COMPUTER AND NETWORK
SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION
CIS 5406-01
Summer 1999 - Lesson 1
Introduction
Attempt to provide a practical hands-on approach
to SA within limitations
Lot of expertise in class (more than me)
Everyone is an expert in the areas in which they have
had crises
SA work is collaborative more than competitive - will
always depend on others
Hopefully, this course will fill in gaps of missing knowledge
Emphasis is curently on UNIX (Linux & Solaris) and Windows NT
Review Class Home Page links
The textbooks are referenced in the lecture notes using the following
abbreviations:
ESA = Essential System Administration
EWNTSA = Essential Windows NT System Administration
Introduction to UNIX
I won't bore you with the standard history of UNIX (which is now
>25 years old)
I want to emphasize several points
Point one, recall that UNIX was initally a simplification of MULTICS,
not a new creation (the name UNIX is a pun on MULTICS)
Point two, some of the operating system's greatest strengths
arose because of the collaborative nature of its development
Other operatings systems in the 60's were products of a manufacturer
with hardware to sell.
Each hardware platform had its own proprietary operating system
Rather than being a product of a manufacturer with hardware to
sell UNIX was a collaborative effort with the following goals:
Simplicity (so it would run on small machines)
Multi-user support (UNIX was originally developed under
the ruse of designing a multiuser text processing system)
Portability (made possible by the creation of the C programming
language)
The end-result of the AT&T directive was true non-competitive
collaboration
Universities could get entire source code for practically nothing.
Users shared ideas, program modifications, bug fixes
The development of early UNIX was user-driven rather than
corporate-driven
The first meeting of the Unix User Group was held in May of 1974
This group would later become the Usenix Association
Introduction to Linux
Linux is a complete UNIX-compatible operating system
Runs on any PC clone, DEC Alphas, and on PowerPCs
It is based on a kernel written by a Finnish student named Linus
Torvalds
It includes a programming environment, set of libraries, X-windows,
NFS, multimedia support, spreadsheets, C, C++, FORTRAN,
Forth, Modula-2, SLIP, PPP, etc...(the GNU project and the
Free Software Foundation)
and importantly, it includes source code
It is mostly POSIX.1 compliant
It exists in MANY incarnations (Slackware, Red Hat, Yggdrasil, Debian, etc.)
You will be installing Red Hat on your class machines.
Why use Linux for this course?
It is certainly not the first UNIX for PC's (XENIX)
It is not the only UNIX-like OS with source code available
(Minix, FreeBSD)
It is because it is a return to UNIX's roots
The entire OS was developed by volunteers from many different
countries
It operates under the same General Public License as GNU
software put out by the Free Software Foundation
Anyone can get the source off of the net
The critical licensing element is: any enhancements to the
code also come under the license
A company can't steal it modify it and then sell it
All future enhancements will be shared freely
Introduction to Windows NT
Windows NT is the "high end" operating system from Microsoft.
The latest version, 4.0, has the same look and feel as Windows95
It is a proprietary operating system that shares an interesting
past with IBM and other companies. It is NOT Windows or Windows95
rehashed -- it was designed independently for the most part to be
a true 32-bit multitasking, multithreading memory protected operating
system.
The next "big step" for Windows NT is Windows NT 2000 (aka Windows NT 5).
Using a proprietary operating system is a two-edged sword, just as
using an "open" operating system has its pitfalls and successes.
In the case of Windows NT, one advantage to a single vendor solution is
Microsoft can control each aspect of the O/S development directly.
The goals for Windows NT were:
o Modular design model
o Environment subsystems
o Installable device drivers
o Symmetric multiprocessing capabilities
o Preemptive multitasking capabilities
o A generic microkernel (hardware indepedent)
o Object-oriented resources
o Separate memory address space for processes
o POSIX compatability
o Government Security Certification
--> A comment about Microsoft Certifications <--
Lab Machines
66MHz 486 and Pentiums
3C505 Ethernet cards (and others)
Genoa 8500 VGA cards
disk space (200 MB)
memory (most 16M)
Sun SPARC Classics (24MB, 500MB)
Pentiums later on :)
Assignment of machines
You will form teams of no more than three people. Each team will be
assigned three machines in the Majors lab -- one to install
Red Hat Linux on, one to install Windows NT server 4.0
and the final will be a Sun SPARC classic to install Solaris on.
First Assignment
1. Form teams. I will allow you to form your own teams.
2. Select a team leader. The team leader will be responsible for
scheduling help with the class assistants.
3. Schedule with the System group a time for your team to meet
with me (jtbauer@cs.fsu.edu) or one of the class assistants
(Scott Daniels - sdaniels@cs.fsu.edu,
Damon Snyder - snyder@cs.fsu.edu,
and Peter Bismuti - bismuti@cs.fsu.edu).
One of us will guide you through the next two
steps, providing the necessary hardware and media.
4. Install RedHat Linux on one of your two machines.
5. Install Windows NT 4.0 on your other machine.
6. Install Solaris 7 on your Sun SPARC machine.
Reading assignment
Review "man" pages for the following UNIX daemons:
inetd, init, cron, portmap, update(8), lpd,
sendmail, nfsd, mountd, lockd, statd, ypbind,
ypserv, ftpd, rlogind, telnetd, rshd, named,
syslogd, fingerd, httpd, tftpd, rarpd, bootparamd.
Read Chs. 1 and 4 in ESA
Read Chs. 1 and 2 in EWNTSA