Linux System Administrator - Daily Tasks

In the daily task of a Linux system administrator the most common duties are
related to preserve security to the systems ! In this post I will describe the main
daily tasks. I will be glad for any comments and contributions to the post.
Checks for systems and software updates: you need to check for system updates
(especially those security related) and software updates. It's a good behavior to
spend some minutes every day reading forum about systems security! It could
be necessary to modify system configuration scripts and to apply these new
changes. To keep your system up-to-date there are different package system
such as RedHat RPM (used by RedHat, Fedora, Cent'OS...) and Debian dpkg (used
by Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint...). Both systems keep a database of all the
software installed in your system; you can use their specific tools to keep your
system update.
Perform Disk Management: you need to check for any RAID issues (it's better to
have a monitoring system that inform you whenever there is a new issue instead
of discovering it too later !!). There are some basic commands you need to know
and use daily, such as du ("disk usage": is a standard program used to estimate
file space used under a particular file system), df (display the amount of
available disk space for file-systems), fdisk (to manage disk partitions),...
Perform Data Backup (it can be scheduled daily or weekly using many different
tools); you need to have a good recover policy in case you have to restore data
or totally damaged systems !!! The most easy tools are TAR and CPIO but they
need to be tuned and can be tricky. It is often better to use different tools.
Perform Data-Base check: if you have to manage a data-base server (MySQL for
example) you can use the command line shell or many other different tools such
as: MySQL WorkBench, MySQL WebMin module (less powerful than WorkBench in
my opinion but still a complete tool), phpMyAdmin (my favorite web tool, really
easy to use and it handles every aspect of managing a MySQL database server).
Perform Server Load control: you need to check CPU, memory, I/O, network
devices. To perform such control you can use a monitor software or command
line tools such as top (that display system resources and information) ps (that
display all the systems process...you can use a combination of ps and grep to
filter what you are searching for)...
Check your log files: you need to periodically check log files (/var/log) and
system messages. When you really know your system, it will be quite easy to
find an issue checking how big are getting your log files !!
User and group management: it could be necessary to add or remove user, to
change their group or the user disk quota. Other than command line there are
many different tools helping you in this task.
Verify network performance: it often happens that this task is handled by
monitoring software or external devices (manageable switches that send log
information to an SNMP server)

The system administrator is responsible for following things:

User administration (setup and maintaining account)

Maintaining system
Verify that peripherals are working properly
Quickly arrange repair for hardware in occasion of hardware failure
Monitor system performance
Create file systems
Install software
Create a backup and recover policy
Monitor network communication
Update system as soon as new version of OS and application software comes out
Implement the policies for the use of the computer system and network
Setup security policies for users. A sysadmin must have a strong grasp of
computer security (e.g. firewalls and intrusion detection systems)
Documentation in form of internal wiki
Password and identity management
Cloud computing and sysadmin
Cloud computing is nothing but a large number of computers connected through
the Internet/Wan. Cloud computing is now part of technology and sysadmin must
lean:

Automation software such as puppet, chef, etc.

Cloud infrastructure such as AWS, Openstack etc.
Network services in cloud such as Content delivery networks (Akamai, CloudFront
etc) and DNS servers.
Source control
Designing best practices for backups, and whole infrastructure.

* Morning checks of systems/software.

* Performing backups of data.
* Applying operating system updates, and configuration changes.
* Installing and configuring new hardware/software.
* Adding/deleting/creating/modifying user account information, resetting
passwords, etc.
* Answering technical queries.
* Responsibility for security.
* Responsibility for documenting the configuration of the system.
* Troubleshooting any reported problems.

* System performance tuning.

* Keeping the network up and running.