
Network Utilities	p. 362
Distributed Computing	p. 369
Usenet	p. 378
WWW: World Wide Web	p. 381
Chapter Summary	p. 383
Exercises	p. 384
Advanced Exercises	p. 385
System Administration 387
System Administration: Core Concepts	p. 389
System Administrator and Superuser	p. 391
Rescue Mode	p. 397
SELinux	p. 400
System Operation	p. 403
System Administration Utilities	p. 415
Setting Up a Server	p. 421
nsswitch.conf: Which Service to Look at First	p. 435
PAM	p. 438
Chapter Summary	p. 443
Exercises	p. 444
Advanced Exercises	p. 445
Files, Directories, and Filesystems	p. 447
Important Files and Directories	p. 448
File Types	p. 459
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

The Book Whether you are an end user, a system administrator, or a little of each, this book explains with step-by-step examples how to get the most out of a Fedora Core or Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. In 28 chapters, this book takes you from installing a Fedora Core or Red Hat Enterprise Linux system through understanding its inner workings, to setting up secure servers that run on the system. The Audience This book is designed for a wide range of readers. It does not require you to have programming experience, but having some experience using a general-purpose computer is helpful. This book is appropriate for Studentswho are taking a class in which they use Linux Home userswho want to set up and/or run Linux Professionalswho use Linux at work System administratorswho need an understanding of Linux and the tools that are available to them Computer science studentswho are studying the Linux operating system Programmerswho need to understand the Linux programming environment Technical executiveswho want to get a grounding in Linux Benefits A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux, Third Edition: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux,gives you a broad understanding of many facets of Linux, from installing Red Hat Linux through using and customizing it. No matter what your background, this book gives you the knowledge you need to get on with your work. You will come away from this book understanding how to use Linux, and this book will remain a valuable reference for years to come. Overlap If you read A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming,you will notice some overlap between that book and the one you are reading now. The first chapter, and the chapters on the utilities, the filesystem, programming tools, and the appendix on regular expressions are very similar in the two books, as are the three chapters on the Bourne Again Shell (bash). Chapters that appear in this book but not in A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programminginclude Chapters 2 and 3 (installation), Chapters 4 and 8 (Red Hat Linux and the GUI), Chapter 10 (networking), all of the chapters in Part IV (system administration) and Part V (servers), and Appendix C (security). This Book Includes Fedora Core 5 on a DVD A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux, Third Edition,includes a DVD that you can use to install or upgrade to Fedora Core 5. Chapter 2 helps you get ready to install Fedora Core. Chapter 3 provides step-by-step instructions for installing Fedora Core from this DVD. This book guides you through learning about, using, and administrating Fedora Core or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What Is New in This Edition The third edition of A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linuxcovers Fedora Core 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4. All the changes, large and small, that have been made to these products since second edition of this book have been incorporated into the explanations and examples. The following list details the sections of this book that have undergone the most major changes. Access Control Lists(ACLs) A security feature that provides finer-grained control over which users can access specific directories and files than do traditional Linux permissions. SELinux(Security Enhanced Linux) A security feature that enforces security policies that limit what a user or program can do. bash(the Bourne Again Shell; Chapters 7, 9, and 28) These chapters have been reorganized and rewritten to provide clearer explanations and better examples of how bash works both from the command line in day-to-da