LINUX DEVELOPER'S RESOURCE

Being the ice-breaker in business is not always the best approach. Don't worry, you're not. There are already thousands of companies that use Linux. In fact, more than 10 percent of all WWW servers run Linux. This is more that several commercial UNIX dialects, such as SCO, HP/UX, AIX, and DEC OSF/1.

The first widespread commercial use of Linux was as an Internet server. However, this has quickly changed to the point where entire businesses are being run on Linux. One German company, Sixt Rent-a-Car, has implemented Linux in more than 200 offices throughout Germany. In addition, there are hundreds of other companies that run Linux alongside other operating systems and a large number of Internet Service Providers that run exclusively on Linux.

So why use Linux in your business?

A better question is why not? If you are strictly a Microsoft house, in that you only use non-Microsoft products when you must, there is probably no need to try to convince you otherwise. However, if you are still trying to decide what the best solution is, have decided to implement a UNIX solution, or haven't decided which direction to take, then maybe I can give you a gentle push.

Running your business on Linux is not an issue of being on the cutting edge. Today, it is more like jumping on the Linux bandwagon as more and more are realizing the business potential of Linux. Chris Fearnley, a Linux and Internet consultant, says that one of Linux's key advantages is the "support for enterprising small businesses." Aside from the monetary savings of the OS itself, there is savings made when fitting the product to the business.

Chris says: "The motivated entrepreneur...can focus on modifying those pre-existing Linux tools to meet her needs (or build an application out of several such tools--this is the power of Unix's 'tool' model of software and after learning how to use it, one will be eternally frustrated by systems that try to do everything in one big application [the silliest recent 'innovation' being the concept of the Web browser as operating system]). "Free software allows the businessperson the ability to get custom software without the vast expense that that type of software incurs on a commercial OS. Moreover, when the entrepreneur shares the improvements they needed with the rest of the Linux community, they will get helpful feedback about how to improve their contribution." This statement directly supports the Internet mentality of sharing. The Internet is a value- added community in which you are expected to add to the value by making a contribution to it. Linux takes that philosophy into the world of operating systems.

Another business advantage that Linux has was described by Dan Wilder, a senior engineer for a point-of-sale development company: "Linux brings high reliability and a sticker price where I can have one at home and as many copies at work as I can use, even doing things like dedicating a whole copy to running on an obsolete old 386 box and doing nothing but acting as a print server for a little-used but conveniently placed laser printer." Many people are getting tired of hearing that they need to buy more expensive and more powerful hardware just for the operating system itself. An operating system, we might add, that does not provide that much more functionality. It just happens to look prettier. You can have the full functionality of a multitasking operating system with just a couple of megabytes of RAM and a 40Mb hard disk.

Benjammin Graham, owner and system administrator of Jammin Internet Services, uses Linux to save money in other ways. Benjammin says, "It can turn a 386 12mhz with 2MB of RAM into a usable server/workstation. Let me see any other OS do that. (I have done it.)" There is no need to throw away "outdated" equipment like this. Linux can be used for a definite competitive advantage. Another problem that you are likely to run into is your boss. (Assuming that's not you.) It is common for MIS managers and CEOs of big companies to shy away from products that are not also from big companies. After all, if the product was that great, the company would be big, right?

One company that is taking Linux by the hand and leading it though the world of big business is Caldera, Inc. Aside from creating Caldera OpenLinux and a wide range of products like the Caldera Network Desktop and Caldera Internet Office Suite, they are building an international organization of companies that are forming the infrastructure of a Linux business network.

Caldera is becoming the big company with the big name that is supporting Linux. However, that's not all. Red Hat, who provides Red Hat Linux, is also becoming a major player in the Linux world. Both provide not only a Linux distribution, but outstanding commercial-grade business software to go with it. Linux has it all: stability, software, and support. Plus, you can't argue with the price. In this day of downsizing and cutbacks, Linux is your key to remaining competitive.

What this Book is About

To best describe what this book is about, I need to first tell you what this book is not about. First, this is not a book to show you how to use all the different Linux commands and utilities. Because the commands and utilities provided with Linux behave identically to those in other UNIX dialects, generic UNIX books are sufficient. Additionally, there are already several books on the market that provide you with that information. Also, this is not a book that shows you how to administer and run a Linux system. A lot of that type of information is available in the Linux documentation. Plus, there are good books available that already do this, such as Running Linux by Matt Walsh and Lar Kaufman from O'Reilly & Associates and the Linux Companion by Mark Komarinski from Prentice Hall.

The intention of this book is not to jump on the Linux bandwagon or to add one more drop to the already present flood of Linux books just to get in on the action. Instead, as the title implies, this book will address those issues that are relevant and important in using Linux in a business. It covers not only the practical aspects such as the actual implementation, but also the strategic issues that every business must address.

If you are looking for a hand-holding, step-by-step introduction to all of Linux's commands, utilities, and functions, then I must disappoint you. This book is not for you. If you're looking for a first aid book that will list out the 1000 most common problems and their solutions, then I must disappoint you again. If you are looking for a how-to book that tells you step-by-step how to configure printers, install a new hard disk, and add users, then this book is also not for you. So why buy this book? There are already many books on the market that provide information on the commands and the hand-holding. To lure you to buy this book rather than another, I must give you something different. There is already a good introduction to the Linux commands and utilities: the Linux documentation. In addition, SAMS has published Linux Unleashed, by Kamran Husain, Timothy Parker, et al. This provides more than a quick reference to all the commands, utilities, and functions. There are also the books that I mentioned earlier. Repeating what is in these books hurts you more than helps you, as you now need to worry about which one you should buy. So why buy this one?

The information provided in this book is based, in part, on my four years of experience in the tech support department of a major UNIX vendor. Common issues arose when dealing with customers that this book addresses. If addressed at all in existing documentation, users and administrators needed to wade through several different manuals, references, and Web sites to get their answers. This book provides a single source that addresses the important issues and their relationship to each other and the Linux system. While providing phone support, I noticed that many of the same problems kept recurring. Users were trying to accomplish some task and they lacked the basic knowledge to go beyond what was explained in the existing documentation. When they wanted to go beyond the basics or expand on the examples provided, they couldn't. Many people simply ended up calling support for the answers, while others would get themselves into situations that they couldn't easily back out of.

After a couple of years of receiving these kinds of phone calls, it became obvious that many users lacked information about the different aspects of their system--information that is available from many different sources but isn't gathered in one place. Until now. No book specifically addresses the issues involved in running your business on Linux. The result is that you spend time and money running from book to Web site to consultant just to find out if Linux is right for you, then you do it all over to find out how to implement your choices. In the following pages, I hope to give you that information, not as a list of facts to store away somewhere, but rather as a collection of interacting processes. Like your body, it is a system that works together to reach a common goal. When one part fails, the whole system can collapse.

This book is not a first-aid handbook. I am not going to list specific issues and specific problems with an explanation of what you need to do to implement that functionality or solve that problem. These books annoy me because they will list 100 things you can do or 100 problems. However, I end up having problem 101 and the book does not go into enough details to expand on what they are saying.

This book is also not a cookbook. I do not provide step-by-step instructions, telling you what to input in what field, what button to press, and what menu option to select. Although cookbooks are good and tell you how to bake a cake, they don't cut it when it comes to administering your computer system. On the other hand, a cookbook that explains how flour, eggs, and milk interact with each other when you put them in the oven enables you not only to bake a cake, but a pie and bread as well. That's what we're going to do here. This book is intended to be used by the system administrator whose job it is to implement a business strategy using Linux and the MIS manager who is interested in the capabilities of Linux. The system administrator will also have a better understanding of things "behind the scenes," thereby making it easier to identify problems and find solutions. The MIS manager will learn just what Linux can do and how well it can fit into any business strategy.

The information is presented in language that even beginners can understand to give them the tools to understand what is happening and why. I intentionally tried to avoid "buzz- words" and "techno-speak" in an effort to bring my message across to most people. Because of that, some of the more knowledgeable readers will encounter places where I oversimplify or gloss over something. This was unavoidable. I also tried to make this book easy to read. I did not want to bog you down with long drawn-out explanations, but rather I wanted to show you key concepts. My intention was to provide a book that you could read on the living room couch, not one that required that you have a computer in front of you.

By using real world examples, you will see that the solution to the problem is within your reach. In this way, you will be able to take a completely new situation and solve problems on your own. This is a book that, unlike the Linux documentation, focuses not on the features of the operating system, but rather on real world problems and situations that real world people are experiencing and implementing. The decision on how to organize the book was difficult. I tried to put things in an order in which subsequent sections and chapters would build on previous material. One major problem that kept cropping up was the chicken-egg/cart-horse business. So often I came to a place where I thought I had to explain one thing first before I started something else, then later I switched things around to limit the amount I had to repeat myself. Unfortunately that is the nature of the business. Hardware and software work together. You can't have one without the other. You can't explain one without explaining the other. Somewhere along the line you either make assumptions about what people already know and leave things out, or you repeat yourself. I did both. However, I feel that I left out those things that were easily accessed from other sources and only repeated myself when absolutely necessary.

A single book cannot do everything in this regard. Some of you might be disappointed at some of the things I left out. I tried to cover those issues that represented the majority of the calls to support as well as the key issues when implementing Linux in your business. I also attempted to address those issues where people lack knowledge of basic relationships. Because that is one goal of this book, it seemed like a reasonable approach. I felt that the assumption of certain base knowledge would be more useful than starting with an explanation of bits and bytes. I also tried not to rehash things that you could find in existing material. However, order to make sense in many places, it was necessary to repeat other documentation.

This book will proceed in three phases. We begin with basic concepts of both UNIX in general and the Linux implementation. Subsequent chapters provide information needed on a user level then progress into the more advanced topics that would be needed by a system administrator. The material is presented in a way that relates to the actual use of the product and not just a description of programs and their behavior. Many real situations with customers are used as examples of how the information is useful. This is intended for people who are new to either Linux or UNIX and will provide the base on which later sections will build. In the second phase, we will discuss the details of the different aspects of a Linux system. What I am going to show you here is not only the inside of a Linux system, but also how things interact with the system as well as with each other. In other words, I am not only going to show you the anatomy of an Linux system, but the physiology as well. Lastly, we are going to talk about actually implementing Linux in your business. We'll talk about setting up Linux as an Internet server, as well as running your day-to-day operation on Linux.

With this book, you will find a CD containing Linux Pro 4.1. Granted, you will be hard pressed to find a Linux book on the market today that does not have a CD. The one difference is that I included some Web page examples for your enjoyment. Although they are not the best Web sites in the world, they will provide you with a general overview of what is possible and get you started on the road to making the perfect Web site. Note also that many of the Web page examples are intentionally poor. Again, I was trying to show you what is possible in the least amount of space. You might also want to look through the files themselves with some kind of editor (e.g., vi, emacs) just to see how they are put together. On the other hand, if there are some real mistakes in there, I would love to hear from you.

When writing this book, I had a few choices:

*   Being politically correct by saying "he or she" instead of just "he"
*   Being lazy and just saying "he"
*   Being grammatically incorrect and saying "they"
although I was referring to a single person

Since I would rather be grammatically incorrect than politically incorrect, I decided to take the third choice. However, I am only human and if I do slip and just say "he", this is not intended as a sexist remark. I am just lazy.

Throughout the book I tell you stories about my experiences in tech support as well as some about supporting end users directly. Often, it may seem like I am trying to make fun of a the customer or user: This is not the case. I am trying to use these examples to demonstrate the problems that arise when you do not understand the principles behind what is happening on your system and what you are doing. Once you are done reading this book, you won't have those problems anymore. I hope you enjoy reading and using this book as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Best regards,
Jimmo Untersiemau, Germany