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

The Linux filesystem

The Linux filesystem consists of a logical collection of files that are stored on a partition or a disk. Your hard drive can have one or many partitions. Those partitions usually contain only one filesystem, and it can extend to an entire disk. One filesystem could be the / (root) filesystem and another the /home filesystem. Or, there can be just one that contains all filesystems.

Generally, using one filesystem per partition is considered to be good practice by allowing for logical maintenance and management. As everything in Linux is a file, physical devices such as hard drives, DVD drives, USB devices, and floppy drives are treated as files too.

Directory structure

Linux uses a hierarchical filesystem structure. It is similar to an upside-down tree, with the root (`/`) at the base of the filesystem. From that point, all the branches (directories) spread throughout the filesystem.

The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) defines the structure of Unix...