I don’t expect much of this to be popular, but i’m used to that. I like BSD. These are mostly in order in terms of building on the previous item. you may be able to do a little mix-up on the order, i think if you do very much, you’ll miss important building blocks.
.5) go to conferences, join user groups. be social. have fun 1) find a mentor. somebody who can answer your questions, and equally important, someone who is willing to ask you questions and force you to think when you think you want a quick answer. 2) don’t use a gui. force yourself to use a cli. learning the cli will get you looking around the system and figuring out how components interact a lot quicker. This will be crucial down the road. Everything is made of components and the more you can intuit about what may be connected to what, the faster you will solve problems (yes, logs are useful, no, not everything is logged, and worse, sometimes things are logged that are horribly misleading). 3) get good with shell scripting. this implies a collection of other tools, the likes of which include awk, sed, sort, etc. 4) if you don’t like perl, learn python. its popular now, so there are lots of people who can help (user groups, lists, channels, books, etc) 5) build stuff at home, or for work. if you have a home lab, build it, figure out how it works. figure out why it matters (both the whole, and the components, sometimes you can change out components and get different/improved functionality). figure out the underlying technology. figure out what needs to be connected to the internet and what doesn’t. do this for lots of different “applications”. if your lab is big enough, hook several pieces together. sometimes this becomes complicated, sometimes its easy. 6) document what you do. even if its just for yourself. write it up. keep it. update it. refer to it later when you don’t remember what you did (I do this on https://www.cryptomnkeys.com <https://www.cryptomnkeys.com/>). if others find it useful, thats great. i refer to it for myself, or when people ask questions about what i did, or how i did it. 7) after you’ve done this a few times, you’ll probably start noticing that there are things that you could do differently/better. sometimes you should go back and redo things the way you think it could be improved. sometimes you’ll be right. other times you will learn why not. 8) play with virtualization, containerization. figure out what the difference is. figure out why that matters. 9) automation is making the computer do tasks, frequently a more elegant way of binding things like cron and shell script together. once you have a solid foundation of how the system works, automation will make a lot more sense. also, the framework you choose will have implications on the language you learn (or extend if you already know it). for example, puppet/chef are based on ruby. salt/ansible are based on python. 10) at some point, you will have to get into networking. start with ipv4. when you’re comfortable with that, move on to ipv6. he.net <http://he.net/> offers a free ipv6 certification. no time limits. tasks to do, and when you’re done, you have a cert and a skill that is in demand right now. > On Aug 25, 2016, at 5:12 PM, Mike C. <[email protected]> wrote: > > After many years of working as a Network Engineer and being a Linux > hobbyist and doing some junior Linux Sys Admin gigs, I've decided to make > the push into developing the skills and acquiring the knowledge to secure > gainful employment as a Linux Sys Admin and/or DevOps engineer. > > I just took advantage of The Linux Foundation's 25th Anniversary 50% off > sale and I'm enrolled in the following self-study courses. > > Essentials of System Administration > > Linux Networking and Administration > > Linux Security Fundamentals > > Software Defined Networking Fundamentals > First question I have is has anyone else taken any of these courses and if > so I'm interested in hearing what you got from the course and what it's > done for you in your job. > > Now for the more open conversation part. There is a big difference between > being a Linux hobbyist / Jr. Sys Admin managing a few servers at a small > company and learning, getting experience with the vast array of common and > uncommon Linux/FOSS apps and tools. > > Cobbler, Puppet, Salt, OpenStack, Graphite, Logstash, memcached, Perl, > asterisk, RabbitMQ, openLDAP, Isilon, Arista, Zimbra, Asterisk, RabbitMQ, > KVM, ZFS, InfluxDB, Cfengine. > > I know about some of these and I've even worked with a few of them. I > studied Computer Science in a previous life and PERL makes my brain hurt. I > can do simple stuff in shell, Python and Ruby. > > The road ahead seems very unclear as I know 2 common skills/experience that > I'm sorely lacking in are scripting and automation. Neither of which will I > get from any of the Linux Foundation courses. > > So I don't really know how to get there from here as what I'm finding is > that most Linux Sys Admin jobs are Sr. level and they want folks to walk > through the door with many years of work experience with the apps, tools > and skills I've mentioned. > > I know that sometimes the Advanced Topics cover some of these topics, which > is all well, good and fine but it doesn't provide any hands-on experience. > > If you've been in these shoes before or where in these shoes, what would > you recommend/? Should I just setup a home lab and start learning all this > stuff? > > It would be awesome to connect with Sr. level experienced Linux Sys Admin > folks. > > Thank you for taking the time to wade through my ramblings! > > Cheers, > > Mike > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > > -- Louis Kowolowski [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Cryptomonkeys: http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/ <http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/> Making life more interesting for people since 1977
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