The most complex job of a system administrator is to manage systems and imposition detection. maintaining the security of big systems is next to traveling the Mount Everest and any lumps in the entire system will be a big time disaster!!

But open source systems are always available for our rescue!! open source software provides a extensive set of tools that are used by the system administrators.

Each of the tools specified below are best in their own means in terms of retrieving data and security.

Read On!

• WIRESHARK– Wireshark is a free open source graphical application which is used for packet sniffing. formerly called Ethereal, it can perform well for capturing, filtering and inspecting network packets. It is used for communications and for educational purposes. its installation is easy from wireshark.org-

#yum -y install wireshark-gnome

Once installed, it can be launched either by selecting Applications>Internet>Wireshark Network Analyzer from GNOME desktop or directly using the command:

# wireshark

It is a go-to tool for optimization, security and network troubleshooting, which is best featured for deep analysis of each and every packet involved in your log in process. Wireshark makes you a system admin superstar by identifying the problems before the users can do.

• NMAP– NMAP is an open source scanner provided by the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 distribution. It can detect any mistakenly open port on the target system and with the help of it necessary action can be taken. NMAP uses the raw IP package in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services those hosts are offering, what type of packet they are running and so on and so forth.

# yum -y install nmap

• PUPPET OPEN SOURCE– Puppet is used for IT reporting, automation and for planning and coordination. The main feature of Puppet holds is that instead of using individualized and customized scripts, it uses a descriptive language to configure machines. Puppet’s services are handy and easy to use when it comes to handling tedious tasks such as running commands on multiple systems. Puppet code can be used to keep the state of the system in line with the desired configuration.

# yum -y install puppet

Once Puppet is installed, the Puppet client must  be configured with the host name of the Puppet master. The host name of the Puppet master should be kept in /etc/puppet/puppet.conf file under the [agent] section.

• COCKPIT– cockpit is a software developed by Red Hat that provides an interactive browser based Linux administration interface. It is easy to use, light weight, simple and powerful remote manager for GNU/Linux servers. Cockpit makes performance and configuration data of the system accessible to the novice system administrators even if they do not know much about the command line tools:

# yum -y install cockpit.-

It enables the system admin to perform multiple tasks such as storage administration, network configuration, logs inspections; in an easy and flexible manner. It is crafted with a major feature of administrating multiple servers and monitors.

• KDUMP– Kdump is a kernel crash dumping mechanism that allows you to save the contents of the system’s memory for later analysis. RHEL offers the Kdump software for the capture of kernel crash dumps. Kernel funds small portion of the memory for the secondary kernel which is called as crash kernel which is used to capture core dump image whenever the system crashes. Kdump software works by using kexec utility which enables the administrator to load into another kernel from the currently running kernel.

#  yum -y install kexec-tools system-config-kdump

If in case of any system crash, Kdump uses kexec utility into a second kernel that is inaccessible to the first kernel. Kdump crash dump mechanism is provided by the Kdump service.

Similarly, there are various other open source tools for system admins such as Mcelog, PCP, AIDE, Memtest86+, SystemTap and many more. each of these have different features which enable the administrators to use them in case of any security issue.