Advanced Suse Linux Administration

Prerequisites:

The course assumes administration knowledge of the SUSE Linux operating system to the level covered in the SUSE Linux System Administration course.

Course Description:

This instructor led course is designed to teach the advanced administration, security, networking and performance tasks required on SUSE Linux within the Enterprise.

Targeted to closely follow the official Novell Certified Linux Professional (NCP) and Novell Certified Linux Administrator (CLA) curriculum, this course together with the SUSE Linux Essentials and the SUSE Linux System Administration course will enable the delegate to work towards achieving the Novell Certified Linux Professional (NCP - SLES 10) qualification and the Novell Certified Linux Administrator (CLA- SLES 10).

The delegate will have knowledge in all, and practice in some, of the following:

• Perform administrative tasks with supplied tools such as YAST
• Setting up a network installation server
• Advanced network configuration
• Network troubleshooting
• Configuring network services LDAP, APACHE, SAMBA, SQUID and DNS
• Securing a Linux server using ACLs and extended file attributes
• Managing security using encryption and authentication
• Firewall configuration
• Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM)
• Kernel installation and compilation
• Compiling software from source
• System logging via syslog
• System performance monitoring
• Collecting process and user activity with system accounting
• Hardware configuration with hotplug and udev
• XEN

This course includes the following modules:

Network Installation of Linux

• Configuring a Linux installation server
• Creating a PXE boot environment
• Automatic installation

Advanced Network Configuration and Troubleshooting

• Configuring the network card (ip link, ip addr)
• Network scripts
• Configuring routing (ip route)
• Serial communication
• Network troubleshooting and related tools (ethereal, tcpdump, ping, traceroute, netstat, arp, nmap)

LDAP

• Structure of an LDAP Tree
• Configuring the LDAP server (slapd.conf)
• Testing the LDAP server (ldapsearch)
• Adding information into LDAP (lpdapadd)
• Configuring the LDAP Clients (nsswitch.conf, ldap.conf)

Apache & Squid

• APACHE main configuration files
• APACHE server configuration (main Section entries)
• Starting APACHE
• APACHE access configuration
• SQUID proxy server
• Configuring client browsers
• Starting SQUID
• The SQUID configuration file (squid.conf)
• SQUID security settings

SAMBA

• The SAMBA configuration file (smb.conf)
• Testing the SAMBA configuration file (testparm)
• Configuring SAMBA users
• Starting SAMBA
• Testing SAMBA (smbclient, smbstatus)
• Managing Windows filesystems (smbmount, nmblookup)
• Accessing Windows shares

The Domain Name Server

• DNS operation
• Types of DNS Servers
• Domain Name Space
• Setting up a DNS server
• Server configuration files (named.conf and databases)
• DNS resource record formats
• Starting and managing the DNS Server (rcnamed, rndc)
• Testing the DNS Server (host, dig, nslookup)
• DNS Client set up (resolv.conf)

Securing Linux

• System security checklist
• User level security
• Limiting access to terminals
• Limiting access to files via ACLs (setfacl, getfacl)
• Limiting access to files by extended permissions and attributes (lsattr, chattr)
• System wide security settings and file access (chkstat)
• The Secure Shell
• Authentication under ssh
• ssh and port tunneling
• gpg
• Use of public and private keys
• gpg command line and graphical tools
• Key managmement
• Using a digital signature

Firewall Configuration

• Basic packets and routing
• Netfilter (iptables)
• Packet filtering (iptables, chains, rule targets, connection tracking)
• Network address translation (NAT)

Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM)

• The main PAM configuration files (/etc/pam.d directory)
• Configuration file formats
• Controlling user access using the configuration files

Kernel Compilation and Installation

• Kernel building
• Monolithic and Modular kernel design
• Listing modules (lsmod, modinfo)
• Modifying the kernel configuration
• Binary kernel packages
• Installing the kernel sources
• Configuring and building a kernel
• Editing the GRUB/LILO configuration file
• Kernel tuning (/proc sysctl.conf, sysctl)

Compiling Software from Source

• Installing programs from source (tar, tarball)
• Compiling Open Source Software (configure, make)
• Installing the compiled software (make install)
• Managing shared libraries (ldd)
• Compiling from SRC (source) RPM packages (rpmbuild, rpm)

System Monitoring and Performance Management

• Syslog configuration (syslog.conf)
• Testing syslog with logger
• Managing logs with logrotate (logrotate.d directory)
• System performance monitoring
• Collecting system performance information (sar)
• Measuring virtual memory (vmstat)
• Measuring I/O performance (iostat)
• Peformance Guidelines
• Other tuning tools (top, free, ksysguard, gkrellm, xosview)
• System Accounting - collecting process and user information (rcacct, ac, lastcomm, sa)

Hardware Configuration

• The Hotplug system
• Devices and Interfaces
• The sysfs filesystem and persistent names
• Device initialisation and interface configuration
• Hotplug and Coldplug
• The Udev system

XEN

• Basic definition
• XEN components
• The Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)
• Virtualization Modes (Fully Virtual, Paravirtual)
• System requirements
• Installing XEN
• Creating a Virtual Machine
• Managing the VM environment (Yast and xm)