Automating UNIX and Linux Administration

My book, titled Automating UNIX and Linux Administration was published in September 2003. The publisher is Apress and the ISBN is 1590592123.

• Read a glowing rewiev of my book as it appeared on Slashdot.org

Summary

Automating UNIX and Linux Administration will focus on automating the tedious daily tasks of system administration. It will provide real-world examples and explore the existing tools that will help with this task. Although the book will provide brief overviews of tools and technologies that are covered, the author will assume the reader knows how to edit a configuration file or mount a file system. The book will focus on putting these tools to use in the real world, such as how to use a set of Perl scripts to manage your user accounts across 1000 machines. It will not show you how to write a basic 'Hello World' program in Perl nor contain a Perl function reference or summary.

The techniques, methods and tools covered in this book will help on a single system, but will be much more useful across multiple systems. Whether you are managing 2 or 5,000 systems, whether they are desktops, servers, or a Beowulf cluster, you will benefit from this type of automation. Although some of the book will be Linux-specific, most of it will apply to any UNIX system. The book will also focus on automating tasks across multiple variants of UNIX.

Purchase Link

If you would like to support me (the author) as much as possible, please purchase the book through the following link:

Chapter Summary

• Chapter 1: Introducing the Basics of Automation This chapter covers the methodology behind system administration automation.
• Chapter 2: Using SSH to Securely Automate System Administration Covers the basics of using SSH, security concerns, setting up passwordless SSH, and other topics.
• Chapter 3: Creating Login Scripts and Shell Scripts Discusses some more advanced features of bash and how you can use them to customize your prompt, create command aliases, enhance tab completion, and otherwise enhance your shell experience. Also provides scripts that allow commands to be run across multiple systems.
• Chapter 4: Pre-Installation: Network Preparation and Management Discusses the tasks necessary to add a new system to your network and provides a custom, modular shell script to automate these tasks.
• Chapter 5: Automating and Customizing Installation Discusses the options available to you when you want to automatically perform operating system installations. Also discusses your options for the customization of your operating systems. Provides scripts that allows a new system (even without a custom operating system) to quickly and easily join your automation system.
• Chapter 6: Automating System Configuration This is where the really good stuff begins. This chapter talks about automatically configuring all of the systems on your network, regardless of the operating systems they run or the tasks they perform. Provides both a custom solution and a comprehensive discussion of GNU cfengine.
• Chapter 7: Sharing Data Between Systems Discusses many methods you can use to share data among your various systems. Talks about network filesystems (such as NFS), NIS/NIS+, GNU cfengine, rsync, CVS, and the HTTP and FTP protocols.
• Chapter 8: Packages and Patches Discusses the issues involved with the updating of many systems. Talks about Solaris patches and custom patches. Talks about the RPM and Debian package formats as well as a custom package solution. Talks about automatic package installation with AutoRPM. Introduces the OpenPKG system which provides packages that can be installed on many different operating systems.
• Chapter 9: System Maintenance and Changes Covers the various maintenance tasks inherent with most modern operating systems. This includes time synchronization, account management, log file rotation, and general system cleanup.
• Chapter 10: System Monitoring Introduces systems for monitoring your systems. Presents Logwatch and swatch for log monitoring and NetSaint for network monitoring.
• Chapter 11: Improving System Security Discusses tools that can enhance your system's security with minimal maintenance on your part. Shows how to use and configure Tripwire, create automatic firewall configurations, and use GNU cfengine to increase your system and network security.
• Chapter 12: Backing up and Restoring Data Presents simple and inexpensive solutions for the automatic backup of your systems' data.
• Chapter 13: User Interfaces Shows you how to create both console- and web-based user interfaces for your automation system using bash, Perl, and Mason.
• Appendix A: Introduction to Basic Tools Covers several tools that will be used throughout this book such as bash, Perl, grep, sed, and awk.
• Appendix B: Customizing and Automating Red Hat Linux Installation Shows you how to automate the installation of Red Hat Linux. Also shows you how to create your own custom Linux distribution derived from Red Hat Linux.
• Appendix C: Building Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) Packages Comprehensive instructions on building your own RPMs.

About the Author

Kirk Bauer has been using computers and programming since 1985. He has been using and administering UNIX systems since 1994. Although his personal favorite UNIX variant is Linux, he has administered everything from FreeBSD to Solaris, AIX, and IRIX.

Kirk has been involved with software development and system/network administration since his first year at Georgia Tech. He has done work for the Georgia Tech Residential Network, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Kirk was one of the founders and the CTO of TogetherWeb in 2000, which was purchased in 2003 by Proficient Systems. Kirk is currently a systems engineer with F5 Networks.

Kirk's latest development is a fully web-based Kickstart management system that is used to deploy Linux on servers quickly and consistently. Saving time through automation has always been his passion, as evidenced by his collection of open-source software -- the most popular being AutoRPM and Logwatch. A few years after graduating from Georgia Tech in 2001 with a bachelor's of science in Computer Engineering, Kirk moved to Peoria, AZ where he lives with his fiance Rachel and his two dogs.

Links

• The publisher's web site
• Full Table of Contents (PDF format)
• Entire Sample Chapter: Chapter 6 (PDF format)

Book Cover