The Linux Sysadmin Kit
A wealth of tools
Here are some de-facto standard tools for system administration work.
The Linux desktop offers a lot of GUI applications for regular computer tasks. System administration happens in the console, using it's full potential.
Network services
Common tools to provide services:
| Remote shell login: | ssh (OpenSSH) |
| Remote desktop: | ssh -X, NoMachine NX, XDMCP, TightVNC, rdesktop |
| Web server: | Apache |
| File server: |
Samba (Windows networking) NFS (UNIX networking) Netatalk (Apple networking) OpenSSH (Secure FTP) ProFTPD, Pure-FTPd (FTP) |
| Print server: |
CUPS Samba (Windows Printing on top of CUPS) |
| Database: | MySQL, Postgres |
| SMTP server: | Postfix |
| IMAP/POP3 server: | Dovecot |
| Email filtering: | DSPAM, SpamAssassin, amavisd-new, MailScanner, ClamAV, sieve filters |
| Firewall / NAT: | iptables (everything else is built on top of it) |
| Port tunneling: | iptables, ssh, stunnel |
| Proxy server: | Squid, Apache |
| VPN: | OpenVPN, OpenSWAN |
| DNS server: | BIND |
| DHCP server: | dhcpd |
| Time server: | xntpd |
| Network service discovery: | Avahi, UPnPd |
| Directory services: | OpenLDAP |
| Backups: | rsync, rsnapshot, tar, Bacula |
| Log server: | Syslog-ng |
| Task scheduling: | Cron, at |
| Status monitoring: | Nagios, Cacti, Zabbix |
| User account lockdown: | kiosktool (KDE) |
| Virtualisation: | VMWare, VirtualBox, OpenVZ |
Daily tools
| File system browsing | cd, ls |
| Config file editing: | vim / emacs / nano |
| File permissions: | chmod, chown, chgrp, chacl |
| File/directory creation: | touch, ln rm mkdir, rmdir, |
| User accounts: |
useradd,
groupadd,
passwd,
chsh,
chfn,
chage,
w,
/etc/passwd,
/etc/group
|
| Process diagnostics: | ps, dstat, sysstat, top, htop |
| Disk diagnotics: | du, df, iotop, iostat, lsof |
| Network diagnostics: | ip, ping, netstat, dig, host, whois, iftop, traceroute, mtr, arp, nmap, tcpdump |
| Hardware info | lspci, lsusb, lshw, hwinfo, dmidecode, |
| Shell conveniences: | less, file, tree, man, locate, screen, script |
| Software installation: |
rpm, zypper / yum (RPM based systems) dpkg, apt-get (Debian based systems) puppet, Cfengine, Chef, ssh (central management) |
| System logs: |
/var/log/*,
tail,
dmesg
|
| Downloading files: | lynx, links, wget |
| Uploading files: | ncftp, sftp, scp |
| Comparing files/folders: | diff / patch, vimdiff, rsync |
| Compression/decompression: | tar, zip/unzip, rar/unrar |
| Version control | CVS, Subversion, Git, Mercurial |
| Scripting: | Bash shell scripts, Perl, Python, Ruby |
| Shell scripting: | if, while, for, seq, case, sort, sed, find, xargs, sort, uniq, head, tail, grep, sed, awk, fmt, make |
| Debugging: | gdb, strace, telnet, ncat, socat. |
| Driver loading: | modprobe, lsmod, rmmod, mkinitrd |
Subsystems
| Boot | GRUB, init / Upstart |
| Devices: | udevd, HAL / DeviceKit, acpid |
| IPC: | D-Bus |
| Logging: | klogd, syslog-ng, logrotate |
| Authentication: |
mingetty, ConsoleKit (console logins) PAM, csync (roaming profiles) |
| Network: | ifconfig, NetworkManager/Wicd/ConnMan |
| Sound: | PulseAudio, ALSA |
| Graphics: | X.Org server, DRI, Mesa |
| Bluetooth: | BlueZ |
| CD Writing: | cdrdao, wodim (cdrkit), mkisofs |
| Scanning: | SANE |
| Disk mounting: | mount, fuse |
| Temperature sensors: | sensors |
| Background services: |
/etc/init.d/*
|
| Security policies: | PolicyKit, sudo |
| Restricted execution: | AppArmor/SELinux, chroot, ulimit |
| Application compatibility: | wine, mono |
| Multimedia codec frameworks: | MPlayer, Xine, GStreamer |
| File change notifications: | FAM, inotify |
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