Linux System Configuration and Administration

Power Linux Unleash the full potentials of Linux,

BIET, Davangere. By Chetan Kumar S Wipro Technologies

Organization of the Talk

Installation of Linux System Configuration

Network

configuration Sharing with Windows Printer Configuration Some security configuration

Administrations
User

Management User home pages

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Organization of Talk

System maintenance
Using

package manager

Cost Effective Linux solutions

Network

Booting Single media Linux

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Where do you start

Is Your Hardware Compatible?

http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/

Do You Have Enough Disk Space?

You

have to decide, remove any virus if required, use fips BIOS may need to be changed to boot from your CD-ROM

Can You Install Using the CD-ROM?

Your

Alternative Boot Methods

Boot

Diskette Driver Diskettes Network Device Drivers Diskette

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Gather more info

Use other OS to
know more
Personal

Desktop Installations
Learning About Your Hardware with Windows

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The auspicious occasion

The Graphical Installation Program User Interface (text mode is also available)

Choose the language, keyboard and mouse

Choose upgrade or new installation

Better to choose fresh installation

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Installation of Linux
Choose personal desktop installation For the first, but next time you bet on Custom After all Linux is knowing more

Choose partition using disk druid Otherwise fdisk, in older

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Installation of Linux
Configure the partition: Set the mount point Set the SWAP size Set the /boot space Enable Ext3 formatting

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Installation of Linux
Choose the boot loader Grub or Lilo

Configure the Network Configuration DHCP, Firewall, IP address etc..

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Installation of Linux
Choose the Root password

Accept the default package selection or customize using the Customize option

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Installation of Linux

Installation starts and go on inserting the required CD when asked BEIT Presentation

Post Installation
Create a boot diskette

Configure your video card, monitor and screen resolution

Reboot and start your Linux.! Presentation BEIT

System Configuration

Kickstart Configurator Kickstart Configurator allows you to create a kickstart file using a graphical user interface, so that you do not have to remember the correct syntax of the file. To use Kickstart Configurator, you must be running the X Window System. To start Kickstart Configurator, select the Main Menu Button (on the Panel) => System Tools => Kickstart, or type the command /usr/sbin/redhat-configkickstart. As you are creating a kickstart file, you can select File => Preview at any time to review your current selections.
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System Configuration

Network configuration
Networking can always be configured after installation with the Network Administration Tool (redhat-confignetwork). For each Ethernet card on the system, click Add Network Device and select the network device and network type of the device. Select eth0 as the network device for the first Ethernet card, select eth1 for the second Ethernet card, and so on.
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Printer Configuration

Menu=> Printing=> New Printer => choose the printer and printing tool (e.g. Post script printer)
Testing printer

Just do lpq to see printer status

Should print the file

Lpr <filename>

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Printer Configuration

Useful Websites http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/p/printer.html General denitions of printers and descriptions of printer types. http://www.linuxprinting.org A database of documents about printing, along with a database of nearly 1000 printers compatible with Linux printing facilities. http://www.cups.org/ Documentation, FAQs, and newsgroups about CUPS. http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PrintingHOWTO/index.html The Linux Printing-HOWTO from the Linux Documentation Project.
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User Security
Authentication In the Authentication section, select whether to use shadow passwords and MD5 encryption for user passwords. The Authentication Configuration options allow you to configure the following methods of authentication: NIS, LDAP, Kerberos 5, Hesiod, SMB, Name Switch Cache These methods are not enabled by default. To enable one or more of these methods, click the appropriate tab, click the checkbox next to Enable, and enter the appropriate information for the authentication method.

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Network Security

Firewalls Choose between High, Medium, and Disabled

security levels.

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Network Security

Common Access control system

/etc/hosts /etc/hosts.allow

/etc/hosts.deny
/etc/hosts.equiv

For more info refer docs on iptable, firewall

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Sharing With Windows

SMB protocol to share files and printers across a network connection. Operating systems that support this protocol include Microsoft Windows (through its Network Neighborhood), OS/2, and Linux. SMB implementation in Linux is called samba There are two things one can do
Share

your files/printer with other windows machine Access windows shared printer/files on linux

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Allow Windows to share

You need to start samba server and nmb server

/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb

start

What ever you want to share is added in /etc/samba/smb.conf

Every

change in conf file require restarting of

server

Just browse OR find computer from windows to see these files/folders You can share folders, CD, printer

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To access windows share

Smbclient is a samba client

L myhost to see all share Smbclient \\\\myhost\\myshare
Smbclient

This will login to share and you can access the share \\\\myhost\\printer can be written to print files

Smbmount can be used to mount (map) folders on to local host

Smbumount

to unmount

There are tools (GUI) for both sharing and accessing files

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User Management

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User Management
Simple way to add user is adduser command Passwd will allow to change the passwd Ofcourse there are host of GUI tools for all these user management Group all common user to single group Be carefull while editing /etc/passwd

/etc/shadow

passwd file may also exist

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User Management

Common files to look at

/etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/shadow

/etc/samba/smbusers

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User Management

Common files to look at

/etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/shadow

/etc/samba/smbusers

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Web server on Linux

Apache server is mostly available on Linux

Rpm

q all | grep apache to check start

This can be started via init services

/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd

Configuration files are at /etc/httpd/conf/ Normally log files at /var/log/httpd

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User home pages

Will allow user to have home pages

http://myhost.com/~user1

Need to edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Enable

UserDir public_html Any user can have their page at public_html

Eg. /home/user1/public_html for user1 /home/user2/public_html for user2

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System maintenance
Using package manager Package Management Tool Because people use their computers differently, users might want to install or remove packages after installation. The Package Management Tool allows users to perform these actions.
RPM

is good package management tool in RedHat Linux

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System maintenance (redhat)

The X Window System is required to run the Package Management Tool. To start the application, go to the Main Menu Button (on the Panel) => System Settings => Add/Remove Applications, Type the command redhat-config-packages at shell prompt. Command line tool rpm

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Lost Root Passwd

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Lost Root Passwd

If you have Lilo installed, type

LILI:

linux init 1 Change the root passwd, reboot aga

If you have installed grub

Type

e to go to edit mode, add init 1 argument at the end

Boot with knoppix or single floppy linux

Mount

the disk and change root passwd Reboot !!

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Cost Effective Linux Solutions

You have PC, with less harddisk for dual OS You have PC, on which you do not want to install Linux
Good

heaven's do not do that

There is a spurt of Linux PC requirements for short duration of time

For

Linux LAB in one term OR during LAB examinations

You have old PC, with out sizable hard disk So you need Linux host for all the above case

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Cost Effective Linux Solution

Some most easy approach

Network

booting Single CD Linux Single floppy Linux

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Network Booting
No need for harddisk(or harddisk with Linux) on every host High level work flow

The

system boots up, may be with floppy (could be with hard disk also) Sends dhcp request for IP number, gets one Mounts the root file system over NFS

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Requirements for Network Booting

Setup an LAN infrastructure Need to setup nfs server Need to setup dhcp server Build a kernel image for network booting

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Setup an LAN infrastructure

Ethernet Cable Hub Ethernet Cable

Your m/c to be booted

NFS server

Your host, NFS server and DHCP server should be on same LAN

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Setup nfs server

Edit /etc/exports file before starting the nfs server.

/ 10.114.7.115(rw,no_root_squash) This will export all files with root r/w to host 10.114.7.115
Save your exports file and from the prompt execute exportfs command Start the nfs server (nfs daemon)
E.g. /etc/rc.d/inid.d/nfs start

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Setup dhcp server

Add in your /etc/dhcpd.conf before starting the dhcp server.

Set the correct MAC address in /etc/dhcpd.conf as follows:

subnet <subnet address e.g.10.3.31.0> netmask 255.255.255.0 { } subnet 10.10.10.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { host master { hardware Ethernet <Mac address of your Ethernet card>; fixed-address <IP address of your machine e.g.10.10.10.1>; option root-path <your root path>; } } Save your /etc/dhcpd.conf file start the dhcpd dameon by /etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd start command

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Build a kernel image for network booting

Linux Kernel compilation steps: Assumptions: machine x86 (i386); boot loader lilo. Get plain vanilla kernel from www.kernel.org Explode it into a directory (better if can do it in /usr/src/) => tar -zxvf linux2.x.xx.tar.gz Optional: create a symbolic link ln -s linux-2.x.xx linux cd to linux directory cd /usr/src/linux or cd /usr/src/linux-2.x.xx Select the components support by make menuconfig or make xconfig save the configuration

Select IP:BOOTP support from Networking options In File system -> Network File System -> Select NFS File system support and Root file system on NFS
Make dep bzImage Make modules modules_install

Do

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Build a kernel image for network booting

Copy the /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage to /boot Do mkbootdisk with new kernel as argument Optional take a coffee or tea break ?

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Putting all together..

Make

sure you are running dhcp server Make sure you are running nfs server On any PC that need Linux for temporary time
Boot with new Thats it !!!

floopy you just made

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Knoppix Single CD Linux

Knoppix is full Linux on a single CD Can be freely downloaded from www.knoppix.com Just make your PC to boot from CD, that is all required Your current software (OS) on your system will not be lost
If

there is less memory, you can create temporary swap on dos partation You can access dos partation
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Knoppix more info

Hardware Requirements
Minimum

of 486 PC, 20M ram for text mode, 90M for graphics mode and128M for office suite Bootable CD drive + key board, mouse, multimedia

Software available
2.4

kernel, standard drivers, development tools, Internet applications, multimedia applications Upto 2GB worth software in total

How to load/install start

Step

1 put the 'cd' in drive, switch on the power 2 Enjoy working on Linux
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All the configuration is auto

Step

Knoppix can be handy

The fact is you need not install Knoppix on harddisk

So

can be used in Demo of linux or software on Linux So you need extra Linux machine lab ?? 2 minutes !! No extra space on harddisk on old PC's, just use knoppix Got a new laptop, just boot Linux on that in a jiffy
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Knoppix in Emergency

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Knoppix at emergency

Lost root passwd, boot knoppix, mount the harddisk, edit /mnt/etc/passwd, reboot old linux
Can

be dangerous, spurious user can do the same

Linux do not boot, boot with knoppix and recover the important files
Best

part is you also recover lost dos/windows files as well with knoppix and bring back to default

You have screwed up your configuration

Boot

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Single Floppy Linux

Similar to Knoppix, but over a floppy

Will

have much lesser applications Some distributions come with two or more floppy

MuLinux quite esay to use

http://mulinux.nevalabs.org/

Coyote linux: mostly for network applications

http://www.coyotelinux.com/

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References

http://www.tldp.org/ (The Linux Documentation Project) : It contains a lots and lots of well documented and timely documents to learn and trouble shoot your Linux system (its free)

http://www.tldp.org/guides.html

The Linux System Administrators' Guide

Lars Wirzenius, Joanna Oja, Stephen Stafford, and Alex Weeks Its free and available at http://www.tldp.org/guides.html

The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use

Michael Stutz Its free and available at http://www.tldp.org/guides.html The Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition Olaf Kirch and Terry Dawson Its free and available at http://www.tldp.org/guides.html

http://www.redhat.com/docs/

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Thanks

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