SYSTEMS AND

NETWORKS
ADMINISTRATION
Engr FRU NGANG
677588866
[email protected]
Systems and Networks Admin

• GENERAL OBJECTIVES : by the end of the course, students would be

given the fundamentals of networks and systems administration,
using Linux as the production environment but with principles that
cut across all systems. Upon completion of this course the student will
be able to work efficiently in a Unix-like system environment, to tailor
an environment to specific needs, to understand the basics of Unix
system administration, and to write scripts for the bash shell for
automating administrative tasks.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
More specifically, students should be able to:
• Understand the role and responsibilities of a system administrator
• Manage the hardware devices on their systems
• Configure the Linux operating system
• Describe the system boot process
• Setup and manage user accounts and groups
• Manage the resources and security of a computer running Linux
• Make effective use of Unix utilities, and scripting languages
• Configure and manage network services on a Linux system
• Develop an appreciation of the documentation available as part of an
installed Unix/Linux system
Teaching method
• A hands on approach would be used in the course, using installed
systems to describe principles and issues with the systems. Students
would be given regular assignments that would culminate in them
configuring the different servers covered in class as part of their end
of course project.
• Powerpoint presentations and Linux tools would be used during
lectures.
Prerequisites
• Operating systems
• Linux
• Networks and Protocols
Evaluation

• A continuous assessment at the end of the 12th lecture

• Project accounting for the TP marks to be evaluated 8 weeks from
today (Servers to configure: DHCP server , SAMBA with AD, NFS,
DNS, WEB with virtual hosting, Mail server , OpenLDAP)

• A final exams (paper based) written at the end of the semester

Course outline
• See expanded version of the syllabus
COURSE OUTLINE

Introduction

Chapter 1: GNU and Unix Commands

Chapter 2: Hardware and Hardware settings in Unix

Chapter 3: Disk management

Chapter 4: Booting your system

Chapter 5: Bash scripting

Chapter 6: Process Management

Course outline
Chapter 7: Managing softwares and packages
Chapter 8: Managing Users and Group
Chapter 9: Managing Network services
Chapter 10: File Sharing services
Chapter 11: Namespaces and DNS
Chapter 12: Emails
- Architecture of an emailing system
- Sendmail
What does a systems admin do?
User account management
Hardware management
Perform filesystem backups, restores
Install and configure new software and services
Keep systems and services operating smoothly
Monitor system and network
Troubleshoot problems
Maintain documentation
Audit security
Help users, performance tuning, and more
User Account Management
User Ids
Mail
Home directories (quotas, drive capacities)
Default startup files (paths)
Permissions, group memberships, accounting and
restrictions
Communicating policies and procedures
Disabling / removing user accounts
Hardware Management
Capacity planning
Inventory
Hardware evaluation and purchase
 Adding and removing hardware
Configuration
 Cabling, wiring, DIP switches, etc.
 Device driver installation
System configuration and settings
User notification and documentation
Data Backups and Backup
Management
Perhaps most important aspect!
Disk and backup media capacity planning
Performance, network and system impact
Disaster recovery
 Onsite/Offsite
 Periodic testing
 Multiple copies
 User communication
Schedules, restore guarantees
and procedures, loss tolerance
Software Installation and
Maintenance
Evaluation of software
Downloading and building (compiling and tweaking)
 Installation
Maintenance of multiple versions
Security
Patches and updates
User notification, documentation
System Monitoring
Hardware and services functioning and operational
 Capacity
 Disk, RAM, CPU, network
Security
Passwords
Break-ins
 System logs
Examination
Periodic rotation and truncation
Archival storage (at least summaries)
Troubleshooting
Problem discovery, diagnosis, and resolution
 Root cause analysis
Often quite difficult!
 Often requires
Broad and thorough
system knowledge
Outside experts
Luck
 Expediency
Local Documentation
Administrative policies and procedures
Backup media locations
Hardware
Location
Description, configuration, connections
 Software
Install media (or download location)
Installation, build, and configuration details
Patches installed
 Acceptable use policies
Security Concerns
System logging and audit facilities
Evaluation and implementation
Monitoring and analysis
Traps, auditing and monitoring programs
Unexpected or unauthorized use detection
Monitoring of security advisories
Security holes and weaknesses
Live exploits
 User Assistance
Time intensive!
Techniques
Help desks
Trouble-ticket systems
– Software availability and usage
– Software configuration settings
– Hardware usage, maintenance,
and troubleshooting
– Writing FAQs
 Administration Challenges
Need
 Broad knowledge of hardware and software
 To balance conflicting requirements
 Short-term vs. long-term needs
 End-user vs. organizational requirements
 Service provider vs. police model
 To work well and efficiently under pressure
 24x7 availability
 Flexibility, tolerance, and patience
 Good communication skills
People think of sysadmins only when things don't work!
 WHICH OS TO LEARN
• WINDOWS dominates the desktop environment
• MAC usage not as wide
• UNIX/LINUX dominates hosted servers on the Internet and Public
Clouds
• We would concentrate on Linux systems
 Linux Distributions
 Mandrake: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
 RedHat: http://www.redhat.com/
 Fedora: http://fedora.redhat.com/
 CentOS
 SuSE/Novell: http://www.suse.com/
 Debian: http://www.debian.org/
 Ubuntu http://ubuntu.com
Unix Structure
Unix file system hierarchy
 Unix FSH
• Each node is either a file or a directory of files, where the latter
can contain other files and directories.
• You specify a file or directory by its path name, either the full, or
absolute, path name or the one relative to a location.
• The full path name starts with the root, /, and follows the
branches of the file system, each separated by /, until you reach
the desired file, e.g.:
• /home/condron/source/xntp
 Unix FSH
 A relative path name specifies the path relative to
another, usually the current working directory that you
are at. Two special directories :
 . the current directory
 .. the parent of the current directory
 So if I'm at /home/frank and wish to specify the path
above in a relative fashion I could use:
 ../condron/source/xntp
 This indicates that I should first go up one directory
level, then come down through the condron directory,
followed by the source directory and then to xntp.
Unix/Linux standard Directories
 / The ancestor of all directories on the system; all other directories
are subdirectories of this directory, either directly or through other
subdirectories.
 /bin Essential tools and other programs (or binaries).
 /dev Files representing the system's various hardware devices. For
example, you use the file `/dev/cdrom' to access the CD−ROM drive.
 /etc Miscellaneous system configuration files, startup files, etc.
Unix/Linux standard Directories
 /home The home directories for all of the system's
users.
 /lib Essential system library files used by tools in `/bin'.
 /proc Files that give information about current system
processes.
 /root The superuser's home directory, whose username
is root. (In the past, the home directory for the
superuser was simply `/'; later, `/root' was adopted for
this purpose to reduce clutter in `/'.)
Unix/Linux standard Directories
 /sbin Essential system administrator tools, or system binaries.
 /tmp Temporary files.
 /usr Subdirectories with files related to user tools and applications.
 Where to get Answers
Linux/UNIX documentation can be found in
many places
 Manual pages (man pages, using man command)
 Texinfo documents (read with info command)
 HOWTOs – focused descriptions of a topic
 Distribution-specific documentation
 Your favorite Web search engine
 Will typically find online versions of the above
 man pages
 Usually my first resource
 provide OS installation-specific information
 Man pages document (almost) every command,
driver, file format, and library routine
 “man -k topic” will list all man pages that use topic
 Parameters are not the same for every UNIX, e.g.:
 Linux: man 4 tty
 Solaris: man -s4 tty
 man page organization
●Man pages are divided into sections (somewhat Linux specific)
– 1: User-level commands and applications
– 2: System calls and kernel error codes
– 3: Library calls
– 4: Device drivers
– 5: Standard file formats
– 6: Games and demonstrations
– 7: Miscellaneous files and documents
– 8: System administration commands
– 9: Obscure kernel specs and interfaces
● Some sections are subdivided
– 3M contains pages for math library
– Section “n” often contains subcommands (such as bash built-in cmds)
● Sections 6 and 9 are typically empty
 Users, groups, and access
 In UNIX/LINUX,permissions
there is a concept of user and an
associated group
 The system determines whether or not a user or
group can access a file or program based on the
permissions assigned to them.
 Apart from all the users, there is a special user called
Super User or the root which has permission to access
any file and directory
 Access permissions
 There are three permissions for any file, directory or application
program.
 The following lists the symbols used to denote each, along with a brief
description:
r — Indicates that a given category of user can read a file.
w — Indicates that a given category of user can write to a file.
x — Indicates that a given category of user can execute the file.
 Access permissions
 The command to view access permissions is ls –l filename
 Each of the three permissions are assigned to three defined
categories of users.
 The categories are:

owner — The owner of the file or application.

group — The group that owns the file or
application.
others — All users with access to the system.
 Access permissions
• One can easily view the permissions for a file by invoking a long
format listing using the command ls -l.
• For instance, if the user juan creates an executable file named test,
the output of the command ls -l test would look like this:

-rwxrwxr-x 1 frungang student 0 Sep 26 12:25 test