UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm certain that the term 'god' was used disproportionately and was not intended to be taken entirely seriously.

You're certainly good at depressing people though... if you've been questing for god status since long before I was in diapers, I don't stand a chance

At a former employer, a small non-IT technology company, I was the defacto part-time local admin (about 2-4 hours per month), but when we had a large problem or change to make that required real expertise, we called in consulting power from our inet connectivity provider. In late 1997 we needed an OS upgrade (for Y2K) on a Solaris box that functioned as our mail server (among other things), and so the consultants were called in.

They had just hired the guy they sent, who claimed to have HP-UX admin experience. His simple OS upgrade cost us two weeks of email connectivity with some business critical email domains. He was fired before the problems were fixed, and the president of my company was mad at me because I was "supposed to know about Unix."

The moral: Don't fake your way into a job you're not qualified for.

Sometimes it's worth it.

OK I got this company that wants to upgrade there servers...

Email - (Plus Adding Webmail)
WebServer - (For webmail and works profiles)
DHCP
Logon + file Server (for roaming profiles)
Firewall
Backup

Now after a week of LINUX sniffing iv decided that I can do it and this is how I think it should be done...with RedHat 9...

EMAIL - Ill use FetchMail to get the mail from a shared POP3 mail box at the ISP, then send it to SendMail, and ill use SqurilMail as the webmail client.

LOGON + FILE SERVER - use SAMBA to act as a PDC for the win2k clients.

FIREWALL - use the builtin firewall that comes with RedHat 9.

Backup - Use AMANDA????

Webserver - use the Apache server that comes with Redhat 9.

DHCP - use the DHCP server that comes with Redhat 9.

Im just using the tools that iv read about and come across so please tell me if im going wrong. This dude said that he could upgrade there system for £2,500 so I said that ill do it for £1000 cos im sure I can do it.

There are quite a few this about UNIX that still bother me...

Like soon as I boot Unix I start XServer but I feel that I should be using the command line. Do unix pros use X alot or is the case that X is for newbies and real pros use the command line?

This whole business of compiling stuff is like a total new idea to me...and I cant quite understand it ...yet. Is it somthing I should learn first so that I can really controll my system?

The other day I switched GNOME to KMD and had to reinstall the whole OS to get GNOME back again. I didnt really have to do that right?

Iv been reading "the unix administrator bible" to try and get a better grip on things but its only goes surface deep on most things.

Does my heart good to see some people out there that know even less about UNIX/Linux than I do, especially after some of the boneheaded questions I've asked here.

At this job I am at now, I have had to learn Linux on the job. Within 3 months, I had built a DHCP server, a Web(Apache)Server, a DNS server that I found out later I did not need, and a Sendmail server. I also had to do a crash course on routing and VLAN's, and I also managed to FLUNK the RHCE exam, terribly.

Using this website and other sources on the 'Net, you can do all this and more(build firewalls with IPtables, compile a kernel, etc.), but you had better get started YESTERDAY if you want this done in a month, and be ready for some experimentation, because it won't be easy.

By the way, at 1 full year, I am a Linux/UNIX peon.

By the way, to switch from GNOME to KDE, use switchdesk.

Oh, and I'll use the GUI until I die, I don't care how experienced I get with Linux/UNIX.

Unless the standard cookbook answers for all those programs are exactly what you'll need, you will, because of your lack of experience, wind up working for a month (150-160 working hours) to get it set up. That's 6.5 to 6.7 GBP per hour, or about 10 USD per hour. If you can live off that for a month (and you are willing to consider this low a wage as the tradeoff for the learning experience), that's not too bad. But you mustRemember what
Or, to paraphrase what a lot of us have said: You have to be always learning, even after the month is over.