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

Chapter 4: Managing Users and Groups

Linux is a multiuser, multitasking operating system, which means multiple users can access the operating system at the same time while sharing platform resources, with the kernel performing tasks for each user concurrently and independently. Linux provides the required isolation and security mechanisms to avoid multiple users accessing or deleting each other's files.

When multiple users are accessing the system, permissions come into play. We'll learn how permissions work in Linux, with their essential read, write, and execution tenets. We'll introduce you to the concept of a superuser (root) account, with complete access to the operating system resources.

Along the way, we'll take a hands-on approach to the topics learned, further deepening the assimilation of key concepts through practical examples. This chapter covers the following topics:

  • Managing users
  • Managing groups
  • Managing permissions

We...