HNDIT2421

SERVE
Administration
Week 3 – Introduction to Centos
 CentOS
• Community Enterprise Operating Systems
 CENT OS
• Which stands for Community Enterprise
Operating System, is the result of a group of
open source contributors and users working
together to develop Linux solutions that are
freely available to users who do not require a
great deal of commercial support to achieve
their goal.
• CentOS dedicated servers were designed based on Red
Hat's product, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• Although the Red Hat Linux server is made entirely of

free and open source software, it is only distributed to
the public in binary form (including CD-ROM and DVD-
ROM) at a fee paid by subscribers.

• However, Red Hat does release its source code for its
product under the terms of the GNU General Public
License.
 So the use of the code for the creation of the CentOS
Linux distribution is an entirely valid and acceptable
practice.
 The distribution of CentOS products completely complies
with Red Hat's redistribution policy.
 The CentOS server is almost identical to the Red Hat
product except that it is modified to remove all Red Hat
branding and artwork.
 CentOS and its Linux solutions are not in any way
affiliated with or supported by Red
Hat, Inc.
 Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available only through a paid
subscription service that provides access to software
updates and varying levels of technical support.
 The product is largely composed of software packages
distributed under open source licenses, and the source
code for these packages is made public by Red Hat.
 CentOS developers use Red Hat's source code to create a
final product very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red
Hat's branding and logos are changed because Red Hat
does not allow them to be redistributed
 CentOS is available free of charge. Technical support is
primarily provided by the community via official
mailing lists, web forums, and chat rooms.
 The project is not affiliated with Red Hat and thus
receives no financial or logistical support from the
company; instead, the CentOS Project relies on
donations from users and organizational sponsors.
 The CentOS dedicated Linux servers and distributions are
developed by a team of core developers who are
supported by a user community comprised of system
administrators, network administrators, enterprise users,
managers, core Linux contributors, and Linux enthusiasts
all over the world.
 CentOS products were designed with the goal of providing
organizations and individuals with Linux products to help
them achieve success in activities like dedicated Linux
server hosting and dedicated server web hosting.
 In an effort to meet this goal, CentOS is committed to:
 Creating solutions that are easily maintained.
 Usable for the long-term in production environments.
 A user and package maintainer friendly environment.
 Supporting the core for the long-term.
 Actively working toward the development of additional solutions.
 A strong community infrastructure.
 An open management policy.
 An open business model.
 Commercial support through its partner vendors, like Vault
Networks.
 CentOS version numbers have two parts, a major version
and a minor version.
 The major and minor version numbers respectively
correspond to the major version and update set of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux from which the source packages used to
build CentOS are taken.
 For example, CentOS4.4 is built from the source packages
from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 update 4.
 Since mid-2006, starting with version 4.4 (formerly known
as Red Hat Enterprise Linux4.0 update 4), Red Hat has
adopted a versioning convention identical to that of
CentOS, e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5
 CentOS supports the x86 architectures: x86 (32- bit)
 x86-64 (AMD's AMD64 and Intel's EM64T, 64-bit)
 The following architectures were supported by CentOS up to
version 4:
 IA-64 (Intel Itanium architecture, 64-bit) (beta support since
CentOS 3)
 PowerPC/32 (Apple Macintosh and PowerMac running the G3 or
G4 PowerPC processor) (beta support since CentOS 3)
 IBM Mainframe (eServer zSeries and S/390) (not
CentOS 5)
 The following two architectures were
 supported or partially supported in CentOS but
 are not supported upstream:

 Alpha (CentOS 4 only)

 SPARC (beta support since CentOS 3)
ALive CD version of CentOS is available at
mirror.centos.org.

ALive USB of CentOS can be created manually or

with UNetbootin.
 Tao Linux was another prominent distribution derived from
Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
 Its primary developer announced in June 2006 that Tao
would be retired and rolled into CentOS development.
 Migration via 'yum update' was available to Tao users,
providing a relatively painless migration path to the
CentOS release.
 This helped prevent Tao users from becoming "orphaned"
by their OS.
 In July of 2009, it was reported that CentOS's founder,
Lance Davis, had disappeared in 2008.
 Davis had ceased contribution to the project but
continued to hold the registration for the CentOS domain
and PayPal account.
 In August of 2009, the CentOS team reportedly made
contact with Davis and obtained the centos.info and
centos.org domains.
 Topics
• Overview
• Using Centos
• Administration
• Networking
 Overview
• Is not associated by Red Hat Inc.
• Centos takes freely available Red Hat
Enterprise Linux source code
• A set of packages and ISO images for installing
centos or running it as live CD
• Freely distributed without paying
subscription fees
• Doesn’t achieve 100% compatibility with RHEL
(Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
 Stepping Stone to RHEL(Red
Hat Enterprise Linux
• As learning tools to become familiar
• The Backing of a Major Linux Vendor
• Technical Support
• Certified Hardware and Software
• Timely Security patches and Updates
• Certification and Training
 Installation
• Media – Centos installation DVD
• PC
– A Pentium class PC ( > 400MHz)
– 128Mb RAM(text), 512MB RAM(GUI)
• Disk Space
– Depending on packages
– 1.5GB to 10GB
• Keyboard & Monitor
 Begin Installation
• Insert DVD
• Start your Computer
• Start the Boot Procedure – Press Enter
– Media Check
– Continue
– Choose Language
– Choose keyboard
– Choose Fresh Install
 Begin Installation
• Choose your partioning Stratetgy
• Review and Modify partioning and Modify
Partioning Layout
• Configure Boot Loader
• Change Device
• Set Hostname
• Choose a Time Zone
 Begin Installation
• Set Root Password
• Install Classes
• Customise categories
• About Install
• Finish Installing
 Running Centos Firstboot
• Firewall – allow or deny access
• SELinux – additional layer security
• Date and Time
• Create User
• Sound Card
• Additional CDs
• Get Updates
 Getting Started With Desktop
• Checking out Your Home Folder
• Open With Side panel
• Background
• Organise your Work – move, delete, rename
• Minimize
• Maximize
• Close
 Getting Started With Desktop
• Change Background
• Choose Browser and Others Apps
• Add a Screensaver
• Change the theme
• Configure your Panel
• Workspaces
 Using Linux Command
• Shell is command line interpreter
• The shell is powerful, complex
 id
• To find out information about your identity, use
the id command as follows:
• $ id
uid=500(timothy) gid=500(timothy)
groups=10(wheel),100(users),500(timothy
)
context=user_u:system_r:unconfined_t
 who
• You can see information about your current
login session by using the who command.
$ who -u -m -H
• NAME LINE TIME IDLE PID COMMENT
• timothy pts/1 2009-04-02 14:12 . 7264
(:0.0)
 pwd
• To find out what your current directory is, type
the pwd command:
• $ pwd
• /usr/bin
 $HOME
• To find out the name of your home directory,
type the echo command, followed by the
$HOME variable:
• $ echo $HOME
• /home/timothy
 cd
• To get back to your home directory, you can
simply type the change directory (cd)
command.
• You can also use the tilde (~) character to
indicate the home directory:
• $ cd ~
 ls
• list the contents of your home directory, using
the ls command.
• $ ls -la /home/timothy
 ps
• The most common utility for checking running
processes is the ps command.
• $ ps u
• $ ps au
• To see and thereby monitor all the
processes
• $ ps aux | less
 Exiting the Shell
• To exit the shell when you are done, type
exit or press [Ctrl]+D.
• There are also administrative commands
in /sbin or /usr/sbin directories.
 Getting Help with Shell
• help command
• man command
 Linux Filesystems
• /bin —Contains common Linux user
commands, such as ls, sort, date, and
chmod.
• /boot— Has the bootable Linux kernel
and boot loader configuration files
(GRUB).
 Linux Filesystems
• /dev—Contains files representing access points
to devices on your systems. These include
terminal devices (tty*), floppy disks (fd*), hard
disks (hd* or sd*), RAM (ram*), and CD-ROM
(cd*). (Applications normally access these
devices directly through the device files, but
end-users rarely access them directly.)
• /etc— Contains administrative configuration
files.
• /home—Contains directories assigned to each
user with a login account.
 Linux Filesystems
• /media —Provides a location for mounting devices, such
as remote file systems and removable media (with
directory names of cdrom, floppy, etc.). In CentOS,
many removable media are mounted automatically in
this directory when the media is inserted (CD or DVD) or
connected (USB pen drives or cameras).
• /proc —Provides a mechanism for the kernel to send
information to processes.
• /root—Represents the root user’s home directory.
• /sbin —Contains administrative commands and daemon
processes.
 Linux Filesystems
• /sys —A /proc-like file system, added with
the Linux 2.6 kernel and intended to
contain files for getting hardware status
and reflecting the system’s device tree as
it is seen by the kernel. It pulls many of its
functions from /proc.
• /tmp —Contains temporary files used by
applications.
 Linux Filesystems
• /usr—Contains user documentation, games,
libraries (lib), and a variety of other user and
administrative commands and files.
• /var—Contains directories of data used by
various applications. In particular, this is where
you would place files that you share as an FTP
server (/var/ftp) or a Web Server (/var/www). It
also contains all system log files (/var/log). In
time, FTP, HTTP, and similar services will move
to the /srv directory to adhere to the Linux
Standards Base
 Creating Files and Directories
• cd— Change to another directory.
• pwd—Print the name of the current
working directory.
• mkdir— Create a directory.
• chmod— Change the permission on a file
or directory.
• ls— List the contents of a directory.
 Moving, Copying, and Deleting Files

• $ mv abc def
• $ mv abc ∼$ cp abc def
• $ cp abc ∼$ rm abc
• $ rm *
 Using the vi Text Editor
• $ vi /tmp/test
 Exploring Other Text Editors
• emacs—Most experienced Linux and UNIX users traditionally have used vi
or emacs as their text editor. Many extensions are available with emacs to
handle editing of many different file types.
• gedit—The GNOME text editor that runs in the GUI
• joe— The joe editor is similar to many PC text editors. Use control and arrow
keys to move around. Press [Ctrl]+C to exit with no save or [Ctrl]+X to save
and exit.
• kate— A nice-looking editor that comes in the kdebase package. It has lots of
bells and whistles, such as highlighting for different types of programming
languages and controls for managing word wrap.
• kedit—A GUI-based text editor that comes with the KDE desktop
• nedit—A good tool for editing source code
 Accessing and Running Applications

• Running yum to Download and Install

RPMs(Red Hat Package Manager)
• # yum install gcc
• Using yum to Install Packages Locally
• yum localinstall /media/disk/CentOS/gftp-*
 Using the rpm(Red Hat Package
Manager) Command
• The rpm command has the following modes of
operation:
• ■ Install (-i)
• ■ Upgrade (-U)
• ■ Freshen (-F)
• ■ Query (-q)
• ■ Verify (-V)
• ■ Signature check (--checksig)
• ■ Uninstall (-e)
• ■ Rebuild database (--rebuilddb)
• ■ Fix permissions (--setperms)
• ■ Set owners/groups (--setugids)
• ■ Show RC (--showrc)
 Linux Applications
• OpenOffice.org
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• The GIMP (gimp)
• Quanta (html editor)
• GnuCash
 Using SSH
• Putty
• winscp
Thank You