This comprehensive guide can help you administer Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 effectively in any production environment, no matter how complex or challenging.

Long-time Red Hat insider Tammy Fox brings together today’s best practices for the entire system lifecycle, from planning and deployment through maintenance and troubleshooting. Fox shows how to maximize your efficiency and effectiveness by automating day-to-day maintenance through scripting, deploying security updates via Red Hat Network, implementing central identity management services, and providing shared data with NFS and Samba.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed contains extensive coverage of network and web services, from the Apache HTTP server and Sendmail email services to remote login with OpenSSH. Fox also describes Red Hat’s most valuable tools for monitoring and optimization and presents thorough coverage of security—including a detailed introduction to Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux).

• Streamline deployment with Kickstart

• Find, install, update, remove, and verify software

• Detect, analyze, and manage hardware

• Manage storage with LVM, RAID, ACLs, and quotas

• Use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 on 64-bit and multi-core systems

• Administer users and groups more efficiently and securely

• Ensure trustworthy backup and rapid recovery

• Script and schedule tasks to run automatically

• Provide unified identity management services

• Configure Apache, BIND, Samba, and Sendmail

• Monitor and tune the kernel and individual applications

• Protect against intruders with SELinux and ExecShield

• Set up firewalls with iptables

• Enable the Linux Auditing System

• Use virtualization to run multiple operating systems concurrently

Part I     Installation and Configuration

Chapter 1 Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Chapter 2 Post-Installation Configuration

Chapter 3 Operating System Updates

Part II Operating System Core Concepts

Chapter 4 Understanding Linux Concepts 

Chapter 5 Working with RPM Software

Chapter 6 Analyzing Hardware

Chapter 7 Managing Storage

Chapter 8 64-Bit, Multi-Core, and Hyper-Threading Technology Processors

Part III System Administration

Chapter 9 Managing Users and Groups

Chapter 10 Techniques for Backup and Recovery

Chapter 11 Automating Tasks with Scripts

Part IV Network Services

Chapter 12 Identity Management

Chapter 13 Network File Sharing

Chapter 14 Granting Network Connectivity with DHCP

Chapter 15 Creating a Web Server with the Apache HTTP Server  

Chapter 16 Hostname Resolution with BIND

Chapter 17 Securing Remote Logins with OpenSSH

Chapter 18 Setting Up an Email Server with Sendmail

Chapter 19 Explaining Other Common Network Services

Part V Monitoring and Tuning

Chapter 20 Monitoring System Resources  

Chapter 21 Monitoring and Tuning the Kernel

Chapter 22 Monitoring and Tuning Applications  

Chapter 23 Protecting Against Intruders with Security-Enhanced Linux  

Chapter 24 Configuring a Firewall

Chapter 25 Linux Auditing System

Appendixes

Appendix A Installing Proprietary Kernel Modules 

Appendix B Creating Virtual Machines  

Appendix C Preventing Security Breaches with ExecShield

Appendix D Troubleshooting

Tammy Fox served as technical leader of Red Hat’s documentation group, where she wrote and revised The Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration Guide. She was founding editor of Red Hat Magazine, now an online publication reaching more than 800,000 system administrators and others interested in Linux and open source. She wrote Red Hat’s LogViewer tool and has written and contributed to several Red Hat configuration tools. Fox is also the founding leader of the Fedora Docs Project.

Register your book at www.samspublishing.com/register for convenient access to updates and to download example scripts presented in this book.

Category: Linux/Networking

Covers: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

User Level: Intermediate–Advanced

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

It is NOT at advanced level - 2008-05-03
Reviewer Rating:
It is stated that the book is for intermediate to advanced level. However, I did not found it advanced at all. Little bit of disappointment.

Lack of Real-World Examples - 2009-09-07
Reviewer Rating:
I skipped to the DNS Config chapter, being new to the DNS config in Linux, I found it hard to follow the organization and understand the author's explanation of terms. Adding some real-world examples would have help explain things, i.e. setting up DNS [...]. Instead, I had to rely on the almighty Google to direct me to a better BIND config tutorial.

Not at all comprehensive. - 2009-06-26
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book as a desktop reference, but so far have been greatly disappointed. Every section I have read has been missing critical information, and the examples are so bare-bones as to be almost useless. You can follow the instructions to the letter, but you'll still find yourself scouring the internet for the missing information. The worst section I have come across is the NFS setup, which dedicates TWO pages to configuring NFS via command line and is missing all the pre-configuration necessary to make it work. Might be an okay book if you're already well-versed in RHEL, but if you're expecting comprehensive info, go elsewhere.

dissapointment - 2009-02-12
Reviewer Rating:
When I got an alert on this book when it was first available I jumped on buying it. Frankly, it fell severely short of expectations. Maybe I presumed there would be more in an unleashed book than what was found between these pages.

A great book for the novice administrator - 2008-11-20
Reviewer Rating:
I have found this book to be great. I was familiar enough with Linux and yet always seemed to be scouring the internet for How To guides for setting up simple services like Samba Server, FTP services and so on. This book is basically a collection of those most common guides, the configuration of the various services is discussed in sufficient depth and the book is clearly written. It may not have the depth some people are looking for based on the reviews but it has been great for me. I feel like I understand whats going on with my CentOS boxes these days.

I use this book in conjunction with CentOS 5.2 (Red Hat Enterprise clone).

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