Legacy material only

Reading strategy:

The recommended text is here. Examples of other reading material is given below. There is a wealth of material available on the internet and students are expected to research the topics for more current examples.

Directed Study :

The role of a System Administrator carries many responsibilities, not all of which may be included in a contract of employment. The following link discusses the roles and responsibilites that should be considered. ja-net discussion document.

The USENIX code of ethics

See RFC1244 RFC for site security policies and procedures. It may date from 1991 but is still relevant today.

managing file system access is an an important part of sys-adm. Getting the right balance of access and denial can be tricky

Some of the risks inherent in the Unix style file permissions 'set [user|group] id is discussed here

And the risks in some installations using ACLs is discussed here and in links from that page.

discussion of acls in Linuxhere. Don't need to study this in depth but the key points are worth reading.

Another overview of acl from a GNU/Linux perspective here.

Troubleshooting TCP/IP networks is discussed here.

just for interest : what to do when you're in / and you type rm -rf *

Exam prep. handouts

Assessment :

Assessment will be via a portfolio of log files and related work taken from the lab exercises listed below.

Assignment specification

Exercise 1:

To build a linux kernel for the 'Jaz' machine that includes acl support for ext2 and ext3 filesystems.

• This exercise will count towards the module assessment.
• You will work in small teams of 3 or 4.
• You will keep a logbook of the work that your team carries out.
• The lab tutor will countersign the logbook when you demonstrate each stage of the task.
• The logbook will form part of the assignment portfolio.

You will need to

• decide on the kernel version;
• obtain the kernel source;
• obtain the acl patches appropriate to your chosen kernel;
• apply the patches to the kernel source;
• build your kernel;
• modify /etc/fstab to include the new mount options;
• reboot with your new kernel;
• administer the acl permissions.
• provide a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of acl and extended attributes.

Some of the risks inherent in the Unix style file permissions 'set [user|group] id is discussed here

And the risks in some installations using ACLs is discussed here and in links from that page.

Exercise 2:

Providing logins and home directories from a server. exploring NIS, LDAP and Samba.

• Linux NIS Howto
• Openldap home page
• An Openldap Howto, a good blow-by-blow howto.
• Redhat-centric Samba howto
• Samba home page

Exercise 3:

System monitoring tools provide useful indicators for identifying bottlenecks and configuration problems that may lead to poor performance

• sysstat tools home page
• Slackware Handbook Project

These are links to the current kernel versions kindly provided dynamically by the Linux HQ :)

Exercise 4:

Private and public networks : An investigation of Firewalls, Proxying, Masquerading and [SPD]NAT

Useful URLs.

• Powerpoint presentation of Firewalls from C. Edward Chow. Excellent stuff.
• IPMasquerading Howto
• IPTables tutorial, one of many.

Security related links

The list here, like the others on this page, is just an arbitrary selection of available material and tools.

• RFC1244 RFC for site security.
• The Tale of an attack and the tools used to identify it. (debian)
• A useful rootkit check utility chkrootkit.
• lsof the list open files utility.
• Tripwire, a commercial tool
• Build a honeypot, a very useful site for white papers, howtos and other info, all opensource.