Red Hat Linux Essentials

Course Description

This five-day hands-on course is a comprehensive introduction to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and teaches students how to perform essential system administration tasks including monitoring processes, package management, and managing users.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Access the command line
• Comprehend the Linux file structure
• Understand expressions, pipelines, and redirection
• Control file access to users and groups
• Manage processes and services
• Install and manage software
• Effectively use online documentation
• Create hard and symbolic links
• Find files, applications and utilities by date, name, owner, type or other criteria
• Monitor system performance and identify performance bottlenecks
• Kill, suspend and alter process priority
• Schedule and reschedule tasks
• Add, modify, and delete users and groups
• Configure user shell environments
• Back up and restore files
• Identify Linux special files and devices
• Manage passwords
• Protect files and directories from unauthorized access
• Start up and shutdown any Linux computer
• Use OpenOffice

Course Benefits

Linux is the foundation for cloud computing, and increasing in popularity in the enterprise. In this course, students obtain the essential know-how needed to perform daily tasks with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Who Should Attend

This course is valuable for all computer professionals involved with Linux and especially for those who need to gain a core level of proficiency with Linux administration and who are interested in command-line tools.

Prerequisite

Previous exposure to computers and keyboard skills are beneficial.

Method Of Instruction

Lecture, demonstrations, seventeen short interactive quizzes, questions and answers, and numerous hands-on exercises.

Hands-on Exercises

Throughout this course, students perform a series of extensive hands-on exercises including:

• Getting help with commands
• Exploring the file system
• Manipulating files
• Navigating the directory structure
• Creating hard and symbolic links
• Finding files with find
• Managing file and group ownership and permissions
• Text processing
• File I/O and redirection
• Creating and editing files with vi
• Customizing the vi environment
• Basic system configuration
• Obtaining process status and changing status priorities
• Scheduling, and rescheduling processes with at, cron, nice, and renice
• Monitoring performance with ps and top
• Basic shell scripting
• Creating and documents with OpenOffice
• Managing users using the GUI
• Working with SUID and SGID
• Making, editing, and deleting a crontab entry
• Using cpio, and tar to back up files
• Managing software packages

Course Outline

Chapter 1: Linux Ideas and History

• Open Source
• Open Source Quality
• Open Source Software Development
• Open Source Popularity
• Linux is an Operating System
• Uses For Linux
• Why Use Linux
• Linux Flavors
• Brief History of UNIX
• Brief History of Linux
• Linux Origins
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• Who Owns Linux
• Red Hat
• The Fedora Project

Chapter 2: Linux Usage Basics

• Loggin In
• What is a Shell
• The tty Driver
• tty Driver Special Characters
• The eof Character
• Logging Out
• Command Line Arguments
• The root User
• Become The root User
• sudo
• Virtual Console
• Start X
• Edit Text Files

Chapter 3: Running Commands and Getting Help

• Getting Help
• Using The On-Line Manual
• The info Command
• The whatis Command
• The whereis Command
• The which Command
• The --help Option

Chapter 4: Browsing the Filesystem

• What is a File
• File Names
• File Properties
• The ls Command
• The cat Command
• The more and less Commands
• The head and tail Commands
• The cp Command
• The mv Command
• The rm Command
• The touch Command
• The Linux File System
• File Types
• Directories
• Inode
• The file Command
• The pwd Command
• Path
• The cd Command
• Useful Linux Shorthand
• The mkdir Command
• The rmdir Command
• Copying Files into Directories
• Moving Files into Directories

Chapter 5: Users, Groups, and Permissions

• Why Have Permissions
• Basic File Permissions
• Permission Modes
• The chmod Command
• The umask Command
• Directory Permissions
• The chgrp Command

Chapter 6: Using the Bash Shell

• Which Shell To Use
• The Bourne Shell
• The Bourne Again Shell
• The C Shell
• The tcsh Shell
• The Korn Shell
• Determining Which Shell Is Running
• The finger Command
• Changing The Shell
• Environment Variables
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• Setting Environment Variables
• Dot Files
• The history Command
• What Is A Shell Script
• The alias Command
• The echo Command
• Quoting

Chapter 7: Standard I/O and Pipes

• Stream
• Filter
• Standard I/O
• Standard Input
• Standard Output
• Standard Error
• I/O Redirection
• Appending Output
• Pipe
• The tee Command
• Semicolon

Chapter 8: Text Processing Commands

• Word count
• grep
• The uniq Command
• The split Command
• The cut Command
• The paste Command
• The sort Command
• The cmp Command
• The diff Command
• The diff3 Command
• Formatting For Printing
• Printing

Chapter 9: The vi Editor

• Why Learn vi
• The vi Temporary File
• Starting vi
• Command Mode and Insert Mode
• Switching between vi Modes
• Moving the Cursor
• Deleting with vi
• Undo
• Exiting vi
• Scrolling
• Searching
• Copy and Paste
• Change
• Join
• Read In A File
• Save As
• vi Tricks
• The .exrc File

Chapter 10: Basic System Configuration Tools

• The /etc Directory
• The /etc/resolv.conf File
• The /etc/sysconfig Directory
• Basics Of Networks
• Assign An IP Address
• Scripts To Configure The Network Card
• GUI System Configuration Commands
• system-config-network
• Time and Date Properties Tool
• Printer Configuration Tool
• Add A Printer
• Printer Commands

Chapter 11: Investigating and Managing Processes

• What Is A Process
• What Is A Daemon
• Process Status
• The pstree Command
• The top Command
• System Uptime
• The cron Daemon
• crontab Entries
• crontab Creation
• The at And batch Commands
• The watch Command
• The time Command
• The nice Command
• The renice Command
• Background & Foreground
• The jobs Command
• The kill Command
• The nohup Command

Chapter 12: Configuring the Bash Shell

• Exit Status
• Setting A Variable
• Special Variable
• The test Command
• Test Conditions
• Arithmetic Evaluations
• If-Then-Else-Fi
• If-Then-Elif-Else-Fi
• For Loops
• While Loops
• The case Construct
• Scripts With Arguments
• Reading In Variables
• Subshells
• The shift Command

Chapter 13: Finding and Processing Files

• The find Utility
• Find The Newest Files
• Disk Free
• The du Command
• The ulimit Utility

Chapter 14: Network Clients

• Access The Web
• Access E-Mail
• Access Instant Messaging
• Access Office Documents
• NFS

Chapter 15: Advanced Topics in Users, Groups and Permissions

• User and Group Identities
• The /etc/passwd File
• The /etc/shadow File
• Change User Password Expiry Information
• Add, Modify, Delete Users
• Add, Modify, Delete A Group
• User Manager GUI Tool
• Change The Password
• The root User
• User Manager GUI Tool
• Special Permissions
• SUID and SGID
• User Private Groups

Chapter 16: The Linux File System In Depth

• Partition Table Structure
• Partition Table Layout
• File System
• Journaled File System
• Inode
• The ln Command
• The tar Command
• Compress Files
• The cpio Command

Chapter 17: Essential System Administration Tools

• System Administrator
• System Administrator Functions
• System Start Up
• init
• System Shutdown
• Improper Shutdown
• Red Hat Package Manager
• Types of RPM Packages
• Contents of RPM Packages
• Query the RPM Database
• Install an RPM Package
• Upgrade an RPM Package
• Erase an RPM Package
• SELinux
• SELinux Modes
• SELinux Policy
• Enable SELinux
• Security Context Associated With Files
• Firewall Options
• Services