Study Guide for

Advanced Linux System Administration I

Lab work for LPI 201

released under the GFDL by LinuxIT

Copyright (c) 2005 LinuxIT.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document

under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;

with the Invariant Sections being History, Acknowledgements, with the	Front-Cover Texts being “released under the GFDL by LinuxIT”.

GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.2, November 2002

Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

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0. PREAMBLE

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Table of Contents

The Linux Kernel	9

1. Kernel Components	9

2. Compiling a Kernel	11

3. Patching a Kernel	12

4. Customising a Kernel	15

System Startup	20

1. Customising the Boot Process	20

2. System Recovery	23

3. Customised initrd	28

The Linux Filesystem	33

1. Operating the Linux Filesystem	33

2. Maintaining a Linux Filesystem	35

3. Configuring automount	37

Hardware and Software Configuration	39

1. Software RAID	39

2. LVM Configuration	42

3. CD Burners and Linux	49

4. Bootable CDROMs	52

5. Configuring PCMCIA Devices	54

File and Service Sharing	56

1. Samba Client Tools	56

2. Configuring a SAMBA server	57

3. Configuring an NFS server	60

4. Setting up an NFS Client	63

System Maintenance	64

1. System Logging	64

2. RPM Builds	66

3. Debian Rebuilds	68

System Automation	70

1. Writing simple perl scripts (using modules)	70

2. Using the Perl taint module to secure data	71

3. Installing Perl modules (CPAN)	72

4. Check for process execution	74

5. Monitor Processes and generate alerts	75

6. Using rsync	78

AppendixA	80

Example Perl Module: Spreadsheet	80

Exam 201: Detailed Objectives	82

Topic 201: Linux Kernel	82

Topic 202: System Startup	84

Topic 203: Filesystem	84

Topic 204: Hardware	86

Topic 209: File and Service Sharing	87

Topic 211: System Maintenance	88

Topic 213: System Customization and Automation	89

Topic 214: Troubleshooting	90

INDEX	93

The Linux Kernel

This module will describe the kernel source tree and the documentation available. We will also apply patches and recompile patched kernels. Information found in the /proc directory will be highlighted.

1. Kernel Components

Modules

Module Components in the Source Tree

In the kernel source tree /usr/src/linux, the kernel components are stored in various subdirectories:

Subdirectory	Description	Example
./drivers	contains code for different types of hardware support	pcmcia
./fs	code for filesystem supported	nfs
./net	code for network support	ipx

These components can be selected while configuring the kernel (see 2. Compiling a Kernel).

Module Components at Runtime

The /lib/modules/<kernelversion>/kernel directory, has many of the same subdirectories present in the kernel source tree. However only the modules that have been compiled will be stored here.

Types of Kernel Images

The various kernel image types differ depending only on the type of compression used to compress the kernel.

The make tool will read the /usr/src/linux/Makefile to compile

A compressed linux kernel using gzip is compiled with: make zImage

The compiled kernel will be:

/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/zImage

A compressed linux kernel using better compression is compiled with: make bzImage

The compiled image will be:

/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage

One can also use: make zdisk or make bzdisk to create compressed kernels on a floppy. The compiled kernel will be written to:

/dev/fd0

Remember to put a floppy in the drive!

Documentation

Most documentation is available in the /usr/src/linux/Documentation directory. The main files are the following:

File	Description
00-INDEX	Summary of the contents for each file in the Documentation directory
Configure.help	Contains the help displayed when configuring a kernel

The Configure.help file also provides further information for when a kernel module doesn't load properly. Specific options and aliases for /etc/modules.conf are specified in that file.

Information about compiling and documentation is available in /usr/src/linux/README.

The version of the kernel is set at the beginning of the Makefile.

VERSION = 2

PATCHLEVEL = 4

SUBLEVEL = 22

EXTRAVERSION =

Make sure to add something to the EXTRAVERSION line like

EXTRAVERSION=-test

This will build a kernel called 2.4.22-test

Notice: You need the “-” sign in EXTRAVERSION or else the version will be 2.4.22test

2. Compiling a Kernel

Compiling and installing a kernel can be described in three stages.

Stage 1: configuring the kernel

Here we need to decide what kind of hardware and network support needs to be included in the kernel as well as which type of kernel we wish to compile (modular or monolithic). These choices will be saved in a single file:

/usr/src/linux/.config

Creating the .config file
Command	Description
make config	Edit each line of .config one at a time
make menuconfig	Edit .config browsing through menus (uses ncurses)
make xconfig	Edit .config browsing through menus (uses GUI widgets)

When editing the .config file using any of the above methods the choices available for most kernel components are:

Do not use the module (n)

Statically compile the module into the kernel (y)

Compile the module as dynamically loadable (M)

Notice that some kernel components can only be statically compiled into the kernel. One cannot therefore have a totally modular kernel.

When compiling a monolithic kernel none of the components should be compiled dynamically.

Stage 2: compiling the modules and the kernel

The next table outlines the various 'makes' and their function during this stage. Notice that not all commands actually compile code and that the make modules_install has been included

Compiling
Command	Description
make clean	makes sure no stale .o files have been left over from a previous build
make dep	adds a .depend with headers specific to the kernel components
make	build the kernel
make modules	build the dynamic modules
make modules_install	install the modules in /lib/modules/kernel-version/

Stage 3: Installing the kernel image

This stage has no script and involves copying the kernel image manually to the boot directory and configuring the bootloader (LILO or GRUB) to find the new kernel.

3. Patching a Kernel

Incremental upgrades can be applied to an existing source tree. If you have downloaded the linux-2.4.21.tgz kernel source and you want to update to a more recent kernel linux-2.4.22 for example, you must download the patch-2.4.22.gz patch.

Applying the Patch

The patch file attempts to overwrite files in the 2.4.21 tree. One way to apply the patch is to proceed as follows:

cd /usr/src
zcat patch-2.4.22.gz | patch -p0

The -p option can strip any number of directories the patch is expecting to find. In the above example the patch starts with:

--- linux-2.4.21/...

+++ linux-2.4.22/...

This indicates that the patch can be applied in the directory where the linux-2.4.21 is.

However if we apply the patch from the /usr/src/linux-2.4.21 directory then we need to strip the first part of all the paths in the patch. So that

--- linux-2.4.21/arch/arm/def-configs/adsagc

+++ linux-2.4.22/arch/arm/def-configs/adsagc

becomes

--- ./arch/arm/def-configs/adsagc

+++ ./arch/arm/def-configs/adsagc

This is done with the -p1 option of patch effectively telling it to strip the first directory.

cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.21
zcat patch-2.4.22.gz | patch -p1

Testing the Patch

Before applying a patch one can test what will be changed without making them:

patch -p1 –dry-run < patchfile

Recovering the Old Source Tree

The patch tool has several mechanisms to reverse the effect of a patch.

In all cases, make sure the old configuration (.config file) is saved. For example, copy the .config file to the /boot directory.

cp .config /boot/config-kernelversion

1. Apply the patch in reverse

The patch tool has a -R switch which can be used to reverse all the operations in a patch file

Example: assuming we have patched the 2.4.21 Linux kernel with patch-2.4.22.gz

The next command will extract the patch:

cd /usr/src
zcat patch-2.4.22.gz | patch -p0 -R

2. You can backup the old changed file to a directory of your choice

mkdir oldfiles
patch -B oldfiles/ -p0 < patch-file

This has the advantage of letting you create a backup patch that can restore the source tree to it's original state.

diff -ur linux-2.4.21 oldfiles/linux-2.4.21 > recover-2.4.21-patch

NOTICE
Applying this recover-2.4.21-patch will have the effect of removing the 2.4.22 patch we just applied in the previous paragraph

3. You can apply the patch with the -b option

By default this option keeps all the original files and appends a “.orig” to them.

patch -b -p0 < patch-file

The patch can be removed with the following lines:

for file in $(find linux-2.4.29 | grep orig)
do
FILENAME=$(echo $file | sed 's/\.orig//')
mv -f $file $FILENAME
done

Building the New Kernel after a patch

Simply copy the old .config to the top of the source directory.

cp /boot/config-kernelversion /usr/src/linux-kernelversion/.config

Next 'make oldconfig' will only prompt for new features.

make oldconfig
make dep
make clean bzImage modules modules_install

4. Customising a Kernel

Loading Kernel modules

Loadable modules are inserted into the kernel at runtime using various methods.

The modprobe tool can be used to selectively insert or remove modules and their dependencies.

The kernel can automatically insert modules using the kmod module. This module has replaced the kerneld module.

When using kmod the kernel will use the tool listed in /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe whenever a module is needed.

Check that kmod has been selected in the source tree as a static component:

grep -i “kmod” /usr/src/linux/.config
CONFIG_KMOD=y

When making a monolithic kernel the CONFIG_MODULES option must be set to no.

The /proc/ directory

The kernel capabilities that have been selected in a default or a patched kernel are reflected in the /proc directory. We will list some of the files containing useful information:

/proc/cmdline

Contains the command line passed at boot time to the kernel by the bootloader

/proc/cpuinfo

CPU information is stored here

/proc/meminfo

Memory statistics are written to this file

/proc/filesystems

Filesystems currently supported by the kernel. Notice that by inserting a new module (e.g cramfs) this will add an entry to the file. So the file isn't a list of all filesystems supported by the kernel!

/proc/partitions

The partition layout is displayed with further information such as the name, the number of block, the major/minor numbers, etc

/proc/sys/

The /proc/sys directory is the only place were files with write permission can be found (the rest of /proc is read-only). Values in this directory can be changed with the sysctl utility or set in the configuration file /etc/sysctl.conf

/proc/sys/kernel/hotplug

Path to the utility invoked by the kernel which implements hotplugin (used for USB devices or hotplug PCI and SCSI devices)

/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe

Path to the utility invoked by the kernel to insert modules

/proc/sys/overflowgid/uid

Maximum number of users on a system. The filesystem uses 16 bits for the user and group fields, so the maximum is 2^16 = 65534 which is usually mapped to the user nobody or nfsnobody more recently

/proc/modules

List of currently loaded modules, same as the output of lsmod

TASK: Patch the linux-2.4.22-1.2149.nptl kernel to support Extended Attributes and Posix Access Control Lists (ACL) for ext2 and ext3 filesystems.

ACLs are beyond this course. All we need to know is that they provide a greater flexibility for directory and file permissions on the filesystem allowing, for example, several groups to access resources with different permissions.

WARNING
This patch will fail on older kernel versions (e.g linux-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl )

Install the 2.4.22-1.2149.nptl kernel and point the /usr/src/linux link to the new source. Then do:

cd /usr/src/linux
bzcat /usr/src/ea+acl+nfsacl-2.4.22-0.8.65.patch.bz2 | patch -p1 –dry-run

If there are no error messages then run patch with no –dry-run option. Next, we compile the new kernel:

Step 1:

Use an editor to add “EXTRAVERSION=-acl” to the Makefile

Step 2:

make mrproper

cp configs/kernel-2.4.22-i686.config .config

make oldconfig (answer y to all questions relative to ACLs)

make dep bzImage modules modules_install

A quick test:

Once you have rebooted with the new kernel, add the acl option into /etc/fstab on any EXT3 filesystem

LABEL=/usr /usr ext3 defaults,acl 1 2

You can then use the setfacl to add assign permissions for different groups on the same directory.

We first create two groups eng and sales:

groupadd eng
groupadd sales

Then add a directory called /usrNEWS:

mkdir /usr/NEWS

The getfacl is a tool that lists ACL privileges. So before we do anything lets look at the following output:

getfacl /usr/NEWS
# file: share
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rwx
group::r-x
other::r-x

Next add rwx permissions on NEWS for the group sales:

setfacl -m g:sales:rwx NEWS/

List the ACL privileges:

getfacl NEWS/
# file: NEWS
# owner: root
# group: sales
user::rwx
group::r-x
group:sales:rwx
mask::rwx
other::r-x

Finally add r_x permissions for the group eng and list the permissions:

setfacl -m g:eng:r-x NEWS/
getfacl NEWS/
# file: NEWS
# owner: root
# group: sales
user::rwx
group::r-x
group:sales:rwx
group:eng:r-x
mask::rwx
other::r-x

The kernel patch has worked. The above tools are not in the 201 objectives.

System Startup

Customising the boot process involves understanding how startup script are called. The chapter also describes common problems that arise at different points during the booting process as well as some recovery techniques. Finally we focus our attention on the “initial ram disk” (or initial root device) initrd stage of the booting process. This will allow us to make decisions as to when new initial ram disks need to be made.

.

1. Customising the Boot Process

Overview of init

In order to prevent processes run by users from interfering with the kernel two distinct memory areas are defined. These are referred to as “kernel space memory” and “user space memory”. The init process is the first program to run in user-space.

Init is therefore the parent of all processes. The init program's configuration file is

/etc/inittab

Runlevels

Runlevels determine which processes should run together. All processes that can be started or stopped at a given runlevel are controlled by a script (called an “init script” or an “rc script”) in /etc/rc.d/init.d

List of rc scripts on a typical system
anacron halt kudzu ntpd rusersd syslog ypxfrd
apmd identd lpd portmap rwalld vncserver
atd ipchains netfs radvd rwhod xfs
autofs iptables network random sendmail xinetd
crond kdcrotate nfs rawdevices single ypbind
functions keytable nfslock rhnsd snmpd yppasswdd
gpm killall nscd rstatd sshd ypserv

Selecting a process to run or be stopped in a given runlevel is done by creating symbolic links in the /etc/rc.d/rcN.d/ directory, where N is a runlevel.

Example 1: selecting httpd process for runlevel 3:

ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S85httpd

Notice that the name of the link is the same as the name of the process and is preceded by an S for start and a number representing the order of execution.

Example 2: stopping httpd process for runlevel 3:

rm /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S85httpd
ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/K15httpd

This time the name of the link starts with a K for kill to make sure the process is stopped when switching from one runlevel to another.

Starting Local scripts

We want to run a script at a given run level. Our script will be called printtotty10 and will simply print the message given as an argument to /dev/tty10.

/bin/printtotty10
#!/bin/bash
echo $1 > /dev/tty10

1. One way to have the script started at a specific run level is to add a line in /etc/inittab like

pr10:3:once:/bin/printtotty10 “Printtotty was started in inittab”

This is not always the best way to do this. What if many scripts need to be started? The inittab file would look messy.

2. We can write a custom rc-script. We follow the usage to call the script the same name as the actual tool we want to startup.

/etc/rc.d/init.d/printtotty10
#!/bin/sh
# chkconfig: 345 85 15
# description: This line has to be here for chkconfig to work ... \
#The script will display a message on /dev/tty10
#First source some predefined functions such as echo_success()
./etc/rc.d/init.d/functions
start() {
echo -n "Starting printtotty10"
/bin/printtotty10 "printtotty10 was started with an rc-script "
echo_success
echo
}
stop() {
echo -n "Stopping custom-rc"
/bin/printtotty10 "The custom script has stopped"
echo_success
echo
}
case "$1" in
start)
start;;
stop)
stop;;
esac
exit 0

3. The printtotty10 script can be started at boot time by placing the command in /etc/rc.d/rc.local. The rc.local script is the last rc-script to be run.

Notice: When setting up a linux server as a router it is possible to switch on ip-forwarding at boot time by adding the following line to rc.local:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

However it is better to use the sysctl mechanism to switch ip-forwarding on every time the network interface is started. This is done by adding the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf:

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

2. System Recovery

When a system crashes and fails to restart it is necessary to alter the normal booting process. This section describes a few solutions corresponding to problems that can occur at the following stages of the booting process

Booting Stage	Type of error	Suggested Solution
INIT	corrupt root filesystem or a faulty /etc/fstab entry use root login prompt a kernel module fails to load or an RC script fails override INIT (see below p.23) or use alternative runlevel
KERNEL	Kernel panic (see below p.24) Hardware initialisation errors (often with older kernels on latest mother boards) Pass appropriate bootloader parameter - e.g acpi=off. (p.27)
BOOT LOADER	Not installed or broken	use a rescue disk or a boot disk (see below p.24)

Overriding the INIT stage

This is necessary if the boot process fails due to a faulty init script. Once the kernel successfully locates the root file system it will attempt to run /sbin/init. But the kernel can be instructed to run a shell instead which will allow us to have access to the system before the services are started.

At the LILO or GRUB boot prompt add the following kernel parameter:

init=/bin/bash

At the end of the kernel boot stage you should get a bash prompt. Read-write access to the root filesystem is achieved with the following

mount /proc
mount -o remount,rw /

Errors at the end of the kernel stage

If the kernel can't mount the root filesystem it will print the following message:

Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03:05

The number 03 is the major number for the first IDE controller, and 05 is the 5th partition on the disk. The problem is that the kernel is missing the proper modules to access the disk.

We need to boot the system using an alternative method. The fix next involves creating a custom initrd and using it for the normal boot process.

Question: In the case above since the drive isn't a SCSI drive what could have caused the problem?

If the wrong root device is passed to the kernel by the boot loader (LILO or GRUB) then the INIT stage cannot start since /sbin/init will be missing

Kernel Panic: No init found. Try passing init= option to kernel

Again we need to boot the system using a different method, then edit the bootloader's configuration file (telling the kernel to use another device as the root filesystem), and reboot.

In both scenarios above it isn't always necessary to use a rescue disk. In fact, it often is a case of booting with a properly configured kernel. But what happens if the we don't have the option? What if the bootloader was reconfigured with the wrong kernels using no initial root disks or trying to mount the wrong root filesystem?

This leads us to the next possible cause of booting problems.

Misconfigured Bootloaders

At this stage we need to use a rescue method to boot the system.

Using a rescue disk

We already know from LPI 101 that any Linux distribution CD can be used to start a system in rescue mode. The advantage of these CDs is that they work on any Linux system.

The rescue process can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Boot from the CD and find the appropriate option (often called “rescue” or “boot an existing system” )

2. In most cases the root device for the existing system is automatically detected and mounted on a subdirectory of the initiatial root device (in RAM)

3. If the mount point is called /system it can become the root of the filesystem for our current shell by typing:

chroot /system

4. At this stage the entire system is available and the bootloader can be fixed

When a bootloader is misconfigured one can use an alternative bootloader (on a floppy or a CD). This bootloader will load a kernel which is instructed to use the root device on the hard drive.

This method is called a boot disk and is used to recover a specific system.

Custom Boot Disk 1:

All we need is a floppy with a Linux kernel image that can boot, and this image must be told were to find the root device on the hard drive.

Assuming that we are using a pre-formatted DOS floppy, the following creates a bootable floppy which will launch a linux kernel image

dd if=/boot/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0

Next, rdev is used to tell the kernel where the root device is. The command must be run on the system we wish to protect and the floppy with the kernel must be in the drive

rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/hda2

Custom Boot Disk 2:

The syslinux package installs a binary called syslinux that can be used to create bootable floppies. The procedure (taken form the packages documentation) is as follows:

1. Make a DOS bootable disk. This can be done either by specifying the /s option when formatting the disk in DOS, or by running the DOS command SYS (this can be done under DOSEMU if DOSEMU has direct device access to the relevant drive):

format a: /s

or

sys a:

2. Boot Linux. Copy the DOS boot sector from the disk into a file:

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=dos.bss bs=512 count=1

3. Run SYSLINUX on the disk:

syslinux /dev/fd0

4. Mount the disk and copy the DOS boot sector file to it. The file

*must* have extension .bss:

mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt

cp dos.bss /mnt

5. Copy the Linux kernel image(s), initrd(s), etc to the disk, and

create/edit syslinux.cfg and help files if desired:

For example if your root device is /dev/sda1 then syslinux.cfg would be:

DEFAULT linux

LABEL linux

KERNEL vmlinuz

APPEND initrd=initrd.img root=/dev/sda1

then

cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt

cp /boot/initrd.img /mnt

6. Unmount the disk (if applicable.)

umount /mnt

NOTICE
Although SYSLINUX can be installed on a CD it is recommended to use the ISOLINUX bootloader instead (see p.53).

Bootloader Kernel Parameters

load_ramdisk=n	If n is 1 then load a ramdisk, the default is 0
prompt_ramdisk=n	If n is 1 prompt to insert a floppy disk containing a ramdisk
nosmp or maxcpus=N	Disable or limit the number of CPUs
apm=off	Disable APM, sometime needed to boot from yet unsupported motherboards
init=	Defaults to /sbin/init but may also be a shell or an alternative process
root=	Set the root filesystem device (can be set with rdev*)
mem=	Assign available RAM size
vga=	Change the console video mode (can be changed with rdev*)

*The rdev manual pages say; “The rdev utility, when used other than to find a name for the current root device, is an ancient hack that works by patching a kernel image at a magic offset with magic numbers. It does not work on architectures other than i386. Its use is strongly discouraged. Use a boot loader like SysLinux or LILO instead”

Troubleshooting LILO

When installing LILO the bootloader mapper, /sbin/lilo, will backup the existing bootloader.

For example if you install LILO on a floppy, the original bootloader will be save to

/boot/boot.0200

Similarly when changing the bootloader on an IDE or a SCSI disk the files will be called

boot.0300 and boot.0800 respectively. The original bootloader can be restored with:

lilo -u

By default the second stage LILO is called /boot/boot.b and when it is successfully loaded it will prompt you with a “boot: ”.

Here the possible errors during the boot stage (taken from the LILO README)

nothing LILO is either not installed or the partition isn't active
L The first stage loader has been loaded but the second stage has failed
LI The second stage boot loader has loaded but was unable to execute
This could be cause if /boot/boot.b moved and /sbin/lilo wasn't rerun
LIL The second stage boot loader has been started, but it can't load the descriptor table from the map file or the second stage boot loader has been loaded at an incorrect address
This could be cause if /boot/boot.b moved and /sbin/lilo wasn't rerun.
LIL- The descriptor table is corrupt
This could be cause if /boot/map moved and /sbin/lilo wasn't rerun.
Scrolling 010101 errors This happens when the second stage boot loader is on a slave device

3. Customised initrd

In most cases a “customised initrd” requires running mkinitrd which will determine the kernel modules needed to support block devices and filesystems used on the root device.

The mkinitrd script
The following are methods used in the mkinitrd script to determine critical information about the root device and filesystem.
-The root filesystem type:
Using /etc/fstab the script determines which filesystem is used on the root device and the corresponding module (for example ext3 or xfs).
-Software RAID:
Using /etc/raidtab the mkinitrd script deduces the names of the raid arrays to start all the devices (even non root).
-LVM root device
Once the root device $rootdev is determined in /etc/fstab the major number is obtained from the following line:
root_major=$(/bin/ls -l $rootdev | awk '{ print $5 }')
If this corresponds to a logical volume, the logical volume commands are copied onto the ram disk.
The mkinitrd script will transfer all the required tools and modules to a file mounted as a loop device on a temporary directory. Once unmounted, the file is compressed and can be used as an initrd.

Syntaxes

The syntax for the Debian and the other distribution's mkinitrd is different.

Debian mkinitrd
Options:
-d confdir Specify an alternative configuration directory.
-k Keep temporary directory used to make the image.
-m command Set the command to make an initrd image.
-o outfile Write to outfile
-r root Override ROOT setting in mkinitrd.conf
Example: mkinitrd -o /boot/initrd-test-$(uname -r).img

Mandriva, RedHat, Suse/Novell mkinitrd
usage: mkinitrd [--version] [-v] [-f] [--preload <module>]
[--omit-scsi-modules] [--omit-raid-modules] [--omit-lvm-modules]
[--with=<module>] [--image-version] [--fstab=<fstab>] [--nocompress]
[--builtin=<module>] [--nopivot] <initrd-image> <kernel-version>
Example: mkinitrd /boot/initrd-test-2.2.5-15.img 2.2.5-15

Example:

As an example we will copy the content of an existing initrd to a new initrd and change the root filesystem type form ext3 to ext2..

1. Uncompress the current initrd

cp /boot/initrd-your-kernel-version.img /tmp/initrd.img.gz
gunzip /tmp/initrd.img.gz

2. Mount the current initrd using a loop device

mkdir /mnt/current
mount -o loop /tmp/initrd.img /mnt/current

3. Estimate the size needed for the new initrd:

df -k /mnt/current
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/tmp/initrd.img 317 191 126 61% /mnt/current

4. Create a new image file called initrd-new.img of size 161K

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/initrd-new.img bs=1K count=317

5. Estimate the number of inodes needed in the current initrd:

df -i /mnt/current
Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/tmp/initrd.img 48 33 15 69% /mnt/current

6. Create a filesystem on the file /tmp/initrd-new.img with 48 inodes

mke2fs -F -m 0 -N 48 /tmp/initrd-new.img

7. Mount the file on a new directory and copy across all the files of the current initrd to the new one:

mkdir /mnt/new
mount -o loop /tmp/initrd-new.img /mnt/new
(cd /mnt/current/; tar cf - .) | (cd /mnt/new; tar xf -)

8. Edit the /mnt/new/linuxrc file and delete the line where the ext3 module is inserted. Also replace the ext3 option by ext2 at the mount command.

9. Finally, unmount the /tmp/initrd-new.img then compress and rename it.

gzip /tmp/initrd-new.img ; mv /tmp/initrd-new.img.gz /boot/initrd-test.img

Or

gzip < /tmp/initrd-new.img > /boot/initrd-test.img

10. Create a new kernel entry in /etc/lilo.conf or /boot/grub/grub.conf instructing the bootloader to use the new initrd.

Sample grub.conf:

title linux (2.4.22)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.4.22.img
title broken?
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-new.img

Sample lilo.conf:

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.22.img
read-only
label=linux
append=”root=LABEL=/”
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
initrd=/boot/initrd-new.img
read-only
label=broken?
append=”root=LABEL=/”

The Linux Filesystem

This objective covers most points seen in LPI 101. Configuring automount is a new feature where special attention has to be payed to the syntax.

1. Operating the Linux Filesystem

When adding new filesystems to the existing root filesystem the key file involved is /etc/fstab which assigns a mount point, a mount order and global options per device.

/etc/fstab options
ro or rw	Read only or read write
noauto	Do not respond to mount -a. Used for external devices CDROMs ...
noexec	Executables cannot be started from the device
nosuid	Ignore SUID bit throughout the filesystem
nodev	Special device files such as block or character devices are ignored
noatime	Do not update atimes (performance gain)
owner	The device can be mounted only by it's owner
user	Implies noexec, nosuid and nodev. A single user's name is added to mtab so that other users may not unmount the devices
users	Same as user but the device may be unmounted by any other user

Mount will also keep track of mounted operations by updating /etc/mtab. The content of this file is similar to another table held by the kernel in /proc/mounts.

Regular local filesystems

When the system boots all local filesytems are mounted from the rc.sysinit scrpt. The mount command will mount every thing in /etc/fstab that has not yet been mounted and that is not encrypted or networked:

mount -a -t nonfs,smbfs,ncpfs -o no_netdev,noloop,noencrypted

When shutting down, all filesystem are unmounted by the halt script by scanning the /proc/mounts file with the help of some awk commands!

Swap Partions and SWAP files

At boot time, swap partitions are activated in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

swapon -a

Similarly when the system shuts down swap is turned off in the halt rc-script:

SWAPS=`awk '! /^Filename/ { print $1 }' /proc/swaps`

[ -n "$SWAPS" ] && runcmd "Turning off swap: " swapoff $SWAPS

Example 1: Making a swap file of 10MB

1.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/SWAPFILE bs=1k count=10240

2.

mkswap /tmp/SWAPFILE

3.

swapon /tmp/SWAPFILE

5.

cat /proc/swaps
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/dev/hda6 partition 522072 39744 -1
/tmp/SWAPFILE file 10232 0 -2

Example 2: Making a swap partition of 16MB

1. Make a new partition (e.g /dev/hda16) of type swap (82) and size 16MB. Reboot

2. Make a swap filesystem on the devices

mkswap /dev/hda16

3. Add the following to /etc/fstab

/dev/hda16 swap swap pri=-1 0 0

4. Make the swap partition available with swapon -a

Notice that if two swap partition are defined the kernel will automatically access them in “striped”mode, provided they have been mounted with the same priority determined by the pri= option in /etc/fstab

2. Maintaining a Linux Filesystem

This section covers a list of commands related to filesystem maintenance.

fsck - check and repair a Linux file system

Main options:

-b	use alternative superblck

-c	check for bad blocks

-f	force checking even when partition is marked clean

-p	automatic repair

-y	answer yes to all question

sync - flush filesystem buffers

Updates modified superblocks and inodes and executes delayed writes. The operating system keeps data in RAM in order to speed up operations. This may cause data to be lost in the event of a crash unless sync is executed. Sync will simply call the 'sync' system call. Another way of doing this is to use the 'ALT+sysreq+s' key combination

badblocks - search a device for bad blocks

It is recommended NOT to use badblocks directly but to use the -c flag with fsck or mkfs.

Main options:

-b	block size

-c	number of blocks tested at a time

-i	file with a list of known bad blocks, these blocks will be skipped

-o	output file, passed to mkfs

mke2fs - create an ext2/3 filesyste

Main options:

-b	blocksize

-i	number of bytes between consecutive inodes 'bytes-per-inode'

-N	number of inodes

-m	Percentage of blocks reserved for user root

-c	Check for bad blocks

-l	Read bad blocks from file

-L	Set a volume LABEL

-j/-J	Create journal (ext3)

-T	Optimise filesystem “type”, values are:

news	one inode per 4kb block

largefile	one inode per megabyte

largefile4	one inode per 4 megabytes

dumpe2fs - dump filesystem information

dumpe2fs prints the super block and blocks group information for the filesystem present on a device

debugfs - ext2 file system debugger

debugfs is used to test and repair an ext2 filesystem. The main options are:

-w	open the filesystem as writeable

-b	blocksize

tune2fs - adjust tunable filesystem parameters on second extended filesystems

Main options:

-l	read the superblock

-L	set the device's volume LABEL

-m	change the filesystem's reserved blocks for user root

-j or -J	set a journal

3. Configuring automount

Mounting can be automated using a mechanism called automount or autofs.

The /usr/sbin/automount is invoked with the rc-script /etc/init.d/autofs.

service autofs start

This script reads the configuration file /etc/auto.master also called a map. The map file defines mount points to be monitored by individual automount daemons.

Sample /etc/auto.master
/extra /etc/auto.extra /home /etc/auto.home

/extra /home

automount automount

When autofs is started it will invoke an instance of /usr/sbin/automount for each mount point defined in the master map /etc/auto.master.

When the map file /etc/auto.master is changed it is necessary to restart autofs. For example if mount points have been deleted, then the associated automount daemon is terminated. Likewise, new daemons are started for newly defined mount points.

Multiple filesystems can be mounted on a single mount point. These filesystems as well as the mount options needed (filesystem type, read-write permissions, etc) are defined in a separate file.

Sample /etc/auto.extra
cdrom -fstype=iso9660,ro,user,exec,nodev,nosuid :/dev/cdrom
nfs -fstype=nfs,soft,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8 192 192.168.3.100:/usr/local

/extra

cdrom

nfs

The CDROM will automatically be accessible in /extra/cdrom and the NFS share is mounted as soon as the /extra/nfs directory is accessed

NOTICE
In the above example:
The directories /extra/cdrom and /extra/nfs must not be created
New entries in /etc/auto.extra are immediately made available: adding 'new -fstype=ext3 :/dev/hda2' to the file will automatically make /extra/new available
By default a mounted device will stay mounted for 5 minutes: if we uncomment the 'cdrom' device in the map file /etc/auto.extra shortly after the CDROM has been accessed, then the device will still be available for approximately 5 minutes in /extra/cdrom

Hardware and Software Configuration

This module will cover the configuration of components which need both kernel support and software tools.

1. Software RAID

RAID stands for “Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks” and was originally designed to combine cheap hard disks together. RAID can either increase speed or reliability depending on the RAID level used.

RAID Levels

RAID-Linear				RAID-0 (stripe)			RAID-1 (mirror)
1		5			1		2			1		1
2		6			3		4			2		2
3		7			5		6			3		3
4		8			7		8			4		4

read	write	redundancy		read	write	redundancy		read	write	redundancy
0	0	no		+	+	no		+	-	yes

RAID-4			RAID-5
1		2		p			1		2		p
3		4		p			p		3		4
5		6		p			5		p		6
7		8		p			7		8		p

read	write	redundancy		read	write	redundancy
+	-	yes		+	0	yes

Spare Disks

If spare disks are configured they will be used in the RAID array as soon as one of the array disks fail.

Kernel and software components

Software raid is handle by the following kernel module:

RAID0	raid0.o
RAID1	raid1.o
RAID4 or RAID5	raid5.o

The raidtools package will provide these most common tools:

Tool	Description
/sbin/lsraid	query raid devices
/sbin/mkraid	create md devices from instructions given in /etc/raidtab
/sbin/raidstart and raidstop	start and stop the md devices

Once a meta device has been successfully created the information can be found in

/proc/mdstats

Booting from a RAID root device (exercise)

1. Make two new partitions of the same size as the root device of type “Linux raid autodetect”.

One can make a smaller new root partition by checking the actual used space on the current root device

df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7 286M 71M 201M 27% /

Use fdisk to create the new partions (e.g /dev/hda14 and /dev/hda15) Reboot.

2. Configure software RAID 1 on these partitions

/etc/raidtab
raiddev /dev/md0
raidlevel 1
nr-raid-disks 2
nr-spare-disks 0
chunk-size 4
persistent-superblock 1
device /dev/hda14
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hda15
raid-disk 1

Use the raidtools to make the array and start it up:

mkraid /dev/md0
raidstart /dev/md0

Make an EXT2 filesystem on the new meta device and mount it on /mnt/sys:

mke2fs /dev/md0
mkdir /mnt/sys
mount /dev/md0 /mnt/sys

3. Copy all files on the current root device to the new root device:

(tar lcvf - /) | (cd /mnt/sys; tar xvf -)

The l option for tar is an instruction to stay on the same file system.

4. Prepare to reboot

The mkinitrd script will read /etc/raitab and /mnt/sys/etc/fstab to customise an initrd.

Edit /mnt/sys/etc/fstab and change the root device to /dev/md0 as well as the filesystem type to ext2.

/mnt/sys/etc/fstab
/dev/md0 / ext2 defaults 1 1

Make the initial rootdisk and call it initrd-raid.img

mkinitrd --fstab=/mnt/sys/etc/fstab /boot/initrd-raid.img $(uname -r)

Uncompress /boot/initrd-raid.img and mount it on a loop device to check that linuxrc will insert the correct modules.

Reconfigure LILO/GRUB to change the following

Sample lilo.conf:

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
initrd=/boot/initrd-raid.img
read-only
root=/dev/md0
label=linux-raid

2. LVM Configuration

Logical Volume Management (LVM)

The Logical Volume Management framework allows one to group different block devices (disks, partitions, RAID arrays...) together as a single larger device, the volume group (VG).

Individual devices used to form a volume group are referred to as physical volumes (PV). Physical volumes once regrouped into a volume group lose their individual character.

Instead the entire volume group is divided into physical extents (PE) of fixed size (4MB by default) from which logical volumes (LV) are created. A logical volume can be thought of as a partition.

Volume Group (VG)

Logical Volume

Physical Extent (PE)

/dev/hda10 /dev/hdb1 /dev/hdd1

Physical Volume (PV)

Kernel and software components

The LVM kernel module is lvm-mod.o. The software tools are installed by the lvm package which provides in particular /sbin/vgscan. This command will start the LVM environment by scanning all the volume groups and build the /etc/lvmtab as well as databases in /etc/lvmtab.d which are used by all the other LVM tools.

Main LVM tools :

PV tools:	pvcreate, pvmove, pvchange, pvdisplay, pvscan ...
VG tools:	vgcreate, vgremove, vgchange, vgdisplay, vgscan ...
LV tools:	lvcreate, lvextend, lvreduce, lvremove, lvchange, lvscan ...

We won't need to use or know all the above tools. We will rather focus on the various LVM components (as depicted in the diagram) and the commands needed to create these components: pvcreate,vgcreate and lvcreate.

Example:

Create a volume group called volumeA with three physical volumes ( 3 partitions in this case) and create a logical volume called lv0 of size 150MB initially.

1. Run vgscan to create the /etc/lvmtab file

2. Create three new partitions (say /dev/hda16, /dev/hda17, /dev/hda18) of 100MB each.

Make sure you toggle the partition type to 8e (Linux LVM). Then reboot.

3. Prepare the physical volumes

pvcreate /dev/hda16
pvcreate /dev/hda17
pvcreate /dev/hda18

4. Create a volume group called volumeA with the above physical volumes:

vgcreate volumeA /dev/hda16 /dev/hda17 /dev/hda18

This will create a directory called /dev/volumeA/. The default PE size of 4MB will be used, one can change this with the -s option.

5. Create a logical volume called lv0 of size 150MB on this volume group

lvcreate -L 150M -n lv0 volumeA

This will create the block device /dev/volume1/lv0

6. Make a filesystem on lv0 and mount it on /mnt/lvm

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/volumeA/lv0
mkdir /mnt/lvm
mount /dev/volumeA/lv0 /mnt/lvm

This wouldn't be very different from other partition types if it weren't for the possibility to change the logical volume's size at anytime.

Let's first show how to reduce the existing 150MB logical volume lv0 with the esfsadm tool installed by the lvm package.

umount /mnt/lvm
e2fsadm -L 25 /dev/volumeA/lv0

NOTICE
The -L option refers to size in megabytes. The is the case with most LVM tools. The -l option can be used to specify logical extents (LE) instead. The default size of an LE is 4MB.

.

The next section will show how to add a new physical volume (a disk) to a volume group and demonstrates how an existing logical volume can be made larger by including physical extents available in the volume group to itself. Once this is done the e2fsadm tool will resize the filesystem across the logical volume.

Extending the Volume Group with a RAID 0 device

So far we have:
VG = /dev/hda16 + /dev/hda17 + /dev/hda18
and we would like to add a RAID0 device to this

1. Create three more partitions (e.g /dev/hda19, /dev/hda20 and /dev/hda21) of size 50MB and of type “Linux raid autodetect” (fd) – reboot!

2. Edit /etc/mtab to add the following RAID 0 device:

raiddev /dev/md1
raid-level 0
nr-raid-disks 3
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 4
device /dev/hda19
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hda20
raid-disk 1
device /dev/hda21
raid-disk 2

3. Start the raid meta device:

mkraid /dev/md1
raidstart /dev/md1

4. Add this device to the Volume Group volumeA

Before adding the device to the volume group run pvscan to see which physical volumes are available. Notice that /dev/md1 is not listed.

We now prepare /dev/md1 as a PV (physical volume):

pvcreate /dev/md1

When running pvscan again the output should look like the following. Notice that /dev/md1 is now listed.

pvscan
pvscan -- reading all physical volumes (this may take a while...)
pvscan -- ACTIVE PV "/dev/md1" is in no VG [305.62 MB]
pvscan -- ACTIVE PV "/dev/hda10" of VG "volumeA"[96 MB / 0 free]
pvscan -- ACTIVE PV "/dev/hda11" of VG "volumeA"[96 MB / 0 free]
pvscan -- ACTIVE PV "/dev/hda12" of VG "volumeA"[96 MB / 84 MB free] pvscan -- total:4[611.46 MB] /in use:3[305.83 MB] /in no VG:1 [305.62 MB]

We next add the device /dev/md1 to the volume group volumeA:

vgextend volumeA /dev/md1

At this stage the volume group has four devices:

VolumeA = /dev/hda10 + /dev/hda11 + /dev/hda12 + /dev/md1

We can take 50MB from /dev/md1 and add them to lv0 (unmount the volume first)

lvextend -L +50 /dev/volumeA/lv0 /dev/md1

The original lv0 volume had 150 megabytes. The + flag in front of the requested size has added 50MB to the logical volume, making it about 200 megabytes. But we haven't extended the filesystem across the entire logical volume yet.

The output of lvscan will show 80MB available. This corresponds to the 25 megabytes resizing done with e2fsadm on p. 21 plus the 50MB added by lvextend above

.

lvscan
lvscan -- ACTIVE "/dev/volumeA/lv0" [80 MB]
lvscan -- 1 logical volumes with 80 MB total in 1 volume group
lvscan -- 1 active logical volume

The next command will extend the filesystem to 80 megabytes:

e2fsadm -L 80 /dev/volume/lv0

If you remount this volume on /mnt/lvm you can see the new available space with df.

REBOOT WARNING
The LVM tools need the lvm-mod.o module and in our case the metadevice /dev/md1. You need to create a new initrd with mkinitrd or add the following lines to a new initrd:
insmod /lib/lvm-mod.o
raidautorun /dev/md1
The volume group is then activated with vgscan from the rc.sysinit script.

Booting from a logical volume root device

As with software RAID we are going to investigate some issues we need to consider when using LVM on the root device.

First make sure the volume we have created previously is mounted. If it isn't then do

mount /dev/volumeA/lv0 /mnt/lvm

Next we archive the root device in the same way as we did for RAID:

tar clvf - / | (cd /mnt/lvm/; tar xvf -)

Edit /mnt/lvm/etc/fstab and enter

/dev/volumeA/lv0 / ext2 defaults 0 1

Edit /etc/lilo.conf or /etc/grub.conf to add a new entry where the kernel points to the new root logical volume. For a 2.4.22 kernel an additional entry in /etc/grub.conf looks like this:

title lvm-root
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-lvm.img

All we need is the initrd initrd-2.4.22-lvm.img.

Once again we will run mkinitrd with –-fstab=<fstab> which we will use to make the script read our new fstab file /mnt/lvm/etc/fstab.

We test this:

mkinitrd --fstab=/mnt/lvm/etc/fstab /boot/initrd-lvm.img $(uname -r)

If we mount this initial ram disk we can see that this is going to work by looking at the linuxrc script.

linuxrc
echo "Loading lvm-mod.o module"
insmod /lib/lvm-mod.o
echo Creating block devices
mkdevices /dev
echo Scanning logical volumes
vgscan
echo Activating logical volumes
vgchange -ay ----snip---

3. CD Burners and Linux

Hardware detection

The tools available on the commandline to burn CDs assume that the CD writer is a SCSI device. However most cheaper CD burners are IDE devices. The 2.4 kernels get around this by providing a ide-scsi.o module to drive the CD burner device.

If you run cdrecord with the -scanbus option you will see that the tool is looking for a SCSI device.

If the CD burner is attached as a secondary master (./dev/hdc) then the following entry in

/etc/modules.conf will enable the ide-sci module for this device :

/etc/modules.conf (from the CD-Writing HOWTO)
options ide-scsi=/dev/hdb
options ide-cd ignore=hdb
alias scd0 sr_mod
pre-install sg modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sg
pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi # load ide-scsi before sr_mod
pre-install ide-scsi modprobe ide-cd # load ide-cd before ide-scsi

The device will be seen as /dev/scd0 and can be added to /etc/fstab with it's own mount point.

The following command shows that the hardware has been correctly detected:

cdrecord -scanbus
Cdrecord 2.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Copyright (C) 1995-2002 J�rg Schilling
Linux sg driver version: 3.1.24
Using libscg version 'schily-0.7'
cdrecord: Warning: using inofficial libscg transport code version (schily - Red Hat-scsi-linux-sg.c-1.75-RH '@(#)scsi-linux-sg.c 1.75 02/10/21 Copyright 1997 J. Schilling').
scsibus0:
0,0,0 0) 'PHILIPS ' 'CDRW48A ' 'P1.3' Removable CD-ROM
0,1,0 1) *
0,2,0 2) *
0,3,0 3) *
0,4,0 4) *
0,5,0 5) *
0,6,0 6) *
0,7,0 7) *

Burning an IsoImage

The cdrecord tool can record either data or sound files.

cdrecord [ general options ] dev=device [ track options ] track1...trackn

The Device

From the output of the cdrecord -scanbus we will use the device dev=0,0,0 for our examples.

Main general options

speed	specify the speed of the CD burner, e.g speed=8

-eject	eject the CD when the recording is done

-multi	start multi session recording. This option must be used with each multi session	recording

Main track options

-data	the track contains data

-audio	the track is an audio file (.au, .wav or .cdr)

Data Recording

cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -data cd_image.iso

Audio Recordng

cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -audio *.wav

Mixed Recording

cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -data cd_image.iso -audio *.wav

ISO9660 Filesystem and burning CDs

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia*
ISO 9660, a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization, defines a file system for CD-ROM media. It aims at supporting different computer operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and systems that follow the Unix specification, so that data may be exchanged.
Levels and restrictions
There are different levels to this standard.
Level 1 File names are restricted to eight characters with a three-character extension, upper case letters, numbers and underscore; maximum depth of directories is eight
Level 2 File names may be up to 31 characters
Level 3 Files allowed to be fragmented (mainly to allow packet writing, or incremental CD recording).
Extensions
There are common extensions to ISO 9660 to deal with the limitations. Rock Ridge supports the preservation of Unix/Linux permissions and longer ASCII-coded names; Joliet supports names stored in Unicode, thus allowing almost any character to be used, even from non-Latin scripts; El Torito enables CDs to be bootable.
ISO 13490 is basically ISO 9660 with multisession support.
*This article is licensed under the "http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html" GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9660" Wikipedia article "ISO_9660"

Creating a CD Image

Store all the data that need to be copied in a separated directory (e.g backups/). We next need to create an isoimage of this directory as follows:

mkisofs -o baskups-image.iso backups/

Check the image file by mounting it as a loop device:

mount -o loop backups-image.iso /mnt
ls /mnt
umount /mnt

Finally, burn the CD with cdrecord. From the output of cdrecord -scanbus on the previous page we see that the CD writer device is seen as dev=0,0,0 so we type:

cdrecord -v dev=0,0,0 backups-image.iso

4. Bootable CDROMs

To allow the BIOS to boot from a CDROM, an extension to the ISO-9660 specification called El Torito was written in 1995 by Phoenix Technologies and IBM. This specification uses the existing ISO-9660 definitions and will cause the BIOS to boot a disk image using a floppy or hard disk emulation.

The ISO -9660 standard specifies that a CDROM should contain any number of “Volume Descriptors”. The El Torito specification adds such a descriptor called a “Boot Record”.

The “Boot Record” points to a “Boot Catalog” which can contain a list of boot entries. The boot catalog contains a default entry which points to a floppy or hard disk boot image.

The mkisofs tool can take a boot image (floppy or hard disk) and add the image in the root directory of th CDROM (usually boot/).

Using disk emulation

Assuming we are creating the CD in a directory called CD-root, we can create the bootable disk image with dd.

dd if=/path/to/boot/image of=<CD-root>/boot/boot.img

The iso-image is then created with the following command:

mkisofs -b boot/boot.img -c boot/boot.catalog -o boot-cd.iso .

Alternatives without disk emulation

It is possible to make a bootable CD using the ISOLINUX bootloader.

“ISOLINUX is a boot loader for Linux/i386 that operates off ISO 9660/El Torito CD-ROMs in "no emulation" mode. This avoids the need to create an "emulation disk image" with limited space (for "floppy emulation") or compatibility problems (for "hard disk emulation".)”

The syslinux package will install the isolinux.bin bootloader. Depending on the distribution this can be found in /usr/lib/syslinux/ or /usr/share/syslinux/.

You next need to create a bootable CD.

1. Make a directory in /tmp

mkdir /tmp/boot-cd

2. Copy the files needed

cp /usr/share/syslinux/isolinux.bin /tmp/boot-cd
cp /boot/vmlinuz-<full-version> /tmp/boot-cd/vmlinuz
cp /boot/initrd-<full-version>.img /tmp/boot-cd/initrd

3. Edit the /tmp/boot-cd/isolinux.cfg file with the following content:

DEFAULT linux

LABEL linux

KERNEL vmlinuz

APPEND initrd=initrd root=/dev/???

4. Create the isoimage with the -no-emul-boot option

cd /tmp/boot-cd/

mkisofs -o ../boot-cd.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat \
-no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table ./

Copying a Bootable CD

In this section we assume that we already have a bootable CDROM. For example the first disk of a boxed Linux distribution.

Put the bootable CD into the CDROM tray. Do not mount the disk!

Then simply type:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=distro-inst1.iso

This will create an iso-image of the disk called distro-inst1.iso and can be written to a blank disk with cdrecord.

5. Configuring PCMCIA Devices

The cardmgr utility monitors the PCMCIA slots. It will scan the /proc/devices file searching for the pcmcia entry. If this entry isn't there then cardmgr will exit.

In order to get the kernel to write an entry into /proc/devices it is necessary to load the relevant modules. Only once kernel support is enabled will cardmgr work properly. The module names are kept in the following configuration files:

For RedHat like distributions: /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia

For Debian like distributions: /etc/pcmcia.conf

The main module is called pcmcia_core and uses two other modules called yenta_socket and ds.

One can start cardmgr on the commandline after having inserted the above kernel modules

modprobe pcmcia_core
modprobe yenta_socket
modprobe ds
cardmgr
cardmgr[18772]: watching 2 sockets

But it is best to use the rc-script provided with the pcmcia-cs package:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia restart

The configuration file with a database of possible devices (e.g modems, wireless network interfaces, memory cards ...) is called /etc/pcmcia/config.

To get infornation about your pcmcia card use the cardctl utility. Put the card into the pcmcia slot and run:

cardctl info
....snip....
PRODID_1="Xircom"
PRODID_2="CardBus Ethernet 10/100 + Modem 56"
PRODID_3="CBEM56G"
....snip....

We can check that this card is listed in /etc/pcmcia/config. The next table shows the information relevant to this card, in particular the xircom_cb module needed.

/etc/pcmcia/config – section relevent to scanned card
card "Xircom CBEM56G-100 CardBus 10/100 Ethernet + 56K Modem" version "Xircom", "*", "CBEM56G" bind "xircom_cb" to 0

File and Service Sharing

This module covers SAMBA and NFS. The objectives state a few specific implementations such as file servers and printer shares.

1. Samba Client Tools

nmblookup
nmblookup trainer-1
querying trainer-1 on 192.168.3.255
192.168.3.101 trainer-1<00>

smbpasswd
smbpasswd -a USER	add a samba user
smbpasswd -e USER	enable a samba user

smbtar
Script using smbclient to archive SMB shares directly to tape

smbclient
smbclient //HOST/SHARE Logs onto the specified share
smbclient -L //HOST List all available shares

Output of smbstatus
Samba version 2.2.7a-security-rollup-fix
Service uid gid pid machine
----------------------------------------------
dean dean dean 3106 trainer-1 (192.168.3.101) Mon Nov 26 13:34:54 2003
IPC$ nobody nogroup 3106 trainer-1 (192.168.3.101) Mon Nov 26 13:34:45 2003
IPC$ nobody nogroup 3106 trainer-1 (192.168.3.101) Mon Nov 26 13:34:53 2003
dean dean dean 3106 trainer-1 (192.168.3.101) Mon Nov 26 13:35:14 2003
netlogon dean dean 3106 trainer-1 (192.168.3.101) Mon Nov 26 13:34:54 2003
public nobody nogroup 3145 drakelap (192.168.3.100) Mon Nov 26 13:35:34 2003
IPC$ nobody nogroup 3106 trainer-1 (192.168.3.101) Mon Nov 26 13:34:54 2003

2. Configuring a SAMBA server

The SAMBA server configuration file smb.conf is usually in /etc/samba/. Within the '[global]' options, parameters such as the 'WORKGROUP = ' can be set.

The SAMBA server uses two daemons called nmbd and smbd implementing NMB and SMB services respectively. Both daemons are started with the single rc-script:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb start

The LanManager host file lmhosts

This file is usually in the same directory as the smb.conf file and is read by nmbd to resolve netBIOS hostnames. The file content is similar to /etc/hosts:

10.0.0.20 accounts

Shared Directories

We will define one share called 'readshare' which is readable and another called 'rw-share' which has read-write permissions but is only accessible for user 'tux':

The smb.conf options
[readshare]
comment = Read-only Directory
path = /usr/local/news/
guest only = yes
browseable = yes # this is optional
[rw-share]
comment = Read-write Share for tux
path = /usr/local/documents
browseable = yes
guest ok = yes
writeable = yes
valid users = tux

Sharing Printers

We choose to export all printers defined with CUPS on the Linux server. The following configuration will enable this:

The smb.conf options
[global]
printcap name = cups
load printers = yes
printing = cups
# printing without filters
[printers]
comment = All Printers defined using CUPS
path = /var/spool/samba
browseable = no
guest ok = yes # allow 'guest account to print'
writable = no
printable = yes
create mode = 0700 # printer drivers must be on the client side print command = lpr-cups -P %p -o raw %s -r

Implementing WINS with Samba?

On a NetBIOS network machine names are resolved using “Windows information network services” or WINS.

Clients can either use broadcasts to query host names or be configured to use a WINS server. This server reduces the amount of traffic on the network due to broadcasts.

SAMBA as a WINS server

To enable WINS in SAMBA the following option is set in smb.conf

wins support = yes

Windows clients can then be configured to use the SAMBA server as a WINS server.

Second WINS server

A NetBIOS network generally only has one WINS server. If a second server is configured then the servers should be able to synchronise their host information. One can configure SAMBA to register on an existing network as a second WINS server by giving it the address of this server with the option:

wins server = <existing wins server>

NOTICE
The options 'wins support' and 'wins server' are mutually exclusive. The 'wins server' option registers the SAMBA server with an existing WINS server and enables WINS capabilities, there is no need to set 'wins support' as well.

Samba server as a Domain Controller

Options selected in /etc/samba/smb.conf:
security = users
domain master = yes
local master
preferred master = yes
domain logon = yes
[netlogon]
path=/var/lib/samba/netlogon
writable = no
public = no

Notice: You don't need to have a logon script. This netlogon share is something the Windows client needs to connect to even if it is empty

3. Configuring an NFS server

“ The NFS protocol is designed to be portable across different machines, operating systems, network architectures, and transport protocols. This portability is achieved through the use of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) primitives built on top of an eXternal Data Representation (XDR)” (RFC1094 NFS v2)

“NFS (Network File System) version 4 is a distributed file system protocol which owes heritage to NFS protocol versions 2 [RFC1094] and 3 [RFC1813]. Unlike earlier versions, the NFS version 4 protocol supports traditional file access while integrating support for file locking and the mount protocol

[...]

The NFS version 4 protocol [...] retains the essential characteristics of previous versions: design for easy recovery, independent of transport protocols, operating systems and filesystems, simplicity, and good performance” (RFC3010)

The NFS server runs the following daemons:

rpc.nfsd

rpc.mountd

These services are started with the nfs sevice:

/etc/init.d/nfs start/stop/status/restart/reload

In addition rpc.statd is used to notify the client when the NFS service is unexpectedly interrupted, and rpc.lockd allows clients to lock files accessed on the server.

These services are started with the nfslock service:

/etc/init.d/nfslock start/stop/status/restart

Programs using remote procedure calls (RPC) use specific program numbers listed in /etc/rpc. When a RPC service is started it will tell portmap which port number it is using as well as its program number.

It is necessary for portmap to be running before starting any NFS service

RPC clients connect to the portmap service, although it is possible to work around portmap if the RPC program number is known.

The /etc/exports file

Syntax:

directory <host>(<option1,option2,...>) <host>(<option1,...>)

/etc/exports common options:

Option	Description
ro	Read only. There is also the read-write option rw
no_root_squash	override the default (root_squash) where root is mapped to user nobody
async	the server writes to disk at predefined intervals (may cause data loss)
sync	use sync rather than async when exporting a directory read-write

User Mappings

Once a remote directory is mounted on the local client one would expect local users to access their files as if the directory was locally mounted. However this will only be the case if UIDs on both the local and remote systems correspond.

Client	Server

root=0 tux=500 penguin=600 root=0 tux=500 penguin=600

NFS is generally used in an environment where UIDs are common between the server and the clients.

Anonuid and Anongid

It is possible, using anonuid and anongid options to assign a unique anonymous UID or GID per exported directory. Users mounting that share will be given the rights of that anonymous ID on the server. For example, everybody accessing the share bellow will inherit the right of the remote user with UID=150 and GID=100

/share *(rw,anonuid=150,anongid=100)

Root Squashing

By default the root user on the client system will be mapped to the user nobody on the server. This option is disabled in /etc/exports with the no_root_squash option

Client	Server

root UID=0 GID=0 UID=65534 GID=65534

Finally, it is possible to map all users from any client to the user nobody with the all_squash option.

TCPwrappers

The portmap tool has been compiled with libwrap giving us the option to control access through /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny.

strings `which portmap ` |grep hosts.allow

Using exportfs and nfsstat

The exportfs command with no arguments will show all exported directories.

exportfs options
-r	re-read /etc/exports and export all directories listed
-u	unexport all shares (until exportfs -r is called)
-a	applies to all exports
-o	specify directories not listed in /etc/exports

The nfsstat displays statistics about NFS server and client activity. The information is read from two files:

/proc/net/rpc/nfs	contains information about NFS client activity

/proc/net/rpc/nfsd	contains information about the NFS server

nfsstat options
-s	show only server statistics
-c	shpw only client statistics
-n	print NFS statistics only
-r	print RPC statistics only
-o	print statistics for specific utility (nfs,rpc,net,fh,rc)

4. Setting up an NFS Client

Mount options
soft	When a major timeout happens send the calling program an I/O error, rather than retry indefinitely.
hard	When a major timeout happens, report “server not responding” and continues to reconnect indefinitely unless the intr option is also specified
bg	If the first mount fails retry subsequent mounts in the background (default is fg)
intr	Allows NFS requests to be interrupted
nolock	Sometimes needed with older NFS servers
rsize=n wsize=n	Set communication block sizes for read and write. The default is 1024 bytes. On a clear network the speed may be improved by setting n to 8192

ERRORS	Possible cause
mount: RPC: Program not registered	The remote NFS server is not running
mount: IP:share failed, reason given by server: Permission denied	Wrong directory

The showmount tool can view NFS shares available on a remote host. The main options are:

showmount -a server	lists client IP and directory mounted
showmount -e server	lists the content of /etc/exports from the server
showmount -d server	lists only the exported directories on the server

System Maintenance

This module covers the syslogd similarly to LPI 102. The added emphasis is on remote logging and name resolution. Sotware packaging is covered here to. We will see how to make our own RPM package.

1. System Logging

Stopping and Starting syslogd

The syslogd daemon is responsible for system logging. It is started as a service:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/syslogd start/stop/status/restart/condrestart

The following lines are from the syslogd rc-script:

if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/syslog ] ; then

. /etc/sysconfig/syslog

The /etc/sysconfig/syslog file defines the following default variables:

SYSLOGD_OPTIONS="-m 0"

KLOGD_OPTIONS="-2"

Configuration File

The configuration file is /etc/syslog.conf with the following format:

FACILITY.PRIORITY ACTION

Facilities

auth, authpriv, cron,daemon, kern, lpr, mail, mark, news, security (same as auth), syslog, user, uucp and local0 to local7

Priorities

debug, info, notice, warning,err, crit, alert, emerg

The following are deprecated:

error (same as err), warn (same as warning), panic (same as emerg)

Actions

Flat file	Full path to a file, usually in /var/log/

Terminal	use /dev/ttyN to output logs to

Username	if Username is logged in, send logs to the user's tty

Host	send logs to a remote host. Prepend the remote host's IP with a @ sign.

Sending logs to a remote server

A seen above the local syslogd can send logs to a remote host (say 192.168.10.33) running a syslogd. Assume we want to send all logs to this remote host, this would be the syntax:

*.*	@192.168.10.33

Configuring syslogd to accept remote logs

In this case we want remote systems to send their logs to our server. The only option that needs to be added at startup is -r.

Edit /etc/sysconfig/syslog and add the -r option to the SYSLOGD_OPTIONS variable

SYSLOGD_OPTIONS="-r -m 0"

Then restart the syslog service.

Name resolution

Once a server has been setup as a remote logging server it will accept logs from hosts on the network. By default these hosts will appear with an IP address in the logs unless the hosts are listed in /etc/hosts. This is due to the fact that syslogd cannot use DNS services. In fact syslogd has not been compiled with libresolv.so, as seen below:

ldd syslogd
libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (0x40024000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
ldd ping
libresolv.so.2 => /lib/libresolv.so.2 (0x40024000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (0x40035000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000

2. RPM Builds

Here is an overview of the specfile sections

Desciption
Summary	A summary of what the package provides
Name	Name of the package
Version	Package version
Release	Package release
Copyright	Copyright agreement under which the package is released
Group	The package group (Amusement, Documentation ...)
Source	Path to the archive containing source and files
BuildRoot	Path to the temporary (fake) root filesystem

Macros and Section
%define	Define a variable that can be referenced later in the SPEC file
%description	Paragraph type description for the package (usually longer than Summary
%prep	The preparation section, includes unpacking the source archive and patching
%setup	Unpack the source archive
%patch	Apply patches if needed
%build	The build section, includes commands to run in the BUILD directory and execute the next commands (make, ...)
%install	The install section, includes command to copy files from the BUILD directory to the fake $RPM_BUILD_ROOT directory
%clean	Delete all files in $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%files	List of files in the package
%doc	List which files are part of the documentation
%config	List which files are configuration files

Example: Copy fstab to /tmp/etc/fstab

We can build a simple RPM package that installs an fstab file into /tmp/etc/. The spec file will look like this:

#This is the Header section
Summary: Installs a fstab file to /tmp/etc
%define name tmp-fstab
%define version 0.2
%define release 1
Name: %{name}
Version: %{version}
Release: %{release}
Copyright: Freely distributable
Group: Documentation
Source: %{name}-%{version}.tar.gz
Packager: Adrian Thomasset <adrian@linuxit.com>
#The BuildRoot directory is a temporary replacement for root (/) while the package is being built.
BuildRoot: /var/tmp/rpm-%{name}/
%description
This package copies a file called fstab to /tmp/etc/
%prep
#The %setup macro simply opens the archived files from SOURCES into BUILD and changes #directory to it (/../../BUILD/%{name}-%{version}/
%setup
#All the work is done here: $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is a reference to the variable defined using the %BuildRoot command earlier
%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/tmp/etc/
install -m 644 fstab $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/tmp/etc/fstab
%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
#Define which files must be copied to the binary RPM package. The $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is #taken as the root directory
%files
/tmp/etc/fstab
%defattr(-,adrian,adrian)

All that is left to do is to prepare the source. In this case we need to create a directory called tmp-fstab-0.2 containing fstab. Notice that the name and the version correspond to the name and version defined in the SPEC file

mkdir tmp-fstab-0.2
cp /etc/fstab tmp-fstab-0.2/

Next we archive the directory and copy this to the SOURCES directory

tar cvzf tmp-fstab-0.2.tar.gz tmp-fstab/
cp tmp-fstab-0.2.tar.gz /path/to/SOURCES/

3. Debian Rebuilds

The Debian rebuilding tools are installed with

apt-get install devscripts build-essential fakeroot

Example: building a package foo

The following command will get the source package foo

apt-get source foo

We must also install the packages required to rebuild the package foo as follows

apt-get build-dep foo

We next go into the source directory of foo and use debuild to make the package:

cd foo/ debuild -us -uc

Finally, the directory above will contain the dpkg package.

System Automation

This module covers most scripting objectives for LPI 201. You do not need to learn a new language such as perl or bash. All that is expected is to accurately describe what a script is doing. Knowing the exact syntax for a specific scripting language is not expected.

The best way to train for this is to go through a few examples. For this we will implement the suggested automated tasks in the LPI objectives.

1. Writing simple perl scripts (using modules)

The online documentation for perl is contained in the perldoc package. The man pages are split into sections. For example the perlintro section can be accessed with:

man perlintro

or

perldoc perlintro

Here is a summary of this perldoc.

Perl scripts must be readable and executable. The first line of the script must point to the interpreter.
For example if which perl returns /usr/bin/perl, then the first line in a script should be:
#!/usr/bin/perl

There are three variable types which can be declared and referenced as in the following script:

# Scalars
my $VARIABLE = “value”; #declare VARIABLE
print (“$VARIABLE \n”); #print VARIABLE

# Arrays
my @ARRAY = (“color1”,”color2”,”color3”); # declare ARRAY
$index=0 # print ARRAY
while ($index < @ARRAY) {
print (“element of $index is @ARRAY[$index] \n”);
$index++;
}

# Hashes or Associative Arrays ({key,value} pairs)
my %HASH=(“color1”, “blue”,”color2”, “red”, “color3”, “white”);
foreach $key (keys %HASH) {
print (“The key $key corresponds to the value $HASH{$key} \n”);
}
@color_rank = sort keys %HASH; # assign the keys to an array

2. Using the Perl taint module to secure data

The taint module is used to check that external variables supplied by the user cannot be used to exploit the system. This module is automatically used when running scripts that have the setuid or setgid bit turned on. It is possible to force a perl script to switch the taint module on with the -T option.

For example the system call bellow will allow any user to read files with read access :

insecure.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
$FILENAME=ARGV[0] # this is the equivalent to $1 in bash
system(“/usr/bin/less”, $FILENAME);

If the script is set SUID root or if the -T option is used then the taint module will be called and this script will not execute.

check-secure.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
$FILENAME=ARGV[0] # this is the equivalent to $1 in bash
system(“/usr/bin/less”, $FILENAME);

In fact the check-secure.pl script isn't secure, it simply won't run with SUID root or the -T option. Here is a version of insecure.pl which works around the taint mechanism and is VERY INSECURE !!

if (open (FILE,"$FILENAME")) {
$line = <FILE>;
while ($line ne "") {
print ($line);
$line = <FILE>;
}
}

3. Installing Perl modules (CPAN)

Read the following perldoc pages for information on perl modules

man perlmod

A set of specific functions can be written as modules and imported into new scripts with the directive:

use module

There are two methods available to dowload, build and install modules from www.cpan.org

Method 1: The modules can be downloaded from www.cpan.org and build as follows:

Unpack the archive and type

perl Makefile.pl
make
make test
make install

Method 2: Use the cpan tool

We can interactively configure CPAN as follows:

# cpan
CPAN is the world-wide archive of perl resources. It consists of about
100 sites that all replicate the same contents all around the globe.
Many countries have at least one CPAN site already. The resources
found on CPAN are easily accessible with the CPAN.pm module. If you
want to use CPAN.pm, you have to configure it properly
Are you ready for manual configuration? [yes]
This can also be done with the commandline
CPAN build and cache directory? [/root/.cpan]
How big should the disk cache be for keeping the build directories
with all the intermediate files?
Cache size for build directory (in MB)? [10]
Where is your gzip program? [/bin/gzip]
Where is your tar program? [/bin/tar]
Where is your unzip program? [/usr/bin/unzip]
Where is your make program? [/usr/bin/make]
Where is your links program? [/usr/bin/links]
Where is your wget program? [/usr/bin/wget]
Warning: ncftpget not found in PATH
Where is your ncftpget program? [] /usr/bin/lftpget
Now we need to know where your favorite CPAN sites are located.
[...]
(1) Africa
(2) Asia
(3) Central America
(4) Europe
(5) North America
(6) Oceania
(7) South America
Select your continent (or several nearby continents) [] 4
[...]
cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.7601)
ReadLine support available (try 'install Bundle::CPAN')
cpan> install Bundle::CPAN
[...]

Once CPAN is configured we can install modules from the command line

perl -MCPAN -e “install MODULENAME”

Modules are installed in subdirectories of /usr/lib/perl. One can check if a specific module is installed with:

perl -MMODULENAME -e 1

For an example application using perl modules see the Appendix.

4. Check for process execution

Searching through the output of ps for a process using grep will sometimes return a positive status even though the process is not running!

This is due to the fact that the grep process itself is sometimes printed out by ps. As in the example below:

ps au|grep junk
root 13643 0.0 0.2 1724 600 pts/1 S 11:22 0:00 grep junk

Needless to say, there aren't any pre-installed tools called junk in general, so the above line would return a positive evaluation in a script!

There is a work around for this problem.

Use pgrep

This tool will search the output of ps for the PIDs of all processes that match the search criteria. For example:

ps aux | pgrep -u root httpd

will match all httpd processes run by user root. One can also use pgrep like grep with a single keyword.

Use |grep -v grep

By piping the output of ps into grep -v grep one can prevent grep from matching itself. This will not work however if the process you are monitoring contains the string grep.

ps aux | grep smbd | grep -v grep

5. Monitor Processes and generate alerts

This objective gives us the opportunity to use bash's control flow capabilities to make decisions when checking for the status of a given process.

Say we want to check that the smbd daemon is running, then restart it and send a message if it is stoped and do nothing if it is still running. The following script will do this:

#!/bin/bash
PROCESS=smb
if ps aux | grep "$PROCESS" | grep -v grep >/dev/null ; then
echo Process $PROCESS is running
else
echo Process $PROCESS is stopped – Restarting it ...
/etc/rc.d/init.d/smb start > /dev/null
fi

Checking the response from a host using ping

#!/bin/bash
while (true)
do #get the times from 10 ping outputs
x=$(ping -c 10 $1 | cut -d"=" -f4 | tail +2|head | sed "s/ms//") #loop through the times to check which ones are longer than 14ms
for times in $x
do
dectimes=$(echo $times | cut -d. -f1) # get an integer
if [ $(($dectimes-14)) -gt 0 ]; then
echo Time exceeded 14ms: $times
fi
done
done

Schedule scripts that parse log files and email them

We can use a perl script to run last in order to read /var/run/utmp and get it to search for the string still which will match all logged users and mail the line to root.

#!/usr/bin/perl $LOGFILE="/tmp/lastlog";
$line="0";
system("last> $LOGFILE");
open (MAIL, "| mail root");
if (open (FILE,"$LOGFILE")) {
while ($line ne "") {
$line=<FILE>;
if ($line =~ still) {
print MAIL $line;
}
}
} close MAIL;

If this script needs to run every hour and it is called /usr/bin/last-log.pl, then you can create a symbolic link in /etc/cron.hourly pointing to it.

Monitor changed files and generate email alert

A 128-bit fingerprint (or “message-digest) for a file can be computed with md5sum.

The foillowing script will check the MD5 checksums for all the files in /etc and compare the output from each run with diff. If there are any differences the changed files are mailed to user root

#!/bin/bash
touch /tmp/md5old
touch /tmp/md5new
mv /tmp/md5new /tmp/md5old
for files in $(find /etc -type f )
do
md5sum $files >> /tmp/md5new
done
x=$(diff /tmp/md5old /tmp/md5new)
if [ -z "$x" ]; then
break
else
echo $x |mail root
fi

Notice that the first time you run this script all the files will be seen as changed!

Checking valid MD5 fingerprints can be done from the STDIN or from a list of pre-computed sums using md5sum -c (--check). We first compute these sums with

find /etc -type f | xargs md5sum > etc-md5.dat

We next pass the content of etc-md5.dat to md5sum -c.

If for example we delete a few blank lines in /etc/sysctl.conf we can see that something has changed with:

md5sum -c etc-md5.dat | grep -v OK
/etc/sysctl.conf: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1906 computed checksums did NOT match

Write a script that notifies administrators when somebody logs in or out

It may not be a good idea to mail all this information but it is possible to gather it and possibly format it using XML or HTML.

Here we read from a list of users we wish to monitor /etc/checks and send an email as soon as they are logged in.

This can run through a cron every minute. This does imply that when somebody from the list is logged in, an email every minute would be sent!

#!/bin/bash
for luser in $(cat /etc/checks)
do
x=$(last |grep $luser|grep still)
if [ -n "$x" ]; then
echo User $luser is logged in | mail root;
fi
done

6. Using rsync

Rsync works like an optimised rcp or scp command. It will copy to the destination directory only the files that are missing or have been changed in the source directory. Even with changed files rsync will send only the difference between the two files.

The syntaxes are:

rsync SRC HOST:/DEST
rsync HOST:/SRC DEST

One can change the value of the remote shell variable RSYNC_RSH used by rsync :

export RSYNC_RSH=ssh

Here is an example script using rsync to keep “Fedora Updates” updated on the local server:

#!/bin/sh cd /var/ftp/pub/updates/fedora ( date echo echo "=== Sync Files ===" rsync -vaz --delete --delete-excluded --exclude="*/debug/*" rsync://rsync.mirror.ac.uk:873/download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/1/ linux/core/updates/1/ 2>&1 echo "=== Sync Files Done ===" echo date ) | mail -s "Fedora Updates Sync Results" andrew@anvil.org

AppendixA

Example Perl Module: Spreadsheet

The Spreadsheet::WriteExcel perl module can generate spreadsheet files.

This module is dependent on the Parse::RecDescent module.

So we need the following module sources from http://search.cpan.org/

Parse-RecDescent-1.94.tar.gz

Spreadsheet-WriteExcel-0.42.tar.gz

Extract the archives and run

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

Then try the following test script:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
use strict;
use Spreadsheet::WriteExcel;
# vars
my($workbook,$worksheet,$format,$col,$row);
# Create a new Excel workbook
$workbook = Spreadsheet::WriteExcel->new("perl.xls");
# Add a worksheet
$worksheet = $workbook->add_worksheet();
# Add and define a format
$format = $workbook->add_format(); # Add a format
$format->set_bold();
$format->set_color('red');
$format->set_align('center');
# Write a formatted and unformatted string, row and column notation.
$col = $row = 0;
$worksheet->write($row, $col, "Hi Excel!", $format);
$worksheet->write(1, $col, "Hi Excel!");
# Write a number and a formula using A1 notation
$worksheet->write('A3', 1.2345);
$worksheet->write('A4', '=SIN(PI()/4)');
$workbook->close();

Exam 201: Detailed Objectives

This is a required exam for LPI certification Level 2. It covers advanced system administration skills that are common across all distributions of Linux.

Each objective is assigned a weighting value. The weights range roughly from 1 to 10, and indicate the relative importance of each objective. Objectives with higher weights will be covered in the exam with more questions.

Topic 201: Linux Kernel

2.201.1 Kernel Components
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: Candidates should be able to utilize kernel components that are necessary to specific hardware, hardware drivers, system resources and requirements. This objective includes implementing different types of kernel images, identifying stable and development kernels and patches, as well as using kernel modules.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:

zImage
bzImage

2.201.2 Compiling a kernel
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: Candidates should be able to properly compile a kernel to include or disable specific features of the Linux kernel as necessary. This objective includes compiling and recompiling the Linux kernel as needed, implementing updates and noting changes in a new kernel, creating a system initrd image, and installing new kernels.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/usr/src/linux/
/etc/lilo.conf
make options (config, xconfig, menuconfig, oldconfig, mrproper zImage, bzImage, modules, modules_install)
mkinitrd (both Red Hat and Debian based)
make

2.201.3 Patching a kernel
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 2

Description: Candidates should be able to properly patch a kernel for various purposes including to implement kernel updates, to implement bug fixes, and to add support for new hardware. This objective also includes being able to properly remove kernel patches from existing production kernels.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
Makefile
patch
gzip
bzip

2.201.4 Customizing a kernel
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: Candidates should be able to customize a kernel for specific system requirements by patching, compiling, and editing configuration files as required. This objective includes being able to assess requirements for a kernel compile versus a kernel patch as well as build and configure kernel modules.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/usr/src/linux
/proc/sys/kernel/
/etc/conf.modules, /etc/modules.conf
patch
make
modprobe
insmod, lsmod
kerneld
kmod

Topic 202: System Startup

2.202.1 Customizing system startup and boot processes
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 2

Description: Candidates should be able to edit appropriate system startup scripts to customize standard system run levels and boot processes. This objective includes interacting with run levels and creating custom initrd images as needed.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/init.d/
/etc/inittab
/etc/rc.d/
mkinitrd (both Red Hat and Debian scripts)

2.202.2 System recovery
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 3

Description: Candidates should be able to properly manipulate a Linux system during both the boot process and during recovery mode. This objective includes using both the init utility and init= kernel options.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
inittab
LILO
init
mount
fsck

Topic 203: Filesystem

2.203.1 Operating the Linux filesystem
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 3

Description: Candidates should be able to properly configure and navigate the standard Linux filesystem. This objective includes configuring and mounting various filesystem types. Also included, is manipulating filesystems to adjust for disk space requirements or device additions.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/fstab
/etc/mtab
/proc/mounts
mount and umount
sync
swapon
swapoff

2.203.2 Maintaining a Linux filesystem
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 4

Description: Candidates should be able to properly maintain a Linux filesystem using system utilities. This objective includes manipulating a standard ext2 filesystem.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
fsck (fsck.ext2)
badblocks
mke2fs
dumpe2fs
debuge2fs
tune2fs

2.203.3 Creating and configuring filesystem options
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 3

Description: Candidates should be able to configure automount filesystems. This objective includes configuring automount for network and device filesystems. Also included is creating non ext2 filesystems for devices such as CD-ROMs.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/auto.master
/etc/auto.[dir]
mkisofs
dd
mke2fs

Topic 204: Hardware

2.204.1 Configuring RAID
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 2

Description: Candidates should be able to configure and implement software RAID. This objective includes using mkraid tools and configuring RAID 0, 1, and 5.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/raidtab
mkraid

2.204.2 Adding new hardware
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 3

Description: Candidates should be able to configure internal and external devices for a system including new hard disks, dumb terminal devices, serial UPS devices, multi-port serial cards, and LCD panels.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/proc/bus/usb
XFree86
modprobe
lsmod
lsdev
lspci
setserial
usbview

2.204.3 Software and kernel configuration
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 2

Description: Candidates should be able to configure kernel options to support various hardware devices including UDMA66 drives and IDE CD burners. This objective includes using LVM (Logical Volume Manager) to manage hard disk drives and particitions as well as software tools to interact with hard disk settings.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/proc/interrupts
hdparm
tune2fs
sysctl

2.204.4 Configuring PCMCIA devices
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: Candidates should be able to configure a Linux installation to include PCMCIA support. This objective includes configuring PCMCIA devices, such as ethernet adapters, to autodetect when inserted.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/pcmcia/
*.opts
cardctl
cardmgr

Topic 209: File and Service Sharing

2.209.1 Configuring a samba server
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 5

Description: The candidate should be able to set up a Samba server for various clients. This objective includes setting up a login script for Samba clients, and setting up an nmbd WINS server. Also included is to change the workgroup in which a server

participates, define a shared directory in smb.conf, define a shared printer in smb.conf,	use nmblookup to test WINS server functionality, and use the smbmount command to	mount an SMB share on a Linux client.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
smbd, nmbd
smbstatus, smbtestparm, smbpasswd, nmblookup
smb.conf, lmhosts

2.209.2 Configuring an NFS server
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 3

Description: The candidate should be able to create an exports file and specify filesystems to be exported. This objective includes editing exports file entries to restrict access to certain hosts, subnets or netgroups. Also included is to specify mount options in the exports file, configure user ID mapping, mount an NFS filesystem on a client, using mount options to specify soft or hard and background retries, signal handling, locking, and block size. The candidate should also be able to configure tcpwrappers to further secure NFS.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/exports
exportfs
showmount
nfsstat

Topic 211: System Maintenance

2.211.1 System logging
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: The candidate should be able to configure syslogd to act as a central network log server. This objective also includes configuring syslogd to send log output to a central log server, logging remote connections, and using grep and other text utils to automate log analysis.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
syslog.conf
/etc/hosts
sysklogd

2.211.2 Packaging software
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: The candidate should be able to build a package. This objective includes building (or rebuilding) both RPM and DEB packaged software.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/debian/rules
SPEC file format
rpm

2.211.3 Backup operations
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 2

Description: The candidate should be able to create an off site backup storage plan.

Topic 213: System Customization and Automation

2.213.1 Automating tasks using scripts
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 3

Description: The candidate should be able to write simple Perl scripts that make use of modules where appropriate, use the Perl taint mode to secure data, and install Perl modules from CPAN. This objective includes using sed and awk in scripts, and using scripts to check for process execution and generate alerts by email or pager if a process dies. Candidates should be able to write and schedule automatic execution of scripts to parse logs for alerts and email them to administrators, synchronize files across machines using rsync, monitor files for changes and generate email alerts, and write a script that notifies administrators when specified users log in or out.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
perl -MCPAN -e shell

bash, awk, sed
crontab
at

Topic 214: Troubleshooting

2.214.2 Creating recovery disks
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer:Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: Candidate should be able to: create both a standard bootdisk for system entrance, and a recovery disk for system repair.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/fstab
/etc/inittab
Any standard editor
Familiarity with the location and contents of the LDP Bootdisk-HOWTO
/usr/sbin/rdev
/bin/cat
/bin/mount (includes -o loop switch)
/sbin/lilo
/bin/dd
/sbin/mke2fs
/usr/sbin/chroot

2.214.3 Identifying boot stages
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: Candidate should be able to: determine, from bootup text, the 4 stages of boot sequence and distinguish between each.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
boot loader start and hand off to kernel
kernel loading
hardware initializiation and setup
daemon initialization and setup

2.214.4 Troubleshooting LILO
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: Candidate should be able to: determine specific stage failures and corrective techniques.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/boot/boot.b
Know meaning of L, LI, LIL, LILO, and scrolling 010101 errors
Know the different LILO install locations, MBR, /dev/fd0, or primary/extended partition.
Know significance of /boot/boot.### files

2.214.5 General troubleshooting
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: A candidate should be able to recognize and identify boot loader and kernel specific stages and utilize kernel boot messages to diagnose kernel errors. This objective includes being able to identify and correct common hardware issues, and be able to determine if the problem is hardware or software.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/proc filesystem
Various system and daemon log files in /var/log/
/, /boot, and /lib/modules
screen output during bootup
kernel syslog entries in system logs (if entry is able to be gained)
location of system kernel and attending modules
dmesg
/sbin/lspci
/usr/bin/lsdev
/sbin/lsmod
/sbin/modprobe
/sbin/insmod
/bin/uname
strace
strings
ltrace
lsof

2.214.6 Troubleshooting system resources
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: A candidate should be able to identify, diagnose and repair local system environment.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/profile && /etc/profile.d/
/etc/init.d/
/etc/rc.*
/etc/sysctl.conf
/etc/bashrc /etc/ld.so.conf
(or other appropriate global shell configuration files)
Core system variables
Any standard editor
/bin/ln
/bin/rm
/sbin/ldconfig
/sbin/sysctl

2.214.8 Troubleshooting environment configurations
Modified: 2001-August-24
Maintainer: Dimitrios Bogiatzoules
Weight: 1

Description: A candidate should be able to identify common local system and user environment configuration issues and common repair techniques.

Key files, terms, and utilities include:
/etc/inittab
/etc/rc.local
/etc/rc.boot
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/
/etc/`shell_name`.conf
/etc/login.defs
/etc/syslog.conf
/etc/passwd
/etc/shadow
/etc/group
/etc/profile
/sbin/init
/usr/sbin/cron
/usr/bin/crontab

INDEX

A

autofs	37

automount	37

B

badblocks	36

C

cardctl	55

cardmgr	54

CD Writing

/etc/modules.conf	49

El Torito	52

ISO9660	51

cdrecord	49

cpan	73

D

debugfs	37

diff	77

dumpe2fs	36

E

e2fsadm	47

El Torito	52

esfsadm	44

exportfs	62

F

files

16

/etc/auto.master	37

/etc/exports	61

/etc/fstab	33

/etc/hosts.allow	62

/etc/hosts.deny	62

/etc/inittab	21

/etc/inittab	20

/etc/lvmtab	43

/etc/lvmtab.d	43

/etc/pcmcia.conf	54

/etc/pcmcia/config	55

/etc/raidtab	41

/etc/rc.d/init.d	20

/etc/rpc	60

/etc/samba/	57

/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia	54

/etc/syslog.conf	64

/proc/cmdline	16

/proc/cpuinfo	16

/proc/filesystems	16

/proc/mdstats	40

/proc/meminfo	16

/proc/modules	17

/proc/mounts	33

/proc/partitions	16

/proc/sys/	16

/proc/sys/kernel/hotplug	16

/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe	16

/proc/sys/overflowgid/uid	17

/usr/src/linux/	9

Makefile.pl	72

fsck	35

fstab options	33

I

ide-scsi.o	49

ISOLINUX	53

K

kernel image types

bzdisk	10

bzImage	10

zdisk	10

zImage	9

kernel panic - no init found	24

kernel panic - unable to mount root fs	24

kernel parameters	27

L

LILO errors	28

lmhosts	57

lsraid	40

lvcreate	44

lvextend	46

LVM

/etc/lvmtab	43

/etc/lvmtab.d	43

Linux raid autodetect	45

logical volumes (LV)	43

LV tools	43

lvm-mod.o	43

physical extents (PE)	43

physical volumes (PV)	42

PV tools	43

VG tools	43

vgscan	43

volume group (VG)	42

M

md5sum	77

mke2fs	36

mkinitrd	28

mkisofs	51

mkraid	40, 46

mkswap	34

N

NFS sevice	60

nfslock	60

nfsstat	62

nmbd	57

nmblookup	56

P

patch	12

PCMCIA

/etc/pcmcia.conf	54

/etc/pcmcia/config	55

/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia	54

cardctl	55

cardmgr	54

ds	55

pcmcia_core	55

yenta_socket	55

perl	70

perldoc	70

portmap	60

pvcreate	44, 46

pvscan	46

R

raidautorun	47

raidstart	40, 46

raidtools	40

rdev	25

RPM Builds	66

rsync	78

S

showmount	63

smbclient	56

smbd	57

smbpasswd	56

smbstatus	56

smbtar	56

software RAID	39

swapon	34

sync	36

sysctl	22

syslogd	64

T

taint	71

tune2fs	37

V

vgcreate	44

vgextend	46

vgscan	43p.

92

LinuxIT Technical Training Centre

The Linux Kernel

_____________________________________________________

System Startup

File and Service Sharing

System Maintenance

System Automation

The Linux Filesystem

Hardware and Software Configuration

License Agreement

Contents

_______________________________________________________

AppendixA

________________________________________________________

LPI 201 Objectives

Adrian Thomasset

2003-11-20T11:11:51