Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Rather than following a cookbook approach, this manual provides a full introduction to the function and interactions at the heart of the LINUX system. Topics include the operating system and its environment; LINUX shells and utilities; system installation, administration, monitoring and upgrading; and problem solving for business applications. Special emphasis is placed in networking with LINUX; building and Internet server; and doing business on the World Wide Web. The CD-ROM contains LINUX Pro 4.1 as well as HTML examples. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments
• What this Book is About
• 1 Introduction to Operating Systems
• What Is an Operating System?
• Processes
• Files and Directories
• Operating System Layers
• Moving On
• 2 The Linux Basics
• What Linux is All About
• A Guided Tour
• What Linux Is Made Of
• What Linux Does
• What Goes with Linux
• Reading All About It: Linux Documentation
• What's Next
• 3 Shells and Basic Utilities
• Talking to Linux: The Shell
• The Search Path
• Shell Variables
• Regular Expressions and Metacharacters
• Quotes
• Pipes and Redirection
• Interpreting the Command
• Different Kinds of Shells
• Command Line Editing
• Command Line Completion
• Functions
• Job Control
• Aliases
• A Few More Constructs
• The C-Shell
• Commonly Used Utilities
• Looking for Files
• Looking Through Files
• Basic Shell Scripting
• Odds and Ends
• 4 Editing Files
• Interactively Editing Files with vi
• Basics
• Basic Editing and Movement Commands
• More vi Magic
• Configuring vi
• Interactively Editing Files with emacs
• Starting emacs
• Basic Movement
• Editing Text
• Searching and Replacing Text
• Customizing emacs
• Noninteractively Editing Files with sed
• Programming with awk
• Putting Things Together
• Perl: The Language of the Web
• 5 Basic System Administration
• Starting and Stopping the System
• The Boot Process
• Run Levels
• Stopping the System
• Users and User Accounts
• User Accounts
• Logging into the System
• Terminals
• Cron
• User Communication
• Printers and Interfaces
• Advanced Formatting Options
• The printcap File
• Remote Printing
• The Next Step
• 6 The Operating System and Its Environment
• The Kernel: The Heartbeat of Linux
• Processes
• The Life Cycle of Processes
• Process Scheduling
• Interrupts, Exceptions, and Traps
• Signals
• System Calls
• Paging and Swapping
• Processes in Action
• Rebuilding Your Kernel
• Installing Your Kernel
• Devices and Device Nodes
• Major and Minor Numbers
• File Systems and Files
• Disk Layout
• 7 The X-Windows System
• Configuring the X-Windows Server
• The Basics of X
• Displaying Clients
• Resources
• Colors
• Fonts
• The Window Manager
• The Pager
• What Else?
• 8 The Computer Itself
• Basic Input/Output Services and the System Bus
• The Expansion Bus
• Industry Standard Architecture (ISA)
• Micro-Channel Architecture (MCA)
• Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA)
• VESA Local Bus (VLB)
• Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)
• The Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI)
• Termination
• Memory
• RAM
• Cache Memory
• Parity
• The Central Processing Unit
• Intel Processors
• Alpha Processors
• Hard Disks
• Floppy Drives
• Tape Drives
• CD-ROMS
• Serial Ports
• Parallel Ports
• Video Cards and Monitors
• Modems
• Printers
• Mice
• Uninterruptable Power Supplies
• 9 Talking to Other Machines
• TCP/IP
• Network Services
• Network Standards
• IP Addressing
• Subnet Masks
• Routing and IP Gateways
• DNS: Finding Other Machines
• Configuring the Domain Name System (DNS)
• Debugging the Name Server
• Your Own IP Address
• NFS
• The Flow of Things
• When Things Go Wrong
• Automount
• SAMBA
• Serial Network Protocols
• Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP)
• Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP)
• Testing the Configuration
• Automating the Login
• Starting the Server
• Setting up a PPP Server
• Accessing the Web
• Firewalls
• Securing the Server
• Securing the Intern