Category: Linux and UNIX

Two weeks ago I started explaining how Linux boots.  Last week I got as far as the UEFI firmware finding a running a “shim” program named shim.efi to satisfy the Secure Boot security policy with its digital signature from a trusted signing authority (which, to further discourage the conspiracy theories, is not Microsoft or somehow […]

It’s amazing that the early 1980s IBM PC design lasted as long as it did. Into the 2000s people relied on its very limited BIOS firmware and MBR partition tables. But now it’s the 2010s and things have finally moved forward. I gave you an overview of how Linux boots. The first steps involve the […]

With Linux, you can just turn it on, wait a few moments, and start doing powerful things! But if you are going to be responsible for critical systems, you need to know how they are supposed to work so you can recognize and fix problems. At its very simplest, we’re looking at this sequence: Firmware […]

When I teach Learning Tree’s Linux server administration course, I frequently find attendees who have taken the introductory Linux for users course and who are in the server course because they are about to be put in charge of running some critical servers, but they don’t have the needed skills. They’re just not ready to […]

Teaching classes has taught me that you can get two very different things out of a Linux training course — knowledge and skill. Knowledge can be communicated efficiently and gained quickly. “Springfield is the capital of Illinois.” “Most system configuration is stored under /etc.” Skill, on the other hand, is something that you can’t directly […]