Book: LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell Section: Chapter 24. Exam 102 Highlighter's Index
24.2 Linux Installation and Package Management
24.2.1 Objective 1: Design a Hard Disk Layout
24.2.1.1 Guidelines
Keep / small by distributing larger parts of the directory tree to other filesystems.
Separate a small /boot partition below cylinder 1024 for kernels.
Separate /var into its own partition to prevent runaway logs from filling /.
Separate /tmp.
Separate /usr if it is to be shared read-only among other systems via NFS.
Set swap size to be about the size of main memory.
24.2.2 Objective 2: Install a Boot Manager
LILO is a popular Linux boot loader.
LILO consists of the lilo command, which installs the boot loader, and the boot loader itself.
LILO is configured using /etc/lilo.conf.
24.2.3 Objective 3: Make and Install Programs from Source
Software often comes in a tarball, a compressed tar archive file.
Larger source code packages include a configure script to verify that everything is in order to compile the software.
make is then used to build the software.
make is also often used to install the software into directories such as /usr/local/bin.
24.2.4 Objective 4: Manage Shared Libraries
System libraries provide many of the functions required by a program.
A program that contains executable code from libraries is statically linked, because it stands alone and contains all necessary code to execute.
Since static linking leads to larger executable files and more resource consumption, system libraries can be shared among many executing programs at the same time.
A program that contains references to external, shared libraries is dynamically linked at runtime by the dynamic linker, ld.so.
New locations for shared libraries can be added to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable. As an alternative, the locations can be added to /etc/ld.so.conf, which lists library file directories. This file is translated into the binary index /etc/ld.so.cache using ldconfig.
24.2.5 Objective 5: Use Debian Package Management
dpkg automates the installation and maintenance of software packages.
dpkg has a number of options.
24.2.6 Objective 6: Use Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)
RPM automates the installation and maintenance of software packages.