{"id":6027,"date":"2017-02-24T22:18:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T22:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/?p=6027"},"modified":"2021-04-08T22:20:48","modified_gmt":"2021-04-08T21:20:48","slug":"what-you-need-know-get-linux-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/pt-br\/blog\/what-you-need-know-get-linux-administration","title":{"rendered":"What you need to know to get into Linux administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The skills required to remain current in the sphere of IT are always changing and in this regard, the role of the Linux administrator is the rule and not the exception. Over the past few years, there has been an increase in the skills required to be a Linux administrator. To illustrate that growth, let\u2019s think of the Linux skill set as a building where the current floors are being remodeled and new, more impressive floors are being added to the top. The current move to web applications and web services, cloud-based environments, and big data have become the top floor penthouses. They are the skills that the best employers are looking for, and they will put you in high demand. Let\u2019s take a look at the whole thing from the ground up.<\/p>\n

The foundation and basement \u2013 Linux system administration<\/h3>\n

This is an area all Linux\/Unix old-timers will recognize. Even though there are now graphical interfaces to accomplish many of these tasks, if you\u2019re serious you\u2019ll learn to use the command line interface in a default shell like Bash. You\u2019ll need to be able to perform tasks such as creating storage (fdisk, mkfs, mkdir, mount), managing files and directories (cd, ls, pwd, rm, rmdir), managing users and permissions (useradd, userdel, psswd, newgrp, chgrp, chmod, chown), managing processes (top, ps, pgrep, kill), managing the boot (GRUB, LILO, run levels), and creating backups and restoring (tar, rsync, dd). Furthermore, let\u2019s not leave out the ever useful vi editor.<\/p>\n

The commands for doing the above and more can be found in a PDF called\u00a0The Linux System Administrator’s Guide<\/a>, located at The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP<\/a>). TLDP maintains a very useful website that is chock-full of free information.<\/p>\n

The main floors \u2013 Linux network administration<\/h3>\n

Once you can manage a stand-alone system, you need to be able to connect that system to other systems with networking concepts such as addressing, routing, and DNS. Again, although there are graphical tools, you should be able to configure the network using just command line tools like ifconfig, route, ip, and iptables. You\u2019ll also need to know how to troubleshoot using tools such as tcpdump.<\/p>\n

Once more, this well-known territory has been covered many times by many people, and information is obtainable by going to TLDP.org and downloading the free\u00a0Linux Network Administrators Guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The top floors \u2013 current Linux technologies<\/h3>\n

Once you\u2019re ready to move into the top floors, you\u2019ll learn about better tools for doing familiar tasks\u2014such as, but not limited to, infrastructure automation and configuration management (Chef, Puppet, Ansible, SaltStack), version control (Git and Perforce), monitoring and reporting (Nagios and Ganglia), log management (ELK), and metrics management (Graphite, Cacti, Splunk).<\/p>\n

At the very top of the building sit the prize technologies\u2014web applications and web services, web performance and monitoring, cloud-based environments, and big data:<\/p>\n