Administering Your Linux System

Your Linux system administrator duties don't end after you have installed Fedora or RHEL. Your ongoing job as a Linux system administrator includes the following tasks :

• Configuring hardware - Often when you add hardware to your Fedora or RHEL computer, that hardware will be automatically detected and configured by tools such as kudzu. In those cases where the hardware was not properly set up, you can use commands such as lsmod, modprobe , insmod , and rmmod to configure the right modules to get the hardware working.

• Managing file systems and disk space - You must keep track of the disk space being consumed, especially if your Fedora or RHEL system is shared by multiple users. At some point, you may need to add a hard disk or track down what is eating up your disk space (you can use commands like find , du and df to do this).

• Monitoring system performance - You may have a run-away process on your system or you may just be experiencing slow performance. Tools that come with Fedora and RHEL can help you determine how much of your CPU and memory are being consumed.

The aforementioned administrative tasks are described in the rest of this chapter. Other chapters cover other administrative topics, such as managing user accounts (Chapter 11), automating system tasks (Chapter 12), system backups and restores (Chapter 13), and securing your system (Chapter 14). Tasks related to network and server administration are covered in Chapters 15 through 26. Ways of getting updates to your Linux software (using up2date and yum) are described in Chapter 5.