Accessible to all, this book teaches the essentials to anyone who wants to become an effective and independent Debian GNU/Linux administrator.

It covers all the topics that a competent Linux administrator should master, from the installation and the update of the system, up to the creation of packages and the compilation of the kernel, but also monitoring, backup and migration, without forgetting advanced topics like SELinux or AppArmor setup to secure services, automated installations, or virtualization with Xen, KVM or LXC.

Structure of the book

The first half of the book covers topics relevant for any Debian user:

• how the Debian project works and the various distributions that it offers;
• how to effectively use the packaging system and the associated tools (dpkg, APT, …);
• how to install Debian with debian-installer;
• how to find the required documentation/help;
• how to setup new services;
• how to solve the problems that you might encounter;

The second half of the book concerns system administrators who have to setup and manage a Debian server, or a large set of desktop machines. You’ll learn:

• how to configure all the most common services (Apache, Postfix, OpenLDAP, Samba, NFS, …)
• how to setup virtual machines with KVM/Xen/LXC
• how to secure your server
• how to automatize installations with FAI/d-i/simple-cdd
• how to manage your storage with LVM and RAID
• etc.

Table of contents

Check out the table of contents of the online version to get a grasp on the topics covered by the book.