Debian Administration Training Course

Debian Distribution

What is Debian?

Choosing Debian version

Debian support and help

Debian community

Console basics

The shell prompt

The shell prompt under X

The root account and root shell prompt (su, sudo, running programs as root under X)

GUI system administration tools

Virtual consoles

How to leave the command prompt

How to shutdown the system

Recovering a sane console

Additional package suggestions for the newbie

An extra user account

sudo configuration

The filesystem

Filesystem permissions

Control of permissions for newly created files: umask

Permissions for groups of users (group)

Timestamps

Links

Named pipes (FIFOs)

Sockets

Device files

Special device files

procfs and sysfs

Midnight Commander (MC)

Customization of MC

Starting MC

File manager in MC

Command-line tricks in MC

The internal editor in MC

The internal viewer in MC

Auto-start features of MC

FTP virtual filesystem of MC

The basic Unix-like work environment

The login shell

Customizing bash

Special key strokes

The pager

Setting a default text editor

How to quit vim

Recording the shell activities

Basic Unix commands

The simple shell command

Command execution and environment variable

"$LANG" variable

"$PATH" variable

"$HOME" variable

Command line options

Shell glob

Return value of the command

Typical command sequences and shell redirection

Command alias

Unix-like text processing

Unix text tools

Regular expressions

Replacement expressions

Global substitution with regular expressions

Extracting data from text file table

Script snippets for piping commands

Debian package management

Debian package management prerequisites

Package configuration

Basic precautions

Life with eternal upgrades

Debian archive basics

Package dependencies

The event flow of the package management

First response to package management troubles

Basic package management operations

apt-get  / apt-cache vs. aptitude

Basic package management operations with the commandline

Interactive use of aptitude

Key bindings of aptitude

Package views under aptitude

Search method options with aptitude

The aptitude regex formula

Dependency resolution of aptitude

Package activity logs

Examples of aptitude operations

Listing packages with regex matching on package names

Browsing with the regex matching

Purging removed packages for good

Tidying auto/manual install status

System wide upgrade

Advanced package management operations

Advanced package management operations with commandline

Verification of installed package files

Safeguarding for package problems

Searching on the package meta data

Debian package management internals

Archive meta data

Top level "Release" file and authenticity

Archive level "Release" files

Fetching of the meta data for the package

The package state for APT

The package state for aptitude

Local copies of the fetched packages

Debian package file names

The dpkg command

The update-alternative command

The dpkg-statoverride command

The dpkg-divert command

Recovery from a broken system

Incompatibility with old user configuration

Different packages with overlapped files

Fixing broken package script

Rescue with the dpkg command

Recovering package selection data

Tips for the package management

How to pick Debian packages

Packages from mixed source of archives

Tweaking candidate version

Updates and Backports

Automatic download and upgrade of packages

Limiting download bandwidth for APT

Emergency downgrading

Who uploaded the package?

The equivs package

Porting a package to the stable system

Proxy server for APT

Small public package archive

Recording and copying system configuration

Converting or installing an alien binary package

Extracting package without dpkg

More readings for the package management

The system initialization

An overview of the boot strap process

BIOS, boot loader, mini-Debian system

The meaning of the runlevel

The configuration of the runlevel

The runlevel management example

The default parameter for each init script

The hostname

The filesystem

Network interface initialization

Network service initialization

The system message

The kernel message

The udev system

The kernel module initialization

Authentication and Security

Normal Unix authentication

Managing account and password information

Good password

Creating encrypted password

PAM and NSS

Configuration files accessed by the PAM and NSS

The modern centralized system management

"Why GNU su does not support the wheel group"

Stricter password rule

Other access controls

sudo

SELinux, Apparmor

Restricting access to some server services

Security of authentication

Secure password over the Internet

Secure Shell

Extra security measures for the Internet

Securing the root password

Network setup

The basic network infrastructure

The domain name

The hostname resolution

The network interface name

The network address range for the LAN

The network device support

The modern network configuration for desktop

GUI network configuration tools

The low level network configuration

Iproute2 commands

Safe low level network operations

Network optimization

Finding optimal MTU

Setting MTU

WAN TCP optimization

Netfilter infrastructure

Network applications

The mail system

Modern mail service basics

The mail configuration strategy for workstation

Mail transport agent (MTA) and Mail user agent (MUA)

Overview of exim4

Basic MUA - Mutt

Mail delivery agent (MDA) with filter

maildrop configuration

procmail configuration

Redeliver mbox contents

POP3/IMAP4 server

The remote access server and utility (SSH)

Basics of SSH

Port forwarding for SMTP/POP3 tunneling

Connecting without remote passwords

Dealing with alien SSH clients

Setting up ssh-agent

How to shutdown the remote system on SSH

Troubleshooting SSH

Other network application servers

Other network application clients

The diagnosis of the system daemons

The X Window System

Setting up desktop environment

The server/client relationship

The X server

Starting the X Window System

Starting X session with gdm

Customizing the X session (classic method)

Customizing the X session (new method)

Connecting a remote X client via SSH

Secure X terminal via the Internet

X applications

X office applications

X utility applications

System tips

The screen program

The use scenario for screen(1)

Key bindings for the screen command

Data recording and presentation

The log daemon

Log analyzer

Recording the shell activities cleanly

Customized display of text data

Customized display of time and date

Colorized shell echo

Colorized commands

Recording the editor activities for complex repeats

Recording the graphic image of an X application

Recording changes in configuration files

Data storage tips

Disk partition configuration

Accessing partition using UUID

Filesystem configuration

Filesystem creation and integrity check

Optimization of filesystem by mount options

Optimization of filesystem via superblock

Optimization of hard disk

Using SMART to predict hard disk failure

Expansion of usable storage space via LVM

Expansion of usable storage space by mounting another partition

Expansion of usable storage space using symlink

Expansion of usable storage space using aufs

Data encryption tips

Removable disk encryption with dm-crypt/LUKS

Encrypted swap partition with dm-crypt

Automatically encrypting files with eCryptfs

Automatically mounting eCryptfs

Monitoring, controlling, and starting program activities

Timing a process

The scheduling priority

The ps command

The top command

Listing files opened by a process

Tracing program activities

Identification of processes using files or sockets

Repeating a command with a constant interval

Repeating a command looping over files

Starting a program from GUI

Customizing program to be started

Killing a process

Scheduling tasks once

Scheduling tasks regularly

Alt-SysRq key

System maintenance tips

Who is on the system?

Warning everyone

Hardware identification

Hardware configuration

System and hardware time

The terminal configuration

The sound infrastructure

Disabling the screen saver

Disabling beep sounds

Memory usage

System security and integrity check

The kernel

Linux kernel 2.6

Kernel parameters

Kernel headers

Compiling the kernel and related modules

Compiling the kernel source: Debian standard method

Compiling the module source: Debian standard method

Non-free hardware drivers

Virtualized system

Virtualization tools

Virtualization work flow

Mounting the virtual disk image file

Chroot system

Multiple desktop systems

Data management

Sharing, copying, and archiving

Archive and compression tools

Copy and synchronization tools

Idioms for the archive

Idioms for the copy

Idioms for the selection of files

Backup and recovery

Backup utility suites

An example script for the system backup

A copy script for the data backup

Removable storage device

Sharing data via network

Archive media

The binary data

Viewing and editing binary data

Manipulating files without mounting disk

Data redundancy

Data file recovery and forensic analysis

Splitting a large file into small files

Clearing file contents

Dummy files

Erasing an entire hard disk

Erasing unused area of an hard disk

Undeleting deleted but still open files

Searching all hardlinks

Invisible disk space consumption

Data security infrastructure

Key management for GnuPG (signing and encrypting)

The MD5 sum