Documentation

In the world of Free Open Source Software (FOSS) documentation can often be at a premium. This is unfortunately especially true when looking for documentation relating to using such software in a production environment. The documents on this site aim to rectify that by providing how-to style documentation guiding a user through the process of installing and configuring a variety of software commonly deployed on servers.

We often lamented the lack of suitable documentation for providing those new to working with the software we use with the basic skills and knowledge they needed to contribute effectively to the team with the minimum of wasted time covering irrelevant topics. The vast majority of the documents in the sections below started from an internal effort to produce such documentation.

As most of these documents started out as part of an internal documentation project a basic knowledge of the Gentoo Linux◳ operating system is assumed as is a working knowledge of basic shell commands and syntax. In an effort to make these documents of maximum use to the widest possible audience each document usually begins with an introduction to the concepts covered as well as some reasons why following the guidance laid out there is potentially desirable. The documents are then often further broken down into basic, intermediate and advanced levels which are mostly expected to be completed sequentially.

We have attempted to organise the documentation into logical categories under broad headings which should give a good idea of what kind of information they contain. Each section contains a brief summary of the type of documentation which can be found there as well as a comprehensive table of contents for all the documents in that section.

Applications

Once you have a secure reliable base to build from it is time to think about the functionality which any production system will be required to provide. Due to the demands placed on modern systems many different software packages are usually required to be installed and configured correctly at the same time, usually on a limited hardware platform.

The documents in this section aim to provide detailed instructions on how to install and configure a wide range of software packages usually found on production installations. These include database servers, DNS servers, email servers, etc. As these documents are aimed at users wishing to deploy the software packages in a production environment particular attention will be paid to security and reliability as well as the more common performance tuning and usability documentation.

Deployment

Whilst deployment can refer to almost all stages of turning a planned computer system into a real implementation this section will concentrate on concrete techniques and systems which can be used to assist the deployment of Gentoo Linux◳ in a production environment.

The documentation found here explores, amongst other things, the construction of a "build-server" to automatically build updated binary-packages enabling Gentoo Linux to be used more like a traditional binary distribution without sacrificing any of its flexibility and use of the Xen hypervisor◳ as a virtualisation technology enabling the consolidation of many logical servers to fewer physical servers.

Management

Competent system management is essential in any organisation if their computer systems and other networked devices are to deliver optimum performance. This section aims to provide a variety of documents which can streamline and simplify the routine tasks performed as part of general systems and network management.

Reliability

Reliability is, as all competent system administrators know, one of the most critical features of any production system. This section is devoted to techniques which can be used to increase the reliability of a computer system at both the hardware and software levels.

The documents in this section will explore a wide variety of methods by which overall system reliability can be increased. These range from monitoring the individual components of a system, such as harddisks, for imminent signs of failure, to implementing high-availability clusters capable of withstanding catastrophic failure of major system components or even entire machines.

Security

Besides reliability there is no other equally important feature of a production system than security. If a system is not secure then no matter how reliable it is or how advanced the functionality which it offers it is nothing more than a liability. This section examines methods to improve the security of individual applications as well as complete computer systems and networks.

Documents include information on encrypting the network traffic of a variety of common applications using SSL and TLS, the construction of a custom firewall using the Linux kernel's Netfilter subsystem and the iptables application as well as information describing how to configure IPsec using the racoon daemon to create a Virtual Private Network (VPN).