Thank you for taking the time to read this cus i have a couple urgent questions. How long would it take to have the skills nessesary to become a systems administrator? Im kinda in a rush right now and need a job fast(within 6months-1year)... Should i learn openSuse,Debian,CentOs or Redhat, like which one would a company most likly be using.. And do i have to know vi in this day in age or is vim good enough? Or vim vs gnuemac? I want to learn vi also cause i know its for legacy systems (i think) I just dont have time to learn stuff i dont need right now. I already have an idea (or list) of types of logs and what they do. Also understanding of network tools,tty navigation,policys,permissions and virtualization. But not a complete understanding how to use alot of these tools yet(specificaly network tools)...Lastly and i aplogize for all the questions, but all i would need to get hired is a certification am i right? Any help on this would be greatly appreiated guys, i'm in a sticky situation..

Being a SysAdmin definitely takes time; there's no easy way.
Definitely load up a distro and use it as much as possible.
Try also creating some VMs as well so you can break stuff whilst still having the base system to do search/diagnostics with.

As regards a distro, look into the job engines/agencies in your area and see what they ask for.
Generally(!) RHEL (paid for subscription inc updates & support)or eg Centos (free rebuild of RHEL; inc updates but not support) tend to be the most popular in medium to large org, but see previous sentence.

Bookmark these
www.linuxtopia.org - more books/manuals than you can read & inc a lot of the official stuff.
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz - oldie but goldie intro to cli
For more bash see http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html & http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/
See also http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/index.html for awk, sed and more

You need to be across what the major tools/concepts are, but its ok to specialise in one or two to start with - there's an infinite amt of knowledge so don't try to know it all; no-one does no matter what they say.

Definitely learn the basics of vim. vim = vi improved so most of the cmds are the same. You need to be able to do simple editing at a cli, but usually you'd be going in remotely via some sort of gui so eg copy/paste inside the editor means being able to use a mouse etc.

If you have no real world (not at home) experience, then a good cert may help you get the interview, but then its all down to you and it would be for a junior position to start with anyway.

HTH

Like fine wine and Slackware releases, it takes as long as it takes.

Do not delude yourself thinking that there is a shortcut. If you are a well disciplined self-learner then you may learn a useful range of skills more quickly than some others, but if you really need a job fast you might consider taking on something else while you learn instead of pretending to be something you are not - that never works out.

And as you should know from your other threads on the topic, the duties of "sysadmin" can vary widely in different shops.

In reality, you do not learn "sysadmin", you learn a variety of topics from networking concepts to filesystem and user management, security concepts and tools, a Swiss-army knife full of utilities useful for numerous tasks... you learn the basic concepts and tools of a general Unix-like operating system.

As noted above, learn the basic system concepts that will be shared by whatever version a company happens to be using. When you get the job learn how those concepts differ, or not, on their particular system.

Yes, learn vi. Not because of any legacy nonsense, but because it is always available. Think of Vim as being the same for basic use.

You can't know what you will or won't need so don't try to cut the corners of the knowledge - that is nonsense. The knowledge and skills all interact and interlock, just get busy and learn them. You are probably better off knowing a few things well than half-knowing many things... it just takes time, learn each thing in turn.


You can't learn by catching glimpses along the way... study each of those topics until you do have a good working understanding of what they do and how to use them... it just takes time and effort.

There is absolutely no susbtitute for that understanding - get it. That is the primary thing that you are selling to your employer!

WRONG! Sober up! What you need is knowledge and understanding in some useful measure, and the ability to communicate and demonstrate it to others. Certifications mostly make money for those who issue them and have little value of themselves in the real world, at least in my own experience.

Speaking only for myself, if I had two candidates, one listing a certification and one listing his or her interest and experience, the one with the certification has much more to prove to me than the other.

2 members found this post helpful.

Cool thanks for fast responses bros many good points made, and i was able to clear some stuff up. However this really is all or nothing for me cause i need a job that could buy a place to live, a minium wage won't cut it. I'll start off with CentOs cause since i dont have any experience i dont think a big company who has money for Redhat will hire me. Also most online job offers im looking at dont state the OS their working with, they just say networking,security,repairing/configuring networks. Anyways thanks bros

God, I hope so.
I think of it as more of apt vs. rpm

In addition to @astrogeeks excellent post here's a few things that may interest you.

System administration, any system, anywhere, is going to include some screwdriver and needle nose work -- you will be replacing disk drives, pulling cables, cleaning dust out of fans, replacing fans, recovering from power outages, replacing motherboards, installing and configuring updates and software releases, making stuff play nice with Windows (oh, yeah), configuring printers, possibly network telephones, you name it, you're going to be doing it.

You may be working with a mix of platforms. Don't be alarmed to see a mix of Sun Solaris, H-P UX, maybe a few blades, different flavors of Linux and, oh, yeah, Windows (lots of idiots still running XP).

You need to know vi. Period. You're going to be using an editor without a GUI, that's vi (and vim, same thing pretty much). Every Unix-like system comes with vi, you need to know and be comfortable with it. While you're at it, you will find AWK useful. And you damned well better be intimately familiar with sh, ksh and BASH (you will not find BASH on too many Unix systems unless somebody has added it). You are going to do a lot of shell programming.

You need to know all the basic commands, you're going to be working in a terminal, not always a click-'n'-drool GUI.

Linux and Unix are, for all practical purposes, pretty much the same. There are variances here and there, Unix systems don't, for example, have disk drives named sda, sdb, and so on. Even so, it's pretty easy to switch back and forth between Solaris and Linux -- ya just gotta know what you're doing.

Anyway, grab a couple of distributions, install them in a VM or two, get familiar with them. I'd suggest installing Slackware and learning to do the basics of system administration there. I'd also put in a vote for Centos. Get 'em both, play with them, figure out how things work and why you do what you need to. Take a look at O'Reilly for a couple or three books (read the reviews, don't go overboard).

Oh, yeah, ask question here.

Hope this helps some.

1 members found this post helpful.

0100100001100101011011000110110001101111, the world is cryptic...

My (unlike two years of school @lest) Vi, yes.

Don't worry too much about Unix: Linux is the new Unix!

There's an annual survey of what operating systems are used on web servers and the top ones are always Debian Stable and CentOS. Unix and BSD hardly figure. For firms who need paid support, the top distros are Red Hat (CentOS is its free version) and SUSE (OpenSUSE is the free version). The London Stock Exchange uses SUSE and the New York one has Red Hat.

So, the vital ones are Debian, CentOS and OpenSUSE. Luckily, on a server all these are going to be similar, since you'll be working from the command line. I'd start with CentOS and really get to know how to use it from the command line, how all the diagnostic tools work, and so on. If you know what tools like netstat or blktrace do, you're on the right track.

Do not bother with Slackware. It's closer to Unix than the others, but that's hardly useful when that makes it further from the common ones. It's rare to find it used commercially. Any Slacker who feels inclined to protest should be prepared to name a major company using it.

How long will it take? How long's a piece of string? Remember that there are plenty of small enterprises (and not so small ones) who are big enough to need a systems administrator but not big enough (or too cheap) to hire an expert. When I worked in a government department, our was an ex-cataloguer from the library who was self-taught!

Thanks for all the help guys i really do appreciate it! Yeah also i understand the init model and how it differs from systems'd parallellization process. Solaris i head of but never paid too much attention to.. I know what chroot jails and enviroments are. I prefer virtualization over a chroot enviroment though.. I think chroot is like a poor mans virtual machine? Im familier with linux security rings 0,1,2,3. I know to protect setuid programs running as root such as /usr/bin/chsh,/usr/bin/passwd. Also I never used but understand the usefulness of openbsd,freebsd,netbsd's stability and its pf's superiority over iptables. I know of alot of important tools like SElinux,GRsecurity,snmp,nmap,netstat,ftrace,perf,ping,nslookup,tracert,ifconfig. Not to sound like a no it all cause i admit im farrrr from it... But i do feel like i know all the important concepts to being a sys admin just not how to actually configure and implement this stuff, lol... I been self-studying networking,hacking and a little html programming for a little over a year now.. For the most part this sums up my knowledge base, so with this in mind would i probaly qualify as a desktop support atleast? Im only 20 btw...

Desktop support is usually MSWin & sometimes Mac OS/X (almost) never Lnux.
You would prob start as a (junior) operator / junior admin.
If you can find somewhere to get some experience, maybe a charity or school (prob for free), that would at least get you something to point at AND a personal reference - very valuable.

As above, this isn't something you can rush...

Setup one or two dstros at home and use them, in fact force yourself to use them as your only desktop (like I do).
If you have to rely on them day-to-day, you'll learn...

This one definitely goes into my book! :-)

Cool sounds good ok, thanks again guys you have been a great help, I think all will be good and i'll make it with do time and patience and as options be come avaliable. So i'll mark this as solved, thanks again!