Summary

Although you may be using Fedora or RHEL as a single-user system, many of the tasks you must perform to keep your computer running are defined as administrator tasks . A special user account called the root user is needed to do many of the things necessary to keep a Linux system working as you would like it to. If you are administering a Linux system that is used by lots of people, the task of administration becomes even larger. You must be able to add and support users, maintain the file systems, and ensure that system performance serves your users well.

To help the administrator, Fedora and RHEL come with a variety of command-line utilities and graphical windows for configuring and maintaining your system. The kudzu program can be used to probe and reconfigure Linux when you add or remove hardware. Commands such as mkfs and mount let you create and mount file systems, respectively. Tools like System Monitor and top let you monitor system performance.

SELinux adds a new layer of security on top of existing Linux security methods . As a systems administrator, you can choose whether or not to turn on SELinux. You can also choose which of your system services are protected by SELinux.