
Ask HN: Linux Adminstration Course for non-sysadmins? - justhw
Is there a site where you can learn or polish your skills in sys admin? 
I'm a dev mainly but when I run into admin problems (ex. adding ssl, ip etc..) searching Google is not efficient. These documents are scattered all over the web.<p>Also, I'm not trying to get a certificate, I just need to know enough.
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gexla
There are so many things you might run into that I don't know how a course
could possibly cover more than the very basics (using Bash, basic commands,
etc.)

Miguel has a good blog post on learning Linux.

<http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Sep-06.html>

Another great resource is to pick up a Linode VPS and go through the library.

<http://library.linode.com/>

I owe a lot of my start in Linux to the Slicehost articles but Slicehost is
going away as it gets eaten by Rackspace.

Skip the courses, they are a waste of time.

~~~
antidoh
You don't have to rent a VPS, you can [use linode and slicehost docs and] just
run on your laptop, or even better on a virtual machine. Throw away your
mistakes, for free.

<http://articles.slicehost.com/sitemap>

<http://slicehost.com/community/>

edit: [clarified]

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kordless
You need these three things:

1\. A book ([http://www.amazon.com/System-Administration-Handbook-
Edition...](http://www.amazon.com/System-Administration-Handbook-Edition-
ebook/dp/B003YMNVCA/ref=tmm_kin_title_0))

2\. An infrastructure (<http://openstack.org/>)

3\. A community (<http://serverfault.com/>)

Oh, and some fun (<http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse>)

:)

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antidoh
AElien Frisch wrote a good book: Essential System Administration (3rd ed),
[http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=978059600...](http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=9780596003432&sts=t)

Some/all of her books: <http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/678#Books>

Her O'Reilly articles: <http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/678#Books>

Any system administrator or general user can learn a lot from Unix Power
Tools:

New, 3rd ed: <http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/678#Books>

Cheap, 2nd ed (prolly good enough if $ matters):
[http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=8354343877&...](http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=8354343877&searchurl=sts%3Dt%26tn%3DUnix%2BPower%2BTools)

Some of this looks good, some looks like crap:
[http://www.amazon.com/s/&url=search-
alias=aps&field-...](http://www.amazon.com/s/&url=search-alias=aps&field-
keywords=linux%20system%20administration?tag=duckduckgo-canonical-20)

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lifeguard
You could start with these google tutorials:
<http://code.google.com/edu/tools101/index.html>

It is a commitment, but I recommend reading "The Manual": _UNIX and Linux
System Administration Handbook_ by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent R. Hein,
Ben Whaley [http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Unix-and-Linux-System-
Admin...](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Unix-and-Linux-System-
Administration-Handbook-Evi-Nemeth/e/9780131480056)

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ejenkinsiii
I don't know what level your looking for or if you want certification but here
are two i've been eyeballing for some time now and both are expensive
[http://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training-
videos/series/linx_rea...](http://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training-
videos/series/linx_realworld) or
<http://www.oreillyschool.com/courses/sysadmin3/> both are online

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dgallagher
The Ubuntu Server Guide is an easy to read, succinct manual:
<https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/serverguide/>

That'll cover basic Ubuntu sysadmin tasks, which is Debian-based. It's a good
place to start.

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lsiebert
Have you considered joining some relevant mailing lists? Alternatively, you
can ask stuff on Stack Overflow.

In terms of more general learning, I suspect that much of it is very domain
specific. Are you on a LAMP stack?

