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danhmiller 04-19-2009 11:15 PM

Please Help. I have to learn Linux Networking in order to get my dream Job...I
 
I am a total Linux Noob Cake... but i am very skilled in Mac and MSWXP. However, in order to get the best job i can ever get the employer told me I had to learn Linux Networking. I've started out by installing Fedora 10 on my laptop partition and buying the book "Linux Networking Cookbook" to get me started. Then I realized the book was meant for people who actually know WTF yum, su -c, and /home is.... lol so i then bought Linux cookbook to help me along. Finally I bought 2 old 600mhz i368 comps from the humane society and a microsoft router to get me started with Linux firewal, VPN, and other network related things. However, I am so new to linux and very intimidated. I have no clue where to start or what Disto will be best. I've been reading like a mad man but remember this is

Elapsed time working with Linux in my life: 5 hours

Elapsed time working with MSWXP in my life: 11 years

so i have a lot of MS info to push out my head and a lot of Linux info in..... please give my and practical advice you can... my future rests in it....thank you all so much


Daniel M

jschiwal 04-19-2009 11:54 PM

The advanced bash scripting guide (abs guide) would be good for learning the shell. You can download it from www.tldp.org. That site is a good source for all sorts of Linux documentation. The ABS Guide is composed entirely of examples which makes it good to learn from.

There are books available on Fedora 10. Also, the same tldp site has the SAG guide. Systems Administrator's Guide. And the NAG Guide. Network Administrator's Guide. The last one is the O'Reilly book (2nd ed. IIRC) and would be very good for learning networking. It covers routing, and configuring various services and protocols.

Much of what you have already learned in MS will carry over. Gateways, subnetting, routes. You just need to learn how to configure them using commands such as ifconfig, ip, route. The etc/hosts file was borrowed from Unix.

The iptables command is used to configure the Linux Netfilter firewall. The TCP/IP knowledge you already know will help you there.

One thing strange about Windows is the tendency to create a bridge if you have two or more interfaces instead of routes between two subnets.

Also, MS likes to wreck protocols. They may be similar to what you used before but not quite. For example, they extended the protocol for VPN authentication. Part of the protocol is the same if you create a VPN in Linux, Mac or an appliance. They did the same to MIT's Kerberos standard, which they then leveraged to extend the desktop monopoly to servers. So don't be surprised if when there are windows machines in the mix, a lot more work is needed.

Magazines such as Linux PRO Magazine or Linux World will sometimes have good articles on bonding interfaces, etc. Keep an eye out for those.

danhmiller 04-20-2009 01:35 AM

thanks for the advice
 
I think I've found my starting place.... on my laptop i have Fedora and openSUSE, and on my old old comp server i have ubuntu 6 server LTS. what do you think a good place to start?

lazlow 04-20-2009 01:55 AM

I would look at Centos. Centos is RHEL(Red Hat Enterprise Linux) with the logos removed. It is free to download/update(unlike RHEL) and has a five year(plus) support life.

Between RHEL(Centos) and Suse(openSuse is close enough), you will cover the VAST majority of Corporate Linux installs. Corporation will almost exclusively install OSs with paid support, someone to call when something goes seriously wrong.

salasi 04-20-2009 04:19 AM

It seems to me that you are asking several questions; for example, how do I learn (and what do I do to get it to work) home networking and how do I learn professional networking? There is quite an overlap between those two questions, but there are areas in the answers to the two differ, and you have to keep in mind that good advice in one context is not necessarily a good answer in another.

In part, at least, the difference between the two answers can be teased out be asking questions like “would I still be doing it this way if I had two hundred clients, rather than two?” and, “if I were paranoid about security, would I still be doing it this way?”: While you can have problems both by being too paranoid and by being not paranoid enough about security, it is my assertion that, in a professional context, in general, the nature of the problems you get by being too paranoid isn't as bad as the nature of the problems that you get by not being paranoid enough.

I think you should have a look at the tutorials at http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/ . That should get you started on networking - all of home networking, more or less, but that isn't the same as all of networking - and looking at networking as a series of projects is a good way of making manageable chunks out of what could be an overwhelming subject, but you do need to keep in mind that you may well be doing things in a different way to that in which you would approach them in for your ideal job.

You are also, indirectly, asking 'how do I learn Linux'. For a home user, you can 'get by' without the use of command line; for anyone intent on becoming a sys admin, I strongly advise that you should embrace the command line (which is not necessarily the same as insisting on the use of the command line for every task). If the thought 'I can find ways of doing everything without the command line' takes root (sorry) in your head, then you may want to consider whether this would really be your ideal job!

Installing and configuring any Linux distro is going to be a help here, but just be aware of the fact that very user friendly distros are not necessarily what you want, as the user-friendliness often consists of hiding details from you that would really prefer to learn.

SAG and NAG are good ideas as is the Linux Documentation Project. To those, I would add 'Beginning Linux programming' (Matthew & Stones, Wrox) as the first few chapters, which is admittedly only a small percentage of the book, do a good job of covering the environment in which a Linux program runs. And the first thing that you should learn is the use of the man page system; 'man man' is, of course, a good place to start. 'apropos', or 'man -k' is also something you'll make use of.

danhmiller 04-20-2009 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi (Post 3514835)
It seems to me that you are asking several questions; for example, how do I learn (and what do I do to get it to work) home networking and how do I learn professional networking? There is quite an overlap between those two questions, but there are areas in the answers to the two differ, and you have to keep in mind that good advice in one context is not necessarily a good answer in another.

In part, at least, the difference between the two answers can be teased out be asking questions like “would I still be doing it this way if I had two hundred clients, rather than two?” and, “if I were paranoid about security, would I still be doing it this way?”: While you can have problems both by being too paranoid and by being not paranoid enough about security, it is my assertion that, in a professional context, in general, the nature of the problems you get by being too paranoid isn't as bad as the nature of the problems that you get by not being paranoid enough.

I think you should have a look at the tutorials at http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/ . That should get you started on networking - all of home networking, more or less, but that isn't the same as all of networking - and looking at networking as a series of projects is a good way of making manageable chunks out of what could be an overwhelming subject, but you do need to keep in mind that you may well be doing things in a different way to that in which you would approach them in for your ideal job.

You are also, indirectly, asking 'how do I learn Linux'. For a home user, you can 'get by' without the use of command line; for anyone intent on becoming a sys admin, I strongly advise that you should embrace the command line (which is not necessarily the same as insisting on the use of the command line for every task). If the thought 'I can find ways of doing everything without the command line' takes root (sorry) in your head, then you may want to consider whether this would really be your ideal job!

Installing and configuring any Linux distro is going to be a help here, but just be aware of the fact that very user friendly distros are not necessarily what you want, as the user-friendliness often consists of hiding details from you that would really prefer to learn.

SAG and NAG are good ideas as is the Linux Documentation Project. To those, I would add 'Beginning Linux programming' (Matthew & Stones, Wrox) as the first few chapters, which is admittedly only a small percentage of the book, do a good job of covering the environment in which a Linux program runs. And the first thing that you should learn is the use of the man page system; 'man man' is, of course, a good place to start. 'apropos', or 'man -k' is also something you'll make use of.

you have answered my question in full... thank you so much you will never know..

end thread

dcatiii 07-15-2010 10:23 AM

if it is still viable, may i recommend the Arch distribution. This is a very lightweight distro with an extensive wiki and support base. When I first started getting heavy back in to Linux, I used this distro and expanded my knowledge considerably...


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