Reading this book

This book starts with the basics in the beginning of Part I and then goes on to talk about servers in Part II. Depending on what you are reading this book for, you should read different sections. If you would like to know everything about Linux then I recommend you read the whole book. Even after reading the whole book there will be many things that you can still learn. I hope that this book will put you on the right track and help guide you through your learning experience. If you would like to run Linux on your desktop then skip ahead to Section 1.2 and read the chapters recommended there. For servers skip ahead to Section 1.3. It is strongly recommended that you have a basic understanding of Networking and know a little bit about programming before you start this book. You will still be able to get a lot out of this book without this knowledge, but it does add to your learning experience.

In this book there are two prompts commonly used. Both are bash shell prompts. If the word bash is followed by the $ symbol then it means that any user should be able to type the command. If the word bash is followed by the # symbol then you must have root privileges in order to use the command. With root privileges I will also assume that you are logged in as root. These prompts will appear as in the following:

bash$ ls -al

and

bash# setup

If a user has a regular bash$ shell and switches to become a superuser that does not always set the path to be the same as the root path. The following is not exactly the same as logging in as root:

bash$ su root

If commands that you want to use are in the /sbin or /usr/sbin directories then you will have to type the directory before the command like this:

bash# /sbin/ifconfig

I will not usually type the /sbin or /usr/sbin suffixes, so you will have to remember to add them when they are necessary because you switched to root and your path has not changed.

All of the file names, special key combinations, URLs and commands will appear in the text as follows:

Example filename: /proc/cpuinfo
Example key combination: Ctrl-Alt-Backspace
Example URL: http://www.cs.byuh.edu/research/colton/
Example command: ps aux