
Show HN: Linux sysadmin skills for anyone - a new online course - snori74
Kicked my course off today - grep101.com - with lessons starting Monday. I think I've got the pricing right to attract a good class of keen learners for this first run through...
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s_henry_paulson
I'm considering signing a couple of my employees up, but I'm reading the
description:

 _you'll be expected to learn and use grep, ssh, apt-get, tail and man_

I also see that restarting services is in there.. however I don't see anything
that tells me any details about what the course actually covers.

You also don't mention what flavor of Linux you're using for teaching.

Also, launching this, and then starting the lessons only 1-2 business days
later? You either don't want a lot of people to sign up... or I can't think of
another reason to do that.

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snori74
Exactly. Using this first course to iron out the bugs in the process. Please
go to the site now - its switched to taking registrations of interest, and
"I'm considering signing a couple of my employees up..." tells me you're
exactly the the sort of person that we need to continue the conversation with.

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daemon13
I really like the concept, but...

\- big no-no - which flavor you will be using? RHEL? Ubuntu? FreeBSD? Let's
say I sign-up and it turns around that there will be RHEL tooling. Well -
money wasted if I standardize on Ubuntu.

>> use grep, ssh, apt-get, tail and man to administer, monitor and extend your
server.

\- lack of proper course description - the above is not enough. How about
setting properly iptables and kernel config (to ensure network security)? how
about properly hardening web server? Install from ports won't cut it. How
about proper partinioning to ensure no executable bits? etc etc etc

\- who are you and how I can be sure that what you teach is best practices and
not some oldish shmaboodle fairy tales?

Would the above be addressed positively - I would pay more... and more... and
more...

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ShaneOG
<http://grep101.com> for lazy (or mobile) people

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snori74
Thanks!

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ivan_ah
I really like the idea. I think receiving a curated list of links[1] to web
resources (docs, tutorials and howtos) would be sufficient to learn common
sysadmin tasks.

The initial learning curve might be hard for some people though. What is bash?
What are commands? How do you cd,mv,cp etc. What is /? What is /etc? etc...

Be sure to let us know how it goes.

____________

[1]: My collection of links for common UNIX commands:
[http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/anatomy/doku.php?do=index&idx...](http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/anatomy/doku.php?do=index&idx=commands)

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nakkiel
I'm currently between two jobs and have a lot of free time. While not really
in need for that sort of courses, I might consider giving it a try but I'm
unable to find any information on the stuff taught.

What are the highlights?

~~~
snori74
Fair point. It's dark where I am, so sleep is called for, but when I wake I'll
add in some extra detail to the launch page.

To give you an idea, here's some headers for the days:

1 Accessing your New Server 2 Basic navigation, cd, pwd etc 4 Installing
software, exploring the file structure 5 more, less, nano, tab completion,
history and "dot files" 9 cron, contab, /etc/cron.daily anacran and "at" 19
Automation - using logrotate

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snori74
The site has now switched to taking registrations of interest for our upcoming
courses in the new year - please sign up to that if you're interested at all
in this approach.

Like a lot of startups have found, it's hard to know exactly what you've got
until it's already underway - and your input will drive the direction this
goes.

To answer a couple of points that have come up: (a) Participants on this first
course will be using Ubuntu Server LTS, but the course material is based
around them having _two_ servers one Debian-flavoured, one RHEL-flavoured. At
this level its more about getting them familiar with Linux as a whole,
assuming that they may need to support multiple versions. (b) In my day job I
act as sysadmin for 20-odd production systems, ranging from PC104 systems
running Slackware, to RHEL 6 systems, (c) I've run many technical training
courses in the past.

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belorn
It is very good for people to learn how to use specific tools like grep, ssh,
tail and the command line interface in general. That said, together with a
course like this, one should, really, _really_ find a real world website/group
to support.

I have yet to find a shortage of friends, family and hobby groups around me
who want someone who can take care of their website/hosting/and so on. Its
like learning to cook; there are always someone who want free food. By taking
responsibility for a website, one is very much more invested to "get it to
work", and learn around 85% of what syadmin really is about.

~~~
snori74
Absolutely. At least in this case participants do have a working remote server
of their own for their duration - a big step up from either a server "just in
class" or a Gnome box on their desk.

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caster_cp
Great idea, and interesting model for a course. This is really an ability that
many good developers lack. The downside on your marketing approach for me is
having to pay $20 for something without having any idea about how the classes
are. A cool model is letting the first user try one class first, before
signing up :)

Besides that, as I said, its a very cool idea, and I wish you good luck with
your project!

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snori74
Yes, I see that, but these daily "bites' really are just that. For example,
the first simply gets you pointed toward PuTTY, provides some reading on SSH,
and asks to to logon and use passwd to change your password.

And yes, there will be monitoring and chasing up of anyone who isn't doing
their tasks :-)

(the original concept was to report on you to your SO!)

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ivanhoe
Do you plan to include more fun stuff (postfix, bind, etc...) in the future?
That's something I'd definitely pay $20 for..

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jliechti1
As a web person looking to get "closer to the metal", this is the kind of
course I'm looking for.

I also like the idea of daily bite-sized tasks assigned via email and the
private mailing list for users sounds nice.

In addition to these, will there be any other feedback mechanisms in the
course?

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snori74
No, each day's task will have you leave evidence that you've completed it (a
directory created, application installed, etc) so that "we" can judge
progress.

The "daily tasks have some general tips and a series of link to online
resources that should make them easy to complete.

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mgcross
I signed up to 'keep myself honest' on my commitment to migrate my websites
from my Bluehost account to my 3 month old Linode. I'm somewhat comfortable
with CLI, but need to fill in some holes and get the practice.

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ck2
That font needs to be bigger and red is too low contrast on white background -
at least after sitting in front of a monitor for 12 hours.

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snori74
Opps, now that you mention it, that's a bizzare colour choice - I'm one of the
"7 to 10%" (according to Wikipedia), so didn't even notice! Now fixed.

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itsjaredc
I'd be interested in this if it were proven, but you should do a month free so
people see what they're getting before they pay.

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forkrulassail
Agreed, 20 up front without a decent course layout is a bit of a gamble.

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darthhao
I took a leap of faith and signed up without seeing anything beforehand. I
hope it'll be worth it.

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macarthy12
Cool idea, good luck

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snori74
Yes, if you check out <http://grep101.blogspot.com/> you'll see that its very
much pared down from some of the wild ideas I had!

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lazyfunctor
nice idea! curious, where and how are you providing the server access with
root access?

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dschiptsov
Sysadmin skills isn't about using tools, it is about understanding how they
work and why it is so.

Sysadmin's understanding isn't about memorizing apt-get or yum install, is
mostly about _./configure --help_ ,)

After you will be able to build from the sources full LAMP stack, understand
dependencies and cross-references, realizing the amount of crap^Wcode
apache+php uses - this will be something to start with (integrating Informix
or Oracle support is a bonus,)

The next step is to understand and internalize what is the difference between
mod_php and fastcgi configurations - why they are different, how to enable
caching, how it works, what are persistent connections to DB, etc.

The next level - be able to visualize in your mind the flows of data, and
follow requests through all the layers - OS, http-server, fast-cgi transport,
scripting engine, database-connection, table storage (realization that MyISAM
engine or MongoDB are using table-level locking is a sign that you're on the
right way).

Then, you must be able to separate the flows, partition the data, at least
understand that /var/log and /var/db/mysql on the same disk slice is a sign of
stupidity.

Then comes access patterns - how often the data are accessed, when changes
occur, how often they are synced, etc (here comes caching and replications,
then sharding).

This ability, to understand, trace and see patterns makes one sysadmin.

After that you might say that you kind of sysadmin.) Learning ssh is nothing.
Googling is enough.

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sergiotapia
Thank you for your valuable input! /s

For a Windows server admin like myself, this course sounds ideal, the things
you mention are important no doubt but how important are they for a person
just starting out?

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zeroexzeroone
I agree with this statement, you have to start somewhere and many a Windows
admin don't use command-line now. So essentially a beginner's course in
command-line tools, i.e. beginning system administration, not only is good for
Linux but can strengthen a Windows admin by helping them not be afraid of
cmd.exe.

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peterwwillis
The course description sounds essentially the same as just following HOWTOs
(which is how I taught myself the basic tools involved in sysadmin-ing many
years ago). Just follow these old tutorials and save $20.

<http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/categories.html>

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mgcross
There are certainly tons of free resources out there, but I'm busy enough that
$1/day for 20 days of emails with directed tutorials is more than worth it.
Those howto's look like a great resource for more detailed (and varied) info,
but I just need someone to guide me (and gently prod me) through the basics.

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bravoyankee
What an excellent idea. I wish this was around when I was learning on Red Hat
5.1.

I may still check this out though. I still have lots to learn.

