Summary

This chapter discussed in detail two topics of major importance to system administrators:

• Management of the file system

• Management of system services

To administer a UNIX system effectively, it is important to have a basic understanding of the major file systems and the media on which they are stored. A sound understanding of directory structure and backing up and restoring data is also essential. While the directories and actual commands vary across the major variants, the concepts are still the same. Proper use of backup and restore capabilities enables you to guarantee that users have required data, as well as that the system has the appropriate resources. System services, such as the Service Access Facility, accounting, and scheduling, are described. The Service Access Facility (SAF) manages services available to hardware devices. Accounting utilities enable the administrator to monitor usage on the system. Through process scheduling (see Chapter 11), the system administrator can assign different priorities to processes running on the system.