The Linux Operating System Section

This section contains a large amount of tutorials and information about Linux. It contains eleven tutorials written similar to book format on various aspects of Linux. It also contains, Linux editorials, Linux tips and Linux weblinks including links to The Linux Documentation Project and Metalab's Index of Linux publications.

Agustin's Linux Manuals

The Computer Documentation Project is proud to host four volumes of Agustin Velasco's Series about Linux. Agustin has generously made these manuals available to the public through this site. These manuals are:

1. Volume 1 - Installation and Internet - Includes Chapters 1 and 2 which cover the installation, partition types, mount points, package selections, configuring services, the boot mode, configuring X, creating users, configuring dial up, modems, high speed internet, DSL, configuring ISDN, routers, login protocols, and more.
2. Volume 2 - System Administration - Includes Chapters 3 and 4 covering command basics, terminals, shells, command aliases, file permissions, using chmod and chown, process control, bash configuration, the linuxconf utility, account privileges, account policies, managing groups, using NFS, implementing disk quotas, the Mandrake control center, installing scanners, backups, samba printing, and more.
3. Volume 3 - Multimedia and Hardware Installation - Includes Chapters 5, 6, and 7 covering configuring the sound card, the XMMS player, the DSCD player, Xine, video conferencing, GnomeMeeting, the desktop, installing hardware, loading modules for the hardware, IDEs, tweaking hard drive performance, installing CD-ROMs, installing Zip drives, installing USB devices, installing firewire, and more.
4. Volume 4 - Networks and Servers - Includes Chapters 8 and 9 covering IP addressing, network classes, decimal notation, subnetting, allocating subnets, subnet masks, routing protocols, classless internet domain router, apache web server, apache modules, DNS servers, setting up DNS zones, virtual web hosting, and more.

The second edition of Agustin's Linux Manual, based on Mandrake 10, is available at www.netcontrol.org for a very low price. You can find websites with downloadable versions of Agustin's Linux manual first edition at netcontrol.org or at http://www.globusz.com/authors_v.asp.

Additional Linux Tutorials

1. The CTDP Linux User's Guide - This document gives the user a good organized overview of Linux including basic commands, file structure, file systems, system configuration, managing users and processes, networking and the respective services, including the configuration of X. It explains how to set up filesystems, how to set liLO and the kernel up, working with the init process, setting up system logging, CRON, user accounting, user limits, printing, setting up the network, Samba services, DNS, DHCP, BOOTP, IP masquerading, using linux as a router, network file sharing (NFS) and more.
2. How Linux Works CTDP Guide - This document explains in detail, how the system operates from the kernel operation, and how it locates the root filesystem to how many system and network services work. This document explains the inner workings from the BIOS, through the operation of the boot loader (liLO), loading the kernel, and more. It continues with explanations of the various system runlevels, the init process, and how the startup script files are structured and operates. It explains the login process, the shell, and system environment, filesystems, devices, keymapping, system configuration, X, and various daemons, system and networking services. This guide is an essential key in a complete understanding of Linux.
3. CTDP Linux Files and Command Reference - This manual explains in more detail the Linux file system and Linux configuration file details. It also lists many commands by category available in Linux giving a brief description of each one. Available in PDF Format here.
4. Linux Brief CTDP How-tos - This document contains a multitude of handy brief how-tos. The how-tos are organized by category and they include, how to install and run a recent version of the JAVA environment, how to perform diskless boots from client computers using Linux as a server, and some tips on script writing.
5. The CTDP Linux Startup Manual - This manual documents in great detail how linux boots from the operation of BIOS, the LiLO boot loader, the kernel, to intricate detail on each startup script and beyond.
6. The CTDP Linux Programmer's Guide - This guide documents much about programming on the Linux operating system, from script writing, to C and more. This document is under development. Currently it includes information about script writing in Linux, with information about Linux structures and signals required for programming. It includes script and C code examples. This document will be expanded to include C++, and GUI tools as time permits.

Documentation Background and Purpose

The documentation written by Mark Allen was written as Linux was learned. It was written, primarily using Redhat Linux 6.1 and the text normally describes Redhat systems, although it is applicable to most modern versions of Linux. It was written for the purpose of helping others learn Linux much faster as well as for use as a handy reference for Linux. We are trying to briefly cover most aspects of Linux from the basics to the complex. We are interested in user feedback about these documents, specifically what you like about them along with areas it can improved upon. We cannot guarantee a response to all contacts, but will read comments and suggestions. We cannot guarantee all information in this documentation to be accurate and you must use it at your own risk. This documentation is constantly growing and changing.

This documentation was originally written with an engineering audience or person with a computer science background, but can be used by anyone. We have tried to explain details in layman's terms and have expanded explanations and sections to help those with little to no computer familiarity.

Please note that all user's material is written not only from a system administrator point of view, but the system is considered to be a full server configuration. The only possible reason for installing Linux as a workstation rather than a server, would be due to hardware limitations on the system it is being installed on. Other than that, perhaps a user is sure the server functions will never be needed. In this case, if a user is so severely limiting the capability of Linux, then why should they not run a Windows workstation, except to save money? To me, running Linux as a workstation is a waste since it was designed for so much more. A friend of mine compared it to using a bus as a commuter vehicle with the only rider being the driver.

Much of the problem with learning Linux is that there are so many available commands and tools along with a variety of ways to accomplish each task. The main goal of this documentation is to help the reader more quickly discover what those tools and commands are and thereby learn faster. This is done by categorizing capabilities into various sections which describe various operating system functions. This document attempts to give examples and reasonably full explanations about the various tools involved but more emphasis has been placed on having a reasonable listing of tools. As this documentation is upgraded, where it is helpful, additional examples and explanations will be added. One of the greatest problems in writing this documentation is that many functional areas run over into other functional areas. For instance filesystems and user quotas both deal with filesystems. Therefore some information may be repeated in various sections or documents in order to avoid the necessity of looking in many areas for complete information.