Introduction to Network and System Administration

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction to Network and System Administration

Outline

 Scope of Network and system administration

 Goal of Network and system administration
 Duties of Network and system administrator
 Ethics in Network and system administration
 Windows operating system
 Linux operating system
Definition of network and system administration

 Network and system administration is a branch of engineering

that concerns the operational management of human computer
systems.
 It is about putting together a network of computers
(workstations, PCs and supercomputers), getting them running
and then keeping them running in spite of the activities of
users who tend to cause the systems to fail.
 Who did this?
 System administrator : “one who manages computer and
network systems on behalf of another, such as an employer or
a client. SAs are the people who make things work and keep it
all running”.
 SA looks after computers, networks, and the people who use
them.
 SA may look after hardware, operating systems, software,
configurations, applications, or security.
 Based on the size of organization

 In a small organization, system admin can be entire IT staff

– Phone support
– Order and install software and hardware
– Fix anything that breaks from phones to servers
– Develop software
 In a large organization, system admin is part of large IT org
– Specialists instead of “jack of all trades”
– Database admin,
– Network admin,
– Fileserver admin,
– Help desk worker,
– Programmers.
Scope and goals of Network and system administration

 The scope of the system administrator’s responsibilities is wide.

 Users rely upon system admins for advice, planning, maintenance
and repair tasks performed, whether pro-actively or reactively
performed.
 System administrators are expected to have a good understanding of
what is available in the vendor world, and what the user community
may require in the foreseeable future.
 With such responsibilities upon the shoulders of these individuals, it
is important that all computer users and system administrators
understand the norms and principles to be applied to the task.
Ethics in Network and system administration

 System and network administration should obey the Ethical

guidelines (The SAGE code of ethics).
 Fair treatment
I will treat everyone fairly. I will not discriminate against anyone on grounds
such as age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, national
origin, or any other non-business related issue.
 Privacy
I will only access private information on computer systems when it
is necessary in the course of my duties. I will maintain and protect
the confidentiality of any information to which I may have access,
regardless of the method by which I came into knowledge of it. I
acknowledge and will follow all relevant laws governing
information privacy.
 Communication
I will keep users informed about computing matters that may affect
them such as sharing of common resources, maintenance of
security, occurrence of system monitoring, and any relevant legal
obligations.
 System integrity
I will strive to ensure the integrity of the systems for which I have
responsibility, using all appropriate means – such as regularly
maintaining software and hardware; analyzing levels of system
performance and activity; and, as far as possible, preventing
unauthorized use or access.
 Cooperation
I will cooperate with and support my fellow computing
professionals.
I acknowledge the community responsibility that is fundamental to
the integrity of local, national, and international network and
computing resources.
 Honesty
I will be honest about my competence and will seek help when
necessary.
When my professional advice is sought, I will be impartial. I will
avoid conflicts of interest; if they do arise I will declare them and
recuse myself if necessary.
 Education
I will continue to update and enhance my technical knowledge and
other work-related skills through training, study, and the sharing of
information and experiences with my fellow professionals.
I will help others improve their skills and understanding where my
skills and experience allow me to do so.
 Social responsibility
I will continue to enlarge my understanding of the social and legal
issues relating to computing environments.
When appropriate, I will communicate that understanding to others
and encourage the writing and adoption of policies and laws about
computer systems consistent with these ethical principles.
Duties of Network and system administrator

 System and network administrators has multiple

tasks ranging from monitoring stand alone system
to large organizational network.
 Some tasks of system and network administrators
are:
 What does system admins do? (duties)

1. Add and remove users.

2. Add and remove hardware.
3. Perform backups.
4. Install new software systems.
5. Troubleshooting.
6. System monitoring.
7. Auditing security.
8. Helping users.
 User Management

• Creating user accounts

– Consistency requires automation
• Username and UID namespace management
• Home directory backups and quotas
• Removing user accounts
– Consistency requires automation
– Remove everything, not just homedir and passwd
 Hardware Management

• Adding and removing hardware

– Configuration, cabling, etc.
– Device drivers
– Scheduling downtimes and notifying users
• Evaluation and purchase
• Capacity planning
– How manyservers?
– How much bandwidth, disk space?
• Data Center management
– Power, racks, environment (cooling, fire alarm)
 Backups

 Backup strategy and policies

 Scheduling: when and how often?
 Capacity planning
 Location: On-site vs off-site.
 Installing backup software
 Performing backups and restores
 Monitoring backups
 Checking logs
 Verifying media
 Software Installation

• Automated consistent OS installs

• Evaluation of software
• Finding and building open source software
• Purchase of commercial software
• Managing software installations
– Distributing software to multiple hosts
– Package management
– Managing multiple versions of a software pkg
• Patching and updating software
• Scheduling downtimes and notifying users
 Troubleshooting

• Problem identification
– By usernotification
– By log files or monitoring programs
• Tracking and visibility
– Ensure users know you’re working onproblem
• Finding the root cause of problems
– Provide temporary solution if necessary
– Solve the root problem to permanently eliminate
 Performance Monitoring

• Automatically monitor systems for

– Problems (disk full, error logs, security)
– Performance (CPU, mem, disk, network)
• Log rotation and backups
• Provides data for capacity planning
– Convince management of need for hardware
 Helping Users

• Request tracking system

– Ensures that you don’t forget problems.
– Ensures users know you’re working on their problem; reduces
interruptions, status queries.
– Lets management know what you’ve done.
• User documentation and training
– Acceptable Use Policies
– Document software, hardware (printers), etc.
 Network Administration
 Network administration means the management of
network infrastructure devices (routers and switches).
 A network administrator is an individual that is
responsible for the maintenance of computer
hardware and software systems that make up
a computer network including the maintenance
and monitoring of active data network or converged
infrastructure and related network equipment
 Network Administration
The actual role of the network administrator will vary
from place to place, but will commonly include activities
and tasks such as network address assignment,
management and implementation of routing protocols
such as ISIS, OSPF, BGP, routing table configurations and
certain implementations of authentication (e.g.:
challenge response, etc.). It can also include
maintenance of certain network servers: file
servers,VPN gateways, intrusion detection systems,
security,etc.
Operating system (os)
Windows and Linux operating systems
Operating system (OS)

Windows operating system

Linux operating system
 Windows Operating system

 Windows products before 1995 release: Windows

95 operating system
Graphical user interfaces requiring the MS-DOS
operating system
Disadvantages:
 Multitasking not supported
 Little built-in security
 Lacked interprocess communication capability
 Required customization to work with each system hardware
component
Source: www.microsoft.com.
 Design Goals of windows OS

 Needs
Accommodate user needs
Optimize resources
 Response
Five design goals
 Extensibility
 Portability
 Reliability
 Compatibility
 Performance
File Management
 Directory Services

 Active Directory
Database storing many information types
General-purpose directory service for heterogeneous
network
Built entirely around DNS and LDAP
Groups machines into domains
 Each domain gets a DNS domain name (e.g., cs.edu)
 Each domain must have at least one domain controller
 Domain can have more than one domain controller
Active Directory clients use standard DNS and LDAP
protocols: locate objects on the network
 Security Concerns

 Multilayered security system

First security layer: password management
Second security layer: file access security
 Distinguishes between owners and groups
 Users decide operation types person is allowed to perform
on a file
 Gives user auditing capabilities: automatically tracks who
uses files and how files used.
 Kerberos security
Authentication (mutual), data integrity, and data
privacy
Each domain has own Kerberos server
Microsoft implemented standard Kerberos protocol
Microsoft separates distributed security services users
from their providers
 Supports many options without unusable complexity
Task management

figure
Using the TaskManager, users can view the system status, assign priorities, and
more.
The resource monitor offers running statistics for this session.
Selected commands that can be used in the Command Prompt Window.
Linux Operating system
Linux Distributions
 Unix
Unix is a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system.
You can have many users logged into a system
simultaneously, each running many programs.
It's the kernel's job to keep each process and user separate and
to regulate access to system hardware, including cpu, memory,
disk and other I/O devices.
First Version was created in Bell Labs in 1969.
Some of the Bell Labs programmers who had worked on
this project, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Rudd
Canaday, and Doug McIlroy designed and implemented
the first version of the Unix File System on a PDP-7
along with a few utilities. It was given the name UNIX
by Brian Kernighan.
00:00:00 Hours, Jan 1, 1970 is time zero for UNIX. It is
also called as epoch.
1973 Unix is re-written mostly in C, a new language
developed by Dennis Ritchie.
Being written in this high-level language greatly decreased the
effort needed to port it to new machines.
1977 There were about 500 Unix sites world-wide.
1980 BSD 4.1 (Berkeley Software Development)
1983 SunOS, BSD 4.2, System V
1988 AT&T and Sun Microsystems jointly develop System V
Release 4 (SVR4). This later developed into UnixWare and
Solaris 2.
1991 Linux was originated
 What is LINUX
Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally
created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of
developers around the world.
It originated in 1991 as a personal project of Linus
Torvalds, a Finnish graduate student.
The Kernel version 1.0 was released in 1994.
Developed under the GNU General Public License , the
source code for Linux is freely available to everyone.
 LINUX distributions
Mandrake: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
RedHat: http://www.redhat.com/
Fedora: http://fedora.redhat.com/
SuSE/Novell: http://www.suse.com/
Debian: http://www.debian.org/
Ubuntu https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Enterprise targeted Operating
System. It based on mature Open Source technology and
available at a cost with one year Red Hat Network
subscription for upgrade and support contract.
UNIX structure
UNIX File System
 File System
The Unix file system looks like an inverted tree structure.
You start with the root directory, denoted by /, at the top and
work down through sub-directories underneath it.
Each node is either a file or a directory of files, where the
latter can contain other files and directories.
You specify a file or directory by its path name, either the full,
or absolute, path name or the one relative to a location.
The full path name starts with the root, /, and follows the
branches of the file system, each separated by /, until you
reach the desired file, e.g.:
/home/condron/source/xntp
A relative path name specifies the path relative to another,
usually the current working directory that you are at. Two
special directories :
. the current directory
.. the parent of the current directory
So if I'm at /home/frank and wish to specify the path above in
a relative fashion I could use:
../condron/source/xntp
This indicates that I should first go up one directory level,
then come down through the condron directory, followed by
the source directory and then to xntp.
Structure of Standard Directories in Unix/Linux

/ The ancestor of all directories on the system; all other

directories are subdirectories of this directory, either directly
or through other subdirectories.
/bin Essential tools and other programs (or binaries).
/dev Files representing the system's various hardware devices.
For example, you use the file `/dev/cdrom' to access the
CD−ROM drive.
/etc Miscellaneous system configuration files, startup files,
etc.
/home The home directories for all of the system's users.
/lib Essential system library files used by tools in `/bin'.
/proc Files that give information about current system
processes.
/root The superuser's home directory, whose username is root.
(In the past, the home directory for the superuser was simply
`/'; later, `/root' was adopted for this purpose to reduce clutter
in `/'.)
/sbin Essential system administrator tools, or system binaries.
/tmp Temporary files.
/usr Subdirectories with files related to user tools and
applications.
 Directories, Files and Inodes
Every directory and file is listed in its parent directory.
In the case of the root directory, that parent is itself.

A directory is a file that contains a table listing the files

contained within it, giving file names to the inode numbers in
the list.
The information about all the files and directories is
maintained in INODE TABLE
An Inode (Index Nodes) is an entry in the table containing
information about a file (metadata) including file permissions,
UID, GID, size, time stamp, pointers to files data blocks on
the disk etc.
 Essential Shell Commands

The shell is the Linux command line interpreter.

 It provides an interface between the user and the kernel
 and executes programs called commands.

 For example, if a user enters ls then the shell executes the ls command.
 ls prints a listing of a specific file or directory.

A shell is a unique user program that allows users to interact with

 operating system functions.
 Shell accepts user-readable commands and converts them to kernel-friendly.
 Continued…

What is the kernel?

The kernel is computer software that is at the heart of a
computer’s operating system, controlling everything in it.
It is in charge of the following Linux system’s resources:
File administration
Management of processes
Management of I/O
Device management, memory management, and so forth.
 Basic File Manipulation Commands and
Directory Navigation Commands

Basic Navigation
 Pwd :- (print working directory) shows the
current directory (basically, the folder) you’re in.
 Cd:- The most basic command of all time, cd (change
directory) means... Err, change directory.
 cd followed by a dash (-)will bring you to the recent directory
you were in.
 Ls:- ls (list) list down all the content inside the directory.
 Continued…

Basic Navigation
 Flags:- In addition to performing a general task, a command
may also contain flags to specify a specific task you want the
command to do. A flag is anything prefixed with a dash (-) that
follows the command name.
 For example, you can type ls -l. In this case, l being the flag, to
display the content of the directory in a nice list view.
 shutdown -h now:- to shutdown the computer
 Reboot:- To restart the computer:
 Exit :- To log out from the terminals
 Continued…

File Manipulation
 mkdir:- mkdir (make directory) is used to create a
directory.
 mv:- To move files, the command mv (move) is used.
 rm:-rm (remove) removes files. Take note that this action
cannot be undone.
 rm –r :- To remove a directory and all its contents, including
any subdirectories and files
 rm –rf:- to remove a directory and all its contents without
asking yes/no
 Continued…

File Manipulation
 rmdir:- to remove a directory
 touch:- When you wish to create new (empty) files, use touch
 cp:- Copying is undeniably one of the greatest inventions of all
time. To do that, use cp
 To copy a directory recursively, use cp -r.
 echo:- prints out whatever you say to it.