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June 18, 2021

(LFCS) 1. Essential Commands 25%

Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS)


1. Essential Commands - 25%

1.1 Log into local & remote graphical and text mode consoles
1.2 Search for files
1.3 Evaluate and compare the basic file system features and options
1.4 Compare and manipulate file content
1.5 Use input-output redirection (e.g. >, >>, |, 2>)
1.6 Analyze text using basic regular expressions
1.7 Archive, backup, compress, unpack, and uncompress files
1.8 Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories
1.9 Create and manage hard and soft links
1.10 List, set, and change standard file permissions
1.11 Read, and use system documentation
1.12 Manage access to the root account

2. Operation of Running Systems - 20% 3. User and Group Management - 10% 4. Networking - 12% 5. Service Configuration - 20% 6. Storage Management - 13%

1.1 Log into local & remote graphical and text mode consoles

Basic concept to know:

  • Text Terminal: text input/output environment.
    • Originally, they meant a piece of equipment through which you could interact with a computer: in the early days of Unix, that meant a teleprinter-style device resembling a typewriter, sometimes called a teletypewriter, or “tty” in shorthand
    • Tty were used to establish a connection to a mainframe computer and share operating system provided by it
    • A typical text terminal produces input and displays output and errors
  • Console: terminal in modern computers that don't use mainframe but have an own operating system. It is generally a terminal in the physical sense that is, by some definition, the primary terminal directly connected to a machine.
    • The console appears to the operating system "like" a remote terminal
    • In Linux and FreeBSD, the console, in realty, appears as several terminals (ttys) called Virtual Consoles
  • Virtual Consoles: to provide several text terminals on a single computer
    • Multiple virtual consoles can be accessed simultaneously
  • Shell: command line interface or CLI
    • It is the primary interface that users see when they log in, whose primary purpose is to start other programs
    • It is presented inside console
    • There are many different Linux shells
    • Command-line shells include flow control constructs to combine commands. In addition to typing commands at an interactive prompt, users can write shell scripts

To summarize: A virtual console is a shell prompted in a non-graphical environment, accessed from the physical machine, not remotely.

  • Pseudo-terminal: Terminal provided by programs called terminal emulators e.g. ssh, tmux
  • X Windows System: is a windowing system for bitmap displays
    • X provides the basic framework for a graphical user interface (GUI) environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting with a mouse and keyboard
    • X does not mandate the user interface – this is handled by individual programs, like KDE or GNOME
    • It is considered "graphical terminal"
    • When is executed it will substitute one of the text terminal provided by virtual console. In CentOS the terminal will be 1, in other system could be 7.
    • Some applications running inside X Windows System provide pseudo-terminal e.g. Konsole, Gnome Terminal
    • If graphical environment is not started, you can run command startx to execute it

Log in:

  • To log into local environment you must provide, when prompted, userID and password for both graphical and text mode
  • To login into a remote text environment you can use command ssh
  • To login into a remote graphical environment you can use command ssh -X

Once logged command w can be used to show who is logged and what they are doing:

[root@localhost ~]# w
23:41:16 up 2 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.02, 0.02, 0.01
USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT
root     tty1                      23:40   60.00s  0.01s  0.01s -bash
root     pts/0    192.168.0.34     23:41    1.00s  0.02s  0.00s w

First column shows which user is logged into system and the second one to which terminal.

  • For Virtual Console in terminal is showed tty1, tty2 etc.
  • For ssh remote sessions (pseudo-terminal) in terminal is showed pts/0, pts/1 etc.
  • :0 is for X11server namely used for graphical login

References:

1.2 Search for files

  • find is recursive without parameters
  • Base syntax: find PATH PARAMETERS
  • find /etc -name "\*host*" Search in /etc all file/directories with host in their name. * is a wildcard
  • find . -perm 777 -exec rm -f '{}' \; Search from current position all files/directories with permissions 777 and after remove them
    -exec uses the result of find to do something
    {} will be substitute with result of find
    The exec's command must be contained between -exec and \;.
    ; is treated as end of command character in bash shell. For this I must escape it with \. If escaped it will be interpreted by find and not by bash shell.
  • Some parameter accepts value n with + or - in front. The meaning is:
    • +n - for greater than n
    • -n - for less than n
    • n - for exactly n
  • find /etc -size -100k Search in /etc all files/directories with size less of 100 kilobytes
  • find . -maxdepth 3 -type f -size +2M Search starting from current position, descending maximum three directories levels, files with size major of 2 megabyte
  • find . \( -name name1 -o -name name2 \)
    • -o or, it is used to combine two conditions. \ is escape to avoid that ( or ) will be interpreted by bash shell
  • find . -samefile file
    • Find all files that have same i-node of file
  • find . \! -user owner
    • It will show all files that aren't owned by user owner. ! means negation, but must be escaped by \ to not be interpreted by bash shell
  • find . -iname name
    • Search name ignoring case
  • find . -perm 222
    • Find all files with permissions equal to 222. E.g. only file with permissions 222 will be showed
  • find . -perm -222
    • Find all files with at least permissions 222. E.g. 777 match as valid.
  • find . -perm /222
    • Find all files with write for owner or write for group or write for others (at least one)
  • find . -perm -g=w
    • Find all files with at least permission write for group
  • find . -atime +1
    • Show all files accessed at least two days ago (more than 24 hours)

      -— and more examples ---
  • find . -maxdepth 3 -type f -size +2M
    • Find files with depth 3 and size above 2 mb
  • find /home/user -perm 777 -exec rm '{}' +
    • Find files with permission 777 and remove them
  • find /etc -iname "*.conf" -mtime -180 –print
    • Find files based on how many times they have been accessed (atime) or modified (mtime)
  • find /dir/ -type f –size +100m –depth
    • Find files in directory larger than 100 mb
  • find . –type f | grep * | ls –li | sort –k1 –r | head –n 101 > biggestfiles.txt
    • Find 100 larges files in a dir
  • find . – type f | ls –l | grep ‘rwx’ > files_that_match.txt
    • Find files that match ‘rwx’:

1.3 Evaluate and compare the basic file system features and options

  • Main commands: df

Printout disk free space in a human readable format:

df -h

See which file system type each partition is:

df -T

See more details with file command about individual devices:

file -sL /dev/sda1 (or other device)

File system fatures:

  • Ext: "Extended Filesystem". Old, deprecated.
  • Ext2: no journaling, max file size 2TB. Lower writes to disk = good for USB sticks etc.
  • Ext3: journaling (journal, ordered, writeback), max file size 2TB
    • Journaling: file changes and metadata are written to a journal before being committed. If a system crashes during an operation, the journal can be used to bring back the system files quicker with lower likeliness of corrupted files.
  • Ext4: From 2008. Supports up to 16TB file size. Can turn off journaling optionally.
  • Fat: From Microsoft. No journaling. Max file size 4 GB.

References:

1.4 Compare and manipulate file content

  • diff file1 file2Compare file1 and file 2
  • diff -y file1 file2Compare file1 and file 2 with output in two columns
  • vi fileIt is used to manipulate a fileInside vi:In command mode:In insert mode:
    • i - switch between command mode to insert mode
    • Esc - switch between insert to command mode
    • o - open a new line and enter in insert mode
    • O - open a new line above current position and enter in insert mode
    • :wq - write and quit
    • :q! - quit without save
    • :w! - force write
    • u - undo
    • ctrl + r - redo
    • gg - go to file begin
    • G - go to last line
    • Search
      • :/texttosearch
      • n - next occurence
      • N - previous occurence
      • :300 - go to line 300
    • dd - delete current line
    • x - delete current character
    • d$ - delete from current point to end of line
    • Replace:
      • :%s/one/ONE/g - replace all occurrences of one with ONE:%s/one/ONE - replace first occurrences of one with INE
    • Cut and paste:
      • v - select text
      • y - copy text selected text
      • p - paste copied text
      • d - delete selected text
    • It's possible to insert text
  • uniq fileRemove equal consecutive rows
    • uniq -w 2 fleRemove equal consecutive rows comparing only first two characters
    • uniq -c fileRemove equal consecutive rows and show number of occurrences
  • sort file order file content
    • sort -k 2 fileOrder file content using as reference second word
  • cut -d delimiter -f column
    • cut -d ' ' -f 1 filePrint first word of each line. Delimiter will be space
    • cut -d ' ' -f 1,3 filePrint first and third word of each line. Delimiter will be space
  • cat filePrint file content
  • tail file Print last 10 file lines
    • tail -n 5 file Print last 5 file lines
    • tail -f file Print last 10 file lines and append. Useful to monitor log files
  • head file Print first 10 file lines
    • head -n 2 file Print first 2 file lines
  • tr SET1 SET2 translate set of characters one to set of characters 2
    • cat file | tr test subIt will replace all occurrences of test with sub
    • cat file | tr -s ' 'It will replace all consecutive occurrences of space with one space
  • file namefile print the type of namefile

Compare binary files

Hex to string/bin conversion:

xxd <infile> <outfile>

Dump binary file in hex/octal:

od <file> # octal
od -x <file> # hex

Compare files byte by byte:

cmp <file1> <file2>

1.5 Use input-output redirection (e.g. >, >>, |, 2>)

All Unix-based operating systems provide at least three different input and output channels - called stdin, stdout and stderr respectively - that allow communication between a program and the environment in which it is run.

In Bash each of these channels is numbered from 0 to 2, and takes the name of file descriptor, because it refers to a particular file: as it happens with any other file stored in the system, you can manipulate it, copy it, read it or write it on its.

When a Bash environment is started, all three default descriptor files point to the terminal where the session was initialized: the input (stdin - 0) corresponds to what is typed in the terminal, and both outputs - stdout ( 1) for traditional messages and stderr (2) for error messages - they are sent to the terminal. In fact, an open terminal in a Unix-based operating system is usually itself a file, commonly stored in /dev/tty0; when a new session is opened in parallel with an existing one, the new terminal will be /dev/tty1 and so on. Therefore, initially the three file descriptor all point to the file representing the terminal in which they are executed.

There are operator to redirect input, ouput and error.

  • < - redirect stdin
    • wc < fileExecute wc using the content of file as input
  • > and >> - redirect stdout
    • echo test > file1Write test in a file1. The content of file1 will be replaced
    • echo test >> file1Append test in file1
  • 2> - redirect stderr
    • find /proc -name "cpu*" 2> /dev/nullFind in /proc file/directory that begin with cpu and redirect all errors, like 'Permission Denied' to special file /dev/null (virtual file that discard all data)
  • | - the stdout is transformed in stdin
    • cat file | wcUse the output of 'cat file' as input of wc
  • 2>&1 - redirect stderr to same place of stdout
  • All redirections can be combined
    • find /etc -name '\*a\*' 2> /dev/null | less

References:

1.6 Analyze text using basic regular expressions

  • File Globbing in LinuxFile globbing is a feature provided by the UNIX/Linux shell to represent multiple filenames by using special characters called wildcards with a single file name. A wildcard is essentially a symbol which may be used to substitute for one or more characters. Therefore, we can use wildcards for generating the appropriate combination of file names as per our requirement.
    • * - Every characterls -l a*List all file/directories that begin with a
    • ? - Every single characterls -l a?List all file/directories formed by two character that begin with a
    • [ab] - list of charactersls -l a[ab]List file/directories called aa or ab
    • [a-c]ls -l a[a-c]List file/directories called aa, ab and ac
    • Wildcards can be combinedls -l a[a-c]*List all file/directories that begins aa, ab and ac
  • grep pattern path/*Search pattern inside the strings of the files in path/*. Show file name and row matching patternIt is no recursive and key sensitive. To have recursion -r must be addedPattern can be a regular expression. The regular expression must be surrounded by ' ' otherwise content could match bash globing.
    • grep -l patter path/*Search pattern inside file in path/*. Show only file name
    • grep -lr patter path/*Search pattern inside file in path/* and path subdirectories. Show only file name
    • grep -ilr patter path/*Search pattern ignoring case inside file in path/* and path subdirectories. Show only file name
  • Not all regular expressions are supported by grep. As alternative can be used egrep
  • sed - Without -i the results of file alteration won't be permanent
    • sed 's/source/target/' fileIn any row of file, it will change first occurrence of source to target. Print all rows
    • sed 's/source/target/g' fileIn any row of file, it will change all occurrences of source to target. Print all rows
    • sed 's/source/target/gI'In any row of file, it will change all occurrences of source to target. Ignore case = case insensitive. Print all rows
    • sed '10s/source/target/' fileFor row 10, it will change first occurrence of source to target. Print all rows
    • sed -n 's/source/target/p'In any row of file, it will change first occurrence of source to target. Print only changed rows
    • sed -n '/source/p' fileIt will print only rows that contain sourceIt is equal to grep source file
    • sed -n 2,4p fileIt prints rows from 2 to 4
    • sed '/source/d' fileDelete rows with source
    • sed -n 12d fileDelete row 12
    • sed '11inewline' fileIt will insert newline as line 11
    • sed -i 's/source/target/g' fileIn any row of file, it will change all occurrences of source to target. Save result to file
    • sed -i.orign 's/source/target/g' fileIn any row of file, it will change all occurrences of source to target. Save result to file but keep an copy of original file with name file.orign

References:

1.7 Archive, backup, compress, unpack, and uncompress files

  • tar Save many files into a single fileFile permissions are maintained by default only for file users. For other user I must explicit say to maintain permission during decompression using -p parameter
    • tar jcfv file.tar.bz2 *Save all files of current directory in new bzip2 compressed file called file.tar.bz2
    • tar jxfv file.tar.bz2Extract content of file.tar.bz2
    • tar tf file.tarShow content of file.tar. Note: the file.tar isn't compressed
    • tar --delete -f test.tar fileDelete file from test.tar. Note: the test.tar isn't compressed
    • tar --update -f test.tar fileUpdate file in test.tar. Note: the test.tar isn't compressed
    • tar X<(command that generate list) -c -f file.tar *tar X<(ls | file -f - | grep -i MPEG | cut -d: -f 1) -c -f file.tar *Exclude file MPEG from content of file.tar
  • Backup a deviceDevice must be unmounteddd if=/dev/sda of=/system_images/sda.img
  • Restore devicedd if=/system_images/sda.img of=/dev/sda
  • rsync it is used to keep synchronized the content of two directories
    • yum -y install rsync Install rsync command
    • rsync -av source destSynchronize source with dest. -a archive, provide a series of default option
    • rsync -avz /tmp [email protected]:/destSynchronize tmp with dest that it's contained in a remote machine with IP 123.123.123.123.-z means that content will be compressed during transfer
    • rsync -avzhe ssh source root@remote_host:/remote_directory/Synchronize source with remote_directory using ssh

To extract an uncompressed archive:

tar -xvf /path/to/foo.tar

To create an uncompressed archive:

tar -cvf /path/to/foo.tar /path/to/foo/

To extract a .gz archive:

tar -xzvf /path/to/foo.tgz

To create a .gz archive:

tar -czvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/

To list the content of an .gz archive:

tar -ztvf /path/to/foo.tgz

To extract a .bz2 archive:

tar -xjvf /path/to/foo.tgz

To create a .bz2 archive:

tar -cjvf /path/to/foo.tgz /path/to/foo/

To extract a .tar in specified Directory:

tar -xvf /path/to/foo.tar -C /path/to/destination/

1.8 Create, delete, copy, and move files and directories

You must be able to check results of activities.

  • ls list directory content
    • ls -l long output. It will print more columnsFile Type+Permissions - Number of links - Owner - Group - Dimension - Creation date - Creation hour - NameFirst letter of first column indicate file type:
      • - : file
      • d: directory
      • l: link
    • ls -la long output plus hidden files
    • ls -lR long output recursive (show subdirectories content)
    • ls -lt long output sorted by modification time
    • ls -ld /etc show the directory properties and not its content
  • du file show disk usage
    • du directory show space used by directory and each subdirectory. It is recursive
    • du -s directory summarize space used by directory and subdirectory
    • du * show space of each file in current directory
  • pwd print current directory
  • touch fileIt creates an empty file
  • cp source destination copy source file to destination
    • cp file1 file2 ./destCopy file2 and file2 to directory dest
    • cp * ./destCopy all file of current directory to directory dest
    • cp -r dir1 dir2Copy dir1 in dir2. -r recursive
  • mkdir dir create directory dir
    • mkdir -p dir/dir2Create a directory dir with a subdirecotory dir2
  • rmdir dir remove dir. Note: dir must be empty
  • tree show directories tree
    • yum -y install tree to install tree
  • mv file file2 rename file in file2
    • mv file dir move file in directory dir
    • mv dir .. move directory dir at the upper directory level
  • rm file delete file
    • rm -f file remove read-only file
    • rm -r dir remove directory dir and all subdirectories and files

1.9 Create and manage hard and soft links

The i-node (index node) is a data structure in a Unix-style file system that describes a file-system object such as a file or a directory. Each i-node stores the attributes and disk block location(s) of the object's data.

File-system object attributes may include metadata (times of last change, access, modification), as well as owner and permission data.

Directories are lists of names assigned to i-nodes. A directory contains an entry for itself, its parent, and each of its children.

Each i-nodes is identified by a unique i-node numbers

To summarize: directory contains filenames, that is associated to i-node, that contains reference to data block.

Hard link

  • The filenames is an hard link.
  • I can have two filenames that point to same i-node.
  • Hardlink limits:
    • Must point to same device
    • Hardlinks pointing a directory cannot be created

Symbolic link

  • It's a pointer to a filename
  • This means that there will by this chain: link -> filename -> i-node
    • If filename will be removed, link will become invalid
  • Note: permissions on a link are "open", because real permission are associate to i-node
  • ls -li in first column show the i-node number
  • ln target newname It will create and hard link to the same i-node of target with name (filename) newname
  • ln -s target newlink It will create a symbolic link to target called newlink
    • ln -s /var . It will create a symbolic link to var in current directory. The name of link will be var

Note: A file is considered deleted when they don't exist anymore hard link to same i-node. This means that rm remove link, hard or symbolic.

References:

1.10 List, set, and change standard file permissions

To see user, group and permission use ls -l. Permissions are in the first column, name in third and group in fourth.

Each file/directory will have an owner and will be associated to a group.

The permissions for each file/directory are given for each of this category:

  • Owner
  • Group
  • Others

Others are all other users that are not the owner and are not member of group.

NOTE: The order matters.

For each category can be set below permissions

  • Read
    • Octal value: 4
  • Write
    • Octal value: 2
  • Exec (Execution)
    • Octal value: 1

The right that each permission provide are different and depends if target is a file or a directory:

Note: When exec is set for group of other, file will be executed with identity of the user that are executing command (user ID) and group of user (group ID)

Absolute mode:

  • Use numbers for each permission, that must be added if more that a permission
  • chmod 760 file Change file permission
    • Owner: grant read, write and exec
    • Group: grant read, write
    • Others: no permission

Relative mode:

  • chmod +x file Add exec to owner, group and other
  • chmod g+w file Add write to group
  • chmod o-rw file Remove read and write to others

Advanced permissions

There are other special permissions that can be granted to file/dirctories

  • Suid: When a file with setuid is executed, the resulting process will assume the effective user ID given to the owner class. This enables users to be treated temporarily as root (or another user). E.g passwd has suid setted
  • Sgid: When a file with setgid is executed, the resulting process will assume the group ID given to the group class
  • Sticky bit is applied to /tmp
  • Suid cannot be applied to Bash scripts

Absolute mode:

  • chmod 4760 file Change file permission
    • Add suid
    • Owner: grant read, write and exec
    • Group: grant read, write
    • Others: no permission

Relative mode:

  • chmod u+s file set suid
  • chmod g+s file set guid
  • chmod +t dir set sticky bit

References:

1.11 Read, and use system documentation

  • commad --help
    • Show help of a command
  • man command
    • Show command manual
    • man -k keywordSearch a manual for provided keywork
      • sudo mandbCreate database used by man -k command
  • /usr/share/doc
    • It contains configuration files examples
  • info command
    • It shows info document
  • bash completion
    • During the digitalization of a command can be used the pressed two time Tab key to show possible value or parameter
    • yum -y install bash-completion must be installed

1.12 Manage access to the root account

  • root is the system administrator
  • When logged as root, shell prompts # character. Otherwise $
  • su Used to become root. It will continue to use the current session with user and group id substituted
    • It will ask root password
  • su - Used to become root. It is same as logging into a fresh session on a terminal
    • It will ask root password
  • su - user Login as user.
    • It will be required user password
    • If command is executed by root, password won't be required
  • sudo command to allow an ordinary user to execute commands as a different user (usually the superuser)
  • In default configuration, group wheel is authorized to act as root. If a user is member of wheel can execute all command as root with this syntax:
    • sudo command
    • NOTE: user password must be provided
  • To add user to wheel execute:
    • usermod -aG wheel username
  • visudo Modify the sudo configurationWhit this row inserted in sudo configuration, demo user can execute this command:sudo -u user commandThis means that it will execute command with the identity of user.If -u is not specified, this means that command will be executed as root.demo user can open a root session running:sudo su -The powerfulness of this command is that a root session can be opened only providing user password (in this case the password of user demo).This means that root direct login (with user and password) could be disabled and root session will be opened using only sudo. Some Linux distribution use this method as default configuration (e.g Ubuntu).The advance is that root password is not shared if I need to add a new system administrator.
    • Basic configuration:
    • demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL​ The first field indicates the username that the rule will apply to.
    • demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL​ The first "ALL" indicates that this rule applies to all hosts.
    • demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL​ This "ALL" indicates that user demo can run commands as all users.
    • demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL​ This "ALL" indicates that user demo can run commands as all groups.
    • demo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL​ The last "ALL" indicates these rules apply to all commands.
  • In sudo configuration % indicate group
    • %users localhost=/sbin/shutdown -h nowThe users in group users can execute command /sbin/shutdown -h now on localhost as root
  • To simplify configuration in sudo configuration can be used aliasSOFTWARE can be used in sodo configuration rows
    • Cmnd_Alias SOFTWARE = /bin/rpm,/usr/bin/up2date, /usr/bin/yum
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June 18, 2021, 09:02
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