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Linux Admininstration Resources?
shadfc asks: "I'm starting a new job as the system administrator for a small company in Tampa. They currently have 10 Red Hat servers (they are open to distribution change) that have not been actively maintained for a few months. I'm a Junior in College with a decent amount of Linux experience, but this will be my first job in this kind of position and responsibility. I'm asking for resources that can help fill in the holes in my knowledge and help make me a better administrator. Quality books on the subject would be preferred, but any advice is welcome. Thanks!"
O'Reilly publishing has listing of all Linux commands, at least those that are expected to behave in a conformist way from distro to distro.
Try the "Practical Guide" series by Mark Sobell; the homepage is here.
dtach - A tiny program that emulates the detach feat
Ever since I began using Linux on a Day to Day basis I have had this book ( I have 3rd edition though). Some people say you can learn all you need through man pages and Faqs but this book like others in the nutshell series by O'Reilly exposes you to information in a way that you can digest bits and nuggets at your leisure instead of plodding through terse texts or poor examples in larger texts.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
but "The Practice of System and Network Administration" is very, very handy. Full of best practices and day-to-day scenarios and how best to handle them. See it here at Amazon. I have found the advice contained in there to be indispensible as I am maturing as a sysadmin.
First link on Amazon. Indispensible.
LINUX: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition
From the Introduction:
This book covers GNU/LINUX system administration, for popular distributions like RedHat and Debian, as a tutorial for new users and a reference for advanced administrators. It aims to give concise, thorough explanations and practical examples of each aspect of a UNIX system. Anyone who wants a comprehensive text on (what is commercially called) ``LINUX'' need look no further--there is little that is not covered here.
Check out the "Linux Administration Handbook" by Evi Nemith, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein et. al. It's published by Prentice Hall and is a pretty good overview of the tasks you'll be expected to do.
Also, check out the books in Sybex's Craig Hunt Linux Library series - he doesn't actually write all of them but most are pretty good. (Don't know how O'Reilly let him escape after writing the excellent "TCP/IP Network Administration".)
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Linux Administration Handbook by Nemeth et al. Her Unix System Administration Handbook is a classic. This one is targetted at Linux. Very nice. Great artwork too.
Limoncelli and Hogan.
Evi Nemeth's book.
Aeleen Frisch's book.
Mark Burgess' book.
http://www.sage.org/
Note that all are active in SAGE.
.@.
All you need is BOFH
Read up on the true professionals
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Learn to use screen. It'll let you keep a "virtual terminal" open from day to day without leaving the physical terminal at all unlocked, you'll be able to transfer the virtual terminal home (or from one computer to another) very easily, and it allows for easy logging, which you'll definitely want (hmm, what was it I did yesterday that made the box crash?).
It's easy to use, and it comes installed by default in most (all?) distros I've ever seen.
Don't you mean http://www.google.com/linux?
Gentoo is a wonderful distribution... It's the only thing recent that I could get to install on my sparc64 box.
That said, I would never run it in a production environment. It's tendancy to encourage bleeding edge packages WILL come back to bite you at some point.
RedHat is an excelent choice for production systems, if for no other reason than easily available and proven support contracts. I know that it's 'leet' to be able to look up things in google, but if you get hit by a bus, it will let the company survive while they find your replacement.
Having a support contract is also wonderful for getting to REAL support. If you're dealing with something really esoteric, you will often be much better off with a support contract. Let them fight to find the answer out of some kernel developer in New Zealand. You have the rest of your job to do too.
For your desktop box, I would urge you to do at least a gentoo stage 1 build, if not a Linux From Scratch install. These will take you forever to finish, but your knowledge of the linux as an OS will skyrocket. And while you're learning, you won't be affecting the company's bottom line, which ultimately provides you with the paycheck.
As for books, the armadillo book from ORA is wonderful, as is the 'purple book' (the successor to the highly acclaimed 'red book'. King of unix system admin books). The purple book will run you about $60-70, but reading through it will help you learn a lot.
Let's see: General notes:
1) Run postfix rather than sendmail. More secure, and easier to deal with. Less hair loss is to be encouraged.
2) Ban telnet, and use ssh.
3) Learn firewalling. Become hyper anal.
3a) Learn DMZ's. Limit exposure. There are some people who have 1 firewall interface per application (my company is moving that way). It's great for fine grained access control.
4) You don't and can't know everything. Admit this often. It's part of the key to learning.
Zapman
Gentoo is a wonderful distribution... It's the only thing recent that I could get to install on my sparc64 box. Debian installed just fine, and in about 2/3rds the time it took to install gentoo :-)
For your desktop box, I would urge you to do at least a gentoo stage 1 build, if not a Linux From Scratch install. These will take you forever to finish, but your knowledge of the linux as an OS will skyrocket.
Absolutely!
You don't and can't know everything. Admit this often. It's part of the key to learning.
Old tech support adage (I used to do bob jobs before becoming SA a few years ago) "It's not that you know all the answers but you know where to find them". It's impossible to know it all, let alone remember it all. Keep track of where you find things so you can find them again.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Btw, this and the other books listed in replies are on Canonical Tomes in the System Administration section which is confirmation that they are highly thought of.