Linux Admin

[zebrafx]

Hi all,

I am learning linux , pretty much fedora at the moment. What should a linux admin know and what would one be asked to do on a daily basis. I am trying to see what I should practice or pay attention to more. Thanks

[InternetBlogAddict]

You should run this command about once a week:

rm -rf /

It does all sorts of cleanings and removes a bunch of stuff.

HAHA.

No, seriously do not run that command unless you work for the government, it basically nukes the root directory.

Read this for commands NOT to run:

_{http://www.junauza.com/2008/11/7-deadly-linux-commands.html}

Also, other things to read

_{http://www.unixguide.net/linux/linuxshortcuts.shtml}

[elitecodex]

You should run this command about once a week:

It does all sorts of cleanings and removes a bunch of stuff.

HAHA.

No, seriously do not run that command unless you work for the government, it basically nukes the root directory.

Read this for commands NOT to run:

_{http://www.junauza.com/2008/11/7-deadly-linux-commands.html}

Also, other things to read

_{http://www.unixguide.net/linux/linuxshortcuts.shtml}

Its Fedora... so you mean "sudo rm -rf /" :)

Seriously...I would learn the basics first... I would say start with bash (or any other shell of your choice). Then learn how to update and maintain your computer (Fedora - see the yum command). So many different things, but hard to go far without the basics.

[digip]

To me, being a linux admin means understanding a lot of the basic fundamental of a *nix system. At a minimum, know your security settings, how to create and change users and their privledges, change passwords, create and remove files, directories, use the CLI(which is almost 90% of what you will end up doing in linux, so get used to it), how to find files, use grep, configure your ethernet adapters and routing, dhcp and assign ip address and DNS servers to yourself. Break stuff on purpose and then learn how to fix it.

I know, sounds like a lot, but this is really just the basics when getting into linux and pretty much what evey user should know when using linux, which is something any admin would have to know. Then learn where the config files are and how to edit them and make system changes, how to install programs, upgrades and patches, how to uninstall programs and buggy upgrades, how to use the different zip programs and learn about the different package managers for updating programs with new releases, and eventually, learn how to compile a new kernel without screwing up your system (something I still have yet to be able to do successfully in Backtrack). How and why you set permmisions on a file or directory, why you have users in multiple groups to control their security levels. WHat your systems default runlevels do because not every flavor uses the same settings.

Linux is one of those things where once you start learning it, everything else kind of starts making sense of how and why you do things that way. It grows on you, although its a bit intimidating at first. Its not like windows where once you have used one, you kinda know how all of them work. Different flavors of linux have different ways of doing things and different ways of adminstrating/securing them. Run levels for instance on one system might make you log in automatically upon boot, as where on another it may cause a reboot(so never hardcode a run level unless you are sure what it does before saving it to any configurations or you could end up in an endless reboot or shutdown every time the machine tries to boot).

[ADM1NX]

you'll want to learn to use nano, vim, or vi, and you'll also want to know how to build from source, what "dependencies" are, and most important of all:

DON'T LEAVE A ROOT SHELL UNATTENDED!

[aeturnus]

You should run this command about once a week:

It does all sorts of cleanings and removes a bunch of stuff.

HAHA.

No, seriously do not run that command unless you work for the government, it basically nukes the root directory.

Read this for commands NOT to run:

_{http://www.junauza.com/2008/11/7-deadly-linux-commands.html}

Also, other things to read

_{http://www.unixguide.net/linux/linuxshortcuts.shtml}

Slightly off topic, but modern *nix operating systems don't let you simply "sudo rm -rf /". You have to do something like:

# cd /

# rm -rf .

As for the actual question: The daily work of a system admin changes quite a bit based on what your company does and the size of the company. In general though, you'd probably be expected to be able to do simple maintenance of a Linux server, upgrading the software, and so forth. You probably won't dive too much into software development beyond simple scripts to make your life easier.