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)

Giving estimates and deciding on next steps

While you're working through the troubleshooting process, it's a great idea to make notes as you go, and keep track of significant times during the incident:

  • What time was the incident first reported?
  • What time did you get into a position to start troubleshooting?
  • What time did you isolate the issue?
  • What time was pertinent information discovered?
  • And so on

Another thing to be aware of is the estimate. Estimates are something that higher-ups like to hear, in a lot of cases, because it means they can pass the estimates on to their own higher-ups, or to customers.

If you have no clear idea what's causing an issue yet, you can't give a reliable estimate, and you should explain this. However, if you've managed to isolate the issue and found it to be caused by something such as a stored procedure running against...