Installation covers most flavors of Linux distribution such as Red hat Linux and Fedora Linux and Suse Linux

• First Stage: Starting the Installation
• First Stage: Boot Media
• Accessing the Installer
• First Stage: Installation Method
• Network Installation Server
• Second Stage: Installation Overview
• Configuring File Systems
• Advanced Partitioning
• Package Selection
• First Boot: Post-Install Configuration
• Starting a Kickstart Installation
• Anatomy of a Kickstart File

Command line:

• Introduction to Bash Shell
• Basic Commands (ls,cd,tail,cat,mkdir)
• Commands to work with file(mv,cp,rm)
• Text editor (vim)
• Stream text editor (grep, sed, and awk)
• STDERR,STDOUT,STDIN
• Compression Tar,gzip and bzip2
• Easily accessible tools in linux.

System Initialization

• Boot Sequence Overview
• Troubleshooting boot issues
• What is GRUB and grub.conf
• Starting the Boot Process: GRUB
• Kernel Initialization
• init Initialization (init 0,1,2,3,4,5)
• Run Levels
• /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
• /etc/rc.d/rc
• System V run levels
• /etc/rc.d/rc.local
• Controlling Services(service,init.d,chkconfig)

Booting and run levels

• The boot process: from BIOS to kernel then to user space
• Setting kernel parameters
• Run levels and init scripts
• Configuring services to run at boot
• Securing single-user mode (su login)
• Shutting down and rebooting the system

Package Management - Working with packages

• RPM Package Manager
• Installing and Removing Software
• Updating a Kernel RPM
• rpm Queries
• rpm Verification
• About yum
• Using yum
• Searching packages/files
• Configuring Additional Repositories
• Creating a private repository
• Red Hat Network
• Red Hat Network Server
• Entitlements
• Red Hat Network Client

Kernel Services - Configuring the kernel

• The Linux Kernel
• Kernel Images and Variants
• Kernel Modules
• Kernel Module Utilities
• Managing the initrd Image
• Accessing Drivers Through /dev
• Device Node Examples
• Managing /dev With udev
• Adding Files Under /dev
• Kernel Configuration With /proc
• /proc Examples
• sysctl : Persistent Kernel Configuration
• Exploring Hardware Devices (hwinfo)
• Monitoring Processes and Resources(kill,ps,pstree,top)

System Services – Linux System Services

• Network Time Protocol
• System Logging
• syslog Configuration
• XOrg: The X11 Server
• XOrg Server Configuration
• XOrg in runlevel 3
• XOrg in runlevel 5
• Remote X Sessions
• SSH: Secure Shell
• VNC: Virtual Network Computing
• cron
• Controlling Access to cron
• System crontab Files
• Daily Cron Jobs
• The anacron System
• CUPS

User Administration

• Adding a New User Account
• User Private Groups
• Modifying / Deleting User Accounts
• Group Administration
• Password Aging Policies
• Switching Accounts
• sudo
• Network Users
• Authentication Configuration
• Example: NIS Configuration
• Example: LDAP Configuration
• SUID and SGID Executables
• SGID Directories
• The Sticky Bit
• Default File Permissions
• Access Control Lists (ACLs)
• SELinux
• SELinux: Targeted Policy
• SELinux: Management

File system Management

• Adding New File systems to the File system Tree
• Device Recognition
• Disk Partitioning
• Managing Partitions
• Making Filesystems
• Difference between ext3 and ext4
• Filesystem Labels
• tune2fs
• Mount Points and /etc/fstab
• Mounting Filesystems with mount
• Unmounting Filesystems
• mount By Example
• Handling Swap Files and Partitions
• Mounting NFS Filesystems
• Automounter
• Direct Maps
• gnome-mount
• Checking available free space and space used by files (df,du)
• Checking and correcting the integrity of filesystems (fsck)

File system security

• Users and groups
• The ‘root’ user or superuser
• Changing file ownership (chown)
• Changing file group ownership (chgrp)
• Permissions on files
• Permissions on directories
• How permissions are applied
• Changing permissions (chmod)

Processes and jobs

• What processes are ?
• The properties of a process
• Parent processes and child processes
• Killing processes and sending signals to a process (kill, killall, xkill)

Advanced File system Management

• Configuring the Quota System
• Setting Quotas for Users
• Reporting Quota Status
• What is Software RAID?
• Software RAID Configuration
• Software RAID Testing and Recovery
• What is Logical Volume Manager (LVM)?
• Creating Logical Volumes
• Resizing Logical Volumes
• Logical Volume Manager Snapshots
• Using LVM Snapshots
• Archiving tools: tar
• Archiving Tools: dump/restore
• Archiving Tools: rsync:

Network Interfaces

• Driver Selection
• Speed and Duplex Settings
• IPv4 Addresses
• Dynamic IPv4 Configuration
• Static IPv4 Configuration
• Device Aliases
• Routing Table
• Default Gateway
• Configuring Routes
• Verify IP Connectivity
• Defining the Local Host Name
• Local Resolver
• Remote Resolvers
• Verify DNS Connectivity
• Network Configuration Utilities
• Transparent Dynamic Configuration
• Implementing IPv6
• IPv6: Dynamic Interface Configuration
• IPv6: Static Interface Configuration
• IPv6: Routing Configuration
• New and Modified Utilities

Basic networking configuration

• Configure a network device to connect to a local network
• Configure a network device to connect to a wide-area network
• Communicate between subnets within a single network
• Configure a network device to implement authentication
• Configuring a multi- homed network device
• Resolving networking and communication problems
• /sbin/route
• /sbin/ifconfig
• /bin/netstat
• /bin/ping
• /sbin/arp
• /usr/sbin/arpwatch
• /usr/sbin/tcpdump
• /usr/sbin/lsof
• /usr/bin/nc

Troubleshooting network issues

• ifconfig
• route
• netstat
• /etc/network and /etc/sysconfig/network - scripts/
• System log files
• ping
• /etc/resolv.conf
• /etc/hosts
• /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny
• /etc/hostname and /etc/HOSTNAME
• traceroute
• nslookup and dig
• dmesg

Organizing Networked Systems

• Host Name Resolution
• DNS-Specific Resolvers
• Trace a DNS Query with dig
• Exploring DNS with host
• Service Profile: DNS
• Getting Started with BIND
• bind-chroot Package
• caching-nameserver Package

Network File Sharing Services

• NFS server and NFS Client
• NFS share for group collaboration

SMB

• Samba server and samba client connections
• Samba share for group collaboration

Managing sendmail

• E-mail aliases
• Mail quotas
• Virtual mail domains
• Configuring internal mail relays
• Monitoring SMTP servers
• /etc/aliases
• sendmail.cw

DNS - BIND configuration

• Configure BIND to function as a caching-only DNS server
• Configure a caching-only name server to forward DNS queries
• Format, and reload the DNS by using kill or ndc
• Configuring DNS logging
• Configuring BIND options
• Configuring directory location for zone files
• /etc/named.conf
• /usr/sbin/ndc
• /usr/sbin/named-bootconf
• kill

Web Proxy - Squid Configuration

• Install a proxy server using Squid
• Configure a proxy server using Squid
• Implementing access policies
• Setting up authentication
• Utilizing memory usage
• Squid.conf
• acl
• http_access

DHCP configuration

• What is DHCP?
• Static hosts
• Dynamic hosts
• dhcpd.conf
• dhcpd.leases

Web server - Apache Configuration

• Apache Overview
• Apache Server Configuration
• Virtual Hosts
• Apache Access Configuration
• Deploy a basic CGI application
• Configure group-managed content
• Configure private directories
• Monitoring Apache load and performance
• Restricting client user access
• Configuring mod_php and PHP support
• Setting up client user authentication
• Configuring Apache server options
• access. log
• .htaccess
• httpd.conf
• htpasswd

Linux Security Administration

• Auditing source code
• Securing SSH
• Getting security alerts
• Open mail relays
• Installing Intrusion Detection Systems
• Port scanning with nmap
• Firewall using IP Tables
• Filter and NAT Rules
• SMTP Overview and Implementations
• Connections and Relays
• SMTP AUTH & StartTLS/SSL
• Password Security and PAM
• Security Considerations
• Activating and Interfacing with SELinux
• SELinux commands and Roles
• Location & Access
• Boot level security (GRUB)
• Security need for TCP wrappers
• /etc/inetd.conf
• /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny
• xinetd
• Net filter Overview
• Rules: General Considerations
• Connection Tracking
• Network Address Translation (NAT)
• IP tables
• /proc/sys/net/ipv4

Introduction to Shell Script

• Different type of shell
• Shell scrtip basics
• Executing shell scripts.
• Header,comments on script
• Redirection
• Vairables
• Conditions
• Loops
• Eg: Backup script and scheduling the script

Storage

• Configure a system as an iSCSI initiator that persistently mounts an iSCSI target

Career opportunities in Linux domain:

• System Administrator - Linux
• Technical Support Analyst - Linux
• Linux Device Driver Engineer
• Linux kernel Developer
• Embedded Engineer - Linux/UNIX Kernel