Linux Newbie!

[d0nny]

Hi
I have a 'spare' server at home with quite a lot of disk space in it (6 x 36GB SCSI disks), and I want to experiment with Linux. I have downloaded the 4 disks for Fedora and want to load this onto the server in due course. I also want to add this to my home network and use it like a storage server (music, movies, etc), but I also want to start learning about Linux admin.

So my first question is Are there any good websites that are good for beginners that document starting out (installation, etc)?
Secondly, any advice on starting out in admin?

Thanks ...
D0nny

 

[Trevoke]

If you're using Fedora, yeah, go to the Red Hat website (

http://www.redhat.com)

and they should have everything you need.
If they don't, go to another distribution. The biggest ones are Debian, Mandriva, SUSE,... Ubuntu is a growing distribution recommended for beginners, and my personal favorite is Gentoo.

-Haben sie fosforos?
-No tiengo caballero, but I have un briquet.

 

[pansophic]

Installations are very distro specific. You will probably find the most helpful general installation information at the Red Hat site. If you suffer a specific problem during installation, you may need to look at other resources, but keep in mind that different distros will put configuration and executable programs in different places. So you may not be able to easily find the configuration file that a particular post points to, even when it specifies an explicit path.

I have always been partial to the Linux Documentation Project

http://www.tldp.org,

but Google is your friend. There are numerous good books on system administration, that's where I would probably start out. You can move backwards, forwards and skip sections easily. Not so on web sites.

Good luck, and welcome to the wonderful world of Linux!


pansophic

 

[d0nny]

Thanks for your comments, and I agree there are different versions of Linux so it must be hard to be more specific on the different installations. I only referred to RedHat as I had this installed at work (although I hardly ever used it), so I thought I would carry on.
Is there a 'best' version, or are they all very much the same? If I go RedHat, will I miss anything from another version?

Also, on the books, is there a recommendation on a good book that will allow me to learn admin? I understand there are a lot of Linux books, but I assume I would want something that is good for reference AND good for learning - probably something hard to combine.

D0nny

 

[pansophic]

Best" is always a matter of taste. And yes, you are almost always missing "something" choosing one distribution over another. RedHat is as good as any. I don't like their licensing model (you are running Fedora, their freeware distro), so I have moved on to SuSE. I've also used Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, FreeBSD, CentOS, WhiteBox and I've installed Gentoo, Xandros and Ubuntu.

All of the distributions are different in some aspect, and the same in most aspects (FreeBSD is technically not Linux and is very different). Some of the newer distributions like Xandros, are very easy to install, and therefore appealing to newbies. Gentoo is a source distribution, and takes quite a while to install (compared with other distros) but builds each package specifically for your hardware during installation. It is optimized for the box it is installed on, and should operate more efficiently for any platform on which it is installed.

Nearly every administrator I know has a copy of Essential System Administration from O'Reilly

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/esa3/

as a reference. I'm not sure how good it is to learn from though. I recall that it had references to modifying the text files involved with administration, much of which can be handled through GUIs in current distributions.

This article on Linux.com is interesting. Not sure I agree with his choices, but to each his own.

http://enterprise.linux.com/enterprise/05/10/26/215206.shtml?tid=113

The banter at the end has more tools of interest than the initial article as far as I am concerned, but you'll get to make your own choices.


pansophic

 

[RhythmAce]

If you are using Fedora Core 4 then you already have the best. Don't listen to anybody else. As for those 4 drives you have, if you choose to let the installer cofigure your drives for you, it will use LVM to create one large logical drive or volume. This causes some angst among the purists. They fear if one physical drive crashes, they may all go down. I've used it for years however and had no problems. There are other solutions to using multiple drives you may want to look into. For the most part, the installation is all automated. Near the end, you will be asked for the network info so you may want to keep that handy.

 

[d0nny]

Thanks again for your comments.
I suppose ultimately I want to use my new-found skills in a professional manner, so it might make a difference in what distribution I use depending on what is mainly used in business. Is there a prominent distro in business?

Also, I may have questions on using the extra disks. Can I add these at a later date? Also, I'm not sure I want a single logical disk. Does Linux have any RAID software so I can limit my data loss?

D0nny

 

[Annihilannic]

We use Red Hat Enterprise Linux Application Server 2.1 and 3.0, and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.

But don't worry, any skills you gain using Fedora will usually be applicable to RHEL. The main difference is that they are updated less frequently, so are supposedly more stable and reliable for professional use.

Annihilannic.

 

[RhythmAce]

Far and away the most poular distibution used by professionals is Red Hat's Enterprise Edition. If you have a website hosted by a hosting service that uses linux server, chances are this is what they are running. Unlike the free version (fedora), it does not keep up with the lates versions of software uot there. They work very hard on making the entire system stable. What would be stable for us may not be under the demands of a professional system. Fedora tends to be more bleeding edge. That is, to remain popular they stuff there new distros with the latest packages. They try to come out with a new version about two times a year so testing these distros under high stress is not as high a priority as getting uot your product before everybody else. If learning is what your goal is. You can use just about anything your heart desires except for the ones that run under Windows. They are not real linux systems and do not run real linux software. Most linux distos come with the same packages. Most come with installation programs to make installation easy. Many even use the RPM program manager. Which means you can install programs without having to build or compile each package for your machine. The major differences in distros is the layout of the directory structure and logo. In short, there is not much that you can learn from one distro and not the other.

 

[Trevoke]

Linux is "incorrect".
GNU/Linux is the system you want to use.
Linux is the kernel, and is common across all distributions (some patches may differ).
GNU is the set of userland applications that work with it (this may not exactly correct, but there's your idea).

What changes across distributions?
system paths (where stuff gets installed)
package manager (how you install and keep track of what's installed, and uninstall, etc etc)
how you handle configuration files

The systems are exactly the same (apart from maybe what gets installed by default, of course) besides that. You can safely experiment with various distros if you have the time and a spare box.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[3wsparky]

i would / have installed ubuntu at home , command line only server , with dhcp ,apache ,mrtg, squid tacacs+ ,samba which is a pdc for my little network these are the things your lightly to need a strong understanding of if you want to follow the footsteps of a penguin , nice thing about ubuntu is that its only a single disc , i use redhat at work which is also great but its 4 discs , and can be an arse to get it how you want + if your learning then mistakes will happen , four cd install is a pain. - remember redhat is supported , but some companys want cheap solutions in these cases your looking at something like slackware.

sorry if this confuses the situation.

 

[d0nny]

Thanks for the suggestion of ubuntu.
I have now downloaded the install CD and will look at installing this first to see how it operates.

 

[ericbrunson]

Most experience you gain from using any given distribution will be applicable to any other. The main differences are a) the installer, b) the location of configuration files and c) administration utilities.

The installer is only used once, so I don't consider it a factor to any but a beginner. I would only say avoid Gentoo until you want to get hard-core into how the OS is laid out on the disk, but when you get to that point, it's an excellent exercise.

If you're going to be administrating from the command line you probably won't be using the graphical admin utilities, so again, not important to a server admin.

The configuration files are the most important difference between distributions, but they're really only 10% of the administration of the box. So, it's important to know where to change the IP address and update boot time firewall rules, but *most* of the server configuration is done for the packages (mail, web server, etc.) and it's just the *location* of the file that may change. The syntax of httpd.conf is that same on RH, Deb, Suse, AIX, Solaris and Windows 2000.

There are other minor differences, such as package management, but RPM or DEB, it's just getting used to one or the other (or both).

Since you've got a box the play with, try all different sorts of distros.