Book: LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell
Section: Chapter 24.  Exam 102 Highlighter's Index



24.2 Linux Installation and Package Management

24.2.1 Objective 1: Design a Hard Disk Layout

24.2.1.1 Guidelines
  • Keep / small by distributing larger parts of the directory tree to other filesystems.

  • Separate a small /boot partition below cylinder 1024 for kernels.

  • Separate /var into its own partition to prevent runaway logs from filling /.

  • Separate /tmp.

  • Separate /usr if it is to be shared read-only among other systems via NFS.

  • Set swap size to be about the size of main memory.

24.2.2 Objective 2: Install a Boot Manager

  • LILO is a popular Linux boot loader.

  • LILO consists of the lilo command, which installs the boot loader, and the boot loader itself.

  • LILO is configured using /etc/lilo.conf.

24.2.3 Objective 3: Make and Install Programs from Source

  • Software often comes in a tarball, a compressed tar archive file.

  • Larger source code packages include a configure script to verify that everything is in order to compile the software.

  • make is then used to build the software.

  • make is also often used to install the software into directories such as /usr/local/bin.

24.2.4 Objective 4: Manage Shared Libraries

  • System libraries provide many of the functions required by a program.

  • A program that contains executable code from libraries is statically linked, because it stands alone and contains all necessary code to execute.

  • Since static linking leads to larger executable files and more resource consumption, system libraries can be shared among many executing programs at the same time.

  • A program that contains references to external, shared libraries is dynamically linked at runtime by the dynamic linker, ld.so.

  • New locations for shared libraries can be added to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable. As an alternative, the locations can be added to /etc/ld.so.conf, which lists library file directories. This file is translated into the binary index /etc/ld.so.cache using ldconfig.

24.2.5 Objective 5: Use Debian Package Management

  • dpkg automates the installation and maintenance of software packages.

  • dpkg has a number of options.

24.2.6 Objective 6: Use Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)

  • RPM automates the installation and maintenance of software packages.

  • Package dependencies are handled automatically.