Linux Books

[WebDesigner 0]

Hi Everyone,I am a noob and hence would like to know what books, online resources and interview materials should i read, if i want to apply for a Linux administrator post.I have a experience in other specialization of the IT field but with Windows OSes, had worked earlier on red hat flavor of Linux, but the work was very bare bones.So if you could suggest me a fast track options for Linux admin, that would be great.P.S.: fast track does not mean i am looking for less material but i am looking to cover more material in less time. I need your help because you experienced people can suggest better.Thanks for reading and helping out.Cheers!WebDesigner (Just an ID, Not my profession)

[mahesh2k 0]

Hmm, which distro you use as linux ? If you give us that info then it will become easy. For admin purpose there are two linux distros used in industry environment - red hat, suse. Other distros like debian, centos are for dedicated/vps hosting servers which you rarely encounter for home/business networking most of time. You should find the red hat, suse related books for your linux admin course or knowledge.


If you're targeting RHCE or RHCT then you should get this book. Or if you are interested in administrating linux irresepctive of distro then getting linux bible can be a good option.

other than this, you can browse wiki pages of suse, red hat and debian for more updated information about distros. Get active in related distro community and then answer or ask questions.

[k_nitin_r 8]

If you are looking at a Linux administrator position at some point in the future, you would want to have some hands-on experience with a server distribution. Try Ubuntu's server edition, CentOS and SuSe. You will eventually want to try commercial distributions too, such as Redhat Enterprise Edition. CentOS is pretty close to what RedHat has to offer because it is based on the same source code but does not include the commercial support through RedHat. Ideally, in a work environment, you would have commercial support for anything you use because when something is broken, you would want to hear from somebody who tells you that the problem has occurred with someone else in the past, and to get the solution or the steps to fix the problem. With the open-ness of Linux, you would almost always find the problems that you have encountered in a knowledgebase somewhere and there would be a discussion board or a forum with some posts about it. As for the books, you ought to pick a Linux distribution that you want to learn and buy a book on it. There's the Redhat Bible if you want to learn to work with RedHat, which is pretty much the most common commercial Linux distribution in data centers worldwide (I don't have a source to cite for that, but it is like one of those things that you just treat as common knowledge and do not really try to attempt to prove, knowing that the results will not be worth the effort since the results would most probably tell you what you already know).BTW, why don't you look into stuff that you do everyday as a Windows server administrator and post questions as you go about doing it on Linux? I'm sure there are folks here on the discussion board who can help you with it, and I've got a VM running a Ubuntu LiveCD if it is something generic. If you do get bored along the way, there are plenty of games that run on Linux too! Try Maelstrom, OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon, but with an open-source code base that was re-written from the original), or even Smoking Guns. They are all free, as we expect most things on Linux to be, and are lots of fun too.Managing some of the more useful stuff on Linux tends to be a part of a Linux administrator's job, such as working with the Apache web server. Apache is the most common web server used on Linux, and arguably on the web (yet another one of those things treated as common knowledge), and is quite easy to use. Many Linux distributions also include a graphical interface to help with making some of the settings, but it is just as easy to peek into the configurations files and poke around till you get it working the way you want it to. On a server Linux system, most organizations do not include a graphic interface to save on memory, not that it is all that much for a server, so you would want to figure out how to use the command line interface. A good book on Linux should familiaze you with the common text editors available, such as vi and emacs. I personally prefer vi for its simplicity, but there are Linux administrators and developers out there who swear by emacs and would rather use emacs than switch to an integrated development environment for their development activities. With such a loyal fan following, you have got to check out the features that the editor provides. Most of the text editors on Linux also provide you with syntax highlighting (or, rather, coloring) while in the text mode interface so you would not really miss the graphical interface all that much when it comes to usability when writing source code.When it comes to Linux, pretty much all of the source is available in binary as well as source code. For the most part, you will not have to work with the source code because you will most definitely find a binary version compiled for the distribution of Linux you are using and targeted at your hardware platform. There are package managers that can automatically install software for you. Have you use the iPhone App Store? The package managers available on Linux are pretty much the same, and guess what - Canonical is developing an App Store for Linux too, so as long as you've got a basic familiarity with it, you have the basics to get started with package management. If the organization that you work at is using some non-standard hardware, you would want to learn to figure out how to compile the source code of the various packages that you would be using, as well as the compilation of the Linux kernel itself. It is unlikely that you would be asked to re-compile the Linux kernel with a couple of extra modules during the first couple of years that you get into Linux server administration, but with the way companies have been downsizing and the economic recession, they just might!In case you have not noticed, Linux does not just run on computers - you can find cellular phones, ebook readers, smart phones, routers, and lots of other devices powered by the very same software that powers the servers at RedHat. For these devices, you might have a couple of patches to support the specific hardware that they contain or to run on the limited memory that the devices provide. In other cases, you might want to run Linux on a 32-bit server and so would have to use a couple of patches or modules to support storage capacity over a certain limit, or to use more memory than the base installation supports. Those scenarios are pretty common in data centers like the kind we find in research centers in India. The research centers are not usually on a deadline and are willing to give novice Linux administrators a go at some of the stuff that other organizations would typically set aside only for the more experienced Linux administrators, perhaps due to their low budget when hiring staff, but that is a great way to learn some of the finer things about Linux.If you are in the Windows world, you are probably aware of the embedded edition of Windows XP which is quite common in the public announcement systems and in the screens fitted into buses and metro railways for displaying the current location of the bus or train to passengers and to people on the stations and platforms. Needless to say, they do not have a Vista version of it because Vista was such a memory hog, but they just might have a version of Windows 7 Starter edition targeting devices with low memory. Now, with all of these Windows devices, you might wonder what a Linux server can do for them. Well, pretty much whatever a Windows server can do for them - you can use Linux to run a domain controller to provide a centralized repository of user accounts and computer accounts, along with the automated deployment of updates and new software that you would normally do when using Windows. In addition, you can also have Linux based systems authenticated with that very same database!There's a lot in the Linux world that folks out there do not use yet because they cannot spend the time in training their staff and do not want to put in the budget to hire staff with the know-how, which is one of the key selling points of Windows on the servers.

[WebDesigner 0]

Hey Nitin.Thanks a lot. Will do and post questions as and when they arise. I really appreciate your efforts and am surely impressed about the response and the scope of Linux, on my way to becoming a linux fan.Cheers!WebDes