Linux Supplement for Micah Altman's Unix Handouts

Coming from an IRIX environment Linux should not be too difficult to understand. Most of my notes on my main Unix page are directly applicable.

What to Read

• O'Reilly Press Linux Books
• Linux Documentation Project: which versions to install, how to get things to work, FAQ's
• Linux How-To's: How to do lots of sys-admin stuff. (Printing How-TO has a different URL)

Where to Get Stuff

• Linux Applications and Utilities Page
• the Linux Software Map
• Freshmeat Archives -- A source of much good unixness
• Scientific Applications on Linux
• Linux Online
• Irix Tools: Many of the best features of the Irix OS, like Performance CO-Pilot, XFS, and NUMA, are available as Open Source Projects

Linux System Performance and Monitoring Tools

Many of the common troubleshooting and tuning tools (such as ps top netstat nfsstat df fuser rpcinfo) are available under Linux, but may differ somewhat from other Unix'es. Here are some additional tools to look for on Linux systems:

• RPM -- package manager, shows & manages installed software

• /proc and procinfo- can be used to show installed hardware and related statistics
• vmstat - a curses-based performance monitor, makes the normal stats easier to monitor interactively.
• lsof - like fuser, shows the files used by processes. Also shows other resource use, such as network ports. Invaluable for troubleshooting.
• strace - Trace the system calls for an executable. Invaluable for troubleshooting. (Does not trace shell scripts, but remember that shell scripts can be traced by putting debug flags in the #! line.)
• tcpdump - Trace packets on the network. Invaluable for network troubleshooting, can also be used as the foundation of a performance measurement tool.