[Wolves] Linux sys admin learning.

chris procter chris-procter at talk21.com
Thu Apr 6 16:40:18 BST 2006


--- David Morley <davmor2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have decided to further my knowledge of all things
> linux sys admin
> related this is my list to date please can you add
> any you feel are
> very important to Business that I can Learn freely
> from the internet.
> 
> 
> 1.Samba is a must.
> 2.Email server.  setup, maintenance
> 3.Firewall.  Smoothwall done try IpCop.
> 4.Nfs server
> 5.ssh server
> 6.lamp server
> 7.php
> 8.mysql database
> 9.Apache
 
I was talking to a bunch of linux/unix sysadmins at a
big company a few weeks ago, the subject of RHCE
certification came up and they admited that they'ed
all taken the exams and failed, because they knew
nothing about apache,mysql etc. I expressed some
surprise at this until they pointed out that their
company has a highly trained e-commerce team to look
after the web servers, a database team to look after
the databases, a security team who deal in firewalls
etc etc etc so if they ever need to do any of that
they just call in the experts.

I was then enlightened.

Sys-admin means many different things and there is no
single set of skills that covers all bases. So the
answer is (as it always seems to be) "it depends" but
I would go for learning the basics (in rough order of
importance)

0) security- not a seperate subject really but an
important part of everything below.

1) Command line
2) Shell scripting
3) man pages/google/how to find more info
4) Networking (IP address, netmasks, routing,
gateways,how to diagnose and fix problems)
5) System operations (permissions, run-levels, init
scripts and how to stop, start, add and remove system
services, using cron jobs etc).
6) ssh and doing all of the above remotely
7) Enough knowledge of Apache/mySQL/LDAP/DNS/Samba/NFS
etc to know what they are and how they work, but
without worrying about all the little details (as long
as you know where to find that info when needed)
8) A very solid general knowledge of Linux to the
level that if someone asks you about say RAID you can
give them a decent answer even if you dont know the
details (and again know where to find the details).
9) A knowledge of Windows. You will always have to
deal with it no matter how much you try to avaoid it.


chris



		
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