Section 14.1. Introduction

[Page 576 (continued)]

14.1. Introduction

A system administrator must regularly perform a variety of tasks to keep a Linux system running properly. These tasks involve starting and stopping the system, maintaining user accounts, monitoring system resources, installing new hardware and software, managing the network, and maintaining security.

Almost all of these tasks require the administrator to be in super-user mode, as they access and modify privileged information. If you don't have access to the super-user password, you'll just have to use your imagination. Even in this case, however, being aware of these functions increases your overall understanding of how Linux works. Many of these programs are installed in the /sbin directory, which is not typically included in a user's path, so you may have to explicitly type "/sbin/command" or add /sbin to your path in order to run the utilities.

To cover each of these topics in depth would require an entire book, so this chapter simply presents an overview of system administration. For more detailed information on managing Linux systems, I can highly recommend [Nemeth, 2002].