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Seeking Hands-on Training Programs?

Posted by Cliff on from the practical-classes dept.

thekernel32 asks: "Recently the topic of getting people trained in the Linux/UNIX environment has troubled me. Where are people going for this stuff? I recall taking an Microsoft Networking Essentials class that I dropped out of. The reason why I dropped the Microsoft class was because we were being taught about the existence of Routers, File Servers and other networking topics, but we never saw or [worked with] any of them. I really feel that it would have been more useful to get hands on experience with daemons and real hardware, rather than just being told that they exist. What decent training programs out there have a hands on approach?"

43 comments

  1. Cost by BoneMarrow · · Score: 1

    Your only paying for the teachers salary, the facilities and course material.
    If you were to buy your own and bring it along I doubt they would mind.

    --
    Unfortunately, no one can be told what my sig is...
  2. Cisco Certification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    A friend of mine recently became Cisco certified. He had to configure a hardware router (among other things) for one of the exams. This could be the sort of thing you're after. Check it out.

    1. Re:Cisco Certification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah yes, Cisco equipment is lovely. But for ease of use and overall speed (due to the enhanced BSD protocol stack) you can't really top a custom built NT4 box with the Microsoft ISA Server product.

      Cisco is on the way out, as soon as Microsoft releases .NET Embedded - it is much more optimised for the Internet than Cisco IOS releases will ever be!

  3. Programming vs. Sysadmining by ObviousGuy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I always wondered what it was that attracted people to sysadministration. It seems like there is an inordinate number of Slashbots who are sysadmins or aspiring sysadmins and fewer programmers. Now this could just be a result of sysadmins having more time on their hands during the workday, but I am really curious.

    Why did you choose system administration over programming?

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't it obvious?

    2. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those of lower intelligence are naturally attracted to the profession?

      If not, then no. It is not obvious.

    3. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Because I get to interact with people rather than stare at a screen all day. The ability to flirt on a job is very important to me.

    4. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you not get the joke mmm? The question was asked by "ObviousGuy"!

    5. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Nothing is more satisfying than watching a system work. Maybe your system is a single box, a pair of boxen on a hub, a homogenous enviornment composed of 100's of boxen or perhaps your system is the network of scripts and utilties that keep everything running.

      Your array of monitors are your eyes and ears in this world. Often, you know when something is going to blow and can fix it before anyone notices.

      Of couse, you could be referring to client machine administration. I don't do that and I never will. :) That's for MCSE monkeys.

    6. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. It is like making love to a beautiful woman.

      Not that any of you queers would know what I'm talking about here, of course.

    7. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by kjd · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can do both. Sysadmins who code are usually more competent. Programmers who sysadmin often write more usable system administration programs.

    8. Re:Programming vs. Sysadmining by ThinkingGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When I was in junior high school, I still thought programming was fun. On my trusty Apple ][e I experimented with fractals and cellular autonoma, and wrote some pretty sophisticated Zork-style text adventure games. Then I got to college and took my first actual programming courses. There I discovered that in the real world I was going to be spending most of my time writing programs other people wanted.
      After changing my major a few times, I eventually ended up back in the IT world, this time on the administration side of things. As another poster pointed out, the appeal of sysadmining is watching the whole system work. I get the same thrill out of controlling a remote server thousands of miles away, as I did running my model railroad as a kid.

  4. Recomendation: Onsight, Internal Training Depts. by aguasch · · Score: 3, Informative
    I worked for Morotola for many years, and had quite a few training classes through them. I imagine many other big companies have internal classes that are very hands on. Ours were 10-20 people, each with their own machine, which worked out really well. Lots of coding/experimenting/lab time is a must.

    Most of the instructors were using stock Motorola class stuff, some of which wasn't great, but if you have a good instructor that can make up for it.

    The best instructor was James Lee from Onsight.com who had a bunch of custom Perl (beginning and advanced), CGI, TCL, and a few others, all of which were outstanding. These are the guys that wrote Hacking Linux Exposed and I recently got Open Source Web Development with LAMP that is just excellent, and really mirrors their training skills.

    I don't know if they do classes outside of Motorola (their web page seems to indicate they do), but I'd highly recommend them.

    In general, if you work at a big enough company, they probably have good internal training classes available, or can send you to classes that are good outside.

    I'd be wary trying to pick one on your own, though. I had very bad luck with some "big names" like Learning Tree which seem to just cobble together classes quickly, and try to debug them with you as the guinea pigs at hundreds of dollars a pop.

    --
    This is not a sig.
  5. Find a LUG by reaper20 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Where are people going for this stuff?

    A few hours with a LUG will do wonders. Yeah, people harp about 'certs' and 'proper training', but noone knows linux better than the people who love it and are willing to help others.

    1. Re:Find a LUG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In my experience, people at LUGs don't know shit, and are just there to arrogantly show off their meagre knowledge to others who also don't know shit. Seriously, your average LUG is the worst place to actually learn anything useful.

      A better reason to stay away, of course, is that they are also full of very very annoying people. Almost as irritating as those cunts who endlessly quote Eddie Izzard, forgetting that it is only funny when Mr Izzard does it.

  6. hands on approach? by orthogonal · · Score: 4, Funny
    Recently the topic of getting people trained in the Linux/UNIX environment has troubled me.... What decent training programs out there have a hands on approach?

    Well, with linux, you have three choices:
    • a turgid man page: it's guaranteed to list every command line switch, and possibly even describe a few of those switches. Unless it's a GNU/utility, in which case you should see the Info page. The Info page is hidden somewhere inside of emacs, which is the real OS.
    • the source code itself: it's GPL'd after all, and if we have to write it to produce the functionality, you ought to have to read it to use the functionality. Please disregard (but only at your peril) any comments; they're probably out of date, and certainly obscure. Unless the comment mentions "here be dragons" or "may overflow on some architectures".
    • the hairy ass: kissing the ass of a linux guru will sometimes get you an answer, along with condescension, contempt and strong body odor whilst you're told (between muttered "umask 077" calculations) how it's intuitively obvious.


    Hands on. Yeh.

    Linux is free: download it, install it, disconnect it from the modem until you know what you're doing, and play with it. That's about as hands on as you can get.

    Did I mention it's free? And that rabid OS zealots will be more than happy to help you install it if you act at all attracted to the Kool Aid they're pushing? And did I mention it's free?
    --
    Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
    1. Re:hands on approach? by leviramsey · · Score: 1

      +1 FP (n/t)

    2. Re:hands on approach? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      The way you bolded the words "man", "sauce" and "ass" kind of turned me on, dude. Please, do it again!

    3. Re:hands on approach? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What on earth are you blathering on about, man? Speak up, what what!

  7. Microsoft Networking Class by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You really should have stuck with it, boy. Arrogantly assuming that you know it all and then storming out before they've told you anything useful isn't going to help at all really.

    Remember, son - no man is an island.

    1. Re:Microsoft Networking Class by freaksta · · Score: 1

      No he just realized that he was in a really shitty class... what's to say that he did not already have networking skillz? I have my CCNA, and I sure as hell don't want to sit in some Micro$oft class talking about the 7 layers of the OSI Reference model and what layer a router falls on..

      --


      Hrrm... I usually just sign my name.
  8. Apple's technical training is hands-on by plsuh · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm a curriculum developer for Apple's Technical Training and Certification department, and I also act as the backup sysadmin for our Reston, VA training center. All of our courses are hands-on using serious equipment, with an iBook laptop and a G4 tower at each student station, along with a G4 tower for the instructor and possibly also (depending on the class) an XServe rackmount, a Windows 2000 Server, and Solaris servers, all networked together.

    The classes run three to five days, each day covering on average three chapters. Each chapter consists of an instructor presentation for about 30 minutes, followed by a student exercise that runs between an hour to two hours. As you can see from the time involved, our approach definitely emphasizes the hands-on aspects.

    I can tell you as one of the people who both writes and teaches Apple's courses, most people will zone out if they have to listen to the instructor for more than 30 minutes. At the technical training level, I can't imagine sitting through a straight lecture class for a whole day without a hands-on piece, and really retaining very much of the content.

    --Paul

    Paul Suh
    Curriculum Developer
    Technical Training and Certification
    Apple Computer
    psuh at apple dot com

    1. Re:Apple's technical training is hands-on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree. Apple really knows where it is at when it comes to ease-of-use in its systems, including training.

      They could teach these Linux mingers a thing or two, that's for sure!

  9. Re:Recomendation: Onsight, Internal Training Depts by RoughDesigner · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'd totally agree with the last note in the parent post. Big training firms that put out more classes than you can remember definately put out some really poor quality classes. I wouldn't suggest you take any class they haven't offered for at least a year. Of course this means you can't take any class about new technologies until they're older technologies, but you're better off that way since you won't learn it wrong.


    My company sent me to two Learning Tree classes which sounded great on paper, but were pretty lame . The instructors seemed to have walked in off the street and read the training paperwork, but didn't have any real world experience, so they couldn't help me with anything not in our handouts.


    I also took a class from some other similar company (forget the name) and had a worse experience, so I guess Learning Tree isn't the bottom of the barrel.


    I'd definately try to find a local LUG and pick brains of other geeks. You will learn one way to do it which is not guarenteed to be the best way, but it's a start. How you really learn is to have several LUGgers try to teach you the best way, and you get to learn a lot in their holy wars as they explain the pros and cons of their positions.

  10. You haven't seen the worse by jsse · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The reason why I dropped the Microsoft class was because we were being taught about the existence of Routers, File Servers and other networking topics

    You know what - THAT's an advanced topics in Microsoft Networking Essential! I once received a call from an MCSE asking me why he couldn't see the domain controller and its neigbours in the Network Neighbourhood. I checked and told him that he's in the wrong domain and he insisted that he's in the right domain because he has typed the correct domain name in the 'NT domain' box something like that. I told him it's the TCP/IP domain we are talking about and the Netbios traffic couldn't passthru the routers. Then he, with pride and professional tone, told me that Netbios is on the top of any networking protocol and devices such that it SHOULD be transparent to Microsoft Network, and that I should look into the problem...

    Things go downhill from there.

    1. Re:You haven't seen the worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      He is correct - you should have configured your routers to pass NetBIOS broadcasts on to adjacent segments. That's your fault, not his!

    2. Re:You haven't seen the worse by jsse · · Score: 1

      Why you all Microsoft guys like to post as AC? :)

      You mean, have me drilled holes in all boundary routers and rewrite the security policy in faour of your Microsoft shares? Next time you'd ask me to drill holes for corporation-wide Quake Tournament! (oh may be I'd accept :)

      I don't usually answer AC but you asked the exactly same question that MCSE was asking(hey, is that you?) The best quote from him:

      "Why do you worry about the security? Microsoft Network has all the advanced access control than any other OS."

    3. Re:You haven't seen the worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No really, he does have a point. Though I am surprised he didn't just use WINS servers rather than relying on broadcasts.

      Also regarding that quote, the access control mechanisms available in Windows NT et al *are* far more comprehensive than those available in most Unixes (including ones like Solaris that have some ACL support.)

    4. Re:You haven't seen the worse by MrResistor · · Score: 1

      Also regarding that quote, the access control mechanisms available in Windows NT et al *are* far more comprehensive than those available in most Unixes (including ones like Solaris that have some ACL support.)

      The difference being that Unix permissions actually act as advertised, and are fairly simple to comprehend. And no, MS access control is NOT more comprehensive, they just have multiple checkboxes for the same permissions. Unix has Read, Write, and Execute. Windows has Read, Write and Modify (what exactly is the difference there), and Read & Execute. Notice that these are listed in terms of equivalent function. Windows also has Full Control, which provides no real extra functionality, and seperate Allow and Deny checkboxes, which is pointless and stupid (If you actually care about security you deny all priveleges not specifically granted, you know, like Unix does). Then of course it has an access control list, which does exactly the same thing as Unix ACLs.

      Where exactly is this extra functionality you speak of?

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
  11. Unix/Linux Training by mark*workfire · · Score: 3, Informative

    Global Knowledge has some pretty good training courses. I haven't taken any of the Unix/Linux courses, but their Cisco courses have bene informative.

    Their Unix/Linux catalog is here http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/category.a sp?pageid=9&methodid=c&catid=199&country=United+St ates&translation=English

  12. Red Hat by fulldecent · · Score: 2, Informative

    Rad Hat has some nice certification programs that seem to be versatile and respectable: RHCE

    --

    -- I was raised on the command line, bitch

    1. Re:Red Hat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But pretty damn useless if you want to use one of the many other different Linux distributions, like Mandrake or something.

      That's the trouble with it being so fragmented - you have to learn all the fragments to be any use.

    2. Re:Red Hat by sphealey · · Score: 1
      Rad Hat has some nice certification programs that seem to be versatile and respectable
      The problem is that none of the Red Hat-conducted introductory install and admin classes are currently scheduled. And while I am not a huge fan of formal training in the IT world, when taking on something entirely new one needs a place to get started.

      sPh

  13. Guru Labs by Derek · · Score: 2, Informative
    They had some pretty good hands-on courses when I last checked (about 1 year ago) and their instructors are top notch.

    GuruLabs

    -Derek

  14. Community Colleges *can* be good. by python+eatery · · Score: 2, Informative
    If you live in a largeish city, then you probably have a few community colleges. One of these probably has a good CS department that may have some good classes for you. You can usually take classes ad-hoc, you don't need to be a full time student or anything. They may have evening or weekend classes, but I prefer to take them during business hours and have my job pay for them.

    Community colleges often are trying to give you real world skills you can use today, and are a good bet if you have one with competant CS instructors. Don't take anything where it's more theory than practice though, such as at a real college where they want you to have tons of unnecessary (in the real world) prereqs first.

    --
    Snakes are people too.
  15. Get rich quick! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do computer stuff without actually having to know anything! You too can:

    + Plug things in!
    + Swap good hardware out and put bad hardware in!
    + Press buttons in the Windows Control Panel!
    + Snoop your user's email!
    + Extinguish printer fires!
    + Lock users out of the network, then go home early!
    + Cause Outlook macro virus infestations (and blame your users!)

    It's all in a day's work for a Microsoft "certified" type person!

    (I'm a programmer and in all seriousness there do seem to be a large number of sysadmins who only got into the field to try and make quick bucks when anything "internet" was lucrative in the late 90's before the dot.com crash).

  16. Newcastle University by MyGirlFriendsBroken · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At my uni there is a sysadmin course for the information systems studends taught in a special lab cut off from the rest of the network as that the students. Looks like a fun course but its not available to the CS guys which is a shame.

    Does anybody else have this sort of course available to them as part of their degrees>

    --
    If you read a speed reading book, does it take you less time to read the second half?
    1. Re:Newcastle University by majestyk2000 · · Score: 1

      Karma: Karma Karma Karma Karma chamelion (Mostly affected by your love for eighties pop).

      I find that my love for 80's pop comes and goes, it comes and goes.

  17. Of Course by markcic · · Score: 1

    I recall taking an Microsoft Networking Essentials class that I dropped out of. The reason why I dropped the Microsoft class was because we were being taught about the existence of Routers, File Servers and other networking topics, but we never saw or [worked with] any of them.

    Of course you didn't deal with routers and other networking equipment, it was a Microsoft networking class. Like most OS vendors all they care about the network is that it is attached to the computer. Once your computer can talk to the default gateway; that is as far as the OS vendor needs to go.

  18. Re:Recomendation: Onsight, Internal Training Depts by PerlThoughts · · Score: 1

    I agree wholeheartedly with aguasch. As another former Motorolan, James Lee's classes on Perl from Onsight.com are indeed outstanding.

    James has that mix of technical savvy, presentation skill with an affable demeanor and enthusiasm for the material that you always want but almost never find in instructors. If you ask a detailed question, you get a detailed answer. His Perl classes were far and away the most enjoyable programming courses I've ever taken.

    In fact, I liked his course and demeanor so much I befriended the guy. Absolutely top notch...
    His company does do training outside of Motorola, both in the Chicagoland area, and anywhere in the US.

    One of the only down sides of my new employment is that their training department developed their own (inferior) classes in the areas James instructs, so I can't recommend them to coworkers anymore.

  19. Hands-on Linux/UNIX Training in Northeast US by jaiger · · Score: 1
    I just happened across this post today. Sorry for coming late to the discussion. I'll keep this post brief so as not to spam too much. 8)

    My company offers hands-on Linux and UNIX training. We are located in CT, US. Our training is high-quality and competitively priced. Our instructors are professionals employed full-time in their field of instruction.

    We have RHCEs in house and the owners are experienced Software Engineers with real engineering degrees. Our company consults with local enterprises developing Internet applications based around Unix/Linux and Java technologies.

    We offer you no-bull, hands-on, down-and-dirty training.

    Coincidentally, we have a new set of courses beginning within the next month or so. You can enroll or find more details on our offerings at our website, http://www.innovationsw.com

    Other topics include Apache, Postgres, PHP, Java/JDBC/Servlet/JSP, Solaris. We have plans to expand to J2EE/JBOSS, XML and PERL in the near future.

    -joe