Course Introduction

• Administration and Course Materials
• Course Structure and Agenda
• Delegate and Trainer Introductions

Session 1: ADVANCED NETWORK CONFIGURATION & TROUBLESHOOTING

• Configuring the network card (ip link, ip addr)
• Network scripts
• Configuring routing (ip route)
• Serial communication
• Network troubleshooting and related tools (ethereal, tcpdump, ping, traceroute, netstat, arp, nmap, nc)
• Exercise

Session 2: NETWORK INSTALLATION OF LINUX

• Configuring a Linux installation server
• Creating a PXE boot environment
• Automatic installation
• Exercise

Session 3: LDAP

• Structure of an LDAP Tree
• Configuring the LDAP server (slapd.conf)
• Testing the LDAP server (ldapsearch)
• Adding information into LDAP (lpdapadd)
• Configuring the LDAP Clients (nsswitch.conf, ldap.conf)
• Exercise

Session 4: APACHE & SQUID

• APACHE main configuration files
• APACHE server configuration (main Section entries)
• Starting APACHE
• APACHE access configuration
• SQUID proxy server
• Configuring client browsers
• Starting SQUID
• The SQUID configuration file (squid.conf)
• SQUID security settings
• Exercise

Session 5: SAMBA

• The SAMBA configuration file (smb.conf)
• Testing the SAMBA configuration file (testparm)
• Configuring SAMBA users
• Starting SAMBA
• Testing SAMBA (smbclient, smbstatus)
• Managing Windows filesystems (smbmount, nmblookup)
• Accessing Windows shares
• Exercise

Session 6: THE DOMAIN NAME SERVER

• DNS operation
• Types of DNS Servers
• Domain Name Space
• Setting up a DNS server
• Server configuration files (named.conf and databases)
• DNS resource record formats
• Starting and managing the DNS Server (rcnamed, rndc)
• Testing the DNS Server (host, dig, nslookup)
• DNS Client set up (resolv.conf)
• Exercise

Session 7: NFS NETWORK SERVICES

• NFS operation and daemons (portmapper etc.)
• Setting up an NFS server (/etc/exports and exportfs)
• Setting up an NFS client (mount)
• Mounting NFS filesystems at boot (/etc/fstab)
• Using the automounter to access NFS mounts on demand
• Exercise

Session 8: LOGICAL VOLUME MANAGEMENT (LVM)

• LVM Overview
• Configuring LVM (pvcreate, vgcreate, vgextend, lvcreate etc.)
• Displaying information about the LVM environment (pvdisplay, vgdisplay, lvdisplay)
• Resizing Logical Volumes (lvextend, resize2fs, resize_reiserfs)
• Logical Volume Snapshots (lvcreate, lvdisplay)
• Exercise

Session 9: RAID

• RAID overview
• Raw devices and partitions
• Creating a RAID device (fdisk, mdadm)
• Managing a RAID device (mdadm, /proc/mdstat)
• Creating and mount a file system on a RAID device
• Hot swapping failed drives
• Exercise

Session 10: SECURING LINUX

• System security checklist
• User level security
• Limiting access to terminals
• Limiting access to files via ACLs (setfacl, getfacl)
• Limiting access to files by extended permissions and attributes (lsattr, chattr)
• System wide security settings and file access (chkstat)
• Exercise

Session 11: FIREWALL CONFIGURATION

• Basic packets and routing
• Netfilter (iptables)
• Packet filtering (iptables, chains, rule targets, connection tracking)
• Network address translation (NAT)
• Exercise

Session 12: PLUGGABLE AUTHENTICATION MODULES (PAM)

• The main PAM configuration files (/etc/pam.d directory)
• Configuration file formats
• Controlling user access using the configuration files
• Exercise

Session 13: KERNEL COMPILATION AND INSTALLATION

• Kernel building
• Monolithic and Modular kernel design
• Listing modules (lsmod, modinfo)
• Modifying the kernel configuration
• Binary kernel packages
• Installing the kernel sources
• Configuring and building a kernel
• Editing the GRUB/LILO configuration file
• Kernel tuning (/proc sysctl.conf, sysctl)
• Exercise

Session 14: COMPILING SOFTWARE FROM SOURCE

• Installing programs from source (tar, tarball)
• Compiling Open Source Software (configure, make)
• Installing the compiled software (make install)
• Managing shared libraries (ldd)
• Compiling from SRC (source) RPM packages (rpmbuild, rpm)
• Exercise

Session 15: SYSTEM MONITORING & PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

• System performance monitoring
• Collecting system performance information (sar)
• Measuring virtual memory (vmstat)
• Measuring I/O performance (iostat)
• Performance Guidelines
• System Accounting - collecting process and user information (rcacct, ac, lastcomm, sa)
• Exercise

Session 16: HARDWARE CONFIGURATION

• The Hotplug system
• Devices and Interfaces.
• The sysfs filesystem and persistent names
• Device initialisation and interface configuration
• Hotplug and Coldplug
• The Udev system
• Exercise

Session 17: XEN

• Basic definition
• XEN components
• The Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)
• Virtualization Modes (Fully Virtual, Paravirtual)
• System requirements
• Installing XEN
• Creating a Virtual Machine
• Managing the VM environment (Yast and xm)

Addendum: Reference Materials (provided within the course handbook for additional reading)

APPENDIX A - CONFIGURING APACHE FOR PHP, TOMCAT AND SSL

• Configuring Apache Web Server to support PHP, Tomcat and SSL Security

APPENDIX B - NETWORK INTEGRATION SERVICE (NIS)

• Configuring the NIS Directory Service