HP-UX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION (Essential Operations)

HP-UX Training Overview

This course will teach the commands and methods needed to setup and manage an HP-UX system. The course will also use a problem solving approach in the lab exercises to teach system administrators advanced topics, for long-term mangement of the system.

Customized for: HP-UX 11i v3, PA-RISC & Itanium platforms

HP-UX Training Prerequisites

It is assumed that the student has successfully completed the Fundamentals of HP-UX course, or has equivalent system time as a user.

HP-UX Training Course duration

This course normally requires five (5) days, approximately 60% lecture, and 40% lab time.

HP-UX Training Course Objectives

On completion of this course, a systems administrator should be able to install, update, and boot the HP-UX operating environment; set up user accounts and directories; prepare queues for use; perform backups for integrity and performance reasons; monitor the system for performance and do basic setup of network software and capabilities.

HP-UX Training Course outline

Advanced System Concepts for System Administrators

Process concepts
Shell command usage and review
Optimizing system help information
System administrator functions
Using the root account
HP-UX administrative tools
- commands
- SAM
- System Management Homepage

System Installation and Updating

Installation types and methods
Installing the HP-UX operating system (Ignite-UX)
Updating HP-UX using update-ux
HP-UX product control (swinstall, swlist, swremove)
Obtaining and installing patches to HP-UX
Rebuilding/reconfiguring the HP-UX kernel

Startup and Shutdown

Comparison of PA-RISC and Itanium boot sequences
Default bootstrap
Boot Admin mode (PA-RISC) & EFI modes (Itanium)
Boot to single-user mode
Startup methods and procedures
Shutdown procedures

Managing of System Users

/etc/passwd /etc/group files and contents
Standard, Shadow, and Trusted modes
UID and GID concepts
Creation of a user account
Controlling access by groups
Login sequence
Setting up user environment files
Removing a user account

Managing Printer Queues

Creation of an execution print queue
Commands to manipulate queues
Commands to manipulate jobs in queues

File System Concepts and Review

Whole disk and LVM disk layouts
Device naming conventions
File system structure contents
Supported file types
Special permission codes
Manipulation of Access Control Lists (ACLs)

Managing Disk and Tape Volumes

Creating (disk) device files
Creating file systems with newfs
Changing file system attributes - tunefs & vxtunefs
Checking file system structure with fsck
mounting and umounting file systems
open file control via fuser and lsof
Using LVM on HP-UX
- physical volume creation (pvcreate)
- volume group creation (vgcreate)
- logical volume creation (lvcreate)
- controlling software mirroring and striping
- volume group and logical volume extensions
- file system extensions (fsadm)
Commands to manipulate tape volumes:
- tar utility
- cpio utility
(vx)dump and (vx)restore utilities
fbackup and frestore utilities

Monitoring System Activity

Informational Utilities
The vmstat utility
The iostat utility
The sar utility
The netstat utility

Maintaining System Integrity

Login and user accounting
Command/process level accounting
Disk space usage utilities
Using cron tables
Basic CDE data files and setups

Network Setup and Configuration

Automated methods: sam and /etc/set_parms
TCP/IP address selection
Host names and related files
Configuring network devices
Defining routers and subnet addressing
Network testing with ping
Network utilities: telnet,rlogin, rcp, remsh