Linux® Bible 2011 Edition: Boot up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 13 Other Distributions

Chapter 9. Learning Basic Administration

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating user accounts

• Configuring hardware

• Monitoring system performance

• Doing remote system administration

Your system administrator duties don't end after you have installed Linux. If multiple people are using your Linux system, you, as administrator, must give each person his own login account. You'll use useradd and related commands to add, modify, and delete user accounts.

Configuring hardware is also on your duty list. When you add hardware to your Linux computer, that hardware is often detected and configured automatically. In some cases, however, the hardware may not have been set up properly, and you will use commands such as I smod, modprobe, insmod, and rmmod to configure the right modules to get the hardware working.

Note

A module is object code that is loaded on demand. Most modules are device drivers that allow application programs to talk to a particular piece of hardware. The "Configure Hardware" section later in this chapter includes information about configuring modules.

Your duties also include monitoring system performance. You may have a runaway process on your system or you may just be experiencing slow performance. Tools that come with Linux can help you determine how much of your CPU and memory are being consumed.

These tasks are explored in this chapter.

Creating User Accounts

Every person who uses your Linux system should have a separate user account. Having a user account provides each person with an area in ...