Solaris System Administration

Course Description

This four-day hands-on course prepares students for first of two exams needed in order to become an Oracle Certified Expert on Solaris, while teaching students the essential tasks needed to administer a Solaris system.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Install the Solaris operating system
• Update and install new software packages
• Explain UFS file system capabilities
• Decipher naming conventions for devices
• Correctly partition a disk
• Find files, applications and utilities by date, name, owner, type or other criteria
• Enable disk quotas
• Mount and unmount devices and restrict access to them
• Monitor system performance and identify performance bottlenecks
• Kill, suspend and alter process priority
• Schedule and reschedule tasks
• Add, modify, and delete users and groups
• Configure user shell environments
• Back up and restore files
• Explain the Service Management Facility
• Understand and troubleshoot the boot process
• Manage passwords
• Protect files and directories from unauthorized access
• Start up and shutdown any Solaris computer

Course Benefits

Students will increase their productivity by learning the tools and techniques needed to efficiently and effectively administer a Solaris system and be prepared to take the first of two exams needed in order to become an Oracle Certified Expert on Solaris.

Who Should Attend

This course is valuable for all computer professionals involved with Solaris, especially for those who are acquiring system administration responsibilities on a Solaris system, and for those interested in passing the first of two exams needed in order to become an Oracle Certified Expert on Solaris.

Prerequisite

To ensure your success, we recommend you first take either our Introduction To Solaris course or our Introduction To Linux course, or have the equivalent knowledge. Familiarity with Web browsers, the vi editor, and Solaris command line interface is assumed.

Method Of Instruction

Lecture, demonstrations, questions and answers, and numerous hands-on exercises.

Hands-on Exercises

Throughout this course, students perform a series of extensive hands-on exercises including:

• Logging in
• Installing Solaris
• Performing package administration and updating software
• Booting and rebooting the system
• Understanding run levels and startup scripts
• Rebooting a hung system
• Device configuration
• Working with NVRAM parameters
• Creating an file system
• Manually checking the file system
• Monitoring disk space
• Attaching and examining devices
• Managing file and group ownership
• Setting and changing permission modes with chmod, and umask
• Working with SUID and SGID
• Discovering available devices on the Solaris system
• Mounting and unmounting file systems
• Add new users and groups
• Managing passwords
• Capturing a failed login attempt
• Becoming super user
• Securing remote access
• Customizing system log files
• Setting up sudo
• Using ssh
• Making, editing, and deleting a crontab entry
• Using ufsdump and ufsrestore to back up and restore files
• Obtaining process status and changing status priorities
• Scheduling, and rescheduling processes with at, cron, nice, and renice
• Monitoring performance with free, vmstat, ps and top
• How to print files

Course Outline

Chapter 1: Getting Started

• Solaris operating system features
• Understanding system concepts
• Logging in and using the system
• Defining the root account
• Difference between su and su -
• Accessing and searching the on-line reference manual

Chapter 2: Installing Solaris

• Installation requirements
• Installation options
• Upgrading software
• Patches and packages

Chapter 3: System Boot

• The boot process
• BIOS setting and configuration
• Boot PROM commands
• Understanding init
• Understanding run levels
• Single-User Mode
• NVRAM parameters
• Service Management Facility
• Configuring devices
• System shutdown

Chapter 4: The Solaris File System

• Devices and special files
• Disk partitioning
• The mount command
• The fsck command
• Managing hard and symbolic links

Chapter 5: Disks

• Disk architecture
• Disk nomenclature
• Partitioning a disk
• Labeling a disk
• The path_to_inst file
• The /etc/vfstab file
• Listing devices

Chapter 6: User Administration

• User accounts
• The /etc/passwd file
• The /etc/shadow file
• Adding new users and groups
• Using the SMC GUI
• Customizing the user environment

Chapter 7: File Security

• The chmod command
• Securing network access
• Password management
• Enabling and monitoring sudo
• SUID and SGID
• Using ssh

Chapter 8: Printing

• The Solaris print process
• Enabling printers
• Configuring the LP print service

Chapter 9: Monitoring Processes and Automating Tasks

• The /etc/cron.d directory
• The cron utility
• Making your own crontab entry
• The at utility
• The top utility
• The vmstat utility
• The free utility
• System logs

Chapter 10: Backing Up and Restoring Files

• Planning a backup strategy
• Backing up files with ufsdump
• Backing up files with tar
• Snapshot
• Restoring files