Book Image

Linux Administration Cookbook

By : Adam K. Dean
Book Image

Linux Administration Cookbook

By: Adam K. Dean

Overview of this book

Linux is one of the most widely used operating systems among system administrators,and even modern application and server development is heavily reliant on the Linux platform. The Linux Administration Cookbook is your go-to guide to get started on your Linux journey. It will help you understand what that strange little server is doing in the corner of your office, what the mysterious virtual machine languishing in Azure is crunching through, what that circuit-board-like thing is doing under your office TV, and why the LEDs on it are blinking rapidly. This book will get you started with administering Linux, giving you the knowledge and tools you need to troubleshoot day-to-day problems, ranging from a Raspberry Pi to a server in Azure, while giving you a good understanding of the fundamentals of how GNU/Linux works. Through the course of the book, you’ll install and configure a system, while the author regales you with errors and anecdotes from his vast experience as a data center hardware engineer, systems administrator, and DevOps consultant. By the end of the book, you will have gained practical knowledge of Linux, which will serve as a bedrock for learning Linux administration and aid you in your Linux journey.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Installing and understanding a web server

A web server is the component you're interacting with directly when you go to a website. It traditionally listens on port 80 (for Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)) or 443 (for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)).

When you type a URL into your browser, these ports are generally hidden unless explicitly defined; for example, hitting https://duckduckgo.com in Chrome or Firefox will load the website, but it won't tell you that it's connecting on port 443. In a similar fashion, if you go to https://duckduckgo.com:443, the exact same page should load.

Also, if you try to go to port 80 using HTTPS (https://duckduckgo.com:80/), you will generally get an error saying the site can't provide a secure connection:

This is because you tried to talk to an insecure port (80) using a secure protocol (HTTPS).

Web servers...