Carla Schroder - Linux Cookbook: Essential Skills for Linux Users and System & Network Administrators

by Carla Schroder

Copyright 2021 Carla Schroder. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published by OReilly Media, Inc. , 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.

OReilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com .

• Acquisitions Editor: Suzanne McQuade
• Development Editor: Jeff Bleiel
• Production Editor: Daniel Elfanbaum
• Copyeditor: Sonia Saruba
• Proofreader: Tom Sullivan
• Indexer: nSight, Inc.
• Interior Designer: David Futato
• Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery
• Illustrator: Kate Dullea

• December 2004: First Edition
• September 2021: Second Edition

See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781492087168 for release details.

The OReilly logo is a registered trademark of OReilly Media, Inc. Linux Cookbook, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of OReilly Media, Inc.

The views expressed in this work are those of the author, and do not represent the publishers views. While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights.

978-1-492-08716-8

[LSI]

Way back in olden times I wrote the first edition of the Linux Cookbook, whichwas released unto a joyous world in 2004. It sold well, I heard from manyhappy readers, and some are still my friends.

For a Linux book, 17 years old is ancient. Linux was 14 years old in 2004, awee baby computer operating system. Even so, it was already a popularand widely used powerhouse, adapting to any role, from tiny embedded devicesto mainframes and supercomputers. The rapid growth of Linux is partly due to itbeing a free clone of Unix, the most mature and powerful operating system of all.The other major factor in the speedy growth and adoption of Linux is the absenceof barriers. Anyone can download and try it, and the source code is freelyavailable to anyone who wants to use and contribute to it.

At the time it was a great example of form following function, like my first car.It ran, it was reliable, but it wasnt pretty, and it needed a lot of customwiggling of this and jiggling of that to keep going. Running a Linux system backthen meant learning your way around a hodgepodge of commands, scripts, andconfiguration files, and a fair bit of wiggling and jiggling. Software management, storage management, networking, audio, video, kernel management, process managementeverything required a lot of hands-on work and continual study.

Some 17 years later, every important subsystem in Linux has substantially changedand improved. Now all those manual chores we had to do for basic administrationare replaced by what I call It Just Works Subsystems. Every aspect of runninga Linux system is many times easier, and we can focus on using Linux to do coolthings instead of having to wiggle and jiggle this and that just to keep itrunning.

I am delighted to present this greatly updated Linux Cookbook second edition,and I hope you enjoy learning about all of this cool new goodness.