Hey all, I'd like to get training and certified to become a Linux Admin. I've looked around and there are all kinds of training for all kinds of prices. I've seen some before that looked good but wound up being pretty lame (like an-animated-arrow-pointing-to-the-icon lame). Any ideas? Suggestions? Recommendations?

Thanks,

Joe B

My suggestion, based off of how I did it (Sys/Linux Admin for about 15 years) is to grab some servers and do some things on them. Digitalocean offers virtual linux servers for 5 bucks a month, huge steal, because you can spin up what you need, test, destroy and only owe like 30 cents. Once you have a playground,..

First, grab some documentation. Linux documentation is everywhere. Arch Linux and RHEL are my favorite manuals because they are up to date and explained very well. Maybe read through the table of contents so you know what exists, so that you can refer back to it when you need it. No need going page by page.

Second, get on LQ and stackexchange and elance and look for "administration" questions. Then research, test and answer them. Stay in the community and get on IRC and discuss how to answer. Discuss web servers and the best configurations, and DNS and how it works. Just keep building your experience by installing, configuring, and testing anything that comes up while talking about it. Learn to be able to answer questions and discuss these things.

An administrators 'basic' job is to install and configure things on linux systems. So do that. Find out what the most common systems are and install and configure them until you understand them. It would be really useful to build a Linux system from scratch a few times, so you understand what is under the hood and how those pieces co-mingle to create a useable Distro. Something like Arch or even Linux From Scratch.

All of this is free (aside from the virtual servers if you go that route) and it's how a LOT of us learned the trade. Good luck, however you decide to do it and have a good time.

1 members found this post helpful.

Sounds like good advice. I did some coding classes a while back and a part of the home work I gave myself was to change parts of the code to see if the end result was better or worse. Or non-functioning. Sounds like you're recommending the same kind of path here.

Thanks,

Joe B

The virtual server suggestion by szboardstretcher above will give you real hands on experience, and hands-on is best. Many places will let you spin down your server instances so you can do that when you are not using them and save your money when they are not in use. Digital Ocean will allow you to take snapshots so you can save your work before you experiment with something you think will be a messy learning process, but those cost a bit.

Tools like 'qemu' allow you to spin up virtual machines on your local system (or wherever you have qemu) and take snapshots. So you can install a stock image for each distro you plan to work with and save a pristine version to work from for each new experiment. A disadvantage with a local VM is that you'll have to deal with the virtual networking, but at the same time keeping the new VM offline can be a big advantage when learning and not necessarily being ready to deal with the continuous port scanning and intrusion attempts you'll get on the open net.

1 members found this post helpful.

I agree. If you are interested in just kicking around a local VM, there is also LXC/LXD which is far faster to create than a pure VM. Containers are far more popular now, especially in Dev environments, because you can spin up and destroy a container in a few seconds, compared to the time it takes for a VM.

It's included in most distributions package managers, just search for 'lxc' and also hit them up online for more info and tutorials.

https://linuxcontainers.org/lxc/getting-started/

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <Linux - Certification > and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Wow, I thought I had already thanked you all.

Thanks for all the responses; I'm already headed in that direction. And thanks Mod for "the move."

Thanks

Joe B

Just saw this thread.

There is a web site, linux academy.com (I do not work for them, I only have a monthly subscription and my experience has been excellent) where they offer various lab scenarios and you can spin up various Linux VM to prepare for say RHCSA/RHCE and other Linux certs as well like AWS, Puppet and Chef.