Newbie admin tasks on Red Hat Linux

[Tonatiuh]

Red Hat Linux AS 2.1 / 3.0

This is my first time using Linux and I want to do some basic tasks:

1) To admin my disks and filesystems:
- In Solaris i can use the admintool
- In HPUX I can use the SAM
- What can I use in Linux (Red Hat AS) ?

2) Where and how to chage the keyboard language?

Thanks!

[HGN]

Hi

You can fdisk for the diskadmin purpose

1.fdisk /dev/dsk/sda (find out from the df -k output the device file for the disk and there is no need to give the full device, for example if it is /dev/dsk/c0t1d0 you can use /dev/dsk/c0t1d*) With this you can create partions.
2.Once you have saved it you might have to reboot if it is the same array of the OS disk if not you can continue with creating the filesystems
find the device name from fdisk for the partion you created
fdisk /dev/dsk/c0t0d*
select option to display
#mke2fs /dev/dsk/c0t0d10
3.If you want to convert to ext3 filesystem then
#tune2fs -f /dev/dsk/c0t0d10
4.Mount the filesystem
#mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d10 /
5.Make an entry in fstab for this

Hope this helps.

Rgds

Gopi

[Steven E. Protter]

1) To admin my disks and filesystems:
- In Solaris i can use the admintool
- In HPUX I can use the SAM
- What can I use in Linux (Red Hat AS) ?


There is a GUI tool, though less capable than sam called, I believe linuxconf . I've been doing my administration on the command line for quite a while though.

df -h

is the equivalent of bdf on HP-UX and will give you a good idea what filesystems are getting full.

SEP

[Johannes Krackowizer_1]

hi,

1) use fdisk to create, delete, manipulate, ... partition table of a harddrive
if you are using ide-drives:
/dev/hda primary master
/dev/hdb primary slave
/dev/hdc secondary master
/dev/hdd secondary slave
...

most ide-raid or scsi drivers name the devices:

/dev/sda first scsi drive/raid-drive
/dev/sdb second scsi drive/raid-drive
...

have a look at /proc/diskstats
ram0 ... ramx are /dev/ram0 ... /dev/ramx = ramdrives
md0 ... mdx are /dev/md0 ... /dev/mdx = software raid
fd0 is /dev/fd0 = floppy
hda is /dev/hda = primary master
hda1 is /dev/hda1 = first partition on primary master
hdc and no hdc1, hdc2, ... is /dev/hdc = no partitions on secondory master (properly a new harddisk or cd-rom)

to create new partitions type:
fdisk
type "n" for new partitons
type "t" to change system partition id
83 linux, 82 linux swap, fd linux software raid
type "w" to write changes to harddrive

for id 83 and 82 it's very simple:
mkfs.ext2 = format ext2
mkfs.ext3 = format ext3
mkfs.reiserfs = format reiserfs
mkswap = make swap
have a look at ls /sbin/mk.* for more filesystems.

finaly you have to insert your new created filesystem into /etc/fstab

for software raid have a look at:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html

2) the keyboard language could be changed in fedora core with the tool system-config-keyboard. i think in redhat there is a similar tool like redhat-config-keyboard or so.

best regards

johannes

[Jerome Henry]

If you want a gui to administrate disks, use kdiskfree and kwikdisk. But sure that fdisk /dev/hdnumber is faster, df -h usually give enough info.
For you keyboard, Johannes's suggestion is the right one, redhat-config-keyboard (and redhat-config-anything_you_need_to_configure for other functions).

hth

J

[xyko_1]

Hi,

there's a good web tool called webmin that has many features. You may try it on http://www.webmin.com/

But I suggest that you also study how to manage your linux box using command line. http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/ is a good source of information for beginners.

Best regards,
Xyko

[Rick Garland]

The RedHat in bottom left corner (generally) will bring up a menu dialog that you can drill down to find your GUI tools.

[Marco Di Ianni]

You can use also LVM....
what do you FileSystem type use?!