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<H1><A NAME="SECTION00200000000000000000">Introduction</A></H1>
<P>
<P>
<I>
In the beginning, the file was without form, and void; and <BR>
emptiness was upon the face of the bits. And the Fingers of <BR>
the Author moved upon the face of the keyboard. And the Author <BR>
said, Let there be words, and there were words. <BR>
</I><P>
<P>
This manual, the Linux System Administrators'
Guide, describes the system administration aspects of
using Linux. It is intended for people who know next
to nothing about system administration (as in ``what
is it?''), but who have already mastered at least the
basics of normal usage. This manual also doesn't tell
you how to install Linux; that is described in the
Installation and Getting Started document. See below
for more information about Linux manuals.
<P>
System administration is all the things that one has
to do to keep a computer system in a useable shape.
It includes things like backing up files (and restoring
them if necessary), installing new programs, creating
accounts for users (and deleting them when no longer
needed), making certain that the filesystem is not
corrupted, and so on. If a computer were, say, a house,
system administration would be called maintenance,
and would include cleaning, fixing broken windows,
and other such things. System administration is
not called maintenance, because that would be too
simple.<A NAME="tex2html1" HREF="footnode.html#79"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="gif" SRC="./foot_motif.gif"></A>
<P>
The structure of this manual is such that many of the chapters
should be usable independently, so that if you need
information about, say, backups, you can read just that
chapter.<A NAME="tex2html2" HREF="footnode.html#74"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="gif" SRC="./foot_motif.gif"></A>
This hopefully makes the book easier to use as a
reference manual, and makes it possible to read just a small
part when needed, instead of having to read everything.
However, this manual is first and foremost a
tutorial, and a reference manual only as a lucky coincidence.
<P>
This manual is not intended to be used completely by itself.
Plenty of the rest of the Linux documentation is also
important for system administrators. After all, a system
administrator is just a user with special privileges and
duties. A very important resource are the manual pages, which
should always be consulted when a command is not familiar.
<P>
While this manual is targeted at Linux, a general principle
has been that it should be useful with other UNIX based
operating systems as well. Unfortunately, since there is so
much variance between different versions of UNIX in
general, and in system administration in particular, there is
little hope to cover all variants. Even covering all
possibilities for Linux is difficult, due to the nature of
its development.
<P>
There is no one official Linux distribution, so different
people have different setups, and many people have
a setup they have built up themselves. This book is
not targeted at any one distribution, even though I
use the Debian GNU/Linux system almost exclusively.
When possible, I have tried to point out differences,
and explain several alternatives.
<P>
I have tried to describe how things work, rather
than just listing ``five easy steps'' for each task.
This means that there is much information here that is
not necessary for everyone, but those parts are marked
as such and can be skipped if you use a preconfigured
system. Reading everything will, naturally, increase
your understanding of the system and should make using
and administering it more pleasant.
<P>
<P>
Like all other Linux related development, the
work was done on a volunteer basis: I did it because I
thought it might be fun and because I felt it should be
done. However, like all volunteer work, there is a limit to
how much effort I have been able to spend, and
also on how much knowledge and experience I have. This means
that the manual is not necessarily as good as it would be if a
wizard had been paid handsomely to write it and had spent a
few years to perfect it. I think, of course, that it is
pretty nice, but be warned.
<P>
One particular point where I have cut corners
is that I have not covered very thoroughly many
things that are already well documented in other freely
available manuals. This applies especially to program
specific documentation, such as all the details of using
<tt>mkfs)</tt><A NAME="81"> </A>. I only describe the purpose of the program,
and as much of its usage as is necessary for the purposes of
this manual. For further information, I refer the gentle
reader to these other manuals. Usually, all of the referred
to documentation is part of the full Linux documentation
set.
<P>
While I have tried to make this manual as good as possible,
I would really like to hear from you if you have any ideas on
how to make it better. Bad language, factual errors, ideas
for new areas to cover, rewritten sections, information about
how various UNIX versions do things, I am interested in
all of it.
My contact information is available via the World Wide
Web at <tt>http://www.iki.fi/liw/mail-to-lasu.html</tt>.
You need to read this web page to bypass my junkmail filters.
<P>
Many people have helped me with this book, directly or indirectly.
I would like to especially thank Matt Welsh for inspiration and
LDP leadership, Andy Oram for
getting me to work again with much-valued feedback, Olaf Kirch
for showing me that it can be done, and Adam Richter at Yggdrasil
and others for showing me that other people can find it interesting
as well.
<P>
Stephen Tweedie, H. Peter Anvin, Rémy Card, Theodore
Ts'o, and Stephen Tweedie have let me borrow their
work<A NAME="tex2html3" HREF="footnode.html#78"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM ALT="gif" SRC="./foot_motif.gif"></A> (and thus make the book look thicker and much
more impressive). I am most grateful for this, and
very apologetic for the earlier versions that sometimes
lacked proper attribution.
<P>
In addition, I would like to thank Mark Komarinski for sending his
material in 1993 and the many system administration columns
in Linux Journal. They are quite informative and inspirational.
<P>
Many useful comments have been sent by a large number
of people. My miniature black hole of an archive
doesn't let me find all their names, but some of them
are, in alphabetical order: Paul Caprioli, Ales Cepek,
Marie-France Declerfayt, Dave Dobson, Olaf Flebbe, Helmut
Geyer, Larry Greenfield and his father, Stephen Harris,
Jyrki Havia, Jim Haynes, York Lam, Timothy Andrew Lister,
Jim Lynch, Michael J. Micek, Jacob Navia, Dan Poirier,
Daniel Quinlan, Jouni K Seppänen, Philippe Steindl,
G.B. Stotte. My apologies to anyone I have forgotten.
<P>
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<P><ADDRESS>
<I>Lars Wirzenius <BR>
Sat Nov 15 02:32:11 EET 1997</I>
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