UNIX System Management and Security: Differences between Linux, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX

Understanding the capabilities and limitations of an operating system, its software installation and management procedures and how to configure and manage other system software is a key ingredient of keeping systems secure. This paper discusses the differences in system configuration, management and security between some of the most common versions of UNIX (Red Hat Linux, Solaris, HP-UX and AIX), including management and security tools available on these systems. The 'man' pages should be consulted on each platform for details on additional options for the commands and/or system calls discussed here. All of the discussed systems conform to the System V standard with Berkeley extensions although each system provides its own software installation and system management utilities and kernel configuration methods. Vendor-provided and open source software are discussed and compared where applicable.