Book Image

Mastering Linux Administration

By : Alexandru Calcatinge, Julian Balog
Book Image

Mastering Linux Administration

By: Alexandru Calcatinge, Julian Balog

Overview of this book

Linux plays a significant role in modern data center management and provides great versatility in deploying and managing your workloads on-premises and in the cloud. This book covers the important topics you need to know about for your everyday Linux administration tasks. The book starts by helping you understand the Linux command line and how to work with files, packages, and filesystems. You'll then begin administering network services and hardening security, and learn about cloud computing, containers, and orchestration. Once you've learned how to work with the command line, you'll explore the essential Linux commands for managing users, processes, and daemons and discover how to secure your Linux environment using application security frameworks and firewall managers. As you advance through the chapters, you'll work with containers, hypervisors, virtual machines, Ansible, and Kubernetes. You'll also learn how to deploy Linux to the cloud using AWS and Azure. By the end of this Linux book, you'll be well-versed with Linux and have mastered everyday administrative tasks using workflows spanning from on-premises to the cloud. If you also find yourself adopting DevOps practices in the process, we'll consider our mission accomplished.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Linux Basic Administration
7
Section 2: Advanced Linux Server Administration
13
Section 3: Cloud Administration

Questions

Here are a few questions and thought experiments that you may ponder, some based on the skills you have learned in this chapter, and others revealed in later parts of the book:

  1. My Linux workstation is running low on disk space. How do I uninstall or remove applications that I don't use anymore?

    Hint: Software packages installed with GUI package management tools can be uninstalled from the same GUI (for instance, see Figure 1.36). Others can be removed using the package manager CLI tools (for instance, apt, dpkg, and rpm).

  2. If I had a relatively large number of Linux VM instances or distros deployed and running at the same time, how would I make it easier to manage them?

    Hint: Use Vagrant, a tool for building and managing VM environments.

  3. How do I enable multiple GUI desktops (GNOME, KDE) for different users on the same Linux system?

    Hint: In the Installing Linux graphical user interfaces section, we showcased the addition of KDE side by side with GNOME. Each user can log in with their GUI desktop of choice (see Figure 1.31).

  4. I'm looking for a robust email client and team collaboration solution for my Linux workstation.

    Hint: The Additional software packages section may provide some guidance.

  5. Can I run multiple Linux instances in WSL?

    Hint: Yes. Use wsl --import.

  6. How do I upgrade my Linux machine to a new version of the distro?

    Hint: Create a bootable media of your new Linux distro and run the installer. Choose to upgrade when prompted. You may also use the command line. Check out the related CLI tools for your Linux distro (for instance, do-release-upgrade for Ubuntu).