Chapter 11: Advanced System Administration

Overview

Previous chapters of this book have dealt exclusively with the Personal Desktop version of Fedora Core , but you still need to perform a number of administrative tasks to keep your system running well; system administration is not limited to full multiuser servers. We have already discussed how to install the operating system and how to use it for day-to-day operations. Now it s time to explore the more advanced administrative aspects of managing a Linux system. More specifically , this chapter focuses on the following tasks :

• Examining important configuration files and the information they contain

• Analyzing system log files to track problems

• Backing up and archiving

• Installing new applications from source code

By understanding the rationale for performing these tasks, as well as how to actually implement them, you will get a better feel for how the operating system works and how to manage it properly. As you will see, Linux provides you with the capability to control and administer nearly all aspects of its operation, including the core part of the system, the kernel.

We will start by looking at the system configuration, including how to find the information you need and how to modify it to suit your requirements.