Red Hat Enterprise Linux Systems Administration Troubleshooting Techniques and Tools

Training Provided by Wintrac Inc. This course will teach the commands and methods needed to perform troubleshooting networking, security, and performance issues on a functioning RHEL system. The course will also use a problem solving approach in the lab exercises to teach system administrators a methodology of: discovery, analysis, tools, and solution in each area that is covered. You can get a complete list of other linux classes at http://www.wintrac.com/courses/courseslinux1.asp

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Systems Administration Troubleshooting Techniques and Tools Review of System Concepts for System Administrators

• System administrator functions
• Using the root account
• root access via sudo
• Using the RHEL administrative graphical interfaces
• Manipulating root account history files
• Installing and using webmin for remote administration

Overview of Troubleshooting Techniques

• methodologies
• available tools
  • in RHEL distributions
  • third party
  • freeware
  • system-specific ( "home-grown" )

Startup Time Issues and Resolutions

• review of boot time components
• troubleshooting GRUB problems
• building GRUB recovery boot media
• alternate methods of booting
  • single user mode
  • recovery or installation media
• fixing problems with filesystem structures
• resolving issues with LVM boot file systems

RHEL Hardware Configuration

• location of key files and descriptions
• tools to manipulate hardware configuration files
• understanding hardware discovery and drivers
• diagnostic tools to test hardware components

RHEL Software Configuration

• location of key files and descriptions
• tools to manipulate configuration files

Networking Troubleshooting Considerations

• review of networking hardware / software components
• techniques to manually configure network interfaces
• software IP configuration / testing using ifconfig
• testing areas and tools
  • network connectivity
  • server configuration (files)
  • DNS, VSFTPD, DHCPD, SAMBA
• available tools

Security Issues

• review of security in all major component areas
• impact of selected security level
  • default from installation
  • SELinux
  • via "hardening" tools
• PAM
  • security role in RHEL
  • functional areas
  • files and configuration
  • resolving issues with PAM controls
• security monitoring / troubleshooting tools

Application Troubleshooting

writing utilities to sense problems

• physical memory usage
• paging file
• disk and network I/ O bandwidth

Resources for Troubleshooting Information

• on-line searchable repositories
• available diagnostic tools (summary)
• Red Hat support options