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Essential System Administration Pocket Reference

Introduction and Font Conventions

This book serves as a quick reference to the most important system administration commands, options, configuration files, and tasks on Unix systems, including specifics for AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, and Solaris. For more details about any item or topic, consult a general system administration reference (e.g., Essential System Administration, Third Edition, O’Reilly & Associates).

Items in this book are grouped by topic (see the Table of Contents). Within each topic, items are in more-or-less alphabetical order, although related items are kept together (use the Index to find any particular item).

This book uses the following font and symbol conventions:

Italic

Used for the names of users and groups, files and directories, and replaceable parameters within normal text.

constant width bold

Used for Unix commands, options, program names, and configuration-file literals and keywords.

constant width italic

Used for replaceable parameters in commands, options, and configuration-file formats.

a|b

Indicates a choice among items (e.g., a or b).

[optional]

Optional items are enclosed in square brackets.

command†

Open source commands are marked by a dagger.