RHCSA Part 1 Sander Van Vugt

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Red Hat Certified System

Administrator (RHCSA)
Crash Course
Agenda
Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) Crash Course, Part 1, Day 1
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•  Installing CentOS 7.x in a virtual machine
•  Linux basics
•  Managing users, groups and permissions
•  Managing Software
•  Managing Networking
•  Managing Partitions
•  Managing File Systems
•  Managing LVM Logical Volumes
•  Managing KVM Virtual Machines
•  Setting up External Authentication
•  Configuring Remote Mounts
•  Configuring Autofs
•  Managing the Boot Procedure
•  Troubleshooting Linux
•  Configuring SELinux
•  Managing Firewalld
Warning
•  The contents of this course are to be used in addition
to other study materials
•  For a complete list of all topics, consult the RHCSA
objectives as published by Red Hat®

Crash Course, Part 1
Installing CentOS
Installing CentOS
•  RHEL or CentOS?
•  Minimal requirements
•  1 GB of RAM
•  20 GB disk with some unpartitioned disk space

Linux Basics
Connecting to Linux
•  Console mode is common on servers
•  Graphical mode is convenient for new users
•  SSH is common in datacenters
Root or not
•  Root is the almighty and unlimited user account
•  Avoid logging in as root at all times
•  If root access is required, use su
•  If administrator access on specific tasks is needed,
configure and use sudo
•  visudo will help you doing that
Exploring the File System
•  Directories on Linux are standardized
•  man hier contains the description of what is where
•  Try to respect the default directory structures
•  /usr/local
•  /home
•  /tmp
Common FS Management Utilities
•  cd: change directory
•  pwd: print current directory
•  ls: list files and their properties
•  cp: copy files
•  rm: remove files
•  mv: move files
Understanding Links
•  A link is a pointer to something else
•  Hard link points to an inode
•  inodes are the entrypoints to all file system
administration
•  Symbolic links point to a file name
•  Cross-device is allowed
•  Can point to a directory also
Getting help
•  man contains extensive usage information about
commands and configuration files and more
•  Use man -k to search the mandb on keywords
•  Use mandb to update the mandb
•  command --help shows a short overview of available
options
Finding Files
•  find is used to find files based on any criteria
•  find / -name "host"
•  find / -size +1G
•  find / -user linda -exec ls -l {}\;
•  find / -perm /4000
•  and many more
Filtering Information
•  grep is the universal filtering utility
•  grep root *
•  ps aux | grep http
Editing Files
•  Many editors are available, but there's only one editor:
vi
•  vim is an improved version of vi, offering some
additional options to make it easier to use
•  view is a read-only version of vi
•  Don't bother using anything else, many other
commands depend on vi also
Working with vi
•  vi has a command mode and an input mode
•  Get from command mode to input mode using i, o, a
•  Get from input mode to command mode using Esc
•  Useful commands
•  :wq! or ZZ write changes and quit
•  u: undo last modification
•  dd: delete a line
•  /something: search for something
•  n: repeat next search
•  x: delete one character

Managing Users and Groups
Why users are important
•  A user is an entity that is used on Linux to grant access
to specific resources
•  Every system has multiple system users
•  Some systems have people users as well
Understanding Group Membership
•  Any Linux user must be a member of at least one group
•  This group is used to set group ownership when
creating new files
•  Users may be member of secondary groups as well
•  Secondary group membership determines which
resources may be accessed
Exploring /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
•  /etc/passwd is used to store user accounts and their
main properties
•  /etc/shadow is used to store hashes of encrypted
passwords and additional password properties
•  /etc/groups is used to store groups and their
properties
•  Secondary group membership is administered through /
etc/groups
•  Primary group membership is administered through /
etc/passwd
Setting New User Defaults
•  New user defaults are stored in two locations
•  /etc/defaults/useradd
•  /etc/login.defs
•  Alternatively, use useradd to set defaults for new users
•  /etc/skel is the skeleton directory, it's contents is
copied to the user home directory when a new user is
created
Managing Groups
•  groupadd
•  groupmod
•  groupdel
Managing Users
•  useradd
•  usermod
•  userdel
Managing Passwords
•  Users can change their own passwords using passwd
•  Root can change any users password using passwd
•  The passwd command also offers options to set default
password related properties
•  Or use it to lock/unlock user accounts
•  chage can be used to show and change password
properties

Managing Permissions
Understanding Basic Linux Permissions
•  read (4)
•  open files
•  list contents of directories
•  write (2)
•  modify files
•  add or delete files from directories
•  execute (1)
•  run files
•  Access directories using cd
Understanding Ownership
•  File access is based on ownership
•  All files have user, group and others
•  Show user and group and the file permissions using ls -l
Managing Basic Permissions
•  chown is used to set ownership
•  chgrp is used to set group ownership
•  chmod is used to set permissions
•  Absolute mode: chmod 770 myfile
•  Relative mode: chmod +x myscript, chmod u+w,o-rx
myfile
Understanding Advanced Linux Permissions
•  set user ID (SUID) (4)
•  On files: run an executable file with the permissions of
the file owner
•  set group ID (SGID) (2)
•  On files: run files with permissions of group owner
•  On directories: set directory group owner as group
owner of all files in that directory
•  sticky bit (1)
•  On directories: only delete files if you're owner of the file
or owner of the directory containing the files
Managing Advanced Linux Permissions
•  Absolute mode: use chmod with 4 digits, of which the
first digit sets special permissions
•  Relative mode
•  chmod u+s sets SUID
•  chmod g+s sets SGID
•  chmod +t sets sticky bit
Understanding Access Control Lists
•  In Linux, every directory or file can have one user owner and one
group owner only
•  In some cases a more sophisticated solution for granting
permissions is required
•  Access Control Lists (ACLs) take care of this
•  Typically, ACLs are applied on shared group directories, or to grant
selective additional access to a directory or file
•  Important to remember: when setting ACLs on directories, you'll
need to set two
•  A recursive current ACL to take care of existing files and directories
•  A default ACL to take care of any file that will be created in the futur
Managing Access Control Lists
•  Use getfacl to show current ACL settings
•  Use setfacl to set new ACLs
•  setfacl -R -m g:sales:rx /files/account
•  setfacl -m d:g:sales:rx /files/account
•  Best practice: set ALCs immediately after taking care of
basic permissions to ensure they are properly applied
to new files
Day 1 Final Lab, Part 1
•  Create the following groups: students and profs
•  Set passwords for all new users to expire after 90 days. 3 days
before expiration the user should get an expiration warning
•  Create the following users: linda, lisa, anna and anouk
•  Make linda and lisa a member of the group students and anna and
anouk a member of the group profs
•  Create the directories /data/profs and /data students
•  Members of the groups profs and students should have full access
to their directories, no one else should have access
•  Members of the groups profs should have read access to all files
in /data/students
•  Users should only be allowed to remove files they have created
themselves
•  User anna is head master and should have permissions to delete all
files in /data
•  Users should be able to write to all files created by group members
without changing the group ownership

Managing Software
Managing Repositories
•  A repository is an installation source that contains RPM packages
that can easily be installed using the yum utility
•  By working with repositories, a requested package can easily be
installed, including all of its dependencies
•  Access to repositories is defined through configuration files in /etc/
yum.repos.d
•  Make sure you know how to do this on the exam!
Working with yum
•  yum was created to be intuitive
•  yum search searches for packages based on package
name or description
•  yum install is used to install packages
•  yum remove is used to remove packages
•  yum provides */filename is very useful and search for
packages containing a specific file
Using rpm to perform queries
•  rpm is the legacy tool for managing packages
•  It still is useful, but for querying packages
•  rpm -qa lists all installed packages
•  rpm -qf /some/filename shows to which package a file
belongs
•  rpm -q[p]l packagename lists package contents
•  rpm -q[p]c packagename lists configuration files
•  rpm -q[p]d packagename lists documentation

Managing Networking
Understanding IPv4 Networking
•  The IPv4 address is used to uniquely identify a node on the local
network or on the Internet
•  Behind a NAT router, addresses from the private address range can
be used
•  10.0.0.0/8
•  172.16.0.0/12
•  192.168.0.0/16
•  The gateway defines how to contact nodes on other networks
•  DNS name resolution is required to translate host names to IP
addresses and vice versa
•  IPv6 is upcoming, but not an RHCSA objective
Managing Runtime Network Configurations
•  The ip command is used for managing runtime network
configurations
•  This is useful for testing before making a configuration
persistent
•  Everything you change using ip will be gone after a
reboot
•  ip addr add dev eth0 192.168.4.10/24
•  ip route add default via 192.168.4.2
•  DNS is configured through /etc/resolv.conf
Managing Persistent Networking
•  The NetworkManager service is used to manage network
configurations
•  The network service is used to manage network devices
•  Network configuration is stored in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/
ifcfg-*
•  nmcli is the recommended tool to create or change network
configurations
•  Make sure to install bash-completion.rpm
•  nmtui is the easy and accessible tool to create or change network
configurations
•  Do NOT use on RHEL versions before 7.2 (cat /etc/redhat-release)
Testing Networking
•  ip address show and ip link show display current
configuration
•  ping tests network connectivity
•  dig tests DNS server responsiveness

Managing Partitions
Understanding MBR and GPT
•  MBR is based on the MSDOS standard from the early
1980's
•  4 partitions can be stored in the MBR
•  to go beyond 4 partitions, use extended and logical
partitions
•  Use fdisk to manage MBR partitions
•  MBR has some limitations
•  Maximum addressable disk size is 2TB
•  No more than 15 partitions
Understanding MBR and GPT
•  GPT is the GUID partition tabel
•  It is mandatory on disks bigger than 2 TB
•  No more difference between primary, extended and
logical partitions
•  Maximum of 128 partitions
•  Use gdisk to manage GPT partitions
Understanding Disk Device Names
•  /dev/sda is the first SCSI device, /dev/sdb is the secind
SCSI device and so on
•  In KVM Virtual machines, you may find /dev/vda
instead
•  Partitions are numbered on their disk device; /dev/
sda1 is the first partition on /dev/sda
•  On MBR, /dev/sda5 is always the first logical partition
When to Use Partprobe
•  fdisk and gdisk write to the on-disk partition table
•  When this gets updated, the kernel partition table in /
proc/partitions does not always get updated
successfully
•  Use partprobe to push the changes to the kernel
partition table if while creating new partitions you'll get
an error

Managing File Systems
Understanding File System Choices
•  XFS is the default file system on RHEL 7
•  Ext4 is still available and supported
•  Btrfs has been offered as a tech preview, but will never
be fully implemented
•  For special purposes, other file systems do exist
Managing File Systems
•  mkfs is used to format a disk and put a file system on
top of it
Managing Labels and UUID
•  To make identification easier, labels and UUIDs can be
used
•  Particularly useful in SAN environments where disk
device names may change
•  After making a file system, every file system gets an
auto-generated UUID
•  Manually assigned labels can also be used
•  tune2fs -L is used to set labels on Ext4
•  xfs_label is used to assign labels to XFS file systems
Mounting File Systems
•  While mounting, you connect a disk device to a specific
directory
•  Use mount [-o options] /dev/sdb1 /mnt to mount a
disk device
Making Mounts Persistent through fstab
•  To make mounts persistent, put them in /etc/fstab
•  Six columns are used in /etc/fstab
•  device
•  mount point
•  file system type
•  mount options
•  dump option (set to 0)
•  fsck option (set to 0)
•  On your server, create a directory /repo and use yumdownloader to
copy all nmap RPMs into this directory
•  Configure this directory to be exposed as a repository for local
usage
•  Search for the RPM package containing the file sealert and make
sure it is installed
•  Query the RPM package you've just installed to list all related
configuration files
•  On the unpartitioned disk space on your computer, create a 1 GB
partition and format it with the Ext4 file system
•  Ensure that you keep disk space available to add more partitions
later
•  Set the label mydata on the partition you've just created
•  Configure your system to automatically mount this new partion on
the directory files while booting

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