Linux System Admins: The only book you'll ever need (almost)... Chapter 1 notes

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One of the books I've been most impressed with on the Linux front is Evi Nemeth, et al's Linux Administration Handbook. I have the second edition of this wonderful book. In the past I've used it as a reference, but I recently started to read it cover to cover in the hope that I'll eventually learn a lot more about Linux internals. What follows are my notes from the first chapter:

Technologies I should learn as a system administrator:
∘ vi/vim
∘ perl
∘ python
∘ shell programming
∘ expect
• Suggested Reading:
∘ Programming Perl by Larry Wall, et al.
∘ Linux in a Nutshell, by Steven Figgins
∘ Learning the vi Editor by Linda Lamb and Arnold Robbins
∘ The Daemon, the GNU & the Penguin, by Peter Salus
• Comprehensive lists of Linux distributions:
∘ http://www.linux.org/dist
∘ http://lwn.net/Distributions
∘ http://www.distrowatch.com/
• Sources of help:
∘ man pages
∘ Texinfo documents (info)
∘ HOWTOs (http://www.tldp.org)
∘ Guides (http://www.tldp.org)
∘ Distribution-specific documentation
∘ Web pages associated with specific software
• Free Linux Documentation Project Guides:
∘ The Linux System Administrator's Guide by Lars Wirzenius
∘ Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide by Mendel Cooper
∘ The Linux Network Administrator's Guide by Olaf Kirch
∘ Linux System Administration Made Easy by Steve Frampton
• MAN Page organization : 1 user-level commands, 2 system calls, 3 library calls, 4 device drivers and network protocols, 5 standard file formats, 6 games and demos, 7 miscellaneous files and documents, 8 sysadmin commands, 9 obscure kernel specs and interfaces.
• man -k or apropos - prints a list of man pages containing
• MANPATH environment /etc/man.config in RHEL/Fedora or /etc/manpath.config (Debian/Ubuntu/SUSE)
• Sysadmin Sites:
∘ http://www.ugu.com/
∘ http://www.stokely.com/
∘ http://www.cpan.org/
∘ http://www.securityfocus.com/
∘ http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
• which gcc
• locate signal.h (and updatedb to update locate's database)
• Essential tasks of sysadmins:
∘ Add/Removing and managing user accounts
∘ Add/Removing hardware
∘ Performing backups
∘ Installing and upgrading software
∘ Monitoring the system
∘ Troubleshooting
∘ Maintaining local documentation
∘ Monitoring security
∘ Helping Users