Course Description

ISA has developed this course for students who are in an environment that has more than one type of UNIX platform, or will be moving to such an environment. Unlike most system administration courses, the ISA's multi-vendor course covers UNIX System Administration with four operating systems in mind: Tru64 UNIX, AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX. All four platforms are available in the classroom and all are used as examples during the lecture. During laboratory workshops, students are given time to work on each lab twice - on their choice of two platforms - giving a broad training experience ideal for companies with multiple UNIX OS types.

Goals

Once completing this course, you should have a good grasp of System Administration responsibilities and you should be able to:

• Boot & shutdown systems
• Manage File Systems
• Install, backup, and restore systems
• Add, delete, and manage user accounts
• Monitor performance and troubleshoot problems
• Add machines to a local network
• Identify basic security issues

Intended Participants

This course is designed for students who have some experience in a UNIX environment and need to learn how to administrate one or more of the following UNIX platforms:

• Tru64 UNIX
• AIX
• Solaris
• HP-UX

Prerequisites

ISA's Multi-vendor UNIX Utilities and Commands course or Familiarity with UNIX including logging into a system, using an editor in UNIX, managing files and directories, use of non-privileged commands. Being able to write and debug simple shell scripts is helpful but not required.

Format

Lecture with Enhanced Laboratory Workshops where students can perform each lab exercise twice, once each on their choice of two UNIX platforms: Thu64 UNIX, AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX.

Course Outline

Introduction

• Brief history of UNIX
• Duties and Responsibilities of the Administrator
• Resources & Tools available
• System Concepts

System Boot and Shutdown

• Bootstrapping Process
• Booting in a Single User Mode
• Initialization files and startup scripts
• Shutdowns and Reboots
• Lab Exercises

File Systems

• Drives
• Pathnames & File attributes
• Logical Volumes
• File Systems & Partitioning
• Swap Space
• USF, NFSS, JFS, AdvFS, etc.
• Lab Exercises

System Installation

• Preparations for an install
• Full Installs
• Partial/Update Installs
• Options and Methods
• Lab Exercises

Root & Process Control

• Who IS super user
• Becoming Root, Sudo
• Security issues
• Parts of a process, daemons
• Monitoring processes (ps, top)
• Managing processes (kill, nice, renice)
• Portmap & well know processes
• Runaway & defunct processes
• Lab Exercises

Backups and Restores

• Strategies for Archival
• Methods for Backups (HW) and (SW)
• Recovery and Restores

User Management

• User Information & Important Files
• Adding Users
• User Environments
• Quotas, Permissions, Management
• Removing & Disabling Users
• Lab Exercises

Kernal & Drivers

• Types of Kernals
• Building and Configuring Kernals
• Options & Attributes
• Device Drivers
• When & Why to rebuild/configure
• Lab Exercises

System Management

• Introduction
• What needs monitoring?
• Monitoring Tools
• Logs, Logs, and more Logs
• Cron & At Jobs, System Crashes
• Lab Exercises

Licensing & Software

• Licensing Requirements
• Types of Licenses, Licensing Packages
• Installing Licenses & Software
• Firmware updates
• Lab Exercises

Networking Overview

• TCP/IP, packet formation
• Internet Addressing, MAC addressing
• Networks and Subnets
• Networking Files & Processes
• Network File Sharing
• DNS, DHCP

Printing

• Setting up a local printer
• Network printing
• LPC & Print management

Security in Brief

• Password authentication & choices
• Shadowed / etc / passwd files
• Rsh, rlogin
• Setup Issues
• Portmap Issues
• Resources Available