Principles
of Network and System Administration Mark Burgess
Oslo College, Norway
Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The Scope of System
Administration 1
1.2 Is System Administration a
Discipline? 2
1.3 A Jigsaw Puzzle 2
1.4 The Goals of System Administration
3
1.5 A Philosophy 3
1.6 The Challenges of System
Administration 4
1.7 Common Practice and Good
Practice 5
1.8 Bugs 6
1.9 Information Sources for
Sysadms 6
Exercises 7
2 The System Components 8
2.1 What is 'The System? 8
2.2 Operating Systems 9
2.3 File Systems 16
2.4 Processes and Job control
32
2.5 Logs and Audits 34
2.6 Privileged Accounts 35
2.7 Hardware Awareness 36
2.8 System Uniformity 38
3 Networked Communities 40
3.1 Communities 40
3.2 User Sociology 41
3.3 Client-Server Cooperation 42
3.4 Host Identities and Name
Services 43
3.5 Common Network Sharing
Models 46
3.6 Physical Network 49
3.7 TCP/IP Networks 55
3.8 Network Analysis 62
3.9 Planning Network Resources
70
Host Management
4.1 Choices
4.2 Start-up and Shutdown
4.3 Configuring and
Personalizing Workstations
4.4 Installation of the
Operating System
4.5 Software Installation
4.6 Installing a Unix Disk
4.7 Kernel Customization
User Management
5.1 User Registration
5-2 Account Policy
5.3 Login Environment
5.4 User Support Services
5.5 Controlling User Resources
5.6 User Well-being
Models of Network
Administration
6.1 Administration Models
6.2 Immunity and Convergence
6.3 Network Organization
6.4 Bootstrapping
Infrastructure
6.5 Cfengine: Policy Automation
6.6 SNMP Network Management
6.7 Integrating Multiple OSes
6.8 A Model Checklist
Configuration and Maintenance
7. 1 System Policy
7.2 Synchronizing Clocks
7.3 Executing Jobs at Regular
Times
7.4 Automation
7.5 Preventative Maintenance
7.6 Fault Report and Diagnosis
7.7 System Performance Tuning
Services
8.1 High Level Services
8.2 Proxies and Agents
8.3 Installing a New Service
8.4 Summoning Daemons
8.5 Setting up the DNS Name
Service
8.6 Setting up a WWW Server
8.7 E-mail Configuration
8.8 Mounting NFS Disks
8.9 The Printer Service
Principles of Security
9-1 Physical Security
9.2 Four Independent Issues
9-3 Trust Relationships
9.4 Security Policy
9.5 Protecting from Loss
9-6 System and Network Security
9-7 Social Engineering
9.8 TCP IP Security
9.9 Attacks
Security Implementation
10.1 The Recovery Plan
10.2 Data Integrity
10.3 Analysing Network Security
10.4 VPNs: Secure Shell and
FreeS/WAN
10.5 WWW Security
10.6 Firewalls
10.7 Intrusion Detection and
Forensics
Analytical System
Administration
11.1 Science vs Technology
11.2 Studying Complex Systems
11.3 The Purpose of Observation
11.4 Evaluation Methods and
Problems
11.5 Evaluating a Hierarchical
System
11.6 Faults
11.7 Deterministic and
Stochastic Behaviour
11.8 Observational Errors
11.9 Strategic Analyses
11.10 Summary
Summary and Outlook
12.1 The Next Generation
Internet Protocol (IPv6)
12.2 Never-dos in System
Administration
12.3 Information Management in
the Future
12.4 Collaboration with
Software Engineering
12.5 The Future of System
Administration
Summary
A.1 Summary of Principles
A.2 Summary of Suggestions
Some Useful Unix Commands
Programming and Compiling
Contents
C.3 WWW and CGI Programming 377
C.4 PHP and the Web 383
C.5 Cfengine 385
D Glossary 393
E Recommended Reading 397
Bibliography 398
Index 410
