This course presents selected parts of a RHEL6 system environment. It shows best practices in areas that include: shell command line and graphical environments, security, scripting (languages), performance management, task automation, and package management and building.

Linux Training Prerequisites

Participants are assumed to be Oracle Solaris 10 system administrators working on production level configurations, and have used and demonstrated competencies in Linux fundamentals and entry-level administrative functions.

Linux Training Course duration

This course normally requires three (3) days, approximately 50% lecture and 50% lab time.

Linux Training Course outline

The Userspace / System Environment

Comparison of BASH and Korn shells (features)
Script development
Additions to file level security
    ACLs - file and directory (default)
    chattr and lsattr
    SELinux
    file operation auditing
Additions to system level security
    root account history file control
    GRUB level (passwords)
    PAM (pluggable authentication)
Text Editors
    vim extended features
    gvim, gedit, nedit
Automating Tasks
    Additional cron features
    Understanding anacron

Package Management Environment

Comparison of rpm and yum
Advanced features of rpm
Steps in building a yum repository
Building binary distribution packages

Startup and Shutdown

Components involved in the Linux boot
Grub loader stages and configuration
Default bootstrap
Boot to single-user mode
Linux startup methods, tools, and procedures
Understanding run levels
Adding procedures to the startup mechanisms
Shutdown methods and control

Managing Disk and Tape Volumes

Commands to manipulate disks/filesystems
    partitioning disk surfaces with fdisk
    creating ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems (mkfs)
    manipulating file system structures
    verifying file system structures (fsck)
    making file systems available to software (mount)
    configuring swap space(s)
    Logical Volume Management (LVM)

Network Setup and Configuration

TCP/IP address selection
Host names and related files
Configuring network devices
Network testing with ping

Basic Server Setups (Procedures and Mechanisms)

DNS (client)
FTP
Web (Apache)

RHEL 6 Performance Management Capabilities

Monitoring tools provided with RHEL6 (Review)
    *stat family of programs
    sar / sadc, watch
Third party / freely available tools
    procinfo, atop, htop, nmon
Kernel tunables (viewing, changing via sysctl and /proc based files)

Memory management
caching (levels and controls)

CPU management
defining (and using) processor sets
isolating CPU (cores) at boot time
specifying default affinity for scheduling

Disk I/O management
RHEL6 I/O elevator scheduling
comparing I/O scheduling methods
manipulating I/O priorities