Linux Training Syllabus

Table of contents:

• Week 1
  • I: Introducing Linux
  • II: User Software
• Week 2
  • III: The command-line
  • IV: Basic Administration
• Week 3
  • V: System Administration
  • VI: Apache and MySQL administration
• Week 4
  • VII: Windows Integration
  • VIII: Automation
• Week 5
  • IX: System Administration II
  • X: Networking Tools
  • Final Test
• Week 6
  • XI: Customizing your user environment

This is a series of 1-hour classes to teach IT people about Linux systems administration. It's being taught by Thomas Stromberg to anyone who cares. The classes are being taught with Red Hat Fedora Linux 1 and SUSE Linux 9.1, but the concepts can easily be applied to other Linux distributions or even Mac OS X.

Week 1

I: Introducing Linux

The following are explained while installing Linux or during the first bootup

• History
• Distributions
• Devices and Drives in Linux
• Filesystem Hierarchy
• Components: Kernel, Distribution, XFree86, Sawfish, Gnome.

II: User Software

• GNOME Basics. Changing the desktop background, adding menu items, plugins.
• Changing the screen resolution
• Evolution - the default e-mail client in Fedora.
• Mozilla - Web browser
• OpenOffice - Productivity tools. Word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software.
• gaim - Chat application
• XScreensaver
• How user preferences are stored in your home directory
• Updating your system with up2date / yum.
• How to restart X11: Ctrl-Alt-Backspace

Week 2

III: The command-line

• The command-line (shells, tab completion, cd, ls)
• file management: cd, df, find, locate
• nano, the text editor that replaces pico.
• man pages - the help system
• ssh - secure text-based connectivity to other machines. Demonstrate X-Forwarding.
• Handling compressed archives with zip and tar.
• GNU screen - The ability to resume command-line sessions from anywhere.

IV: Basic Administration

• Adding users, groups
• su - the obsoleted way to become the root user.
• sudo - the modern way to run processes as another user.
• Changing users passwords with the passwd command.
• Printing with CUPS.
• Installing new software with yum (if Fedora) or YaST (if SUSE)
• Installing new software with rpm
• Installing webmin for easy web based systems administration

Week 3

V: System Administration

• logfiles. Using tail -f to watch /var/log/messages
• Configuring Kerberos authentication
• Explaining file permissions, including setuid.
• How to enable and disable services
• ntp - Setting up time synchronization
• Setting DNS settings by editing /etc/resolv.conf
• Changing XFree86 settings in /etc/XFree86/XFree86.conf

VI: Apache and MySQL administration

• About the Apache webserver.
• About the MySQL database engine.
• About the PHP scripting language.
• Enabling the Apache with PHP and MySQL services
• Using MySQL Administrator
• PHPMyAdmin - web based administration and query console for MySQL.
• Adding a MySQL user in phpmyadmin
• Installing WordPress - a popular blogging software that uses MySQL.
• Installing Coppermine - a popular photo gallery software that uses MySQL.

Week 4

VII: Windows Integration

• Connecting to your Linux machine from Windows using PuTTY and WinSCP.
• WINE - free Windows API compatibility layer, for running Windows applications in Linux. We will use mIRC as a sample application.
• Samba basics.
• Configuring Samba to authenticate using ADS
• rdesktop - Windows Terminal Server Client.
• smbclient - an FTP-like client for SMB shares
• smbmount - Mounting samba shares to a local directory (explain mount)
• smb4k (unless Konqueror decides to work)

VIII: Automation

• cut - cutting out the good parts of your input
• sort - sorting files
• uniq - finding the unique lines in a set of input
• sed - searching and replacing
• tail, head
• find -exec - running a command on a large set of files
• Writing a shell script
• Scheduling tasks with cron.

Week 5

IX: System Administration II

• Mounting disks
• Killing processes with kill
• Where to find software: freshmeat.net
• Fetching files with wget
• Compiling software: configure, make, make install
• fstab
• Reviewing find and du for finding out where your disk space went to.
• Single user mode

X: Networking Tools

• ping - check if a host is online
• traceroute - see your hops between hosts
• telnet - diagnostics
• nmap - seeing what ports are open on a host
• xinetd - the "internet super server". TCP/IP service manager.
• lsof - list open ports and files
• ethereal - Packet Sniffer Extraordinaire.

Final Test

For the final test, I will present a badly beaten Linux machine. It's got numerous problems on it, and they need to be fixed. Here are some problems you will run up against:

• You don't know the root password. (Pay attention to how single user mode works, and how to change users passwords)
• You don't know the MySQL root password, but need to get access to the database. You will need to use Google to research the answer to this one.
• The settings in XFree86 are not right for the current monitor, so it is not starting up.
• The /var partition is full.

Week 6

XI: Customizing your user environment

• symbolic links
• The Z Shell
• aliases, including -s types in zsh.
• variables
• PATH
• prompts
• Terminal transparency
• adding things to your X startup

Don't worry. I'll help you guys out as needed.