Best Training in Linux Administration? 467
Love to Learn Linux asks: "My company is making the move to Linux. I've been a Windows admin the last 5 years and have been asked to learn Linux. I've got some O'Reilly books but I need some hands on experience. My company will pay for any Linux training I choose. I'd prefer an online course to one of those 4 day classroom courses since I'd like to take my time and really learn it.
So far, I've been recommended the Red Hat eLearning course and the O'Reilly Learning Lab. Would you recommend either of these over the other, or are there some better choices?"
Real life (Score:4, Informative)
TrainingCamp for LPIC (Score:5, Informative)
Take a week... (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lfs/html/ [tldp.org]
Go RedHat (Score:5, Informative)
This will be more of benefit to you if you actually are going to use RedHat, but of course the general principles will apply.
If I were you, I'd also get Linux on a home machine and start "fiddling" to get up to speed.
Maybe install Vmware or a similar product so you can try different things.
Personally I took a leap and went from Windows to Gentoo [gentoo.org] linux and never looked back!
Good luck with it.
You could dual-boot an existing Windows machine or run VMWARE so you c
Online courses... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Use it at home (Score:2, Informative)
Was that wise? I doubt it, but I'm nothing if not stubborn.
The kind they have in Hawaii (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, get your co to pay for training in the most interesting setting they'll allow, where you can score a free lunch.
If you have time to "take your time", where you'll really learn is by installing at home. Have the co fork over for VMWare, and set yourself up with a nice virtual network on your home machine. You'll learn way more than through any online training course. You may even want to do this for a few weeks before starting the official training course.
This is a little off beat, but if you're totally new to unix, it might be helpful to nab a copy of Solaris x86 and put that in a vmware machine. I hate to admit this, but when I was starting I had a hard time understanding the linux man pages. The Solaris documentation was just luxurious, and the main options for commands pretty much the same. It used to be (maybe still is) free so you can probably get a copy someplace.
Good luck.
Pick the hardest Distro (Score:5, Informative)
It's no different than mastering the DOS 3.3 command set and scripting; just [infinitely?] more commands scripting, languages and widgets at your disposal.
Geek Cruise... (Score:2, Informative)
Realistically - aside from the "install at home" and "online courses suck" and "go to TLDP" - find a local Linux Users Group. Nothing at all beats face to face and it's value is compounded by the fact that it's hard to come up with months of future questions in a 5 day class - having a group of people you can sit down with any time goes miles to improving your skills with Linux. They'll often see things you'll miss or not be taught.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Set up a home system first (Score:5, Informative)
I totally second this.
I'll add that I think that the best distro to learn the guts of Linux on is Gentoo. Go the full compile-it-yourself route. There are easy to follow, step by step instructions, and they take the time to tell you why you're doing everything. By the time you have it installed (and it will take a while), you'll be a virtual expert on Linux.
Of course, you shouldn't limit yourself to just one distro, and Gentoo probably isn't the easiest to manage. I like Debian stable for server things because it is so easy to keep up to date.
Damn funny! Mod the parrent UP! (Score:2, Informative)
from the looks of it, the Microsoft "shared source" program seems to offer all of the same freedoms as the GPL.
And, I think my personal fave:
VB can go just as low level as C and the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast
woooo!, oh man, I can't stop laughing. please, someone make it stop!
Books are the best... (Score:1, Informative)
Get the book Linux for Windows Administrators by Mark Minasi and Dan York. (Amazon [amazon.com])
It is really an exelent book with so-called "Cookbooks". They're step-by-step instructions on how to setup DHCP, DNS, Apache, Sendmail, FTP, WINS (I think), and some other stuff I forgot. Even I could figure it out! They were really simple instructions, and, better yet--they really worked!.
So, that's the book I learned from. It's based off RH 7.3, but the instructions worked fine also with Slackware (9-10) and RH 8.
[No I don't get kickbacks].Set up a small net in your work lab (Score:5, Informative)
In your work lab get 2-3 computers. Set up a linux box as a DHCP and DNS server, then maybe add apache, samba, etc. These are the things that you'll likely be using linux for in the enterprise, right? You can play with firewalling and IPSec if that is your thing too.
After the initial install, go here to learn the rest:
The Linux Documentation Project [tldp.org]
The basic sysadmin guide there will give you the basics, and the specific howto's are great for setting up DHCP, DNS, etc.
Another good guide:
IBM Linux Newbie Guide [dbstreams.ca]
Set up that small net, play, learn, then go to your class and learn a lot more.
Have fun!
Re:Set up a home system first (Score:1, Informative)
There are a few good books availalble. O'Reilly books, theres a book called "how linux works" and i believe even one called "Linux for New users" or something (neither of those by oreilly) and here's a website i found doing quick google search: here [comptechdoc.org] it looks a little dated but should still work for you
also you can find a ton of information on whatever youre trying to do. when i was learning IP chains i simply googled and found many pages and had it running in no time. and i think samba comes with an old version of an orielly book in html format with it.
Re:Set up a home system first (Score:3, Informative)
Now, start playing. Basic install on your server, play with the interface for a bit. Get out the "Linux Network Administrator's Guide" and read it cover to cover. Read the Samba documentation in equal detail. Make a checklist of all the services you will need to support (DHCP server, DHCP client, Samba, Mail, WWW, FTP) and try them out. Get your test lab working with them.
Now, play harder. Try to make Samba a domain controller. Set up RAID on your Linux server. Do some NFS to your Linux client. A big stack of Linux books, a personal lab, and a workplan of things to try and make work will get you fully trained up, probably several years faster than I took learning a little at a time. :)
Re:Use it at home (Score:2, Informative)
Some Good Links (Score:2, Informative)
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz [2038bug.com]
The best place for questions:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/ [linuxquestions.org]
More reading:
http://www.tldp.org/ [tldp.org]
------
You've seen the posts, now see the website!
http://hiddenuniverse.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Re:Use it at home (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not. When you just install a distro at home and start using it you'll learn a lot, sure. But what you'll learn a scattershot and mostly just what you need to do to get a functional system, because that's what your incentive is to do. You won't learn best practices and you won't learn why things are they way they are. Heck you probably won't even learn about some fairly basic tools just because you didn't happen to need them. You really need the formality of a structured learning environment (not a class, specifically, but a structured curriculum at least) to make sure you cover everything you need to know.
I know it seems to be the number one recommended method here on Slashdot, but it really has some serious flaws that everyone seems to conveniently overlook. Following your advice leads to sloppiness and "good enough"-ness. Not exactly skills that will endear you to an employer.
Re:Stick w/the books (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Set up a home system first (Score:2, Informative)
Maintain a seperate network to put your wife and kids PCs on because they get really pissed off when they find out there's no internet and they can't get TV Guide because you wanted to see what would happen as you type in mysterious iptables rules.
Pay for another router/switch, and route both subnets to your dsl modem or whatever. Bonus you get to learn about setting up subnets and DMZs and funky routing ju ju.
Re:Real life (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Real life (Score:2, Informative)
Welcome aboard! (Score:5, Informative)
- Take advantage of an off-site "bootcamp". They won't make you a Linux SysAdmin, but they will give you a very good head start and are a good introduction to Linux. Let someone coach you through the first installs in class - you'll get plenty of opportunity to beat your head against the wall on your own later.
- Definitely set up systems at home. The best way to learn is getting your hands dirty and using it every day. I'd also recommend using it as your primary workstation right off the bat at work; drink your own champaign, so to speak. With tools like rdesktop, smb4k, webmin and OpenOffice.org your should be able to do everything you need to do while you learn.
- Build a good reference library. You've already mentioned O'reilly - they're great, but also build up a library of bookmarks and make friends with google!
- Try many different distros. Everyone you ask will tell you difinitively which one is best. Don't take their word for it, find out for yourself. Besides, my recommendation for a desktop distro for my budy isn't the same as the distro I'd use for myself, and that is different still from the distro that I'd run as a web- or file-server, etc.
Personally, I'd not spend my time, initially, on an online course. In my experience, you're better off starting out in an environment where you have someone in meat-space to bounce questions off of and get answers immediately. Once you know your way around Linux a bit, then pick some specific goals or projects (set up a mail server with DNS, set up a webserver with secure areas and cgi scripting, etc.). Just going through the process of downloading the latest apache and compiling it from source (and forgetting to compile in certain functionality or having to go hunting for supporting libraries for a function you're missing) will give you invaluable insight into the whole process of fine-tuning and customizing your Linux boxes to really make them perform as you want.And if you don't know perl and php, learn them! Windows admins don't naturally think of scripting something right off the bat, at least I didn't. Now, "how can I script this?" is the first thing I ask if I find myself doing the same thing more than once. I've even loaded ActivePerl onto my Windows Servers and have my entire user and group management process scripted. over 18,000 users are created, placed in groups, have their home directories created/moved/archived, etc. based on data gleaned from HR's databases. I used to get lists of hires, fires and transfers and have to manually manage their accounts and data. Not any more. A couple of perl scripts and an Active Directory perl module with a little Win32::OLE thrown in and I spend my valuable time doing more important stuff (like post on /.)
Anyway, this is free advice, which means you get what you pay for ;-) Welcome to the club!
Instructor-led vs. Do-it-yourself (Score:2, Informative)
Instructor-led:
Pro: There's someone there to answer your questions.
Pro: You can dedicate yourself to the material without interruption.
Pro: You won't be led off on tangential tasks.
Pro: You'll have something to put on your resume.
Con: You might be overly isolated from the nuts-and-bolts
Do-it-yourself:
Pro: You'll learn where to go to find the answers on your own.
Pro: You can focus on topics that are important to you.
Pro: You're exposed to the full breadth or possilities.
Con: You'll have to figure out on your own what's signal and what's noise.
FWIW, I've looked into the RedHat courses for some of my employees, and I think they're fairly good for someone who wants to learn useful Linux (for business) administration. The topics are a good mix of basics and enterprise-level stuff.
To help you with the self-taught portion of your learning experience, I highly recommend Linux Administration Handbook [prenhall.com]. It will lead you from low-level (booting, etc.) to high-level (web servers, backups), and it's concise enough to use as a reference later on.
A good friend (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing that even comes close to having a hardcore hacker as a good friend. Information is quickest gained through other people's personal experience.
I've done it all. I've read a whole series of O'Reilly books (don't even bother with any other publisher) on various Linux and Network related subjects--I've read at least 25 of them cover-to-cover in the last 4 years. I have a whole bookshelf lined with them.
Then I subscribed to O'Reilly's Safari online [ora.com] program, and will never again be without it. I'll never have to buy another tech book again. If you can tolerate reading books online, getting a subscription is an ABSOLUTE must. And if you buy (or would like to buy) an average of more then two or three books a year, this will save you loads of cash. You can read up to about 60 books a year for $10/mo.
However, when you need to come up to speed as quick as possible, by far and away the best resource is a friend who knows it all. Install Linux on all your computers, and play with every piece of software you may be even slightly interested. Read all the books, read all the man pages. Write a few scripts in Bash, Perl, Sed, Awk, and anything else you hear about. And when you get stuck (and believe me, you will), call up that friend or drop by his desk. You'll be an expert faster than you can immagine.
It's the little things, you know, that make you an expert. Anybody can copy files to another computer, but if you can come up with something like
off the top of your head, then people will start feeling the respect.Re:A good friend (Score:3, Informative)
Q:How is
tar cf - dir{1,2} | (ssh host2 'cd destdir; tar xpf -')
better than
scp -p dir{1,2} host2:destdir
A:tar preserves more about the files than scp, for example, scp follows symbolic links, tar copies the links themselves. Also, the method I proposed allows more versatility, such as:
Windows to Linux Migration Training (Score:2, Informative)
You will find that the demands to migrate Windows systems to Linux will outstrip your time. You need to pick up chilli-hot pointers to get basic services established in an instant.
For example: MS Windows has wizards and GUI tools to help get DHCP server, DNS server, file and print, etc. configured. Each requires only a limited amount oof back0ground information (IP Address, network mask, domain name, IP range for DHCP, upstream DNS server, gateway address, etc.) With Linux, no matter which distribution, you have to learn to use an editor (that is unlike anything you have ever used in Windows NT)and then manually configure each control file (dhcpd.conf, named.conf and so on) and if you get one dot wrong - your server will not work.
Samba is a bear to configure. Setting up a PDC and a BDC requires LDAP. Installation and configuration of LDAP requires more than transient knowledge! Then you have to install and configure a set of control scripts that interface between the Windows world (client requests) and the Linux OS. Again, this is not for the faint at heart average MS Windows network administrator who already feels out of his depth just having to deal with Linux.
If I were you, I'd check out the Samba web site, download the Samba-3 by Example book (can be purchased from Amazon.Com also) and use the networking examples it presents. You can download this book from: http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/Samba-Guide.pdf
The above book fully documents a wide range of MS Windows networks and includes all configuration files you may need for: 1. DHCP serving, Dynamic DNS, Samba, Firewall, CUPS (printing), etc. It is not perfect, but a good start.
You might also check out the Freedom Technology Center (see http://www.freedomtechnologycenter.org)for hands-on training courses they offer.
There is a wide range of potential training you can buy. Look for sources that run custom hand-on training. This is your best option to get yourself up to speed.
John T. jht@samba.org
try linux from scratch (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Set up a home system first (Score:3, Informative)
Firewalling is probably harder than a web server (especially if you use thttpd).
I disagree with the other comments about Gentoo--I'd say Slackware or Crux is a better compromise between getting you to actually start using your system quickly and forcing you to learn how to use it.
Linux from Scratch is probably the best, closest equivalent to an online 'course.' It's much more engaging than a Gentoo install, and hand-holds you through all of the steps without doing them for you like Gentoo does.
There's a slim chance I might be biased, though :)
Re:Set up a home system first (Score:3, Informative)
And for the love of Pete, If you compile a new kernel, DONT OVERWRITE THE OLD KERNEL!!!!!
Set up a new menu entry, so you can always failsafe back into the old kernel. I don't know how many times I've seen this done.
Re:Real life (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Use it at home (Score:5, Informative)
I started with Slackware back in the mid-'90s. I'd have to agree that it was a hard distribution to work with. At least back then, anyway. (Getting X set up took several evenings and a few scary sessions where you never knew whether your monitor would survive.) Since those days of yore, some friends have switched to Slackware from other distributions and they find it fairly simple. Of course they're not newbies tackling it any more, so...
Getting back to the original question: I'd suggest, if his employer can see that he's covered for the week and not getting yanked out of class to respond to a pager, that the fellow take the week-long class. Immerse yourself in it. Back when I was beginning to get into UNIX, I found that what worked best for me was to convert my system to run nothing else. It was DOS, Windows, VMS, and a bunch of other OSes at work but at home it was all UNIX all the time. (Technically it was Coherent but you get the idea.)
If he can swing it, I suggest getting a hold of a system that he can dedicate to use with his distribution of choice. Highly recommended. You wouldn't want to be screwing around and experimenting with dual booting the home Windows box and risking the wife's Christmas card list and the kids' term papers. (Not if you want to stay off their sh*t list, that is.) That way you can mess that system up, troubleshoot it, and fix it.
If you're not interested in fixing fouled up systems right off the bat, try doing some projects. I found several semi-work-related projects where I do some of the work at home on the new system. For example, we had some old FORTRAN code that some coworkers wanted converted to C. Heck, writing web pages for the intranet at work could be done at home on the Linux system. You'll learn one or more text editors along the way and most likely pick up some basic administrative skills at the same time. Anyway, I found it helped to have some goal when learning the new OS rather than just flipping around and trying things out randomly. Of course, YMMV.
Re:Pick the hardest Distro (Score:5, Informative)
But hey, don't think that I'm knocking off LFS. I went through it myself... but after a year plus of using Slackware (following a year of using Mandrake consistently).
LFS is really useful if you want to understand how to build a Linux distro. It's technically not even a distro. It's more of a commando-style survival training, whereas a distro would be summer camp.
I also doubt the "you will know your system inside and out" argument. I believe "you will know how to build a working Linux system" is a better description of the LFS learning process.
Bear in mind that the poster is a Windows admin for five years... and he wants to have working knowledge of adminning Linux... not building a distro. Moving from Windows, and getting an introduction to Linux via LFS is really not something you'd want to go through.
My recommendation? I live and breathe Slackware... but the poster should really try out a few distros. Fedora Core & Mandrake would scratch that need-some-GUIs-to-get-me-going itch for a start. After that, you might want to try some of the more traditional distros... Slackware and Debian would be my recommendation then.
In the end, Linux is about choice. Just sometimes, the choice isn't yours... just your company's. Take a course on whatever distro they've decided upon... but play with a different distro at home for a different "feel".
Certification (Score:3, Informative)
Try to memorize what -d, -w, or -f means for 50 different commands. -f could mean first, force, fake (simulate), file....
You might be able to force it in your brain, but it will fall out again two days after the test unless you are constantly using the commands.
I don't regret paying for the certification and the LPI certainly fills its place, but if I would chose today, I think I would rather go for CompTIA Linux+ certification (which I believe is more up to date), or maybe RedHat Certified Engineer. Does anyone have any opinions on those certificates?
Re:Use it at home (Score:2, Informative)
As soon as I read your post, this first response is exactly what I was thinking -- install it at home. If you have the hardware available to you, set up a lot of different configurations. Try not using your windows machines at all for a while and doing everything on Linux. If you don't have hardware available to you, get some. Linux runs great on machines 4 years old (yeah, yeah, we could run it on our 386's too -- but runs *well*) that cost $100 or are even free.
- Try:
- Linux as your firewall/router
- Install Apache - every good admin should know how to compile this and some basic configuration information
- Three words: "./configure", "make", "make install"
- Setup a second machine - test using NFS and Samba
- If you want to get a little adventurous, try NIS
- If you don't know sh, practice -- you'll need it -- same goes for VI
- RPMs (and I'm sure Debian's package manager also) make life easy -- if you want the easy way into linux, choose an RPM based distrobution like Fedora [redhat.com] and check out YUM [duke.edu]
- Having a weird problem that you can't easily solve? Google Groups [google.com] are a good starting point.
Good luck.SAIR Certification (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Use it at home (Score:4, Informative)
Learned everything I needed to know in an hour from the man pages the first time I needed to set them for users.
How the kernel knows where the root partition is.
Learned this the first time I had a disk array fail and had to restore from backup. I don't remember where I found it, probably in the LILO documentation somewhere.
What the difference between the exire time in an SOA record and the TTL in the zone file is.
Haven't set up a fresh DNS server since I switched to djbdns a few years ago, so I didn't remember this one. Ten seconds of googling refreshed my memory.
I guess my point in all of this is that it doesn't matter if you have holes in your knowledge. Instead, it is important to know that you do have them, and to know where to find the information you need. And, for what it's worth, I'm mostly self-taught, but I've taken some classes. Both are valuable.