Part I Common Tasks

These days many people use computers with a graphical user interface (GUI) like GNOME. Although they offer lots of features, their use is limited when it comes to the execution of automated tasks. Shells are a good addition to GUIs and this chapter gives you an overview of some aspects of shells, in this case Bash.

Many commands and system utilities need to be run as root to modify files and/or perform tasks that only the super user is allowed to. For security reasons and to avoid accidentally running dangerous commands, it is generally advisable not to log in directly as root. Instead, it is recommended to wo…

SUSE offers a continuous stream of software security updates for your product. By default, the update applet is used to keep your system up-to-date. Refer to Section 8.4, “Keeping the System Up-to-date” for further information on the update applet. This chapter covers the alternative tool for updati…

This section is intended for system administrators and experts who do not run an X server on their systems and depend on the text-based installation tool. It provides basic information about starting and operating YaST in text mode.

This chapter describes Zypper and RPM, two command line tools for managing software. For a definition of the terminology used in this context (for example, repository, patch, or update) refer to Section 8.1, “Definition of Terms”.

Being able to do file system snapshots providing the ability to do rollbacks on Linux is a feature that was often requested in the past. Snapper, with the Btrfs file system or thin-provisioned LVM volumes now fills that gap.

Btrfs, a new copy-on-write file system for Linux, supports file system snapshots (a copy of the state of a subvolume at a certain point of time) of subvolumes (one or more separately mountable file systems within each physical partition). Snapshots are also supported on thin-provisioned LVM volumes formatted with XFS, Ext4 or Ext3. Snapper lets you create and manage these snapshots. It comes with a command line and a YaST interface. Starting with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 it is also possible to boot from Btrfs snapshots—see Section 6.3, “System Rollback by Booting from Snapshots” for more information.

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) enables you to control a remote computer via a graphical desktop (as opposed to a remote shell access). VNC is platform-independent and lets you access the remote machine from any operating system.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop supports two different kinds of VNC sessions: One-time sessions that “live” as long as the VNC connection from the client is kept up, and persistent sessions that “live” until they are explicitly terminated.

These days, many people use several computers—one computer at home, one or several computers at the workplace, and possibly a laptop, tablet, or a smartphone on the road. Many files are needed on all these computers. You should be able to work with all computers and modify the files so that you have the latest version of the data available on all computers.

This chapter introduces GNOME configuration options which administrators can use to adjust system-wide settings, such as customizing menus, installing themes, configuring fonts, changing preferred applications, and locking down capabilities.