Novell Certified Linux Professional Study Guide

Novell® Certified Linux Professional Study GuideAbout the Author Emmett Dulaney is the author of several Linux, Unix, and certification titles. The Certification columnist and reviewer for UnixReview, he teaches the business of technology at Anderson University. He holds, or has held, 17 different vendor certifications and is a former partner in Mercury Technical Solutions. © Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

1. The NCLP Certification Process and Planning Your Approach.

    The Exam Situation

    Exam-Taking Basics

    Exam-Handling Strategies

    Planning Your Approach

2. Understanding SuSE Linux Enterprise Server.

    Introducing Linux

    Introducing SLES 9

    Installing SLES

    Drivers and Interfaces

    The Linux Desktop

      Working with KDE

      Working with Other Desktops

    Working with Processes

    Summary

3. Preliminary GNU and Unix Commands.

    Working at the Command Line

      Command-Line Interaction

      Connecting Commands

      Wildcards

      The Path Statement and Other Variables

      Common Variables

      Quoting

      Command History

      Command Aliasing

      Other Features and Notes

    Processing Text

      nl, head, and tail

      cut, paste, and join

      Paste

      Join

      Sort, Count, Format, and Translate

      Other Useful Utilities

    Basic File Management

      Working with cd and pwd

      Absolute and Relative Addressing

      Working with ls

      Applying a touch

    Copying and Moving

      cp

      mv

      dd

      Removing Files and Directories

      Making Directories

    Standard Output and Input

      tee for Two

      xargs

    Working with Processes

      What Is a Process

      Working with ps

      Working with pstree and top

      Ending a Process

      Background and Foreground

    Changing Priorities

      nice

      renice

    Working with grep and sed

      The grep Family 

      sed

      Other Useful Utilities

    Working with vi

      Starting vi

      Navigation

      Changing Text

      Saving Files

      Inserting and Deleting

      Navigating Screens

      Searching for Text

      Copying Text 

      Other Operations

    Lab Exercise 3-1: Starting and Stopping a Service

    Summary

    Metacharacter Summary

    Command Summary

4. Working with Files.

    Working with File Permissions and Ownership

      Standard Permissions

      Changing Values

      Access Control Lists

      Special Permissions

    Working with Links

      Hard Links

      Symbolic Links

    Finding System Files

    Working with Quotas

    Summary

    Command Summary

5. Basic Linux Administration.

    Creating and Managing Users

      Creating User Accounts

      Managing User Accounts

      Removing Users

    Working with Groups

      Creating a New Group

      Picking a Group

      Modifying Groups

    Working with PAM

    Configuring System Logs

      The Log Daemon

      Files to Know

    Maintaining Effective Backups

      Utilities to Know

      dd

      Related Utilities

    Adding a Mirror

    Working with the Time

      Working with NTP

    Lab Exercise 5-1: Manually Creating a New User

    Summary

    Command Summary

6. Shells, Scripting, Programming, and Compiling.

    Sprucing Up a Basic Script

      Items to Keep in Mind

    Accepting Input

      Representing the Variables

      The shift Command

    Adding Logic

      Using [

      Using If-Then Mentality

      Using exit

      Two If-Then Variations

      Conditional Execution

    Looping Around

      Using while

      Using until

      Using for

    Revisiting Input

    Working with case

      A Mild exit

    Working with Numbers

    Lab Exercise 6-1: Finding and Killing the Process That Is Your Shell

    Lab Exercise 6-2: Create a Script to Count the Number of Running Processes

    Summary

    Command Summary

7. Boot, Initialization, Shutdown, and Runlevels.

    Understanding Runlevels

    Changing Runlevels

    The inittab File

    Enter LILO

    Enter GRUB

    Related Boot Files and Utilities

    Booting from Start to Finish

    Enter the User

    Summary

    Command Summary

8. Working with Filesystems.

    Laying Out the Filesystem

      The Standard Disk Layout

      The Hard Disk Layout

    Working with Hard Disks

      Creating Partitions

      Creating Filesystems

    Maintaining Filesystem Integrity 

    Mounting and Unmounting

    Hard Disks and YaST

    Summary

    Command Summary

9. Managing Printing.

    Printing a File

    Moving Up to CUPS

    Formatting a File

    Installing a Printer

    Basic Configuration Files

    Printing Utilities

    Summary

    Command Summary

10. Administrative Tasks Revisited.

    Installing Software

    Shared Libraries

    Package Management with Red Hat

      Installing and Removing Software Using RPM

      Verifying an RPM

      Querying a Package

      Building RPMs

      Building a Package

    Understanding the Linux Kernel

      Kernel Modules

    Kernel Construction

      Obtaining the Kernel Source Code

      Building the Kernel

    Working with mail

    Monitoring the System

    Performing Administrative Security Tasks

      Working with iptables

      Host Security

      User-Level Security

    Adding Hardware

    Lab Exercise 10-1: Evaluating and Correcting a Security Risk

    Summary

    Command Summary

11. Networking Fundamentals.

    TCP/IP Background

      The Four Layers of TCP/IP

      Primary Protocols

      Address Resolution Protocol

      Protocols and Ports

    TCP/IP Host Configuration

      IP Address

      Subnet Mask

      Default Gateway

      Supplying Values

    Other TCP/IP Configuration

    Configuring Routes

    Configuring Networking Services

      The /etc/services File

      Network Access

    Working with LDAP

    Working with Apache

    Working with NFS, smb, and nmb

      NFS

      NIS

      SMB

      NMB

    Working with DNS

      Using the hosts Files

      Moving Up to DNS

      Utilities to Use with DNS

    Working with OpenSSH

    Working with the IP Tool 

    Lab Exercise 11-1: Verifying Your Host Information 

    Lab Exercise 11-2: Create an Entry in the hosts File

    Lab Exercise 11-3: Identifying Running Network Services

    Summary

    Command Summary

12. Working with YaST.

    Introducing YaST

    Working with Users

    Working with Software

    Working with Hardware

    Working with Networks

    Working with YOU

    Working with Remote Administration

    Working with Security Settings

    Summary

13. Other Items to Know.

    Using Local Documentation

      The man Utility

      Using --help

      Getting Info

      Other Local Documentation

    Finding Remote Resources

    Working with KFind

    Scheduling Jobs for Later

      Using at

      Working with cron

    Programming 101

    Monitoring SLES

    Summary

    Command Summary

14. Sample Practicums.

    Practicum One

    Practicum Two

    Summary

Index.