Best Training in Linux Administration?

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?"

Comments

Use it at home

[SonicTooth]

Install Linux at home. It's the best training you'll ever get. And then switch over your best friends and finally your grandparents. You'll be a pro in no time.

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Good advise.

And then I looked at your sig :D

Now, I am confused.

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good idea, but it won't cover all the things that he will need to do in a business setting.

Re:Use it at home

[theparanoidcynic]

The key is learning on a hard distro, and sticking with it until you master the damn thing. I started my Linux career with Slackware (although I did know sh from my required "introduction to unix" course so I wasn't that fucked.)

Was that wise? I doubt it, but I'm nothing if not stubborn. ;)

Re:Use it at home

[zangdesign]

Set up a small, representative network at home - don't bother making it work like you would use a home machine, but rather concentrate on how the company would need it.

Re:Use it at home

[BSDape]

Slackware is be the distro to begin with.

Re:Use it at home

[wnarifin]

Install one distribution (I'd prefer Fedora Core 1), then http://www.tldp.org/, then http://www.linuxquestions.org/. Free, but takes time.

Re:Use it at home

[damiangerous]

Install Linux at home. It's the best training you'll ever get.

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:Use it at home

[stratjakt]

Slackware is a "hard" distro? I think the installer and package manager aren't too bad. It's no portage or apt-get but it's alright.

My first linuxes were rolled by hand, though.

It tought me a lot about the computer, and it's useful stuff as a programmer, but I can't say it taught me shit about real-life network administration.

I mean, you need a real-life network to fuck around with.

Re:Use it at home

[nomadic]

Actually the best training is at work; home networks just don't typically have the complexity you find in a business environment. Unfortunately most people can't just hang out with a linux admin team for a few months to pick up stuff.

Re:Use it at home

[antirename]

Oddly enough, everyone I know who is good at Linux administration (or programming in general) is self-taught. Yes, you wind up with holes in your knowledge, but they are usually small. Take a class, you think you know it all, and all of a sudden you are in over your head when you see something new. I see it all the time in new hires. (I only bring up programming because config files really seem to confuse MCSE's, since there is nothing to click on and you actually have to type.)

Re: Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything I was taught in college was M$. Taught myself linux in my spare time (ca. 1997). Built about a dozen (sub $50) boxes to do dhcp, dns, apache, squid, etc... Showed it to my old boss who just left the company. Parlayed that into an AIX/Linux gig for over $15k more with no trouble. Granted, I lucked into somthing, but I seriously owe Linus Torvalds bigtime for my chance at this livelihood. Were it not for him, I would still be welding large hunks of steel together for $10 an hour.

--
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(1 15),10);'

Re:Use it at home

[tverbeek]

Using it at home is the approach I used, and I've been surprised by just how well it's served me. When I decided it was time for me to learn Linux, I picked up a mainstream Linux distro (Red Hat 6.0) and one of those thick guide books (SAMS Linux Unleashed) to give myself the maximum possible safety net... but nearly everything I know about it I picked up by solving real-life problems with it at home.

It's been almost spooky at times how often something has come up in my professional life which I'd just been dealing with at home (e.g. mail transport, firewalls, attachment filtering, Samba, mod_rewrite, cron), and once in a while something I'd learned how to do on the job would come in handy for the home network (e.g. floppy-based 386 print servers, spam blocking).

Re:Use it at home

[damiangerous]

Take a class, you think you know it all

Exactly, you hear that a lot here about "paper MCSEs". Yet that's just the converse of the typical proposal here: "You don't need a class, you can learn it all by running Slack on your old 486." Yet somehow one is sage advice and the other is mocked. You can't learn without doing, but you can't learn in a vacuum either. Neglecting either one will lead to sometimes critical (from a business standpoint) holes in your knowledge.

Just like you shouldn't take a class and think you know everything before you have real experience, you shouldn't think you've seen it all already "in the wild" and structured learning is beneath you. It's the same personality flaw. It's just manifesting itself in a different way.

Re:Use it at home

[panic_paranoia]

While I agree that a formal training will benefit you tremendously, there are just some things it won't teach you. Sometimes you just need to use it for yourself without any guidance to really understand it. Still, this method of learning should in addition to, not as a replacement for formal training if these skills are to be used in professional environment. As the parent said trial and error will only teach you what you need to do to get a functional system. And a "functional system" doesn't necessarily imply good security or performance.

Re:Use it at home

[Whyrph]

Install linux from home, yes. Then install Linux From Scratch. It's like Gentoo, except you do everything by hand, and it tells you what each package does. You'll learn a lot.

Re:Use it at home

[Confessed Geek]

As an actively employed "Linux Systems Administrator" (my real job title) I must concur with "damiangerous." While I was a windows admin I set up multiple linux boxes out of curiosity, slackware, rh5, and it was interesting and educational, but once I was done I just sort of looked at them and was like "Now What?"

Only after I attended a 3 night a week month long class did it all come together.

Don't disregard the classroom setting. A online course or reading o'reilly books (and even the Linux for Dummy's book) are good but for your first introduction a classroom (with hands on training) is the best place to start. If you have a good instructor you won't just learn "the Facts" but will get a better grasp of the implications and how to use the tools, and get some real practical advice.

Your milage may vary as some people are much better book learners while others do better with lecture, but a good class does a really good job of giving a good foundation to start from so additional online or deadtree training is more approachable and rewarding.

Re:Use it at home

[sl4shd0rk]

I would disagree. The ability to be able to find the answers to the problem at hand is priceless. How many times have you been in on this conversation? "Oh yeah, that's right. We ran across this once before when Tidwell was here. How'd he do it?" And everyone stands around with their thumb up their ass making a bunch of grunting noises trying to sound like they remember how to do it. Nobody remembers everything. Some of the best people that I know in the tech field learned via "Scattershot". That alone didn't make them good - their own personal drive to excel made them good. Sloppy and lazy are not labels I would apply to self starters.

Re:Use it at home

[aldragon]

I agree with that entirely. It's by far the best way (except actually getting into the code and helping with development yourself, hehe). However some training/certification as well would'nt hurt, because with home system administeration there's bound to be a couple of gaps in one's knowledge.

Re:Use it at home

[gmack]

Slackware.. then my first full time job: "See those 30 comps?" your in charge now and we don't know how they work.

Thankfully they were debian. But steep learning curves are a fun thing.

Re:Use it at home

[wnarifin]

See. He's an experienced Windows Network admin for 5 years. I believe that he won't take much time to (re)learn that in linux (and I believe he's already a computer geek since he is here. Geek won't take long time to learn linux). That's why I'm suggesting him to install Redhat/Fedora because the distro has lots of customised GUI apps for settings. Even if he attend the class, I think he still need to install it at home to "mess up" with different settings/possibilities.

Re:Use it at home

[stinky wizzleteats]

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.

I guess that depends on your personal work ethic. I'm kind of proud of my home system, and I didn't need a suit in front of a whiteboard to help me set it up, expand it over the years, and carefully maintain it.

In fact, given that the people who write Linux generally do so in conditions much more similar to my home network than a cube farm or a datacenter, it's no surprise that the personal, individual pursuit of computing know-how is the single most important reason as to "why things are the way they are" in the Linux/Free software world.

Re:Use it at home

[SealBeater]

Slackware is be the distro to begin with.

Amen.

SealBeater

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have been on to something there as it appears as though that spineless wimp SonicTooth has since removed their sig (or you're a lying, obfuscating coward trying to make poor SonicTooth look like a spineless wimp).

Slashdot sigs: the last bastion of after-the-fact manipulation.

Re:Use it at home

[tverbeek]

Following your advice leads to sloppiness and "good enough"-ness. Not exactly skills that will endear you to an employer.

Depends on the employer. For many, "good enough" is... good enough. After all, it's why one former employer of mine is (by now) switching to Exchange and IIS on Windows, instead of Postfix and Apache on Linux: they're "good enough" and have the advantage of being from the same software vendor and consultants they (now) buy everything else from. And (setting aside my perfectionist tendencies and principle for a moment) for some businesses, anything better than "good enough" is a luxury... one they can't afford.

Re:Use it at home

[mindstrm]

Every good sysadmin that I know has learned chiefly on their own. They may have had some schooling in some facts of computing.. but NONE of them learned OS skills in a class.

Classes generally don't give you the WHY of everything either.. they cram as much as they can into a short period of time. What gives you the WHY is work experience.

Yes, of course, there are things at home you just can't learn at home.. you can't learn them much better at school either.

Granted, a good course can help you fit some things together.. and I'm not saying you won't learn something..... but it's not the answer.

The real reason many suggest learning on your own is because requests for "what is a good course to learn linux so I can do sysadmin" generally come from those who DON'T learn on their own, and think a course is the answer, and will promote them up a level. A course will teach you things, and depending on the course, might teach you some really good facts.. but in the end, if you don't learn quickly on your own, you are going nowhere.

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Use it at work.

If your company is going to use RedHat, get a decent system and try to install it on it.

If your company hasn't made up it's mind, install debian. http://debian.org and go to the #debian room on irc.freenode.net and start asking questions.
You'll get a lot of RTFM responses I'm sure, but just ask where TFM is and they'll give you a link.

Then install gentoo and go to the #gentoo chat room.

Also, check out a knoppix disk. That's going to be the best way to tell if any linux will run on your chosen test system.

check out the linux documentation sight too.

Most successfull linux admins have learned in their basement.

Re:Use it at home

[adaminnj]

Installing a home PC with distro de'jur and then using it to read about all the things you don't think you can do anymore because the tools are unfamiliar then learning the tools to accomplish the same things you use to do with a M$ box is a very good way to learn. But then it doesn't sound like this guy has a few years to get up to speed. As I've see from paperer MCS* if you don't follow-up with a full time use of any OS then your just end up with a cert and no skills then end up back at berger flippen or what ever.
I recommend
Start by tossing out your Windoughs box completely at home (or at least unplugging it and hiding it) and if you can get away with it at work get a second box and using it for everything you can!
and then loading a Linux box at home (MHO is stay away from the Fedora project) and then just picking any training that would fit you schedule to start (it will still take years for you to be any good unless you have some UNIX skills now) and focus on the comandline tool GUI's get you in trouble. if you don't understand commandline you will probably will never recover from even small probs.
Then get some deprogramming help and off the M$ wagon.

Your going to learn more about Linux administration at home at your darkend desk trying to do or install something than in a book or a classroom and you will keep thous lessons in your head longer but you'll need reading material try
http://www.google.com/search?q=linux&ie=UTF-8 &oe=U TF-8

Re:Use it at home

[thephotoman]

Actually, I would recommend the Fedora Project here. It's got enough bugs in it that he'll have to learn how to fix most anything. That's how I learned Linux in the first place. I still use my Fedora box, despite the fact that both my apt-rpm/Synaptic and yum/Yumi packages are broken. I'll probably continue to do so until Thanksgiving or so, when I'll have time to back everything up and move to Debian, which I have working successfully on my laptop, save for getting J2RE to work in Mozilla and Firefox (though it works in Konqueror).

Re:Use it at home

[adaminnj]

you should buy the movie "The Code" to start you Life in Linux just so you know where it came from

Re:Use it at home

[adaminnj]

Hahaha I'm laughing my ass off here!

You do have a point and I was going to recommend Debian too.

My issue with Fedora is the whole RedHat GPL thing.

I believe that they are abusing the GPL by only offering only Fedora for download but this is just MHO

Re:Use it at home

[thephotoman]

Seriously, that's how I learned how to manage Linux myself, over the course of about a month. Fix the problems in FC1 and get it to work properly. It was fun, and it kept me occupied during what otherwise would have been a boring summer break.

As for Fedora only by download, I've found that free ISOs are probably the best way to install anything...except Debian. With that, I'd just grab Knoppix, install it to hard disk, and then use apt-get to get a normal Debian system...again, what I did.

The other advice I'm hearing is to roll your own. While it can be complex, it's a project I'd love to try, just to gain a working knowledge of the low-level processes in Linux. Yes, I can handle the high-level stuff, but when it comes to that kernel, I'm clueless.

Re:Use it at home

[mcrbids]

As an actively employed "Linux Systems Administrator" (my real job title) I must concur with "damiangerous." While I was a windows admin I set up multiple linux boxes out of curiosity, slackware, rh5, and it was interesting and educational, but once I was done I just sort of looked at them and was like "Now What?"

Only after I attended a 3 night a week month long class did it all come together.

Well, as "an actively employed "Linux Systems Administrator" (my real job title)" I can say that I followed a different path. There just weren't any decent classes anywhere near me unless I was willing to drive several hours each way, twice a week.

It started with me getting rid of Windows on my personal workstation, and using only Linux. I bought every book I thought might help, and became an avid reader of sites like http://rootprompt.org/ and http://www.linuxtoday.com (though the latter is mostly advocacy)

It also helps to know a few other people - I've offered and received useful tips from other experienced techs.

It was about a year before I truly "got" Linux - I noticed it when I sat down at a Windows system and immediately felt "cramped" because of all the limitations on what I was doing.

The single book that helped me most get going was "Red Hat Linux Unleashed".

Re:Use it at home

[Nailer]

Yes, you wind up with holes in your knowledge, but they are usually small.

As someone who learnt Linux at home, then took some classes, then became an instructor, I think most people who learn from home's knowledge holes are gaping.

Basic stuff like quotas. How the kernel knows where the root partition is. What the difference between the exire time in an SOA record and the TTL in the zone file is.

Most self-taught Linux users are no worse than the self-taught NT admin who has no idea what a port is.

Re:Use it at home

[adaminnj]

but if you want linux to work you have to respect the GPL and the copyleft.

you shoule get a copy of the movie "The Code" and you would be supporting a good cause

Re:Use it at home

[rnturn]

``Slackware is a "hard" distro? I think the installer and package manager aren't too bad. It's no portage or apt-get but it's alright.''

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:Use it at home

[rnturn]

``We ran across this once before when Tidwell was here. How'd he do it?" And everyone stands around with their thumb up their ass making a bunch of grunting noises trying to sound like they remember how to do it.''

And, of course, while they're grunting, they all recall that the reason that Tidwell isn't around to fix the problem is that his boss got sick and tired of his not documenting his procedures. :-) As much as everyone bitches and complains about it, documentation is important; especially for the odd little things that Tidwell knew how to do. Even if it's only an email, it's better than nothing. And, finally, I'd be wondering why none of the guys never had the curiousity to ask 'ol Tidwell what it was that he was doing to solve that problem. (And if he refused to tell you, then you know that management had another good reason for getting rid of him.)

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

As a self-taught MCSE, I agree that classroom teaching for this type of thing is often not as useful as trying to work it out for yourself at home. I do however think that the structure of working towards a qualification is very helpful in ensuring that you cover more material than you might otherwise. In my experience, the exams themselves may not be particularly relevant to a real-life work situation, but the study you do to pass the exam (if you do it properly) can be very helpful.

Also speaking as an MCSE, may I say how surprising it is to read another patronising /. comment on the subject...

Re:Use it at home

[Brandybuck]

I only bring up programming because config files really seem to confuse MCSE's, since there is nothing to click on and you actually have to type.

Huh? Are you implying that editing configuration files by hand is "programming"? I think you need a basic computer dictionary!

Re:Use it at home

[Alex]

Install Linux at home. You'll be a pro in no time.

Yeah - this is the best way to get exposed to complex setups.

Alex

Re:Use it at home

[Errtu76]

While i agree with you that this is the best way to learn, it's also the slowest. More importantly, after you self-learnt linux, you don't have any certificate/diploma to show for it. And no paper = no value for your boss.

Re:Use it at home

[maxpublic]

"See those 30 comps?" your in charge now and we don't know how they work.

And this will teach more than any college course or class in existence.

This is much how I learned, right from the beginning, e.g., "we don't know how this here mainframe actually works. Figure it out. If you can't, we'll fire you and hire someone else to give it a shot."

This should be a degree requirement for everyone in CS. It would do a lot to weed out the often-useless trash passing themselves off as CS majors these days.

Max

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no is the answer here. If you have zero experience, it's very hard to get into linux, especially since there is so much information around, and often it's hard to figure out if the manual you are using is upto date or not.

Getting a crash course, in class or from a friend, is the best way to get you going. Then you can start experimenting. It's a lot easier if you have been pointed in the right direction from the beginning. When you feel confident enough you could decide to sign up for a master class, or explore on your own.

Now hopefully the company will give you enough time to learn. Oh yeah, want last thing, don't forget to break stuff on purpose. It's usually the thing I, and many others, forget/neglect to do. It will make you more confident when the shit hits the fan on a production machine.

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

..and you're be a friendless geek who's grandparents hate you...oh...that explains it.

Re:Use it at home

[Scarblac]

I don't see what being able to figure out what some computer does has to do with Computer Science.

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Small holes in your knowledge like finding median in n*lg(n), no formal introduction to concurrency and so on. Oh yes, definitely someone I would hire as programmer.

Re:Use it at home

[LenIT]

Use it at home is the best, but true he may not get the business uses experience, however; this will be his best teacher to at least become more familiar with the enviroment itself and then go from with more knowledge of how to get around. Then obtain in advance what packages, services your company will be running and get them rolled up onto your home servers and make a mess and clean it up :) I think most of us got started .. Good luck

Re:Use it at home

[ThogScully]

This should be a degree requirement for everyone in CS. It would do a lot to weed out the often-useless trash passing themselves off as CS majors these days.

And are you included in this demographic? CS degrees have nothing to do with system or network administration.
-N

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think people are saying never to take a class. The key point is to get some experience BEFORE you take a class. If you have no context in which to integrate the information presented in a class then the class will be of lesser value.

As to the "formality of a structured learning environment" --- formal structured learning environments don't encourage you to dig deep into the areas *you* need. If the OP is in a shop converting only servers to linux he doesn't need a session of how to install and configure Open Office.

As to "good-enough"-ness --- what business environment are you working in .... if your good enough criterion is pretty high then good enough is just that and you can go put out the next fire.
Spending one day getting a perl script good enough versus 10 days to turn it into your magnum opus will most certainly make your boss happy.

Re:Use it at home

[zerocool^]

That's because the most important aspect of being self taught isn't knowing the information, it's knowing where to look for the answer. There's still volumes about linux that I don't know, but when I run into a problem, I have a good idea where to start looking for the answers. It's kind of getting the zen of linux.

~Will

Re:Use it at home

[Stepping Razor]

My first linuxes were rolled by hand, though.

Pah, you youngsters had it easy. In my day we had to make our linuxes by typing in all the 0s and 1s by hand. In the dark.

Re:Use it at home

[zerocool^]

Agreed.

I had messed with linux over a few years, but back in 2000, I just said to myself I'm going to completely ditch windows and run linux. I went to the store, bought Mandrake 7.something, backed up my data to a spare hard drive, and wiped windows and used linux as my primary for like 6 months.

That way, anything I wanted to do and didn't know how, I would have to learn how to do it.

Re:Use it at home

[mikael]

And, of course, while they're grunting, they all recall that the reason that Tidwell isn't around to fix the problem is that his boss got sick and tired of his not documenting his procedures. :-)

And, of course, Tidwell is now working as a self-employed consultant earning over $100/hour.

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

"Heck, writing web pages for the intranet at work could be done at home on the Linux system."

Just me but I write software at work where they pay me.

Re:Use it at home

[B'Trey]

I've been using Linux at home in some level or other for around a decade and I certainly don't consider myself qualified to work as a System administrator. How much experience do you get at home setting up DHCP, DNS, adding users, configuring Sendmail or an alternate MTA, etc. I have a nine computer network at home, run my own web server, mail server, a couple of mailing lists, etc. and I've done all of the things I mention above. But for many of those tasks, I sweated for a couple of days digging through man pages and web sites and HOWTOs until I got it working and then never looked at it again. If I had to do it all over again, I'd be pretty much back to square one because I don't remember how I got it working three years ago. Using Linux at home is a great idea for getting comfortable with the OS but it doesn't come close to preparing you to be a real SysAdmin.

Re:Use it at home

[cat5]

I was a Windows Admin and User at home for 2 years before I finally was introduced to Yggdrasil linux (your all old if you remember this one). I remember installing it on my 486, finishing up, rebooting and getting to a login prompt, realizing: crap, what was the password I typed in.

Soon after, I tried out Red Hat 5.2, then 6.2 before I 'got' it. Fedora/RHEL is not the 100% answer. All those fancy GUI's are shite if you don't have access to a monitor. Need to learning awk? Not really, but it helps if he knows what he needs to look for on a line. I'd say learning to read the log files and errors are the hardest thing to do, so installing something and having it break, and you fixing it with a book or google, or even irc, is much better than a class.. and trust me, I'm just finished taking RH133 + Rh253 + RH302 in the last 3 weeks (forced, told my boss I didn't need them, but was a nice vacation) so RH training is very basic, enough to get around a gui system. Learning how to use the tools you have to get info off the net without a gui, is more difficult for more people than you think.

I work in support, and believe me when I tell you that no one knows how to ftp from the command line anymore, I know, because I have to walk them through it. Pick up a book, you'll learn more.
As recommended before, go with the 'Unleashed' series. If you need to learn something like LDAP or DNS or NFS/NIS, then O'Reilly is going to help you there.

Re:Use it at home

[CmdrGravy]

Maybe documentation is useful for everyone else but not, I suspect, for old Tidwell.

It shouldn't be that way but with companies quite happy to let you train younger, cheaper staff to do your job and then make you redundant then it makes sense to keep as much as you can to yourself - it maximises your market value.

Re:Use it at home

[sseremeth]

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 and check out YUM
• Having a weird problem that you can't easily solve? Google Groups are a good starting point.

Good luck.

Re:Use it at home

[toolshed7]

I agree. Remember a lot of us, have migrated to Linux and Windows is that werid OS that does not make sense to us. I think a class can get you grounded, but like anything you will have to teach and learn yourself. The class can show you the goaline, but you got 11 players that are comming after that ball. Run forest...run.

Re:Use it at home

[Skweetis]

Basic stuff like quotas.

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.

Re:Use it at home

[crashoverride025]

actually I'm a Linux+ certified professional, and if you do well on the test you either did one of the three:
1. Guessed reallly well
2. Taught your self with hundreds of different machines networked together all using Linux or
3. Got Linux+ In Depth and took a class

I did a combination of 2&3 and got a 815/900

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Debian and Fedora at home...Personal preference is Debian...and YES, I installed it from the ISO (the SARGE installer is very nice).

Want GUI?
apt-get install x-window-system-core
apt-get install gnome-core

Now how hard is that?

Oh, and for learning you can go the route of self taught or teacher instructed...which ever works for you. I've done both but the MOST valuable asset for me was the Local Linux Users Group.

I am forced onto Windows @ work, but at home I'm now a full Linux convert! Debian rocks, but FC is easier to convince coporations with NO opensource strategy to use (simply because it is affiliated with RedHat and most Windows-Only folks at least know the name RedHat).

Re:Use it at home

[1lus10n]

yes, actually they do. More often than not they don't have ENOUGH to do with systems administration. People who design the curriculum tend to be to worried about weather everyone can make a fucking webpage look purrty enough with java.

Most schools that offer a CS degree program have at least 1 or 2 required courses on operating systems, which typically delve into how the OS works. Sounds like systems administration for beginners if you ask me.

Re:Use it at home

[ThogScully]

Operating Systems and Networking classes are the closest to system administration in a Computer Science cuurriculum, yes.

But, learning to program filesystem caching algorithms, network communication protocols, and other such things still isn't pertinant to system administration. It may help understand some of the underlying principles, but it's hardly required and certainly not a justification of system administration being a computer science field.

Computer science is about programming and software design.
-N

Re:Use it at home

[Jaysyn]

Apparently not a God damn thing from most of the CS grads I've met.

Jaysyn

Re:Use it at home

[Artine]

You're right. It's not. CS is Computer SCIENCE. CS is a synthesis of mathematics and engineering. It has nothing to do with administration of any network or system. It's about algorithms, the study of efficiency, the theory of computation. What you're looking for is something along the lines of Computer Information Systems.

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

that's no more than a big pile of crap.

good enough.

Re:Use it at home

[CountJoe]

You'll be a pro in no time.

Ummm ... I hope you intended this to be a Joke.

Learning Linux simply by using it at home will be a timely process. And you only really learn something if you have to deal with it. So there is no way you could learn enough about Linux to support your company in a reasonable amount of time.

If your company is willing to pay for it, take a course!

Re:Use it at home

[joshmccormack]

Actually the best training is at work; home networks just don't typically have the complexity you find in a business environment. Unfortunately most people can't just hang out with a linux admin team for a few months to pick up stuff.


Very good point. At work you'll have tons of boxes running different versions of different OSes, with different configurations and programs available. You'll have to deal with all sorts of oddities, things that can't be fixed or replaced but have to be used, and things that were not done the right way and have been kept alive for all too long.

If you're really serious about it, and you have the room and cash, you can try. Get a whole lot of boxes - cheap junk is possibly better than new, as you'll get to diagnose hardware problems along the way. Set them up with different distros, versions, configurations. Network them, run different databases and app servers, mail servers and what not.

Then start trying to do things. Move servers from box to box, from the command line, without shutting anything down. Learn to write shell scripts and Perl so you can monitor everything and control everything.

If you want to complete the ambiance of a hosting facility set up tons of loud fans, install extra locks, and put up chain link fences. And try subsisting on a steady diet of microwave burritos, Mountain Dew and Ho Hos (subsitute with Ding Dongs, Devil Dogs, etc.)

Re:Use it at home

[maxpublic]

Computer science is about programming and software design.

Back in the day when web sites as commercial products were a new thing and Perl was rapidly becoming the language of choice for dynamic interactions (and the number of Perl programmers was tiny), I was hired as an independent contractor for a company that was looking to ride the way of commercial web site offerings to wealth. They wanted a Perl programmer but had been unable to find one who was interested (not surprising, in a town of 120,000).

I was told of this opportunity, thought "what the hell", and went in for an interview. When they asked if I could program in Perl I said "yes", even though my answer was purest bullshit. I could program in C, mind you, and a number of other languages, but not Perl.

I was hired and a week, four books, and a couple hundred online examples later, I was merrily programming in Perl, creating websites for customers ranging from tiny mom-'n-pop shops up to corporations with more than 40,000 employees.

Despite the way in which administration of the company was constantly bungled, our client list grew and with it the work. We needed a second programmer; this was especially true since I was an independent and had the habit of turning down jobs that would push my work week beyond 40-50 hours. I had little desire to turn my life into work and despite the pleading (and sometimes threats) I said "no" when that magical number was reached.

The guy who ran the company insisted that every applicant had a B.S. in computer science, at a minimum, despite my warnings of previous past experiences with C.S. majors in other jobs that had turned out badly. He didn't care, though; he wanted a C.S. major so he could point to that person when talking to clients to show that he had 'professionals' on staff. Since I didn't have a CS degree I didn't count, even though I was single-handedly keeping his company afloat by completing job after job.

So we interviewed, and I was asked to sit in to give my opinion on the actual skill of the applicants. Every time - every single time - I said that NONE of the applicants were qualified, and yet I was ignored and some idiot with the prestigious degree was hired.

We went through 12 such 'programmers' in 18 months. Not a single one ever completed a job for a customer. I was asked, time and time again, to bail someone out because the job was long past due and the clients were getting angry. And so the C.S. major was fired and despite these experiences the boss insisted on hiring YET ANOTHER CS MAJOR. He just HAD to have that degree to point to for clients.

During the time I contracted with this company we never once had a competent programmer with a C.S. degree. While you may say that my experience was unusual, it wasn't; it was typical in past jobs, and typical in this one as well. I knew just how worthless a C.S. degree was from long, repeated personal experience and tried to warn this guy of the pitfalls. But he was blinded by the sheepskin and apparently thought, I guess, that he'd eventually get a decent programmer.

He never did. After 18 months of frustration I refused to contract with the company again and terminated my professional relationship with them. I just didn't need the bullshit. The company, by the way, has folded - due, I'm told, to an inability to complete contracts for web sites which required programming.

Computer science might be about programming and software design, but it's been my experience that many C.S. majors are capable of neither. They must be taught these things on the job because college doesn't give them the skills needed to actually do the work in the real world. And since this is the case, ANY savvy geek will do, regardless of whether or not he or she has a degree in computer science.

Max

Re:Use it at home

[ThogScully]

That's a nice story and all, but that hardly discusses the topic. You suggested several posts back that a CS degree should be requisite for system administration, but that isn't what CS is.

If your qualm is that CS graduates can't program, then that's fine - I think a lot of people with CS degrees got them for the heck of it, just because it was the next big thing... and many great programmers have little use for the college education methods... But still, CS is programming and I have little doubt that a good CS program can help further the skills of an already competent programmer who really wants to be a programmer.

Just because you think CS churns out bad programmers though doesn't mean it has anything to do with system administration.
-N

Re:Use it at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that. You are not going to master things like BIND, load balancing, sendmail, etc just by installing a bunch of Linux desktops. Get some real training in real business uses for Linux. I'd go with the redhat training just because I am pissed at O'reilly for producing so many shitty books lately. O'reilly used to mean quality but now they are just living off their name.

Re:Use it at home

[middlemen]

HI Confessed Geek, Can you tell me the name of the institute which gave you good classes on Linux administration? Thanx for the info

Re:Use it at home

[Jaysyn]

That's nice & all, but I've met CS grads that knew *nothing* about how a computer works or programming. Cough, Cough, JU, Cough....

Jaysyn

Re:Use it at home

[1lus10n]

It is Computer Science. Therefor it should encompass all of computers. As I pointed out above they do cover generic begginer level things, they do not however cover enough of it. Which is a large part (though not the only part) of why most CS grads are bloody incompotent.

This is one of my major peeves with CS degree programs. They focus to much on "paper skills" and useless crap (math, english etc). If they would first build the core competency of the individual and then worry about the peripheral stuff then CS grads would be more compotent. For god's sake's they have YEARS to teach this stuff, why is it that it often goes in one ear and out the other ?

Just for the record I think it should be just as difficult to get a degree in CS as it is to get a degree in law or medicine. The degree's should also be just as granular.

Re:Use it at home

[cfuse]

Depends on the employer. For many, "good enough" is... good enough.

My former employer is the dominant player in a niche market. Their business practices are so sloppy that it's frightening. They never cared how something was done, just that it was done. They assumed that just because they had an idea that idea was the best possible solution, no discussion, no debate.

The hated it when I refused to make changes to the system that would cause problems (we were responsible for emergency medical assistance, I would not make changes that could result in the risk of injury or death of our clients). They hated it even more when I'd point out that the reason that they had hired me was to ensure that system worked without fail (which was difficult enough, thank you very much) and that I was only doing what I had been hired to do.

Re:Use it at home

[Timex]

And this will teach more than any college course or class in existence.

You would have loved my college class...

Back when I was in college (a local two-year technical college, 1993), my dad sent me a box of 3.5" floppies. The floppies had whichever version of slackware had Linux kernel 0.99 pl10.

I got permission to put it on a system to play with. After playing the Floppy Shuffle for a while, I was done. I was Happy. It worked.

I came back the next day, sat down in front of the system I installed it on, and Windows 3.1 booted up! Someone in a night class had re-installed the OS. I almost freaked. My professor told me to relax, and re-install Linux. "This is a learning institution. That's going to happen a lot. Get over it," he said. I re-installed Linux several times over the next few weeks, and I learned a lot about how to get a system up from nothing to something that is usable, in a decent amount of time.

When I had a PC of my own at home (I had an Apple IIgs at the time, so I was excited to get the PC for this), I was able to install Linux on that, and even get it onto the Internet. (Slurp is a wonderful thing...)

When I finished school and went to work, I was the only one in the QA lab that knew unix at all, and it wasn't long before I was the one that took care of the Sun boxen (SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 5.x). MIS knew that if they got called up for help with a unix box, the problem was not something that could have been resolved quickly.

Re:Use it at home

[sfjoe]

As someone who learnt Linux at home, then took some classes, then became an instructor, I think most people who learn from home's knowledge holes are gaping.

I learned at home. I know some of the "basic stuiff" you mentioned but if I were to do anything, I'd want to do a little research to cover those gaping holes. The thing is, I don't see how not knowing those things constitutes "gaping" holes.

Re:Use it at home

[invenustus]

This is one of my major peeves with CS degree programs. They focus to much on "paper skills" and useless crap (math, english etc).

It's called a liberal arts education. Universities aren't giving out Certified Java Programmer certificates, they're giving out baccalaureate degrees. Most colleges want this degree to mean that the holder has a solid grounding in all of human knowledge. Certainly people can argue about what perspectives should be represented in this body of knowledge, but Python programming ranks somewhat low on the list. If the major is called Computer Science and not Computer Skills, nlogn and Hamilton cycles are going to take precedence over being able to hack some wicked C++.

Re:Use it at home

[1lus10n]

Sorry. Bullshit. Especially if your dealing with a Bachelor of Science degree.

This is why people from other countries are steadily surpassing our comp sci grads, because there schools teach them the technical foundation that allows them to understand WHY to do something. Not just how to do it.

Our problem is our people dont understand the why well enough, they do it for no reason. Security ? what security ? Why would I do that ? Memory management ? But it looks pretty.

Their problem is that they dont understand the why, there is less innovation. That is changing mighty quickly though.

-- Just of note. Certifications also suffer from this problem. They teach you how to do things but not why to do them, or what methods to use to determine which method to use etc etc

Having knowledge and knowing how to use it are two very different things.

Real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, some people mock Gentoo, but installing it is once of the best linux learning experices I've ever had. Even if you don't end up running it, it'll teach you a good bit about the internals. The documentation is pretty good as well.

Re:Real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, some people mock Gentoo, but installing it is once of the best linux learning experices I've ever had. Even if you don't end up running it...

Still waiting for it to finish compiling, eh?

Re:Real life

[spacepimp]

ive been installing gentoo for the last 2 days.. i figured i wanted to see how easy it was to install kde, as a gui for the experience and just for fun. it has now been compiling on my pc (800 mhz and 128mb of ram ) for 12 hours. best learning experience ive had yet with linux, as a newbie, but im amazed at how long its taking to compile. hopefully before i go to sleep.

Re:Real life

[eric_ste]

Yep, parent is right. And you have the Gentoo forums to help you if you are in need. Installing gentoo will certainly teach you lot's of stuff. But if you are to become a Linux sysadmin, your first step, IMHO, should be to drop windows and start using Linux on your work computer and on your home computer. Also, get him to give you a few old PC's to play with. Like 333Mhz which you can get for about 50$. On these PC's, don't use gentoo, compiling everything will be much too long. Use a precompiled distribution and preferably the one your Boss wants you to use in prod.

Set up the networking, play with apache, PHP, postfix, Openldap. Create and delete useracounts, explore /etc/init.d, read the rc script to understand how your server boots.

Instead of going on a class, get him to buy good books. I like wrox and Oreily books but others may be good also.
Learn to use man, the sysadmin's bestfriend.

Learn vi. Vi may be hard at first but it is very useful. the linux version is generaly vim. You may also use gvim but it's better to kick yourself in the ass and learn it if you are to become a Unix sysadmin.

Also, a good source of info is generally included in /usr/share/doc.

Finally, http://www.google.com/linux, I could not live without.

I do not know many sysadmins that understood Linux and wanted to go back to windows.

Have fun!

Re:Real life

[Ziviyr]

That joke is old, buy a computer capable of more than 20 MIPS and try again.

Re:Real life

[mrjackson2000]

KDE takes a LONG time, as does OpenOffice

Re:Real life

[Curtman]

What amazes me about Gentoo is how aweful those LiveCD's are. I've been a Gentoo user for over two years, I'm not knocking the distro whatsoever. But if you're new to Linux, do yourself a favour and install Gentoo from Knoppix, instead of the Gentoo LiveCD's. The process is the exact same, except you have FireFox, X-Chat, and many other helpful resources available to you. I think those CD's are a terrible way to introduce people to Gentoo.

Re:Real life

[spacepimp]

i thought about this, but i wasnt certain how much slower it would be considering the ram usage of knoppix, i have the luxury of two other desktops to experiment with whileim waiting for it to compile. mostly i used a winxp box (em* bows head in shame) and ssh'd while i did it. my next question is how long should asterisk take to compile which is to be my next protage

Re:Real life

[Daengbo]

Linux From Scratch is a better candidate for this, IMO. A list of mirrors for the necessary files and the book is here: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Re:Real life

[mikelieman]

Hell, why not just do a Linux from Scratch install and just jump right in...

Re:Real life

[Hobadee]

Learn vi.

*cough*emacs*cough*
No, seriously, choose your allegiances soon, because you will be forced to sooner or later. KDE/Gnome, Emacs/Vi, the list goes on and on. The sooner you decide what you like - the sooner you can start learning about it. But make sure you start out with what you like, because your not allowed to switch!

Re:Real life

[Fred_A]

Full KDE 4 hours, full Gnome + Mozilla about 4 hours...

Gentoo isn't very useable if you don't have a fast machine and a fast link (not immensely fast but at least ADSL).
OTOH, a lot of large packages are available as precompiled binaries.

I have to run Gentoo because it's the only freely available distro that has a more or less decent AMD64 support but I'd rather go back to something more polished where you spend less time installing it and more time using it. Not to mention that I'm not completely convinced that compiling everything is really worth it anyway...

Ah well...

Re:Real life

[eric_ste]

I can actually use both, emacs for coding and vi for sysadmin stuff.

Re:Real life

[magefile]

Once you've learned vi[m], if you still want a GUI, use jEdit. All sorts of nice features for programmers & sysadmins.

Re:Real life

[CAIMLAS]

This seems like a horrible recommendation to me.

Maybe for someone that's only been using linux for a short while, and started with a snazzy RedHat, SuSE, or Mandrake install, this would be a huge step up in complexity and learning potential. However, I'd say it's a bad idea because it takes way too long for the amount of learning that actually takes place: the "gentoo process" automates all the complex things that actually lead to learning; the processing time merely gives an illusion to how to administer a linux machine. I've seen quite a few gentoo people that think they knew a lot, and ended up being bumblefucks when it came to touching anything else.

My recommendation: start with the current debian stable. You'll learn what individual modules do, and you'll start with a minimal installation and be able to configure everything on your own.

Alternatively, start with LFS (linux from scratch). You'll have to start with some sort of Linux install, and it wouldn't matter which. The idea, though, is to learn how to do -everything- from scratch.

Most courses will just teach you how to set up and configure a couple services and some basics about the system, while you don't learn actually how the services work on the system, or get a 'feel' how things work. As a Windows admin, I'm sure you're well aware of the importance of having a "feel" for how a well-tuned system works. The same applies for Linux, just as Windows or a Ford or Chevy.

Whatever path you pick, I'd recommend keeping a notebook full of, well, notes. Not just commands, but principles. It'll help you cement the ideas in our mind. I'd recommend pen and paper vs. a computer, as I find it results in better retention for some reason.

Re:Real life

[moexu]

Some recommended books:

Unix System Administration Handbook: A wonderful reference, and much better than the Linux version.

Running Linux: The standard from O'Reilly.

How Linux Works: A nice overview and tutorial introduction to Linux.

Wicked Cool Shell Scripts: A shell script cookbook. You might want to pick up an introductory bash book as well if you aren't familiar with it.

I would also agree with the recommendation to install Gentoo. I ran Mandrake for two years, but I learned more about Linux in the week it took me to install Gentoo than I ever did with Mandrake.

Re:Real life

[jadavis]

I try to do that, but I always end up stopping the vim process by C-x C-s, because I'm so used to emacs. Then I have to realize what I did and do C-q or whatever it is to resume.

By the way, does anyone at all know a way to make the emacs command NOT try to open xemacs without having to type "emacs -nw" each time? It's REALLY annoying.

Re:Real life

[Hobadee]

By the way, does anyone at all know a way to make the emacs command NOT try to open xemacs without having to type "emacs -nw" each time? It's REALLY annoying.

<fanatic>Ya, its really easy! Just use text mode Linux and don't install XEmacs!</fanatic>

Re:Real life

[dcstimm]

I would like to see you back that claim up, Its no more a toy then Netbsd in my humble opinion. Gentoo has the best damn package manager Iv seen in a linux distro so far, why else do you think its the most popular non newbie linux distro?

Re:Real life

[GreenBugsBunny]

That always annoyed me, too.

alias emacs='emacs -nw'

in your .bashrc file will take care of it. If you want it to be system-wide, put it in /etc/profile.

Re:Real life

[DrNibbler]

I figured everyone installed gentoo the way I do... boot the livecd, start sshd, goto my laptop, ssh in and install in a screen session. This way I have all the resources you mention without the overhead of X on the machine I'm installing from. If the CD autostarted SSH and had a pre-defined root password I could do the install headless.

Re:Real life

[AJWM]

Every sysadmin I know uses vi. Hell, I even use it as an interview question ("vi or emacs?"), not that I'd base a hire/no-hire decision on it -- but so far everyone has said "vi". (I've been asked that question too.)

I've used about every editor out there at one time or another (including teco), used emacs for a while, but "vi" (or vim) is my first choice. Heck, for a long time I used "ed", and still do occasionally.

Mostly it's a matter of guaranteed availability. Every Unix or Linux system will have "ed", nearly every modern 'nix system will have vi (or a workalike). You're unlikely to find emacs on a server, it's usually considered too heavyweight and maybe a bit too powerful to be running it as root (as you'd need to do to edit the files a sysadmin is likely to need to edit).

Come to think of it, the Certified Sys Admin for Solaris exam includes questions about using vi.

Re:Real life

[wolftone]

don't know if this applies as conveniently to other distros or not, but debian offers a package "emacs-nox".

Re:Real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep,

I can't agree more with that. That's the way i do it.

Re:Real life

[680x0]

I believe it looks to see if the DISPLAY environment variable is set (tells an X11 program where to open its window: this host, another host, and which display if there are multiple ones). So, something like "unsetenv DISPLAY" should do it (for [t]csh, for bash I guess "DISPLAY= ; export DISPLAY" would work).

Re:Real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Not allowed to switch?

*cough*bullshit*cough*

I just install 'em side by side, that way I can use any app I want. Sure, it bloats, but least you have the libs available so you can use basically anything without headaches. It's not as if they use memory if they're not loaded - and disk is cheap.

Anyway...

Re:Real life

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. xemacs is different from GNU emacs. If you run emacs, you will never get xemacs unless you alias (or symlink or rename, etc.) emacs to xemacs.

You're talking about emacs-X11.

Re:Real life

[Curtman]

If the CD autostarted SSH and had a pre-defined root password ...

We would lambaste them for being completely irresponsible. I'm not sure how much overhead you think there is to X especially when its idle, but it's fairly insignificant. If you have the luxury of installing via ssh from another machine, thats great, I do too. But you have to imagine someone new to Linux attempting Gentoo as a first distro navigating through the documentation with Lynx. I've seen it, it ain't pretty.

Re:Real life

[Curtman]

how long should asterisk take to compile which is to be my next protage

I haven't a clue. See you in #gentoo. ;)

Re:Real life

[Card]

Instead of going on a class, get him to buy good books. I like wrox and Oreily books but others may be good also.

I'd like to pitch Marcel Gagne's Linux System Administration: A User's Guide here. This is the first book that was really useful for me, when I was trying to configure my first Red Hat. Gagne writes in a distribution-neutral way, explaining how and why the system actually works the way it does. He gives numerous useful tips and there are even some business-case solutions at the end of the book. This book is not "the only one you will need", but I would still consider it an essential read for a new user.

Re:Real life

[skiman1979]

Like 333Mhz which you can get for about 50$. On these PC's, don't use gentoo, compiling everything will be much too long.

I have a 333Mhz Pentium II system at home with 192 megs RAM and a 6 GB hard drive. I've installed Gentoo a few times on this box. Although it took a bit longer to install than, say, Mandrake, it wasn't that bad. Certainly don't install Gentoo on a system like that from a stage1 tarball. Use stage3 and GRP packages. When I installed that way, I probably spent about 4 hours or so installing. I didn't time it, and I split the install process through 2 evenings so the multiple reboots took a little extra time. YMMV.

Re:Real life

[wolf31o2]

Speaking as the guy that made the 2004.2 LiveCD for x86, and will be making the 2004.3 and 2005.0 LiveCDs I can tell you this.

Gentoo is changing this quite a bit during the 2005.X releases. We are currently working to reduce the number of packages and size of the minimal and universal CDs. We will be offering these CDs for our long-time Gentoo users and for our advanced users, along with the PackageCD.

For 2005.0, we will also be releasing a full live environment LiveCD, which will be a much more accurate look into a fully-running Gentoo system. We will be including many popular packages and it will be completely functional.

The current LiveCD scheme was never intended to showcase Gentoo, but rather to be installation media.

Re:Real life

[Curtman]

For 2005.0, we will also be releasing a full live environment LiveCD

Awesome. I think having a Gentoo LiveCD will put Knoppix in its place. I've been thinking of bootstrapping a -Os compiled system just to see how much stuff I could pack on to a CD. Is that the plan? :)

Re:Real life

[jadavis]

You're my hero. Thank you. I think its actually emacs21-nox, but close enough to be added to my "friends" list.

Set up a home system first

[AJWM]

Set up a firewall, web server, mail server etc, play with the hardware, reconfigure the things, set up raid, lvm, etc.

Nothing beats hands on, and nobody I've interviewed for a sysadmin job (and I've done quite a few recently) who didn't have a setup at home was any good.

Re:Set up a home system first

[Bistronaut]

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.

Re:Set up a home system first

[mo]

Just to add to this, I'd like to point out a reason why this is a good idea.

In taking a class, the instructor tells you directly how to do something. You may or may not retain the information long enough to reuse it the next time you have to, say, install qmail.

However, doing it yourself at home will teach you that all-imporant skill of how to google for linux howto information on the web.

I've done a couple of qmail installs in my lifetime, but any knowledge I've gained has long been forgotten. Except for the fact that I know that qmailrocks.org is the place I go to re-learn what to do.

Re:Set up a home system first

[drinkypoo]

Not only that, but get a few PCs, some switches (don't have to be good ones) and some wifi gear, a couple of windows clients at the very least if not some macs and stuff, and figure out ways to get maximum connectivity between all of them. A bunch of 486s will probably work for most of your linux systems, especially if you're willing to work with older versions of Linux for most of your clients.

Set up ALL the major software packages in every category you can come up with. Learn to configure both primary desktop environments. Install everything ISC has written and use it for something. Learn apache! Install php with it. Do something with perl. apache with php is your ultimate quick-and-dirty web tool, unless you elect to use apache with perl cgi or mod_perl. perl is your quick and dirty everything tool.

Do something that requires patching your kernel - PPTP VPN with MPPE/MPPC (For windows PPTP VPN clients) is one example, and the thing that I have to patch my kernels for. Install something from cvs, including compiling it. Set up both sendmail and qmail (probably not at the same time.) I found qmail+vqadmin+vpopmail+qmail-scanner to be an enlightening exercise and I've been using linux religiously (though seldom exclusively) since about kernel 1.1.47, a fair while.

The more machines you have the more relevant your knowledge is likely to be in the end. After all, the network is the computer, right? :)

Re:Set up a home system first

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with parent. Setting up at home is a great way to learn. Try it on several different machines with different configurations if possible. Getting hardware to work on Linux isn't as bad as it used to be, and you really don't have to recompile the kernel anymore, either.

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 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

[Wugger]

For an office sysadmin, using it at home is a start, but not the end of the journey. Get yourself a lab. You will need three computers, a linux to be your "server", a linux to be a "client" and a windows to be a "client". (If you have more than one Win32 OS in your office, add one client of each type to your lab.)

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:Set up a home system first

[suckmysav]

"Nothing beats hands on, and nobody I've interviewed for a sysadmin job (and I've done quite a few recently) who didn't have a setup at home was any good"

I second that. It frustrates the hell out of your family though.

"Is the network broken? Again?"

"Err, yeah, I'm just working on something, sorry!, I'll have it back soon, I promise!"

"grrrr"

:-)

It's funny though, a lot of MS "sysadmins" have networks at home yet it doesn't seem to do any good for their skill levels, most of the time anyway.

Re:Set up a home system first

[stratjakt]

I agree, but you need to get a whole lot of computers, too.

I have about 7 at home that are on at any given time, for no reason other than to screw around with networked environment, which is a whole different world than a stand-alone box.

I have all my user stuff in an LDAP directory, integrated with my samba PDC which serves out roaming profiles to all my users (uh, me) on all my windows machines (uh, this one).

I have other "dedicated" linux fileservers, a webserver and db server that I test code on, a couple "workstations". Grunt boxes to run bittorrent on. I have an old Bad Dudes arcade cabinet I'm going to jam a motherboard into for my network-aware arcade thingamabob.

It's awesome in here i got TONS OF STUFF to take apart to make into new stuff. And gigs and gigs of porn. And a mini fridge with lots of beer in it.

Anyhow, my point is, you need a network to learn about networking.

That said, shoving passwd/group/hosts into LDAP sucks for a million reasons.. Not the least of which being that openldap seems to crash for no good reason at all which freezes everything. Anyone know of any better alternatives? (learning, see)

Re:Set up a home system first

[AJWM]

Yes, by all means set up a network -- I guess I didn't quite spell that out in my original post. Set up a DHCP server, a Samba server (especially in the probably mixed network you'll be in), and so on.

Specific recommendations depend on what exactly your employer will be doing with it. Do you need to know how to install Oracle, or just PostgreSQL, or no DB at all? Or is it just going to be light duty file server or firewall type stuff?

As far as learning how to configure mail -- Postfix seems to be the agent of choice for a lot of high end commercial users (although often merely as simply the passthrough agent on a Linux box that's doing spam and virus filtering between the firewall and the company's Exchange server.)

Of course there's some key knowledge that will be useful whatever flavor Linux or Unix system you're on: learn vi (emacs may not be installed), learn the structure of the essential files in /etc (passwd, shadow, inittab, various *.conf files) and how the init system works.

For light duty, you can do most of the tasks with GUI tools (like YaST) for a commercial distro. (Ignore the recommendations about setting up Gentoo -- you want to learn about common sysadmin tasks, not about how to nursemaid compile sessions ;-) But you should learn enough that you could configure the thing by vi'ing the config files and scripts (with reference to man pages and HOW-TOs as necessary).

Re:Set up a home system first

[stratjakt]

Oh yeah, I forgot. This is essential:

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:Set up a home system first

[antirename]

This is good advice. If you're a typical geek (at least typical for the ones I drink beer with) you probably have a couple closets full of old laptops, desktops, switches, and rolls of cat5 cable. Playing with it at home is probably the best way to learn.

Re:Set up a home system first

[antirename]

Here's my solution: find a buddy who works for a company that "upgrades" their salesman's laptops every two years and pays another company by the pound to haul them off and recycle them (read ship to China). Swap components to make workable machines. Stick the leftovers in a closet. Later, rinse, repeat. Great way to replicate a network :)

Re:Set up a home system first

[John Courtland]

What I don't agree with here is the Stage-1 isn't really as tough as bootstrapping a GCC tarball from scratch (no compiler on hand). I'm actually performing a Stage-1 on another machine as I write this, and the whole thing is scripted. /usr/portage/scripts/bootstrap.sh and it does the rest.

While I agree in principle that Gentoo is one of the best methods for learning how to get into the nooks and crannies of Linux, you aren't going to learn major "oh shit" tasks. I learned best by making massive mistakes and fixing them. Tool around in it, waste a few boxes and repair them without reinstalling. Set up an iptables ruleset and watch as you accidentally lock yourself out of your ssh shell. It's all good, all in the name of learning.

One last thing:
Learn either LILO or GRUB like your life depends on it. Those two things will almost certainly cause you many problems in the near future. The ever-dreaded 'LI' prompt, and GRUB denying you boot access because you misspelled the name of your kernel. Again, all good as long as it isn't in a production environment.

Re:Set up a home system first

[Fred_A]

I absolutely second that. Knowing how to do things is mostly useless (by the time you do it again, the syntax will have changed anyway).

Knowing how to find how to do things is the useful talent.

Knowing how to find how to do things without an Internet access is an even more useful talent. It takes longer to aquire it though. And often several catastrophes.

Re:Set up a home system first

[love2hateMS]

I would not suggest starting with Debian or Gentoo. They're too difficult for newbies... Debian because the install stinks and they treat newbies like dirt (yeah yeah, flame me, it's true), and Gentoo (with a GREAT user base) is just too darned SLOW waiting for the compiles, and you'll have a hard time getting major apps running on it (Oracle, etc...) Getting Gentoo installed will NOT make you an expert. In a business environment, nobody gives a crud if you can install it. They want Apache, BIND, Tomcat, Sendmail/Postfix, Samba, DHCP, etcetera running securely with solid backups and documented standards being followed. Gentoo and Debian are not supported by major vendors, and you would be an idiot to put them into an enterprise environment. (Remember, I like Gentoo...)

Start with Suse or Red Hat. In the real world, in a business environment, you will use one of those two. Try learning how to configure everything just using an editor (avoid the GUI tools) and you will learn a great deal.

Make learning vi (editor) and bash (the shell) a priority. Learn about the filesystem. Those two skills will make using any Linux distribution a more agreeable experience.

The Gentoo user forums are wonderful, as is librenix.com.

No training course will come close to doing hands-on work, but you may need to take some courses to make your boss think you know what you're doing. Fine. Take the Red Hat courses from either Red Hat or IBM. Having one of those two names on the stupid class certificate will make the managers happy, and the courses are decent, but by no means comprehensive.

Best of luck!

Re:Set up a home system first

[222]

This was actually a hobby of mine for quite some time...
I was determined to test every distro I could get my hands on, to weed out the ones that really appealed to me. My typical day involved setting up BIND, Apache, SAMBA, MySQL and Sendmail.

I cant remember exactly why I picked that lineup, but I can tell you that im very very very good at setting up BIND, Apache, SAMBA, MySQL and Sendmail ;).

Re:Set up a home system first

[carlmenezes]

And for those who feel a little more advanturous than going for Gentoo, try out http://www.linuxfromscratch.org

By the time you're done, other distros will be a piece of cake. And I'm talking from experience. The best part is that, for every piece of software you need to install, there's an HTML page explaining the hows and whys of the configuration files, needed startup scripts etc...

Sure, it'll take you two weeks, but in those two weeks you'll learn more about Linux than in two years of working with RedHat.

Re:Set up a home system first

[GreyWolf3000]

Going from the Windows world to doing things like setting up mail servers in Linux is a really big step.

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

[mortonda]

Learn either LILO or GRUB like your life depends on it.

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:Set up a home system first

[http]

Did I just see "Debian", "stable", and "up to date" in the same sentence?
Hey, pop, clean out the barn, we got 4 horses to put up tonight! ~_^

Re:Set up a home system first

[clymere]

personally i think Slackware is a bit better for really learning. It doesn't have any of the fancy package management tools that other distros have, and while you do a lot of compiling in Gentoo, its ultimately not much harder than using RPM based tools in something like RH.

I don't feel like i learned much about Linux until i made the switch from RH to Slackware. It forced me to learn a LOT.

Re:Set up a home system first

[wolftone]

Debian because the install stinks and they treat newbies like dirt (yeah yeah, flame me, it's true)

Eh, I won't bother flaming you. The Woody install was a little tough, but I got through it and I was just a poor sap whose win2k installation died irrecoverably. I just happened to have the first two disks of a Debian installation and decided that I wasn't going back to MS. System crashed at 11:00pm and I had a (mostly) working system by 4:30am. No *nix experience before that, though I'd been juggling the idea for a couple weeks (hence the cd's). Yes, I used a little help from my brother (cfdisk!? and what are kernel modules!?), but it really wasn't that hard. And the new installer -- which should be attached to the next release, as it has been attached to Debian Testing for some several months now -- is easy.

Granted, I would find it hard to advise any distro to anyone since I went the route of finding one in advance that appealed to me most (large collection of precompiled binaries, set up for my system, and a more-or-less easy and simple way to install them). The advice I would give is to read the propaganda from the companies and/or distributors you're considering, check out the forums, pick something, and learn it.

TrainingCamp for LPIC

[Semireg]

I did a 6-day bootcamp style training session with TrainingCamp. I successfully attained my LPIC-1. Out of the 6 people in my class 2 (including myself) had previous Linux experience and we both passed, the others failed. However, having many coworkers and friends that are teaching themselves linux, this would have given them one of the best starting points around. Highly recommended no matter what your skill level.

Re:TrainingCamp for LPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this straight, you're recommending a class where 66% of the students failed to get certified?

Re:TrainingCamp for LPIC

[PastaLover]

It must be good if they do. IMHO the only good courses is the ones that only a few can finish. People learn more if it's hard, or they give up entirely. Since this guy's company will be funding him I don't think he'll just give up on it.

Re:TrainingCamp for LPIC

[swhalen]

Why would you recommend training from a company that runs its web site (slowly) on Microsoft-IIS/6.0? Maybe that's part of why only 2 of 6 people passed.

Take a week...

[Anonymous Coward]

and have a look here:

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lfs/html/

Go RedHat

[buchalka]

Personally I'd recommend the RedHat training.

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 linux and never looked back!

Good luck with it.

You could dual-boot an existing Windows machine or run VMWARE so you c

Re:Go RedHat

[Stevyn]

I did the same thing with Gentoo. I went from windows to mandrake to gentoo. Gentoo is good because you have a little more control of what happens to your system. Some people say that they learned a ton from just installing, but I think they're a little mistaken. Installing Gentoo will give you more experience and knowledge than installing say Mandrake. This is probably because you'll have to fiddle and fudge it more, but it's worth it in the end. If you work for a big company, see if you can get an extra computer lying around. Install every distro you can. The best way to learn is to use because you'll hit a wall and need to figure out how to climb over it.

Re:Go RedHat

[buchalka]

Yeah I totally agree with this.

Having used Redhat, Mandrake, Slackware I never really "got" linux.

Once I tried out gentoo I really started to understand how it hangs together.

Am I a linux guru now? Nope, But what I am is comfortable in a linux environment and happily pushing it to others like me.

Of course the other advantage of using gentoo is the "USE" flags where you can ensure that all programs on your system are completely configured for your hardware and setup.

End result for me was a much faster system containing only those programs/utilities I have decided to load, and not what a vendor has "decided" I need.

If you are struggling to make the "linux leap" look at gentoo (and be prepared to invest a bit of time) you won't look back.

Now if only I could get Quickbooks working in WINE I could remove my windows partition completely.

Re:Go RedHat

[Stevyn]

I haven't tried quickbooks with crossover, but crossover office is amazing. I'm an engineering student and I need to use Orcad PSPICE for homework and lab reports. I got that program whic is made for windows running with no problems. I've had trouble with wine and I after using crossover I never bothered with it. Well, crossover is based on wine, but they do a lot to test and guarantee program compatibility. Running Microsoft Office XP is no problem at all. I primarily use openoffice, but sometimes you just need word and it's nice to know it's there.

I love using gentoo. I just updated two packages with portage and it was a piece of cake that took a few minutes. I liked mandrake, but the packaging system sucked. Gentoo has a reputation of being geeky and overkill, but it's really a good distro for people just wanting a system that will work without much maintenance. I never have to download another ISO and upgrade, it does it in small increments which is so much easier.

Re:Go RedHat

[HiThere]

Warning: This info is two years old.

The Red Hat training is for those who are already Linux admins. You need to have a lot of background as an administrator already. I found it quite useful...but didn't pass...so this may be biased, however...

Much of the Red Hat training centers around features that one won't normally encounter, and assumes that you already know how to do all the common stuff. Also, the Red Hat training assumes(-ed) that you are doing most-to-all of your work with the command line tools (which I only use for the most common jobs. Oops!)

The Red Hat training is an excellent refresher for an experienced Red Hat Sysadmin (note the version specificity) intending to get certified. But do yourself a favor, and use only the command-line for several months before taking the class. (Or, if that's what you do all the time, use GUI tools during this period.) Also spend a lot of time studying boot loaders, and how to edit their configurations from a non-working (in various ways) system.

What? You say you plan to look that up in a manual? Sorry. That's not the game plan here.

Also spend a bit of time with NFS (though that may have been on the way out of the class). I seem to remember that it went by awfully fast in the class.

Red Hat's clear intention is that the RHCE's should be the most technically competent admins. But there's an awful lot of info to pick up, so don't plan on doing it during the class. Consider the class to be mainly a refresher to take prior to the exam. If you've got a couple of blank spots, you might be able to use the class to fill in the holes (or at least to alert you as to what you need to study at night). DON'T count on it as a first step.

Re:Go RedHat

[PsychoSid]

Well I passed so I am not so biased ! It is a very hard course and only the best get through :) The RHCE course now focuses more on Enterprise server stuff, rather than on how to get X working. Which is what you need in an enterprise environment. Also if you are going to use RHEE then learning Samba etc and configuring netdump would be of great use. It's all a bit horses-for-courses it depends on what you are going to do, and on what Distro. My own experiences on RHEE is Oracle RAC, Apache, NFS, MySQL, PHP, and a 300+ box PVM array. With enterprise layered products such as Autosys and Veritas stuff etc. Not stuff you are going to get involved in much with a Gentoo box at home (sadly)

Re:Go RedHat

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree abou the Red Hat courses.

Yes they are great if you are a Red Hat shop, and don't plan on straying to far from the Red Hat/Fedora fold (maybe Mandrake). They cover some good general Linux info, but spend most of the exercises and demo time on Red Hat specific tools and methods.

Find a good generic LPIC-type course AND read alot AND use google.com/linux AND the man pages AND install your own network at home and make it all work.

Trying to find and depend on one source for learning is limiting yourself to one viewpoint and one way of doing things and one author/instructor's ideas about what is important to know.

Online courses...

[chrispyman]

If I were you I'd stay away from an online course. From what I've found, they usually aren't much better than just reading and doing reseach on your own, the only diffrence is that they have exams and it adds to your GPA. Perhaps you should find a real class of some type (perhaps one of those weekend campy type deals) and get some real world hands on experience.

Re:Online courses...

[TigerDragon]

I know nothing about the RH eLearning course, but the O'Reilly Learning Lab was hands on. It isn't "Real World," but it WAS hands on.

That said, the course was quite basic in what it taught, and other courses might ought to be considered to supplement if there is no prior knowledge of linux systems involved.

1st post = awesome

[bprice20]

I recommend installing a distro like fedora, debian, or slackware and just getting everyting to work... then you'll come up w/ other things to try, you learn as you go

Stick w/the books

[RealBeanDip]

I see you mentioned the O'reilly books - they are the best. I found Unix Power Tools and System Administration (Alein Frisch, sp?) to be the best books you can buy.

As far as online course, I haven't found any worth a sh*t.

Re:Stick w/the books

[rayde]

The book you mentioned, Essential System Administration by AEleen Frisch is definitley an excellent reference. It was the core textbook, along with A Practical Guide to the UNIX System by Mark Sobell in my college Unix introduction course. The first book will act more as a reference, while the second book may be a better walkthrough.

just a thought

[wrinkledshirt]

In addition to whatever training you want to do, audit your office for its current tech needs. If time is short, you might not want to spend too much time studying minutiae unrelated to your future tasks -- some of that time can be put to better use preparing for the switch away from Windows.

Just a thought.

Are You Crazy!?!

[eSims]

Take the offsite training!

These days it is difficult enough to get training (at least in the corp America I work in) let alone offsite. A whole week to do nothing but dig in and learn. Take it... then on your own you can always do self paced work and such... it's a win-win.

Good Luck!

Re:Are You Crazy!?!

[barzok]

Not only dig in & learn, you get to go on a trip on the company dime! Once class is over for the day, check out the city, meet up w/ friends for dinner, catch a baseball/basketball/hockey game, whatever. Turning a company-sponsored trip into a mini-vacation is what offsite training is all about!

No, seriously. If the class starts on a Monday, fly out Friday and stay with a friend for 2 nights. You'll actually save the company money on airfare by staying over a Saturday night.

Re:Are You Crazy!?!

[amarkham]

And for crying out loud, make sure the class is in another city. Better yet, make it a big, interesting city! Vegas, New York, San Francisco, LA, whatever. You're going to sysadmin training, which means it's pretty damned likely you're company will never fly you anywhere interesting again... :)

Pay attention in class, take notes, blah, blah, blah, but take advantage of the boondoggle that the execs and sales people get all the time!

Just a thought

[drgonzo59]

Ask a friend o someone else you know that has some experience to share it. People who love linux often love it because they learned it as hobby and those are the people who usually like to share the knowledge and help others learn it. But if the company has the money to spend, give that a try. Also read through the HOWTOs those helped me.

Out of the frypan and into the FIRE !

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of the frypan and into the FIRE ! (Dummy)

.:.

Ummm, where do you work?

[hendridm]

...and are they hiring?

If I even mention "training" where I work the laughs can be heard clearly from the other side of the planet. Funny how an organization that is so gainst paying for anything is staunchly anti-Open Source.

Re:Ummm, where do you work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess it's time for you to start looking for a less shitty workplace.

Re:Ummm, where do you work?

[hendridm]

Ahhh, but they pay me a lot with excellent benefits to fumble through my job and pretend to the customer like I know WTF I'm doing. Stress = high, pay = high. What can you do...

Re:Ummm, where do you work?

[snowblind]

*sigh* Sadly the days of free rides on the company's dollar for training are dwindling. After 10 years of getting at least one class a year and usually the travel bill picked up. The training budgets have been squeezed nice and tight.

Hands on experience

[penguinoid]

It seems quite a few geeks are recommending hands on experience as the way to go for learning linux. At risk of sounding like an offtopic troll, I would also recommend hands on as a way to learn about girls. No, not hands on *that*! Hands on the girl!

I bet that I now lost my reputation for being a geek.

Re:Hands on experience

[Master of Transhuman]

"I bet that I now lost my reputation for being a geek."

Why? Have you established you've ever had hands on a girl?

You have, however, established a reputation for being unable to communicate in correct English...:-) (Okay, it was a typo, relax.)

Re:Hands on experience

[Anonymous Coward]

hah! Geeks utilize high technology to learn, not that old fashoined crap.
http://www.realdoll.com/

And the best part is, they never say 'no'.

Re:Hands on experience

[georgiana2006]

As a good friend recently reminded me, geek != prude. Nor does geek always = inexperienced....

Re:Hands on experience

[penguinoid]

I don't know whether you were joking or very perceptive, but in fact I have not had a girlfriend. Its sad, I'm already in my second year of college. Yes, I know "You wouldn't need to ask for advice if you would just follow your own." But hey, I already tried *once*.

Re:Hands on experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had my hands all over a girl. Actually woman, you can't really call her a girl by the time you've had two kids with her.

Does that mean I can't be a geek?

Re:Hands on experience

[Anonymous Coward]

"for being unable to communicate in correct English"

Ho , good another English type to conform to ...

There whas British English , US english , American english ( mostly Canadian English with a twist from US english ), Canadian English , Irish English , spanish English , Indian english , etc ...

I am just a glad one ,you, cannot register another type of English , BAstard without a clue on how to communicate properly in a universal langage would be the top ...

Re:Hands on experience

[BCW2]

I don't think you ruined your reputation. Then I've been married for 21 years and raised three daughters. My says I'm still a geek and have her permission to say so!

Re:Hands on experience

[secretsquirel]

I agree, thats why i said "Goodbye" to sysadmining and moved on to pimpin. Coincidentally my girls all give hands on lessons as well.

Re:Hands on experience

[Master of Transhuman]

Heh, heh, I rest my case.

Now try spelling antidisestablishmentarianism.

Re:Hands on experience

[Master of Transhuman]

"I don't know whether you were joking or very perceptive"

How about both?

Actually, I was worse than you are by second year of college - because that was in my late twenties!

Come to think of it, I'm not significantly better off now - and I'm 55.

So look what you have to look forward to - another 30 years of no girlfriend!

My solution - make lots of money and hire young babes to give you blowjobs like Hugh Hefner.

Now if I could just make lots of money...

Re:Hands on experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Girls are simple enough.. I'm seventeen, uber-geeky type of guy (numerous linux computers at home, been working sysadmin, programming, web design, general IT etc since fourteen), but i've never had any trouble with them.

Just be cheerfull around girls, and listen to them when they talk. Don't freak out that their girls, just have fun doing regular stuff like you would with friends.

don't worry about it.. it's not to hard, honestly!

Re:Hands on experience

[Arcanix]

That wasn't so tough, just a simple cut and paste...

antidisesatblishemntarainism

Re:Hands on experience

[mrjohnson]

Stop posting on slashdot and go to that party. Yes, go get drunk right now. Make friends, live it up, and realize that even graduating with honors isn't going to make that much of a difference to the business world to make it worthwhile. All you have to do is pass, so have fun. Or learn to have fun, if you have too.

*sigh* I miss college days. :-)

The kind they have in Hawaii

[Xoro]

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.

Re:The kind they have in Hawaii

[d^2b]

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.

Two words: Free. BSD.

Ok, so it is really only one word. But it has good man pages, and the FreeBSD handbook is a great bonus. Besides, the userland experience is much closer to Linux (I am typing this on a Debian box, while remotely logged into FreeBSD and a Solaris box).

Re:The kind they have in Hawaii

[dramaley]

Another system with really good documentation is OpenBSD. It is also fairly minimal, so figuring out how the system works should be relatively easy. It may be easier to get a copy of OpenBSD (you just have to download the first disk or CD image and then do an ftp install) than Solaris.

Read, Ask, and Use

[panth0r]

First off, read on your own, somebody else teaching you is not comparible to you teaching yourself, so read, study, or do whatever you have to do to learn what you can about Linux, personally, it's how I did it. Secondly, ask, there are many easily-accessable forums out there to help you with the endevour that is Linux. Lastly, I fully agree with the person who said you should use Linux at home.

Best way to `learn` Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Install gentoo. Seriously, it teaches you how everything works and plugs in together from the ground up.

Slashdot Training

[Anonymous Coward]

I recommend the Slashdot Training Course. Read every Slashdot article, including every comment, for a week. For your final exam, try to get mod points within 24 hours.

prepare to READ

[Nate Fox]

read howto's, read readme's, read INSTALL's, read everything. Linux, while being much more powerful and capable than windows, isn't all point and click. you'll have to change settings in files, and you'll have to read to know which settings to change

Clue: Pull your head out and see the light

[Anonymous Coward]

Clue: Pull your head out and see the light. We don't need no stinkin' badges.

.:.

Pick the hardest Distro

[Dark Coder]

By picking the hardest distro such as an older Slackware (don't knock the new ones), you've essentially master-micro-managed all aspect of Linux administration in virtually no time.

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.

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[jburroug]

This is one situation where I'd really recomend Gentoo since the installer is pretty much just a series of commands you have to run it's a good intoroduction to the "Linux Way" of doing things. Sure it won't teach you everything and will be radically different than more corporate distos in some ways but ultimately you'll learn a lot of basic, low level Linux shit just by doing the install. Hell I've been using Linux as my primary OS since 1997 or so and even I learned a couple things during my first Gentoo install about two weeks ago.

Course for a production (public) server it's all about the FreeBSD in my book ;-> Linux is still my choice for desktops and internal utility servers but that's besides the point for this guys question.

One final note. Once you've done your install and get ready to start installing your mission critical apps (Apache, Postfix or whatever) don't use emerge or RPM or Yast etc... grab the source tarball and follow the README/INSTALL directions. It's often a little harder but gives you more control and you learn more about both the app and your OS in the process.

Good Luck!

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[tunabomber]

I agree with this approach in general, but I think that Linux From Scratch is really the best "hard" distro to learn from. Unlike Slackware, LFS is set up specifically with learning in mind, with very explanatory step-by-step documentation. Just about every aspect of the installation is done by hand- the instructions even show you how to write your own boot scripts.
It takes a long time to get an LFS distro up and running, but by the time you do, you will know your system inside and out even before you've started experimenting with different configurations.

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[MoThugz]

That's not the best way... that's overkill. Hard doesn't necessarily mean best.

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".

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[Keitopsis]

I find that starting people with a "polished" GUI distro (Fedora, Mandrake) to understand day to day use works best. The trick afterwards is to start teaching them to read how the GUI tools "work". Teaches use, scripting, and administration with less frusteration. This seems to work well with previous windows admins as they are used to a fundamental GUI-ness of administration.

--Kei

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[elwing]

One final note. Once you've done your install and get ready to start installing your mission critical apps (Apache, Postfix or whatever) don't use emerge or RPM or Yast etc... grab the source tarball and follow the README/INSTALL directions. It's often a little harder but gives you more control and you learn more about both the app and your OS in the process.

I used to do this as well, but time management trumped. It's great going through an Apache compile from scratch once - but having the packages makes updating/upgrading a hell of a lot easier. "Oh.. there's a new patch for apache? apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" Instead of download, configure, compile, install.

But if you're really ambitious, you can set up your own build scripts and compile from source when needed, but create a package you can install/uninstall/upgrade as necessary. - The best of both worlds...

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[maximilln]

I also doubt the "you will know your system inside and out" argument

That's up to the student. LFS is _THE_ prime tool if you want to learn your system inside and out. It is possible to build LFS and learn nothing.

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[PhraudulentOne]

It really would be a good idea to try out several distro's for a couple of weeks to get used to them (get an old copy of slackware from '96-'98 or something and try that on for size), but your company is probably going to be purchasing Redhat (grab Fedora Core 2) or SuSE, so playing with these would be a good idea. Getting used to the way distro's use various packaging systems is a also a good idea (Redhat/Mandrake/SuSE RPMs, Debians APT, Emerge from Gentoo), as well as how they boot and where to place scripts, using runlevels etc.

If you do an older Slackware install then you can get used to Setting up LILO (even though Grub is more of the standard nowadays), manually partitioning and learning how the REAL fdisk works instead of the Windows version, compiling kernels/modules for your hardware and seeing if they work, setting up various networking options in the kernel and trying those. Play with PPP support, PPPoE Connections, Ethernet connections, go grab Apache, Postfix/Sendmail, Qpopper (or any POP/IMAP daemon), MySQL, ProFTPd (or any FTP daemon)and start setting up services for your server. This will get you playing with the configs a lot and getting used to editing config files on a regular basis - remember linux is not about finding the right option under the right category in the right menu - its about sticking the correct config options in the correct config file. I would hold off getting a graphical display set up as that will only hide the nuts & bolts behind the scene. Stay in a text-based environment and do as much as you can.

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to start a flame war, but you can't be serious about compiling all of you mission critical apps by hand.... In a large organization, you are MUCH better off with package management... I won't go into why, the answer is obvious.

Learn on your own box, don't learn on a production box.... use apt for all of your production needs! :)

Re:Pick the hardest Distro

[drsquare]

I disagree with that. The best way to learn is the hardest, the best way to learn is the way which requires the most in-depth knowledge. Don't use a distro. Distros do things for you, you don't learn anything when ready-made scripts configure and install things. Do everything from scratch, every config file, every script, everything. That way you'll learn everything. Don't use a GUI unless you configure it all from scratch. Going in at the deep end FORCES you to learn. If you go in at the shallow end you can paddle about, only making half-hearted efforts to try something harder because you're fine as you are.

LPI: Far Better Than RedHat

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.lpi.org/

RedHat is distro specific, while LPI is distro independent. LPI certs are more respected for this fact. The RHCE was only good for 2 major releases, don't know how it is now that there's no RedHat free distro.

Literature:
http://home.netcom.com/~casandra/ls sg/books/lpi-bo ok.html

There's also SAIR: http://www.linuxcertification.org/

Re:LPI: Far Better Than RedHat

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about Redhat, haven't tried it. However, my experience is that LPI is crap. You are expected to memorize hundreds of commands, together with just about all their parameters. Oh, and you are expected to know about the exact location and exact name of all the configuration files for XFree, NFS, Apache, samba, Sendmail, SSH, tpc wrappers...
Very little understanding required, just a talent for memorizing endless lists.

Oh, and expect to get lots of questions on obsolete things like ppp chat scripts, magic LPR filters or whether the 2.0 kernel supported USB!

You can also add ambiguous and poorly written questions to that, an amateurish site, and the fact that they keep switching topics around which makes coursebooks obsolete. A few coursebooks came when the exam was new, but see how many publishers care about the LPI now.

Re:LPI: Far Better Than RedHat

[Specter]

1) The exams are developed that way because psychometriclly we can demonstrate that people who know these things are able to do the job requirements of a Linux System Administrator. In otherwords, an LPIC will actually be able to do the technical requirements of system administration; the questions weren't just throw in randomly. I would also dispute "very little understanding is required."

2) Some things may be out of date, but we are working on correcting that. We're a non-profit and we don't have tons of cash or other resources which has made updating the exams more challenging in the past. We're going to be addressing that however in the near future and soon you'll see exams that have fresh items rotated in on a regular and frequent basis.

3) The topics were re-arraged to make them hang together more consistently over the exams. The publishers had more than eight months of notice that we were going to do this and there are new books coming out now that are aligned with the topic moves.

4) As with any other Linux community effort, if you don't like the results we're more than happy for you to volunteer to help make things better. Why don't you sign up to create questions that are not "ambiguous and poorly written?" It's all there on our "amateurish" web site.

Jared

Get a laptop

[Nuclear Elephant]

Get your boss to buy you a laptop and install Linux on it - the countless hours you spend up pulling your hair out at night will be the best training money can buy.

Re:Get a laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

Just not a centrino laptop ;)

Re:Get a laptop

[MsGeek]

Centrino Linux support is starting to improve. Between Intel, IBM and HP there are efforts to get all the functionality working properly. And if you just get a Pentium M based laptop without the onboard wireless everything works at this point.

hands on

[Anonymous Coward]

Online classes, books, tutorials are all very good. After going through all of that the best way to learn is by messing around with your companies distro of choice on generic x86 hardware to get a feel for Linux. The finaly step is to get your companies hardware of choice and play around with the distro on that.

online

[l33t m4st3r]

personly i would not recomend an online corse. ive seen the online corse that i cant take at my school. not very good. but i guess it depends where you go. i know that i will be never take an online corse. it seems easier to talk to an actual person when learning. i guess im just rambling, but thats my $0.02

Geek Cruise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh - if my company were footing the bill - I'd go for one of them Carribean geek-cruises. :)

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.

Lucky

[dance2die]

My company will pay for any Linux training I choose You are one of the Luckiest bastard I know...

what direction?

[cabodine]

In what capacity are you to learn Linux? What does your company do? This needs to be answered before you can get a idea of what you will need. I my self was and am a Windows Admin, I also in the last year have started to learn linux. I feel the best way to learn is to jump in and start doing. But not knowing what you plan to do makes it hard to give any advice. I come from a art back ground and have supported art students in a educational enviroment, my current job is much the same. It breaks down to supporting the users apps and helping them over come problems and limitations. To try and go from know almost nothing about linux to where I am now It would be impossible. I have been slow to sit down and read any book from cover to cover about Linux. I have stumbled my way through most of it and have formed or understood why things must be done a certain way. This only comes from using it not reading about it and not from using it in a controlled enviroment. My suggestion is get you feet wet and then come back and request train in specific areas not in Linux in general. I am not sure it there is realy apoint here but that is 2 cents is.

Find a local consultancy...

[DragonWyatt]

Find a local consultancy (ask around, get recommendations, and perform interviews, maybe start with your local sage group) that's full of a bunch of Unix gurus, and contract one or two to act as mentors for about two weeks. Do not settle for anyone with less than about 7 years experience with Unix, and 5 years experience with Linux. Make sure and have a list of tasks (setup an email server, setup a webserver, configure backups, that kind of thing) that are indicative of your needs, as exercises which will help you learn the platform. These folks will be top-notch- do not expect to pay $40-60/hour "Windowz" type rates. For an 80 hour engagement, $12,000 per guru would not be unusual. Negotiate a money-back guarantee at least based on your task list as a set of deliverables. (We do this frequently).

After your two weeks, make sure you contract with either the same company, or RedHat (or whomever) for ongoing escalation support for when you get stuck.

I'm a strong proponent of the mentor approach. I've been on both sides and can attest to the success, IF you have a good mentor. Books are a good reference, and a class is a good generic 'crash approach', but consider how valuable it would be to have a guru or two immersed in your environment, with you and your staff present and participating.

This link might also help you find good mentors.

Good luck!

Re:Find a local consultancy...

[tverbeek]

This link [sage.org] might also help you find good mentors.

And if you're looking for something more social, try this link :)

What is <BR /> exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is <BR /> exactly? It's not HTML.

Vendor-specific vs. Vendor-neutral Training

[base_chakra]

If "someone" recommended Red Hat eLearning, I assume your company is adopting Red Hat? At the outset eLearning might be a reasonable choice, but if you really want to understand Linux, you'll probably want to laern more than just the Red Hat way of doing things. Experiment with Fedora or Red Hat 9 at home; then, after a few months, test a distribution that doesn't rely centrally on RPM and you'll gain a new, edifying perspective.

Re:Vendor-specific vs. Vendor-neutral Training

[Erwos]

I hate to break it to you, but there are only two major distributions that don't rely on RPM (or DEB, which is more or less the same damn thing), and neither of them are really appropriate for a corporate environment.

Also, if they do a good job of teaching RPM, they'll tell you how to _build_ them from spec files, which does involve knowing how to install tgz's and such. You take knowledge, and you apply it to other things - that's what a good education lets you do.

-Erwos

Re:Vendor-specific vs. Vendor-neutral Training

[Nailer]

Why would dpkg and apt (or whatever else) give him a new, edifying perspective over rpm and up2date? Particularly since the big commercial distros (Suse and Red Hat) both use RPM as their packaging format?

Install Gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that installation and hands on is the best thing...You will blow up an install 20+ times before you get it down pat, but after that you can do it in your sleep.. The thing is that your a admin allready, meaning you know what you want to do just not how to do it. http://www.gentoo.org/ they have THE BEST INSTALL MANUAL and the BEST FORUMS I have ever seen for any OS. and right off the bat you are installing linux from scratch so you can get a real hands experience. After that you can tailor that experience to your linux installation of choice.

I liked O'Reilly training

[frankbaird]

I have taken the first 2 O'Reilly courses. I liked them and learned a lot. I liked the free books too. I think I learned more than I would have at the local community college, and I have been able to apply what I learned at work. However, I'm sure that even these courses only scratch the surface. I would also recommend O'Reilly's Unix Power Tools book.

It depends what you're working with

[MysteriousMystery]

It depends on what you're working with, a lot of the suggestions on installing it at home and messing around are quite frankly more effective than taking any class, provided it is for desktop use only. If you plan to learn Apache, or various mail system administration look into formal training like what is offered by the Linux Professional Instute at http://www.LPI.org Red Hat offers nice training but in a lot of ways they teach skills that are related specificly to utilties used only or primarily by their distribution which can be a problem if you plan to use other products in the future.

Jump in with both feet!

[lesburn1]

Jump in with both feet. Uset it at home, make the switch at work on your desk top. Don't let them tell you that you still will need msOutLook.(lookOut)

Like anything worth doing.... it takes time.

[Neo-Rio-101]

I agree with everyone else who says that you need hands on starting in your own home and in your own time.

I found that the O'Reilly books are really good, but their LPI in a nutshell is not the be all and end all of LPI study materials at all (if you're interested in going for level 1 of that). Sometimes the man pages will do - but more often than not, they won't cut the mustard.

One by one you'll have to go through getting different Linux servers up and running... starting with the old faithful Apache, BIND, qmail, NTP, FTP, SSH, Samba, Net-SNMP, etc., and once you've done setting up all of those, try your hand and some of the other more obscure open source projects out there and get them compiled.
Stuff like Nagios, MRTG, Big Sister, IPsec tools (freeswan, KAME), learn how to craft a firewall with iptables, try encrypting a file system with dmsetup, etc.

Don't stick to one distribution. Try as many of the free ones as possible. Each has thier own strengths and weaknesses,... not to mention different locations for config files, and different methods of package installation.

Enlist to as many mailing lists and IRC groups as possible..., then unsubscribe when you're email box can't cope anymore.

Compiling the Linux kernel is a right of passage for all admins.

Leanr how to write a shell script, and don't be tempted to play with X windows or all of RedHat's easy to use configuration programs too much.

Finally, be patient - this takes time, and drink lots and lots of coffee and keep a supply of hair on your head for occasional ripping out. You'll need it.

Good results from Worcester Polytech

[jakedata]

http://www.ce.wpi.edu/IT/Unix/

I had been administering Windows boxes since the first betas of NT, but I just couldn't wrap my head around Linux.

Concerned about my then-current job, I paid for this training out of my own pocket, and it was well worth it.

It is intense, 3 days a week for 6 months. There are 11 books, and multiple projects. And I got a lovely certificate at the end.

Damn funny! Mod the parrent UP!

[iamatlas]

Damn Funny stuff here! I mean, come on:

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!

Re:Damn funny! Mod the parrent UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

the newest VB compiler generates code that's every bit as fast

I can't stop laughing. please, someone make it stop!

Well, except that particular bit is true. A well done runtime environment like the Java VM and Microsoft's CLR are going to run pretty much as fast as natively compiled code. But then, if it all comes out the same in the end why would anyone want to subject themselves to VB? For your own sanity, at least learn C# instead.

Novell.

[marcushnk]

Novell's training is GOOD stuff... well worth looking their gear up.

do it yourself

[gsergiu]

it's the only advice that i can give you. set yourself some goal (I want to be able to do this or that), search on google and do it.
every training that I saw (participated) taught me nothing that i couldn't found on google :) .

Junior colleges

[twigles]

I had a class at a local junior college that was really good. The department was using RH 7/8/9 (at the time no one really knew what was happening bc redhat fired out major release numbers so fast) but the instructor *made* us use the command line for everything. He taught basic scripting and vi, how to lock down the box, how to install things via source and rpm and keep them updated. I did the course on FBSD and someone the previous semester used Solaris, so the material largely transfered all over. Tons of stuff, and the kicker was the price - the course cost about $100 and was a semester long (3 hours/week).

So look around for junior colleges in your area, a lot of them are branching out from the "Get your MCSE in 90 days" crap and teaching all sorts of things like Oracle/SQL, Perl, Unix or whatever. The price is almost always better than what you'll find anywhere else too, although the pace may be a bit slower than what you want.

Oh yeah, the course was at Saddleback College in Orange County. The teacher was Jeff Dorsz (spelling?). I would recommend him to anyone.

Re:Junior colleges

[Bz3rk]

Yeah, check smaller schools. My school, Stanly Community College in NC, is now a Red Hat Academy. You can train for and take the RHCT and Linux+ exams here for about 38 bucks per credit hour (in state), and classes are offered online too. http://www.stanly.edu

Books are the best...

[tajmorton]

Get the book Linux for Windows Administrators by Mark Minasi and Dan York. (Amazon)

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].

Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a Windows admin the last 5 years and have been asked to learn Linux. [...] I'd like to take my time and really learn it.
Hmmm, posting this on Slashdot. You are looking for some friends aren't you?...

LFS is the best teacher out there

[dsettanni]

Install a linux system at home (I prefer SlackWare), then perform an install of linux from scratch. I think its probably the best teacher out there as you actually see what components are getting installed on the system and get a little of the why. There will probably be some intricacies in whatever distro you pick but that will give you a very solid background. Also, pick up Unix power tools from somewhere - learning the tools inside that book is a better education then any class I ever took.

Re:LFS is the best teacher out there

[dsettanni]

slackware.com - oops

Re:LFS is the best teacher out there

[wassy121]

Parent is absolutely correct. If you can run a massochistic O/S like LFS for a year or so, you have more linux knowledge than most people that work in the "linux support" professions. It will teach you everything from autoconf/automake to m4 to the internal nasties of SysV init. All without you really wanting to learn it.

You don't need books. Books are useless, and are out of date as soon as you read them. Subscribe to a mailing list. freebsd-current, linux-kernel, samba-devel, any medium traffic list will fill you with more useful (but esoteric) knowledge than any book printed. These are the places that people discuss the difference between kernel INFO messages, and kernel WARN messages, what they mean, what modules use them, and what modules misuse them.

Don't take classes either, because they are just like college. They can teach you how to run redhat-config-firewall, and run through the pretty interfaces. However, none of them will be able to accurately describe how to use tcpdump to troubleshoot all layers of the OSI model to ensure that the issue you are dealing with has to do with arp caches on a PIX firewall.

I have also found that hanging around other people that are better than you at something tends to get you up to speed quicker. If you can find a job where you are around other people that happen to know Python better than you, sit behind them for a couple hours, watch them work. They usually won't mind. Offer them a Twix, they will be your friend for life.

Keep learning. It is the desire to learn that keeps people intelligent, not the books they read.

Re:LFS is the best teacher out there

[phek]

although I fully agree with you about the LFS and not taking classes, your way off base about books being outdated. Some of the best books to understanding linux and unix are the old ones. The Design of the Unix Operating System, is in my opinion perhaps the best book out there for understanding unix, and it was first published in 1986. Then there's the Bell labs Unix Technical manuals, from back in the 70's, which are also some great reading material from a book.

Thats the whole point of unix is to build on top of whats already been created, so just because some book doesn't have all the newest tools, it has all the tools that were used to create the new tools. If we just started building new tools to replace the old ones, the unix design wouldn't be any better off than any of the other OS designs who'll remain nameless.

In regards to the original poster, I would deffinitly recommend reading the The Design of the Unix Operating System, it'll give you a great understanding of how all the tools fit together and why they were created, etc. etc. As for LFS, it's great to build your own system from scratch, as you'll learn all the intrecicies of how a linux distribution works. The problem with LFS is it's very time consuming, especially if you have a slow computer. It took me about about 3 6+ hour days to build one on a dual 1.6GHZ machine even after I had a fair amount of knowledge about linux already. If you choose not to go with LFS, I would deffinitly recommend slackware, it's great for learning how linux works. I've kinda lost my train of thought now so I'll just leave you with that.

Python

[mslinux]

Learn Python. It works on Linux & Windows as well as Macs (if you have any). It's the best cross-platform scripting language out there and it makes automating common sys-admin tasks easy. We use it for generating reports and monitoring Lin & Win systems.

SANS

[smoon]

Sans offers some great security training, which while not a general "Intro to Linux" does provide some very intensive insight into securing Unix/Linux.

Books can be good, but research them carefuly before you plop down $50 for "linux unleashed" or some other crap book.

Some good books to look at:
UNIX System Administration Handbook (3rd Edition)
by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass, Trent R. Hein [THE classic Unix admin book, this edition also has some Linux-specific stuff]

Linux Administration Handbook
by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Trent Hein, Trent R. Hein [Similar to the above, but all Linux specific. Get both if you can.]

Many (not all) OReilly books (especially older ones) tend to be excellent references, e.g. DNS and BIND, Learning the vi editor, Sendmail, Practical UNIX and Internet security, Programming Perl, etc.

One problem you may face is that "Linux" in the "I just installed Suse" sense, is much more than Windows. Where in Windows you'd need to cover basic setup, network config, active directory, basic security, and maybe web server config, in Linux you have all of that plus the functional equivalent of SQL server, Visual Studio, dozens of programming languages, Office, etc.

Good luck! It's a fun ride once you get the hang of it.

Re:SANS

[killergreen]

I'm a networking instructor at a technical college. I was the primary instructor for our Linux/UNIX offering, and found the "...Linux Bible" series by Christopher Negus invaluable. A hands-on approach, coupled with a textbook that could double as a reference for years to come. I still highly recommend this series to anyone wanting to learn Linux.

change jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.
Set up a home network? Sure, if you want to spend all your free time essentially at work. Switch your friends and grandparents?? Any slashdotters here who'd rather slit their wrists than become their parents/granparents/friends sole support person? Go to school? What, a school without any chicks? or maybe one decent chick that's so tired of being hit on by geeks that she's switched teams?
You'll spend ALL your time learning this stuff and when people have problems, they'll ask you "What was it??" and you'll go "I dunno.. but I know how to fix it!" and they'll go "But *what* was it, so it doesn't happen again?" and then you'll be arrested for assault because that's the way you'll react after spending ALL your waking moments for the past 2 years stuffing your brain full of esoteric stuff.
Trust me. Change Careers. You'll thank me later.

At home with a good book (or books)

[JoeCommodore]

I find the Red Hat Linux Bible to be a good crash course, everything on the book is in the distribution on the cover (except possibly sources which you can download). Does a general overview of all the aspects. Though like the others you sould take a few days hands-on which would get yourself quickly in sync with the system and make the reading less tedious.

Maybe this'll help....

[gr8fulnded]

Slashdot post just the other day

--Dave

Just do it

[Colonel Panic]

Set up a Linux box at home. It can be an old machine that's not able to run WinXP.

As far as distros go, you could choose whichever distro they plan to run at work. If they haven't selected one yet you could try the Xandros Free version for now to get your feet wet - it's supposed to be quite easy to set up. Or you could try one of the liveCDs like Knoppix for a while. After that if you really want to learn all of the ins & outs I would suggest Gentoo - you'll learn a lot setting it up since they don't have much in the way of easy install tools yet. Gentoo makes you dig into a lot of stuff to get it installed. After you install Gentoo, you'll have learned a lot.

Set up a small net in your work lab

[SCHecklerX]

As many others have suggested, you should play on your own. I'd still take the class though. Set up a small network BEFORE going to the class, though. Then you will have intelligent questions to ask, and you will have some goals in your training.

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

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

Set up that small net, play, learn, then go to your class and learn a lot more.

Have fun!

LPI?

[psyconaut]

Might be a good career choice if certifaction rocks your (or your employers) boat.

http://www.lpi.org

-psy

Re:What is exactly?

[theolein]

welcome to xhtml.

Geek Cruises

[Anonymous Coward]

Their classes on a cruise ship. Seriously, Geek Cruises get some of the top people Larry W, etc. Check out their Convincing the boss section.

Be careful

[hdparm]

Admining Linux is not easy. Learning how to do it is, given you have plenty of time on your hands. You need to do huge amount of reading (howto_s, man pages, some good books) while actually DOING all that stuff on (at least) 2 connected computers. Once you're able to setup most common services without constantly refering to docos, you're well on your way.

I am not sure what distro is your company's choice but if you have an opportunity to do so, suggest Red Hat. Product is stable, support is unbelievably good, contains fair set of tools/facilities to ease sysadmin work, there are lots of resources around and there is a decent training/certificaton program available for it.

Whatever the choice though, make sure you do your advanced learning with the distro that will be installed at your place. And good luck.

Oooh so you wanna learn Linux huh?

[Cytlid]

OK BUDDY!

You get that 386 running, I don't care if it has 4 megs of ram, an ISA video card and 120 megs of hard drive space! I need it going PRONTO! Got it? Or yer butt is outta here!

And I don't want any whining, I want dual screen X11 running in 16 bit color, with apache and mysql and openldap, as well as samba.

And don't forget, no cdrom or network here, pal. WE'RE installing from floppies, and get plip going on your parallel port, real men don't have time for ethernet!

Oh and I also want it quad-booting ... 4 distributions, Fedora Core, Debian, Slackware and FreeBSD (make everyone happy).

That should do it.

Re:Oooh so you wanna learn Linux huh?

[chickenmonger]

Oh and I also want it quad-booting ... 4 distributions, Fedora Core, Debian, Slackware and FreeBSD (make everyone happy).

So, effectively, you're suggesting that the poster attend multi-boot camp?

www.google/linux

[junkwerks]

Use it. I kinda like google/bsd nowadays.

Re:Don't stress

[Anonymous Coward]

"... Linux kernel itself lacks any support for any type of journaled filesystem, memory protection, SMP support..."

This guy has to be smoking smoking something and I am a believer in commercial software!!!

Anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they'll pay for anything, take one of those Geek Cruises where you find the likes of Torvalds and Wozniak. Or just hire somebody like Alan Cox or John "Maddog" Hall. If they say anything, surely that includes paying to have a guy named Maddog teach you...

HOWTO's

[glrotate]

Most Linux HOWTO's are horribly out of date. Many aren't even updated for 2.4. Not terribly usefull unless you want a historical perspective.

Some Good Links

[teoryn]

Here's a good online book:
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

The best place for questions:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/

More reading:
http://www.tldp.org/

------
You've seen the posts, now see the website!
http://hiddenuniverse.blogspot.com/

Dont learn Linux as such...

[carldot67]

Learn how to do your job first

There are several levels you will need to go through before you are proficient. Someone with unlimited time would do this:
a) Install Mandrake
b) Play a bit
c) get UNIX admin in a nutshell or some such
d) get tuition from a master sysadmin
e) learn
f) understand
g) gain enlightenment
h) install gentoo/bsd or something more server-y

UNfortunately time limitations mean you probably will need to do it this way around:
a) Install Fedora
b) Point a browser at localhost:10000 (webmin)
c) learn how to add/delete users
d) learn how to control samba (file shares)
e) learn how to control CUPS (printing)
f) learn how to configure networking, esp DHCP
g) learn how to run postfix and mysql

Learn how to replicate your current job functions using webmin. It's not too hard. There are other good management GUIS and such around. Once you can do your job then by all means get an old P90 and turn it into your personal plaything and gain true enlightenment via the command line.

It is always best that an engineer at any level UNDERSTANDS their systems. There is only one way to do that and it takes several years of practical experience and guidance. I think you will love Linux (and therefore *NIX) but it is fundamentally different to Windows so the UNDERSTANDING might take a while. In which case don't panic - UNIX is more logical IMHO.

Good luck and welcome to the party!

Prepare for emergencies

[mmmmmhotpants]

Thinking proactively is the best quality in an administrator.

Learn to think like a hacker.

Learn about things you want to have during an emergency/failure (ghost, backups, knowing the hardware).

A proactively strong and robust system is the mark of a good administrator. If your system can survive and be revived when your companies need it most, everything else you can manage at your lesiure in the off-hours.

Invest in a LUG

[shuz]

Most towns these days have at least one Linux users group. For learning I would A. Take a deep breathe, your entering a world that at times can have leetist s that would like no more then to see you fail so they can bring themselves up. With that in mind join the community and develop friendships with others that are both learning and those that are already experts. Remember that its always handy in a pinch to be able to reference a friend to see if they have had the same problem you are and often its more comfortable that way as well.
B. I would setup a computer has home that is a FULLTIME linux box. For the first time running linux your going to want to stick to something simple. My preference is Debian but Mandrake, fedora, and SuSE are all fairly easy to get into. If you are not familiar with programming,and extensible scripting then your in for an awakening and a treat.
C. Finally I would take a class from someone that is in the same room with you. Like a lot of other concepts Linux can have a lot of theory to learn without actually getting your feet wet. Unlike Microsoft products that you may be used to, there are a lot of hands-on techniques that I would venture to say can ONLY be learned by making a mistake and then seeing how you made the mistake. Trust me you learn so much more when you make a mistake and its better to make that mistake on a non-production machine(carefull with the command rm -rf).
With closing I'd like to remind you to never take the name of root in vain. Very much unlike Windows , root which is the same account as administrator, is often never used unless absolutely neccesary. Learn the command (su -), (pwd), and learn about sudo.
I wish you the very best of luck and please please please, HAVE FUN!

I'd find someone who knows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Find someone who knows FreeBSD or Unix SysV. Dealing with a toy Un*x like Linux would be a piece of cake for him!

OT-Re:Slashdot Training

[v1]

The mod pts thing is easy, though I don't know why. I usually get them in waves... 5 on Monday, spent by Wednesday, 5 more on Thursday, repeat the pattern for about 2 wks straight, then quiet for 1-3 weeks and it starts all over again.

I dunno how I does it, I just does it. Maybe it's my post frequency, maybe my karma. *shrug*

While we are recommending books: Systems Admin....

[Fallen Kell]

Go get the venerable "Red Book" (well now it is purple). Its the Unix Systems Admin book. A truely must have reference book if you are going to be dealing with Unix (Solaris, HP-UX), OS X, or Linux. It does a very good job covering most of the bases of running and configuring systems to do the most common business level jobs and applications (setting up hard drives, raid, networking, email, printing, network file sharing, account management, group management, backups, using tape drives, etc., basically just about all your day to day things that you will have to deal with).

The Real Basics

[value_added]

You can learn the basics of adminstration from a few books (no single book is ever good enough on a specific topic). From there you can reinforce and expand your knowledge with practical experience, and that generally involves a home lab where you try to break and fix things.

As for on-line learning, nothing will replace reading the documentation (printing out and reading/re-reading manpages) but if your company has money to spend, google for "cbt" and you'll come up with a few options.

The caveat here is this: you will accomplish little without a solid grasp of both vi and the command shell. Add some programming 101 concepts to the mix, and you'll have most everything you need at your disposal.

O'Reilly Pocket Guide

[digime]

Install Linux at home, then get Linux Pocket Guide by O'Reilly. It's a guide/command reference, but read it like a book cover to cover. It's written in a way that you'll stay interested. You won't be sorry, and it's a short 179 pages. You'll learn a lot. I have, and I've been using Linux exclusively for 2 years. In a perfect world it would come standard with every distro.

Re:Jesus Saves

[Anonymous Coward]

and Tkachuk scores on the rebound

sorry its late ...

[thhamm]

i think most people said it already, but

know why cd.. gives you "no such file or directory" and cd .. works

use &>/dev/null

dont ask what .so and .a is about

learn C

dont delete /lib, though you think you dont need it

love lilo

never think about suse or redhat

unresolved symbols are your fault, not theirs

know thy linker

learn C, and the preparser, heck, whats that .h hes complaininbout

dont trust binaries

dont change a running system

there is no such thing as "linux 9.1"

know thy system

there is no point in having the latest version if its running fine

know tcp/ip

dont run as root, if its not necessary

know -rwxr-xr-x

dump the "dir" alias. get used to ls -l

use slackware. and never give up. never surrender. it will pay off. .)

Take a few CS and EE courses and read Nemeth

[SocietyoftheFist]

I'd recommend through algorithms and digital logic and computer architecture. I don't wanna sound like a dick but your asking that question shows that you don't think about a computer in terms of the computer but in terms of the operating system running on top of it. This hampers your ability to be a good system administrator as you don't really understand what a computer is or how it works. The short route would be to pick up Nemeths System administration book and just read it.

Re:John C. Dvorak, Dead at 52

[Anonymous Coward]

Nooooo! He'll miss the death of Windows at the hands of OS/2 that he predicted in 1994.

a Mentor is valuable

[oob]

somebody else teaching you is not comparible to you teaching yourself

I disagree. the differences between the Unices and the various Micro-Soft offerings are "cultural" (for want of a better word, perhaps "behavioural") as well as technical from an administration perspective. Interaction with a mentor familiar with the "Unix way" is the best method of overcoming the cultural barrier I think.

For example, Rebooting a system is the first step for Micro-Soft people. Conversely it's the last for Unix people.

Unix people solve error conditions through investigation in the first instance. Windows admins tend to reboot in the same circumstance hoping that the problem will be rectified. If they perform a diagnosis at all, it's invariably after the fact. Often it's dismissed as "one of those things" due to the black-box nature of their platform.

What I'd do if I were you...

[JamesTheBard]

...is basically the same thing that most people have said so far. Either find a copy of VMWare or a personal computer and spin-up a copy of RedHat or Fedora and start playing with it. Once you feel comfortable with it, start branching out. Online courses (atleast for me) don't work that well. I'm more of a hands-on person which means that I need to install the OS, play with the OS, destroy the OS, rebuild the OS atleast a few times before I get really familiar. Oh, and pray to the penguin...he is all knowledgeble.

Learn how to get help

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably the most important skill you will need to learn after going from Windows world.

* If you go with a comercial distribution like Redhat expect to pay for support. Redhat is a support company, that is their business model.

* If you go with something like debian, learn how and who to ask for help. Join your local tlug, get on IRC and mailing lists, start googling. There is a wealth of support just not in the forms you may be use to. If you contribute people will be far more willing to help you.

Linux From Scratch

[BroadbandBradley]

Roll your own using http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

I've found most distros have thier own GUI tools to simplify configuring your system but all these tools simply mask what's going on underneath where everything is really just shell commands and scripts strung together. When the GUI fails what you want to do, you're lost without knowing what goes on underneath. Beyond that, if you become familiar with Redhat tools and GUI and your work installs Debian you're starting over. I'd also reccomend learning Bash shell scripting which is the ultimate in telliing your Linux system what to do.

for an example of what's been done with Linux from scratch check out ByzantineOS

Go to a LUG

[REDSECTOR1]

Dude, get out to your local LUG. Hook up with people there who use linux day in and day out. Ask questions about the things you get stuck on when tinkering around with linux on your own time. Sometimes a MAN page just doesn't cut it! I don't know much about online training out there that's being offered, but online training alone certainly isn't enough to get you up to stuff with your linux skills over night. Best of luck.

you need to set up a network

[wobblie]

and sandbox your activities in it. If you can get your hands on 3 or 4 pc's and a cheap hub, you can get very far.

What you want to concentrate on are
*auth services (pam, unix, nis, samba, ldap, etc)
*mail (set up a few MTA's and try some different configurations)
*name services (dns - probably where you should start)
*shell usage (this takes a while)
*routing and firewalling
*printing (cups, samba)
*samba

Set aside a few tasks for yourself and star trying to do things. Stay simple at first, then work your way up to bigger things.

Though I don't see how the boss asking you to learn linux is much of a motivator.

Building "scale" networks is great

[GoClick]

Depending on how complex your network is you might even be able to get the company to fund a "model city" at work in a spare room.

You can use local sources to buy outdated computers, used switches, hubs, routers and etc to build a "dumbed down" low cost clone of your current network which will allow you to learn using it just like the real network, heck even the same IPs if you're going to put that much effort in. You can practice deploying software, using the systems etc. You might also want to get exact (sans-serial-numbers) clones of key servers if possible so you can test things very carefully.

It's a great way to learn but it'll really help to have a guru to get you going.

Find the local Linux User Group and get involved, make friends and then pester them on IM.

Re:Building "scale" networks is great

[Ryan Amos]

Uhm, fuck that. :) Just use vmware on a speedy PC to simulate a network of linux/windows machines. It's pretty much designed with that purpose in mind. I think a competent windows admin (the guy is obviously a techie) could figure it out.

Depends on the distro...

[LinuxRulz]

Sincerely, I think there isn't a better way to learn how linux administration works.
Let me explain:
Yeah, gentoo is good. The installation guide teaches you a lot about the internals of linux, how to compile stuff and which files must be edited to configure "foobar" package properly.
However, it can only be used as an introduction. The rest depends on how the systems you admin are built.
For example, if your company uses redhat with all gui dialogs and user friendly stuff, you must learn how to use that too. But keep in mind that it will be different on Suse or other disto. Each distro has it's way to be administrated.
In gentoo, you emerge, in Fedora you rpm, in Debian you apt-get.....
The best way to learn is to "get them all" and install them all!!...

The only convergence between all distro this is the console, so try not to depend on gui too much.

Do both

[dpilot]

I honestly can't recommend a training program, though perhaps others can. I would keep it in line with the Linux your company plans to deploy.

But *in addition* set up a small network at home. Set it up as a mini-professional network, not a slapdash home network. You never learn like you do when you're doing, too.

But managers like Certifications, so I wouldn't suggest shorting out the course. Besides, some problems are related to scale, and you won't touch that on most home LANs. Book learning and practical learning can work together.

I'll second what someone said about Gentoo. While you want to deploy what your company uses, it wouldn't hurt to install a Gentoo box. Gentoo has very little handholding, and the install teaches you more than other installs. I wouldn't make Gentoo your first install, or even a particularly early one, though.

Similar problem...

[BigDave81]

I had a similar problem being in the Air Force.
Nothing is going to beat the hands on experience of solving a problem yourself. The problem with this approach is that you always dont know the best way to tackle a given problem. Expert training can remedy this and get you a foothold.
but ultimatly its going to be up to you to take the initiative, install linux at home and if you have any hope of being a decent admin actually use it as your primary OS.
ohh yea and dont forget to visit slashdot regularly. The refresh button is your friend.

Re:Don't stress

[Anonymous Coward]

Fee fum fie fole! I smell the blood of a SlashDot Troll! Be he Live or be he Dead, I have a lot of trouble believing what that Troll just said!

Seriously, for something ".. more than a hobby OS.."
(but not from MacroShaft) what about Solaris? Or the various offerings from IBM or even Novell?

OTOH there ARE professional "support solutions" (and support Professionals) for linux; perhaps they could do a better job than someone apparently starting from zero in an "Enterprise Environment"

- Troll Collector

BIG TIP: Setup linux on your own computer and DIY

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do alot to teach yourself by setting up Linux on a older cheap system. Take a course on Unix administration. and get the O'Reilly book on Unix Administration and work thru each chapter Thats what I did back on an old 486 in the early 90s. And make sure you install the development packages. And for the gurus, future hackers, take a course or read about C programming and system calls.

Further steps
1. Know what grub/lilo is.
2. Know what fdisk/whatever its called now is.
3. Know how to use vi for basic editing
4. just work from a console
5. what goes in /etc
6. what goes in /etc/init.d
7. what goes in /dev
8. don't install some package but build the package from scratch such as nmap
9. understand netstat, and networking
10. understand nfs, samba, automouter
11. profit

And the truly advanced:
12. Understand how to configure and use samba, apache, mysql, php, nessus, nmap
13. more profit

14. Learn Windows Active Directory and other windows technologies.
15. Become a security expert

WhatMeWorry!!

i forgot

[thhamm]

sorry about the rant, but at least *TRY* to understand a *BIT* about the underlying machine. they are no black boxes. and your kernel isnt either.

Linux From Scratch

[Anonymous Coward]

I think LFS is better for education then Gentoo. LFS gives discriptions and explinations, Gentoo does not.

classroom vs online -- it's the personal touch

[jdkane]

From my own experience I can say there's nothing more helpful than a real teacher who is knowledgable in the field being taught. You can tap into that person's knowledge by asking many questions. You quite often get a good dose of real-life experience and wisdom along with the technical details of the subject matter. If you're unlucky then you get a teacher that doesn't impart this kind of good stuff or worse doesn't have the knowledge and just makes you read out of a book. In that case you're probably better off with the online course materials. However there are a lot of good teachers out there and if you can find them then I recommend you choose that option and tap into that amazing resource. You can proactively ask questions and get answers from a person, rather than the wrote course materials that don't digress from the subject matter. Real class can be much more interesting.

This is why I read /.

[Anonymous Coward]

we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool

Granted, Apache is a volunteer based project written by weekend hackers in their spare time

Pure hilarity.

Community college

[ricochet81]

community college in Linux Network Administration werked for me. I did redhat RHCE too, and its really only for people who already know the shit.

Welcome aboard!

[NtroP]

As a Linux SysAdmin who came from the Windows world I'd have to echo many of the earlier senitments:

• 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!

Re:Jesus Saves

[trick-knee]

man, you trolls are really something.

Don't forget about the time investment

[damm0]

Yes, everyone I know who is best at Linux is self-taught. But how much time did that take? Valuable lessons can be learned alone, but you can reduce the time it takes by a factor of 10 or more with structured lessons.

I'm talking years here. You can reduce 10 years of lonerdom to 1 year by using structured learning tools. No class is going to teach you to be a guru in 4 days.

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[SealBeater]

I disagree. I am all self-taught, and I belive that taking a class only
teaches you how to think the way the teacher thinks. I have seen countless
IT people with formal skills approach a problem the exact same way, go through
everything they can remember, once they have gone down the list, they are
stumped. I would much rather be in charge of the training of my brain, esp,
since you can study what you want, it's always "play" and never "work". My
self-teaching has been of tourrmendous advantage, since I, having not
undergone the grinding down of formal education in computers, have developed
novel and unique ways of looking and solving of provblems.

SealBeater

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[mindstrm]

Courses augment self teaching.. they don't replace it.

I firmly believe that to be a good sysadmin, programmer, technologist, etc, you have to be able to learn on your own.. that is the primary skill you need... and this is why almost every single skilled person you meet in this field will tell you they really learned it all on their own.

School, however, is a source of knowledge.. and not every course is there to teach you a bunch of narrow-minded BS.

If you really want to bean up on a specific area, for instance, you are getting more into Linux, taking a couple courses your employer is willing to pay for is certainly not a BAD thing to take advantage of... especially if you feel you will learn something out of it. Especially if you are a learning on your own kind of guy.. you will absorb a lot from the course. Make sure the instructor is someone who can actually add knowledge to you.. the entire course could be worth it if a handful of your unanswered questions are answered.

I think most of us just suggest "do it on your own, courses are silly" because we want people to realize that learning on your own is the most important skill.. that courses are just a brief foray into some new knowledge.

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[damm0]

I agree with the value; I'm self taught as well.

Consider the situation of the person asking the question; they need to learn Linux, they need to learn it now, and they don't have any background. They can't exactly start out and wait 5 years and then announce to the boss "Ok, I'm a guru, now what??"

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what you're developing is novel and unique ways ... in your own mind. What you have in reality is Not Invented Here, and thus you're not standing on the shoulders of giants, you're standing in your own little tinny backyard.

I agree that there's a great deal of utility in self-learning; I do a lot of study on my own. The best environment is to be thrown into a real production environment with a bunch of admins who know their stuff. The next best thing when you can't get that? A class.

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[jadavis]

Well said.

I'd like to add that an important aspect of teaching yourself is that you learn how to learn.

It's much more valuable to know that you can type "man grep" than to memorize that "-i" means case-insensitive.

One thing is for sure: nothing can replace self-teaching. You will be a much more valuable resource to your company because of it.

However, the orginal poster's company needs him now. I think he should install linux everywhere he can and start taking classes. Then, I'd just pick the instructor's brain when I encountered a problem. Hopefully he gets competent fast enough to be helpful.

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[maxpublic]

Valuable lessons can be learned alone, but you can reduce the time it takes by a factor of 10 or more with structured lessons.

That's rather amusing, given how useless a college degree is in most professions - CS included. Structured learning often does very little to teach CS students anything of actual, real-world value.

I'd argue for self-learning (the way most of us have done it, I'd imagine), with liberal doses of research on the internet and question/answer sessions on the newsgroups. There are a lot of people out there who'll lend you a helping hand if you ask for it.

Some - a very few - current administrators and programmers are also good at apprenticeship situations. Many aren't; not because they lack some indefinable skill, but because they're too busy with other things to be bothered with training up a newbie.

I'd say take a class as a very last resort. Avoid a college course as if your professional life depended on it.

Max

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, you don't approach a problem the same way *they* approach a problem, but I bet you approach your next problem the same way you approached your last one. So then when you run through *your* standard list of things to try, you have to start thinking of new things, just like they do.

The advantage to taking classes is that you've got a longer list of things to try, sooner in your career. And just because you've learned something in a class, doesn't mean you stop thinking and learning and become some kind of mindless automaton.

I've learned things in a classroom and I've learned things on my own (I self-learned and implemented the iso7816 smartcard protocol in just a few weeks), and I will usually take a class if the opportunity presents, because it cuts the learning curve way down. Doesn't mean I stop thinking, or suddenly become uncreative.

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is why his company needs his Windows skills at all if they're switching to Linux. It would be a lot easier and probably cheaper to just hire somebody temporarily to set things up and teach this guy slowly and then stay on as a support person for a while. Those four day courses are usually at least hundreds of bucks. That could easily hire a linux geeek for a week to get them where they want to be and he could be there for backup and hand holding. After all, they're saving a lot of money by ditching Windows. Why be so stingey?

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Anonymous Coward]

my backyard is aluminum you insensitive clod!

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

"That's rather amusing, given how useless a college degree is in most professions - CS included."
I would agree about CS but I am curious about your list of "good" and "bad" majors. Of course, I do not agree with respect on Mathematics; I think Don Knuth would agree that a Math degree is worthwhile. I cannot imagine learning "real" physics (as compared with "popular" physics) without studying it at a university. Also biology (e.g. sequencing), chemistry (e.g. good lab technique, P-chem.), some (but not all) engineering, etc. On my "bad" list might be foreign languages (i.e. just go live in Spain or Germany or Sudan(?)), the social sciences, Comm., etc - I'm not really sure my "bad" list is serious because you (should) have to learn to actually go to class, use the library, express your opinion in persuasive ways, open your mind to new ways of thinking, accept differing points of view, etc. Independent of your major, a good university should make you "Grow Up". (No offense to the frat's.)

I had a student in Calculus (1980s) who was very good at math and computing. His degree was in Art. He worked (and still works) as a contract employee; he lived in Europe for ten years, moves from company, makes lots of money and does artwork (for himself, not for money) whenever he can. As a single person, being out of work for a year or two is OK; he can do more artwork and his bank account has a large enough balance (and his expenses are low enough) that money is not a principal concern.

This whole post may be offtopic but I am curious what people consider "good" and "bad" majors. By the way, I do not think being a "computer programmer" requires a university degree; lots of "uneducated hackers" can write (sometimes bad) code. People I know who got CS degrees usually think this was a waste; people are starting to switch from CS to math or physics. One problem with CS is that you learn some skills but you have no ("real" or "interesting") problems to which to apply these skills; who cares if you rewrite gcc? (How many times can you sort lists or learn about a "new" type of database or prove that AI really is not DEAD?) Physics has lots of interesting computational problems (e.g. simulate a quantum computer and see what it should be able to do). Math has lots of interesting computational problems (e.g. number theory, fluid dynamics, conformal mapping, surfaces (als Brakke's Surface Evolver, Bank's PLTMG, Parks & Pitts Least Gradient program), mathematical biology - population models, "wierd" yeast behavior - and mathematical genetics, etc.). (Actually, I think a foreign language major is not such a bad idea; just go to a country where the language is spoken while getting or after getting the degree.)

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[maxpublic]

Remember that I said "a college degree is useless in most professions". That doesn't mean that the learning obtained while getting the college degree is useless, but that the degree itself rarely qualifies one for work in the profession that requires that degree.

Mathematics is a degree I did not consider, and a rather good example of a degree that might actually be useful right from the point of graduation. But then I did say "most" and not "all".

I've had the rare opportunity to study a variety of recently-degreed people who've gone to work in fields that their degree supposedly relates to. The fact is, most of these people are entirely unprepared for the actual WORK of that profession. The work itself must be taught to them, often from scratch, by people who're already employed in that profession. And it's my observation that in many cases someone without a degree could do the actual WORK just as well as someone with the degree; and I've seen this observation confirmed when people who did not have the degree supposedly needed for the profession had no problem at all actually mastering the work.

The only real exceptions I've discovered are professions which immerse the student in work as part of the degree. Doctors are a very good example of this.

A degree would be worth far more, I think, if the learning involved in getting that degree were modeled after the learning the doctor must go through for the same thing. That is, if much of the course of learning revolved around actual WORK in a real-world environment. Sadly this isn't a requirement of most degrees, and I think it's the reason why so many college graduates come to the work environment so utterly useless until trained. And if they have to be trained, it's often just as easy to train any smart, able-bodied person.

This might explain why more than 90% of all college graduates end up in a job unrelated to their degree. Not because they're underqualified (which they are), but because their supposed qualifications simply aren't worth that much in the work environment - and they can easily be swapped about in most work environments (as indicated by the fact that while 90% of them end up in jobs unrelated to their majors, *they do end up with jobs, most of which require college degree other than the one they got*).

Max

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[skyhighpenguin]

If they get someone new in without at least trying to formal train this guy and leave him to learn on the job, for the first few weeks he'll sit there like a lemon, his rate of learning will be governed by the amount of time the new guy can devote to explaining what he's doing, and even then, his knowledge is likely to be ad hoc with large gaps (most Techs I've met can't teach to save their lives, irrespective of technical know-how), so in effect, his time will be wasted and his knowledge won't be anywhere near complete, so why not use his time effectively and send him on a training course and THEN get someone in to help? Some theoretical knowledge from the course, and someone with practical knowledge to round off the training whilst installing the network? Just my $0.02 worth...

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

I cannot disagree with anything you said; if I had not posted on this subject, I would use one of my current mod points to mod you up.

New engineering graduates at Boeing (were/are reported to) spend the first year getting coffee for the "real" engineers and learning how things are actually done. Several of my current students have parents, friends or associates with engineering degrees; when these engineering alumni are asked Calculus 2 questions, the response is "Well, I knew how to do that when I was in college but I have no idea now." PhDs in chemistry usually reply the same way.

A good friend of mine from high school earned an accounting degree and went to work for a lumber company in northern California. The hardest part of his job was learning where to find the information; in college, the data is given to students but in a company an accountant may have to discover the various places where the necessary data is hidden. (Of course, his accounting skills were important but he said that accounting was the easy part of the job.)

Even new PhDs in chemistry are considered to be fairly worthless; they become useful and valuable when they are employed as postdocs doing serious lab work for chemistry professors who see the big picture. I am told that a chemistry PhD candidate who works with a chemistry professor for 4 or 5 years only is worthwhile for one year; before that, the professor invests more time training the student than he/she receives in lab results/output. Postdocs are much better and are actually worth having in one's lab.

I am curious to see examples of the 90% of "worthless" majors and examples of the 10% worthwhile majors, even if these are just based on your opinion (and so you do not have to justify them or cite any studies).

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Azghoul]

Apparently your self-teaching didn't help your "tourrmendous" spelling. :)

I think you are missing the point of a class: Jump-starting what you know, and filling in gaps in what you don't. You can get a lot of hints into things that you didn't even know existed.

Also, if you like the subject, a class is not "work".

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, even ten years of experience with UNIX probably isn't going to make you into a guru. Consider all of the different flavors of *NIX, the different distributions of each flavor, the classic utilities like sed/awk/grep, the GNU utilities, the different hardware used, tape systems, RAID systems, wireless, VPN, etc. Then consider the amount of knowledge to learn about which ways of doing things are effective and which aren't, how to manage people, how to manage multiple projects, how to manage many servers, different programming and scripting languages, relational databases, structured query language, etc.

The good thing is that the more you learn about *NIX systems, the easier and quicker it becomes to learn more about them. Plus, these days you have the Internet to turn to for assistance; not all of us were that fortunate enough when we learned.

Re:Don't forget about the time investment

[aj50]

I guess people with a degree get employed more because the evidance that they have passed a degree course means that they are able and prepared to work hard which is at least as improtant as being able to do the work.

An approach that worked for me...

[WerewolfOfVulcan]

For server skills, you might try installing FreeBSD and set up the services you need (apache, dns, dhcp, samba, etc) using the FreeBSD Handbook. The Handbook contains step-by-step instructions for all of the common services and is very well written. I used this approach in a college class I taught last semester and the students were able to set up services unassisted by the end of the class.

Once you know how to set services up in FreeBSD, you can easily port that knowledge to Linux. In most (if not all) cases, the config files have the same name, they're just stored in different locations.

For workstation skills, you might start off with one of the live CD distros like Knoppix. Just pop in the CD and boot your machine. It's a bit pokey running off the CD, but it won't touch your hard drive unless you run the installer. My 16-year-old son has been using Knoppix for several months and loves it.

Re:Don't stress

[suckmysav]

"Linux kernel itself lacks any support for [...] SMP support(sic)

Oh, excellent trolling there Mr Hive Mind. Here, have a cookie.

Next time however, perhaps you should consult the other members of the Microsoft FUD Division, because they are currently suing the Linux community via their lapdogs at SCO because they claim that "The Linux Kernel SMP support is based on (allegedly) stolen source code".

It's a bit rich to sue a group over their support for SMP if that same group actually doesn't support SMP now, isn't it?

Dingbat

My Advice

[Glamdrlng]

is not on where to get your training, but what to do before you start it. First, find out (if you don't know already) what distro your company is standardizing on, and make sure your training is geared towards it. You're going to suffer from infromation overload as it is, so there's no sense in going to suse-based training and learning yast if you'll be using red hat.

Second, identify the tasks you do as a windows sysadmin, and come up with a list. The more the merrier. Keep that handy while you're learning, and don't let your training end without learning how to accomplish those tasks in a linux environment. Don't settle for the gui way either. You'll save yourself a lot of time and work in the long run if you learn the command line and some shell scripting, plus you'll make yourself more valuable to your organization.

Also, get your company to get you a subscription to one or more linux sysadmin-oriented publications. Sysadmin mag is pretty good, but I'm sure there are others out there.

Finally, network with other linux techs, whether it's through user groups, training, or some other means. It's a strong argument in favor of in-person training, just because you cant network as well during online or teleconference-style classes. Oh, one other thing -- be sure to explain to your superiors that "putzing around on slashdot" == "hard at work". Good luck!

and got to the MAN

[woodsrunner]

Running LINUX at home is great... build a network and everything is the best way to learn. I wouldn't recommending jumping in to the hardest distro first. Go easy with RedHat, SuSE, Slackware... try a bunch if you need to.

Once you get it going, beat down the directories with the man command (i.e. man neat, man ifconfig...) and learn what all the programs do and how to use them. It's amazing how many books are just a regurgitation of the man files.

All the distros have different programs, but most are the same. Using man can really layout what nix is all about and give you a feel for the tools at hand.

And of course some C programming wouldn't hurt either...

A great book you should own

[Hacksaw]

Aside of all the training you should get, a book you should own is "The Practice of Network and Systems Administration". It's not a technical book, it's a book about how to be a great sys-admin.

Since you are making a big switch, you should be thinking about the future, and how to plan for it. This book is an invaluable guide to this sort of planning.

Limoncelli and Hogan, Addison Wesley

You're in the wrong career.

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to find another Windows(TM) position.

You call yourself an IT professional? You're not an IT professional, you're a Windows(TM) professional.

Good luck with your "training." Your company and it's customers will soon see they have the wrong person working in your position.

Gentoo for sure

[hookooekoo]

Best way to learn linux hands down. It will most likely be frustrating but don't give up. The community is bar none the best on their Message Board. Plenty of dedicated pro's will answer your questions quickly. Anyone that mocks Gentoo pretty much just doesn't understand why it is so good. Yes compiling can take a long time for certain packages, but it is for a good reason. It is a complete streamlined install. Gentoo forces you to understand linux, whereas many other distro's allow you to get by with minimal understanding of how linux operates. I have used linux for approx 5 years, but I have learned 10x more about linux using Gentoo than all the previous time combined.

better than any online linux training courses

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

Hi, I already know linux and have also been a sysadmin for the last 5 years as well. Can I have your bosses phone #?

study for one of the various linux certifications.

[Anonymous Coward]

start reviewing the study material for a linux certification. i'm currently lpi certified. people may argue that having a certification doesn't really prove anything, but the certifications do cover a variety of material that is important.

Re:/. fails it again

[Anonymous Coward]

I just read the msg from /. hive mind. funny stuff, based on his message I feel safe diagnosing the problem as /. is probably running on linux, which is obviously not up to snuff. The only resolution to get reliable service must be an IIS/Win2003 server setup. Bah how can I even submit this load of shit. Oh well I typed it, and if you are reading this you must be as much of a bored looser as I am. Go recompile your kernel or something.

Instructor-led vs. Do-it-yourself

[slank]

In general, I think there are advantages to taking courses like RedHat's, as well as a do-it-yourself approach:

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. 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.

Two Words: Use Nix

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to http://www.usenix.org/. Read their website. Join Usenix. Go to their conferences.

In particular, go to the LISA conference. It's all about Unix System Administration. You'll meet all kinds of people who know Unix. You'll attend all kinds of technical talks about Unix. And you can also sign up for various full/half-day tutorials before the conference.

self and Redhat

[baggins2002]

I have never taken one of the eLearning courses with RH, but have taken one of their courses. I can highly recommend it. Having taken a number corporate classes on various subjects, this was the best minute for minute class I have ever taken. At the time I took the course I had already been using linux for over a year and I still felt that the class was well worth it.

As others have said, hands on is mandatory. The first thing I would learn is how to do installs over the network. It's a much faster install and can be automated to the point where you reboot the computer and start an install. This will allow you to play around with various configurations and installations and have the ability to start over with a fresh install in a matter of minutes. I believe the last time I did a full RH install over the network it took less than 20 minutes. Once you learn how to edit the configuration to install what your interested in, you can get this installation down to less than 5 minutes.

You know I have never thought about it until now, but Knoppix might be a good learning tool. Because everytime you reboot you can start afresh. Maybe someone else here can ellucidate on the pros and cons of using Knoppix in this manner.

Find and Join LUG

[Anonymous Coward]

Join LUG - a local linux user group.
http://www.linux.org/groups/

Online references and Forums are great
but having humans to interact with
and talk linux over a bottle of beer is good too:)

Most LUG conducts FREE seminars too.

Here's what you need.

[chris_sawtell]

A Knoppix CD

This is the original live CD. Pop it into any reasonably modern PC and reboot to experience Linux without installation hassles. It's horribly slow but does give you a decent start.

The Linux Professional Institute lpi-101 Objectives.

This is what you have to learn to just start out on Linux admin. Skip the hardware stuff and start out at Objective 103. Go back to the hardware lessons after you are more confident.

The RUTE book

This is by far the best book for the root user. It's in serious need of a second edition, but it's 600 pages of good solid stuff

Gentoo

Once you have got a bit of experience with Linux this is the distribution to go for.
The install manual is a lesson all of its own!

Don't waste your employers money on courses which are simply not necessary provided you can read and understand English, and have sufficient self disipline to do the reading. The money would be much better spent getting a small laptop, and giving it to you once you have an LPI certificate or two.

depends...

[DuctTape]

It really depends upon how much time you and/or your company want to take to get you up to speed. If you can take your own sweet time, hey, do it online at your own pace, learn while you're doing something else, and give it time to soak in.

Now if you have to get up and running within the space of a couple weeks or thereabouts, I would suggest taking a formal course away from your office. This keeps you focused, around an admitted expert, and usually with a good network setup.

I took a course from the friendly Red Hat folks, and although it was a good chunk of change, they did get a lot of knowledge stuffed into my head, and the trainers were great. Approx. 7 hours per day where I did nothing but learn and do labs.

The only downside: it was a certification course, and while I was successful, it was like sipping from the firehose to get all that knowledge crammed in there to where I could pass the RHCE. I pretty much had to say goodbye to family and friends during that time so that I could get everything down. And, if you're a cert freak, they teach you everything you need to pass the course.

Of course, the sysadmin jobs dry up as soon as I get the cert. Oh well.

DT

Gentoo not relevant to sys admin

[kuom]

I run several machines at home, one of them is a gentoo machine. I like Gentoo, but it will *not* teach you much about being a system administrator. It will teach you about some basics about linux (installing one, to be specific), which I don't believe have much to do with sys admin. For example, bootstrapping your kernel. During the gentoo installation, that's just one command, you run the bootstrap script (I believe it was bootstrap.sh), and off it goes (for the next few hours). You don't really learn anything from that except typing in that "bootstrap" command.

I recommend that you read about real TCP/IP networking, as most Windows sys admins I know don't have the correct knowledge about networking (they only know it in Microsoft terms). O'Reilly's TCP/IP Network Administration is a good book, so is Linux TCP/IP Network Administration by Scott Mann.

Get comfortable with command line. I know many Windows sys admins who fear the command line tools. Most linux programs now have GUI counter parts, but to really get the most out of a tool, command line is still your best friend. It also will make remote administration a lot easier for you.

Find out what distribution you will be using, and join the user mailing list(s). Also get familiar with package management of your choice (RPM, DEB, or source). As a sys admin, you will quickly find out that custom compiling everything will become a nightmare to maintain. For me, I build everything into RPMs, even if it's just a single file script. This makes administering multiple machines much easier.

Re:Gentoo not relevant to sys admin

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up

Gentoo

[Xerxes2695]

I personally recommend installing and configuring a Gentoo box. I knew squat about linux, until I did this, and since then I have been using it exclusively. Gentoo is nice, because Portage, it's package management system, takes care of dependencies for you and allows one to concentrate on what the different packages do, how to configure them, and how they interact. Gentoo is extremely well documented, stable, and allows for complete customization. Since it can be installed from scratch, one package at a time, it also will give you a good understanding of how linux operates.

one word : gentoo

[xcable]

one word (distro)

gentoo

heath holcomb

Re:one word : gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

So he'll probably run back screaming to Windows after a week of trial and error?

Gentoo is great for hobbyists, freaks and the likes, but NOT something you'd want to roll out in a big commercial outfit, specially not if you're just starting with *NIX and have NO inhouse knowledge on the matter. RedHat/SuSe provide solid support and documentation, two things a company wants when it starts exploring Windows alternatives (been there done that and stuck with RedHat and RedHat spinoffs since it worked, period)

Re:While we are recommending books: Systems Admin.

[44BSD]

And after you think you're a decent sysadmin, get Limoncelli and Hogan's _Practice of System and Network Administration_ to learn how it's really done in the big leagues. Best thing I've read on system admin since Stephan Zielinski's field guide to sysadmins, and I've been running UNIX machines long enough to have used READMEs written by Dennis Ritchie.

Some suggestions for Linux Administration

[kbahey]

Regarding your question, here are some suggestions:

1. If you can, attend the offsite training. You will get to concentrate away from daily phones/emails/pagers on a topic for a few days. This will get you a jump start. You can later go for an on line course for practice and such.

2. Hands on is the best thing you can do. Get a cheap used P2 in the office or at home, and play with it. Install Linux, then try to configure things manually and see how they work (e.g. NFS exports, autofs/automount, NIS+ or LDAP, /etc/init.d scripts, Samba, Apache, ...etc.) Do things from the GUI interface provided by the distro first (e.g. adding users, ...etc.) then do them manually from the command line (useradd command, ...etc.)

3. If your company has decided on a distro, then install that distro first and play with it. Then install another to see how things are done differently, and how others remain the same.

4. Learn to use the shell. Bash is good. others use zsh or tcsh or whatever.

5. Go to the Usenet group (a.k.a Google Groups) for your distro, and other Linux groups, and see what questions are asked.

There is a lot to learn, and the learning never ceases. Do not be discouraged by that. Once you gain a basic set of understanding, then the rest will come easily, or never come at all. It doesn't matter, since there is more than one way to do things in Unix/Linux.

Download and try

[motorsabbath]

Just download a free CD (e.g. Slackware), install and have at it. Apache, db and mail setup on it is well documented. Good luck! If you feel the need to take a class (and have zero unix skills) then maybe an online class can help, otherwise you should be fine. Contrast the cost of them paying for you to take a class with the cost of them paying you to stay home for 2 weeks with a free distro to learn how things tick.

Use Linux yourself daily

[Tracy Reed]

Run Linux at home and run your own personal mail server, web server, etc on it. That's how I got into Linux. It will teach you more faster than any official training.

gentoo, there is no better distro to learn

[Vulture101]

try to make a web, ftp, dns, samba, etc server with gentoo. preferebly with 2 computer , 1 to install and the other to read the documentation about what you are doing

Take someone along for the ride....

[Anonymous Luddite]

I've been a Windows admin the last 5 years and have been asked to learn Linux. [...] I'd like to take my time and really learn it.

my 2 cents:

aside from whatever training you decide to take, try more than one distro on your own. Even if your company has specified that you will use a particular distro, I think you'll find it worth your time.

gentoo has been mentioned here lots. If you try it, don't make it your first distro. a recent version of Slackware is a good first install I think

most important IMO: don't be the only guy in the department that knows Linux (or any technology that your business depends on...) get someone else trained as well

go hardcore

[21chrisp]

The best way to learn Linux (IMO) is to dive straight into it on your own. I recommend starting out with a very minimal install of a distribution like Slackware and building it from scratch from the bottom up. Just get the gcc compiler and minimal components installed and then use that to compile a new version of gcc. From there, custom compile virtually everything you want on the system. Get all of the common services installed and working (especially Apache). I know it sounds torturous (and indeed it is the first time around), but ultimately you'll get a few week crash course in Linux that's hard to beat. Doing this will give you a very good understanding of how Linux works.

I would avoid using Gentoo to start out with (even though it's my personal fav), because the portage system masks most of the internal processes you want to understand. It would, however, be a great second lesson.

All you really need is a spare computer that you can do what you like with. Maybe your company will give you an old system they're ready to toss?

A good book for refference

[blakemeisenheimer]

If you want a way to practice with out getting rid of your windows machine. You can also run a Gentoo or Knopix live CD. Just FYI that is until you can find some machines to get your lab up. Also what others have not let you know of some good Linux manuals. This is a book that is just perfect for what ever you do with linux. Our Linux developers use this book, and this book as an Admin is my favorite. ISBN 0-13-008466-2 Title: Linux Administration HandBook By: EVI NEMETH - GARTH SNYDER - TRENT R. HEIN Also this is the only book that has been reviewed by Linus Travolds It is an older book but you can order one on www.bookpool.com for about 25% off. Hope this helps... Just to let you know I am a newbie too.

Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

A course, as well as books may be very useful, but you may also want to consider Knoppix. It is a bootable OS on Cd, that wont touch your hard drive.

www.knoppix.com

A good friend

[tyler_larson]

I see you mentioned the O'reilly books - they are the best. I found Unix Power Tools and System Administration (Alein Frisch, sp?) to be the best books you can buy.

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 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

tar cf - dir{1,2} | (ssh host2 'cd destdir; tar xpf -')

off the top of your head, then people will start feeling the respect.

Re:A good friend

[tyler_larson]

Because I know someone will ask, here's the answer right now:

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:

tar cf - * | (ssh host 'md destdir; cd destdir; tar xpf -')

Re:A good friend

[zcat_NZ]

It's also worth mentioning that scp has a lot of per-file overhead, and it's REALLY painful when you're copying a large directory/tree full of very small files.

Re:A good friend

[�berhund]

A:tar preserves more about the files than scp, for example, scp follows symbolic links, tar copies the links themselves.

And a symlink back to a higher directory can put "scp -r" into an infinite loop. :-) So if it seems like it's taking forever, maybe it is. (The "-r" means "recursive", as in directories. Otherwise it'll just do files.)

BSD Documentation is the best to learn from.

[mchallis]

Seriously, I suggest you start with FreeBSD. They have the best documentation plus Absolute BSD is an incredible book. After you work through the BSD documentation you can learn whatever Linux you prefer.

In the beginning there is so much to learn. I was where you are in 1999. As a Windows head, you will need to learn and understand the directory structure, the history of Unix/Linux and the philosophy of Unix.

It takes a 6 months to a year to get your bearings and five years to get good at it. But your are about to learn more than you ever expected about Networking and guts of computing.

It is an exciting journey. Good Luck.

Re:BSD Documentation is the best to learn from.

[AJWM]

Not for a Linux sysadmin. If you're admining a Linux box or any modern Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, etc) that uses a SysV-like init system, then be aware that BSD's init system is quite different. And when you need to worry about daemons and services and run levels (oh my!), details like that are significant.

Heck, if you're going to be the admin of one of the "enterprise" Linux's (RedHat, SUSE, even United Linux if that's still around), you'd be better off reading Solaris docs rather than BSD docs. (Although there'll still be differences.)

Re:BSD Documentation is the best to learn from.

[PenGun]

SysV is evil. BSD boot stratagy is quite sane and that's why you should just get Slak and wing it.

Good luck, you'll need it, and a desire, a need if you will, to RTFM will help a lot. As Riki-Tiki-Tavi said "run and find out".

PenGun
Do What Now ??? .... Standards and Practices !

Re:BSD Documentation is the best to learn from.

[mchallis]

A good point but not great.

I personally found SysV style of init trivial to learn. I admin quite a few RedHat systems. RedHat's documentation is decent, but to really learn, read .

Probably even better advice is to buddy up. It is much easier to learn with a partner.
MC

make sure you bosses know

[hazem]

It will be foolish to think that you can take one course or one training program and be just as proficient in Linux as you are in Windows. Make sure your bosses realize this. (I've been in places where they send you for a week of training, then say, "Here you go, you're an expert now. You take care of it."

There are lots of good suggestions so far. I personally recommend multiple-approach solution:

1) find a local Linux Users Group and get involved
2) seek out the certification you think is best, such as the Red Hat. Has SAGE ever finished their certification program? Sure, a cert is worth the paper it's printed on, but if you're serious about learning (rather than just getting by), it will provide you with a solid foundation.
3) set up a small network at home. Get a domain, and set up servers for mail, web, etc. See how quickly you get hacked, and learn how to prevent it. Get internal services like print servers, samba, file services, authentication, etc working. Will you be doing a mixed environment at work? Make sure your linux network can serve to your windows boxes
4) someone suggested a "city" at work. this is like your home network, but maybe can mirror better the work environment
5) see if your local community college or university has a unix course. It can be a great way to learn some basics about how a unix system is laid out and give you an intro to scripting.

As for distros, I would advise using a common one that you can easily find help for. Fedora Core, Mandrake, Suse, Slackware, to name a few. Has your work settled on the one they'll use? Start with that one.

Watch websites like rootprompt, and subscribe to magazines like linux journal, etc.

linuxcbt.net

[maximus21]

some good and cheap linux cbts to watch and config by.. for rh mostly....

Learn whatever the company is going to

[gujo-odori]

I can't believe no one has suggested this already, but the training course(s) you should take are the one(s) that teach the distro to which your company will migrate.

If that distro will be Red Hat, I would suggest Red Hat courses. If it is something else, you might want to take a look at the LPI certification series (http://www.lpi.org/en/home.html). You'll learn quite a bit in those classes, and they are (somewhat) distro-neutral.

I haven't looked at O'Reilly's classes (like many others here, I'm self-taught), but O'Reilly has a well-deserved reputation for quality reference materials. No publisher is as well-represented as O'Reilly on the shelves of *nix professionals. There are eleven books on my office bookshelf, and eight of them are O'Reilly titles. I have a bunch more at home. When I buy a book at work, if it's O'Reilly I usually pay for it b/c I want to keep it. If it's not, I usually expense it and the company can keep it. I guess what I'm trying to say is, the O'Reilly course is unlikely to suck :-)

If your company has asked you to also choose the distro, then that's another kettle of fish entirely. I won't make a recommendation on that because I don't know enough about your company's needs and capabilities. If you have to choose the distro, please post info on that. I do have a favorite distro, but I won't mention it now; it might not be well-suited for your company's needs, and I could not in good conscience recommend it without more information. Lots of people have beat the drums for their favorite, and some of their arguments are ones that, in general I agree with. However, without knowing what distro your company will use, I think telling you "Set up a learning network with (insert my favorite distro here)" is just giving unfounded advice.

Maybe IBM.

[JayJay.br]

Full Disclosure: I've been a technical instructor in the Linux Sysadmin tracks for lots of vendors out there, and I might have seen the course materials for some others.

I would say IBM Linux tracks are the ones which have the most hands-on time, and the topics are pretty much what you need for administration on a medium-to-large enterprise.

Bad thing is the courses are a bit expensive and RedHat-biased, but they sure are effective.

Practical Application

[fastduke]

Normally everyone will do some sort of classroom type stuff(online,book,class) but without practical application the first step is pretty useless except for a drunken story... Yeah I looked at that linux stuff a little bit, Wow let me tell you what...

Same goes for Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

I was very much a Linux newbie, I had used Mandrake for about two days before I decided to give Debian a try. Sure it was painful at first, but it's "diving in the deep end", and you learn a lot quickly from your own fuckups as well as IRC.

Windows to Linux Migration Training

[janhct]

The biggest obstacle you face is not one of basic Linux familiarization, that can indeed be picked up through hands-on self-managed at-home training. There are many good books that can guide you in the basics, but the big obstacle is always TIME!

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

Re:Windows to Linux Migration Training

[felixdzerzhinsky]

Check out the IBM website for the windows to Linux Roadmap and LPI Tutorials for $ Free!! http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar y/l-roadmap1.html I am working my way through these with a view to taking the exam at FOSDEM in Belgium next year. If your company pays I would do the Red Hat training. Then do the LPI/IBM training for free. You could potentially end up with two Certs. www.fosdem.org

Other Recommendations

[Vskye]

I've read through the thread here and agree with others about setting up a small network at home and just go for it. If you need say.. samba, print servers etc, do that. Pick up a bunch of books from O'Reily, read and get up to par on firewalls and security.

Something others seemed to miss here is that you should do a audit of current equipment/computers that the company wants to run Linux on. Is the hardware supported? Any weird raid controllers that don't have support under Linux? (you get the idea) This can also be used to narrow down you're dist choice.

Personally, I've setup and admin'ed a new ISP setup and the ONLY reason we went with RH is a stupid raid controller that the higher ups wanted.. and was only supported via RH dist. Personally, I'd go with Debian if I had to do it all over again and tell them to stick that raid controller somewhere. (another story all together)

The "official" classes would be good also, but not online. Besides that, getting out of town, learning something AND getting paid isn't such a bad thing now... is it? :)

Go for RedHat

[ToasterTester]

If you can get RedHat classroom training do it. I have had lots of training through the years and RedHat was one of the best I have attended. Lots of hands on and very practical info. I also have done the O'Reilly elearning when out of work and wanting more resume fodder. It is a very basic course that covers a lot of topics, but only enough to that you know what something is and if it interests you.

The classes will give you a kickstart, but they aren't going to teach you to be an SysAdmin only experience in a production enviornment can do that. The classes will give you a leg up over some in a interview. The key is besides taking a class setup a small network at home with a couple machine and experiment. When you screw youself up, don't just reinstall, try to work out of the problem. Get a notebook and keep good notes they can come in handy on the job later. The key to being a good SysAdmin is solving problems that you have never seen before. To do that you need to have worked your way out of lots of problems, to use that insight to troubleshoot new problems. A home network is a good place to start building up that troubleshoot skill without a PHB continually asking what the ETR is.

Good luck

try linux from scratch

[karmester]

I cannot recommend LFS highly enough... http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ 'nuff said

I'm with them

[Anonymous Coward]

As the rest of slashdot has most likely already mentioned, either you're a Linux geek or you're not. It'd cost you and your company less to hire someone who's already proficient than it would to make you proficient.

I recommend two things.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you get a copy of the newest flavor of linux...preferably redhat fedora core 2 or mandrake and get a couple of new linux books, in most cases you'll get a up to date copy of linux with the books. But in case you don't, head over to linuxiso.org and pick up a copy.

Go grab a cup of coffee and sit down at the computer and pop the cd in and start the install. Most likely you'll come to a point where you don't understand something, so take a peak in one of those books and figure it out. Finish up your linux install and play all night with it. You'll find all kinds of neat things to play with, more than you could ever find on any windows box.
But take some time with it...look around at the OS and see what you can do with it. and yes, read those books, read every page.
when you go back to the OS and start playing with it again, you might end up breaking something but don't blame it on the OS...blame it on yourself and figure out why it broke. Look in those books and keep going back and forth between the two medias. In a week or two's time worth of reading and playing with the OS you should be fairly comfortable with things. Once you feel comfortable ...take a class or two. Don't just dive into a class at first and work backwards..because like everyone else says...the teacher will do things differently than what the majority of people do.

I remember way back when,I ordered my very first copy of linux back in 1998 (redhat 5.2) and I popped the cd in and did the install...I was totally lost..I think that night I had to reinstall it 10 times before I got it to work, but I did get it working that night and I ran into problems along the way, I even had a hard time deciding on which OS was right for me weeks after using it(windows or linux)...there was point that I almost came close to giving up on linux because I thought I wasn't smart enough to use it...but I had that burning desire to keep chugging along and figure it out, and as of now I have no problems using it...I don't sit there and ask myself what the fuck is this tar.gz thing lol I find linux easier to use than windows anymore. much less of a headache if you ask me...ecspecially wnen it comes to updates and reboots :P there are none! :)

Now begins the debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Here it comes.....all of the Linux users will begin to pipe up "use this distro, use that distro". My RPM is bigger than your DEB will dominate the conversation.

I won't push a distro, but I will say that you should follow what IBM is doing. They have great Linux documentation to get you through what many large organizations need.

Welcome to the new world.

5 years experience and you haven't bothered?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would certainly question the dedication of anyone who has worked as a professional admin for 5 years, that has not bothered to acquire significant skills on several flavors of unix. Rather than entertain your problem, I'd be wondering how you could *not* have gotten some experience. It's something you would have had to actively work to avoid, in my opinion. Now you wait until the last minute, and you treat a system with a significantly different philosophy as something that you can learn overnight.

Frankly, I think you are in trouble. Learning to be an effective administrator on any unix-like system means unlearning a lot that you know from Windows. It is something that you will *still* be learning after working with it every day for 5 years.

Take a look

[BCW2]

At Novell. They are not fully up to speed yet with Suse, but they are close. The security of Linux on a Novell network just sounds good.

Sure Cisco makes great hardware, but I still think Novell is better software for a backbone.

Re:Take a look

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sure Cisco makes great hardware, but I still think Novell is better software for a backbone."

-1 incoherent

Re:Take a look

[BCW2]

If you don't understand that a network comprises hardware and software to form the "backbone" that connects the computers and other devices, I'm sorry.

In your case that should be:
-1 uneducated

Nobody sets out to do something hard

[Nailer]

They set out to do something practical. Whether its hard or not has no bearing on their desire to achieve a task.

Learning how to install a distro that isn't likely to be used in a business environment (due to significantly less commercial support) just because its hard won't make this guy knowledgable.

Of course....

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time you have it installed (and it will take a while), you'll be a virtual expert on Linux.

Because watching shit scroll by makes you an expert.

Hire Somone

[steffin121]

From a business perspective, Your boss would benfit more from hiring someone that is already trained. Sorry. I've lost too many jobs to this. But ultimately your company would be less likely to suffer the hassle of having a underexperienced, less than capable person, and benefit from no down time due to you not knowing what you are doing.

IRC and Forums!

[JThundley]

I can't believe nobody piped up with the other obvious answer: IRC and forums! Couple that up with running it at home and you'll learn more than you ever wanted to know ;)
It's just that on IRC and forums you get questions answered isntead of being stumped and you'll pick up lots of tips and methods from other people (peers).

Hands on

[rastos1]

"Need some hands on experience"? - put hands on! As many others said: get a distro, poke arount. I agree with the suggestion of trying Slackware. It is simple, straightforward and my favourite ;-). The reason is that it will not shield you by some automated admin tools.

In addition to other opinions I add this:

• watch some discussion board/mailing list related to linux administration/networking or the distro of your choice
• try to find someone who you can talk to if you get stuck.
• read HOWTOs about topics you need: DNS, apache, samba, security, backups, e-mail ... - slackware has all that in /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/
• some topics you can't learn at home (you can start at home but need to extend to more loaded systems) - such as bigger DB maintenance, load handling or a user running wild on disk space. For such things get a group of people switch to your service for non-critical tasks - for example set up a DNS for some small department, mirror part of company intraweb and eventually make the original redirect to your server. etc.
• Learn some basic C and try out writing something simple about libraries, processes, signals, permissions, syslog, sockets, devices, ...
• read man page for sh and csh. Several times. Read man page for sed,awk,textutils - basics of scripting
• get used to opinion that there is nothing to stop you from tweaking the system your way.

Good luck.

Do both college and build a library

[beachdog]

I recommend a short view + long view approach:

For immediate support, build a library. Buy one book at a time as you need it.

(I think the Rute book and an anthology of the Linux Documentation Project are good cornerstone books.)

Balance your library with appropriate college studies. Whatever aspect of computers you work with, there is much worthwhile material to master and develop at length under the leadership of teachers.

Training does not have lasting value.
I took a Red Hat CNE course at my own expense and failed the exam. That training has never had a net positive value ever in a job interview. I simply blew a week trying to absorb what I really would have rather learned in an academic setting where thinking and understanding are valued. The exam was figuring out some stupid dorm tricks and doing a whole bunch of editing real fast.

Get Outside Help!

[dingletec]

The time to START learning was 5 years ago when you first became an admin, so that by now you would have enough experience to do the migration yourself.

Seriously though, if you haven't been using linux already, the time to start isn't when your company needs it.

Some of the commercial distros seem to have enough gui configuration options for a newbie to muddle through as well as they would with MS. I would still suggest you seek outside expertise until you are up to speed though.

Even though I see it all the time, it never ceases to amaze me that people who call themselves Admins have never taken advantage of the opportunities to learn that linux provides. oh well...

The learning curve hurts

[bazooka_foo]

I like many other /.ers are self taught. I don't know the area you live in, but I live in a rural area and local help was nonexistant. I started w/ slack and read a lot of man pages and online howto's. Many times I wished I had a mentor to at least point me in the right direction. If you get stuck feel free to ask. bazooka_foo@yahoo.com

What I tell all my X-Windows Admins...

[HardTronic]

Just throw in a Knoppix CD and pray a lot!

don't learn it, UNDERSTAND it.

[ehanuise]

If you come from a windows background, and have a few years of experience, the biggest hurdle you face is not learning the technicalities of linux, but getting a grip of the overall unix philosophy.

The worst error someone in your position could ever do is learn linux system administration, then "try to do the same thing" as was done using windows.

Linux (and unix, bsd, ...) is a diffeent beast. The main concept you'll need to grasp is that programs and utilities have a limited scope by design. That's unix atomicity : one program that does one and only one thing, but does it well. Every single utility is a lego building brick that you'll use time and over again in various circumstances (especially in shell scripting)

That alone is very diffrent from windows 'all-in-one', monolithic, approach.

I strongly suggest you get involved in your local linux user group. Helping out people solve basic problems and mixing with more experienced admins is a very good way to learn the non purely technical aspects.

Re:don't learn it, UNDERSTAND it.

[essreenim]

I agree. Old school linux server(linux as it was meant to be) for me:
-A raw bare bones kernel and Slackware distro. Kerel stripped down and compiled for the architecture.
-A set of scripts you use to repeat this process again automatically.
-No GUI of any kind.
-All the tools you use are seperate and autonomous.
-There are NO services / daemons running that you dont know about.

mean but true...

[cballowe]

I hate to say it, but I honestly think your employer would be better off recruiting and hiring some linux talent for the lead admin roles with regard to their linux move. It will make the transition less painful in the long run. If you want to learn, the best way to learn would be to move from your (senior, I assume) Windows admin position into a junior Linux admin role under an experienced person (someone with 5+ years of Linux administration experience would be best).

As far as training goes -- list the challenges that you'd like to be prepared to solve. Figure out what your goals will be and try and solve those problems in a test lab. Figure out what you don't know and can't learn quickly without being walked through it. My experience with training classes is that they spend a week covering material that should be covered in a day so if you can skip some intro level work, that would be ideal.

only 1 way will work

[Anonymous Coward]

Use it and get used to it. you can't learn something purly by coursework.. ask any uni graduate and they'll be only too happy to prove that they know next to nothing other than how to pass an exam (and i'm speaking to you with the experience of 3 degrees).

Check Locally

[Snap E Tom]

Finding your local Linux users group will not only surround you with people that know Linux, but they'll probably know of local training. Through my local UG, I found that a local community college offers Linux administration and programming classes. I also found that a local Sun Certified Training Center also offers Linux courses.

Therefore, also check local Sun Training centers and local community colleges.

Finally, I don't think the need for formalized training can be understated. Granted, hanging around people who know Linux and running Linux at home is essential. However, when you apply for a job, a PHB is going to see a list of Linux courses as far more credible than a line that says, "I RUN FEDORA AT HOME."

IBM

[SlashDread]

Take their distro agnostic Linux courses. I have never been better educated than by IBM (That was in the OS/2 days)

Anyway, the disto agnostic approuch seems more usefull to me than a red hat cert.

"/Dread"

Check out SmartCertify.com

[XeXeN]

Ask them for a year subscription to their whole courseware offering, there is alot of stuff offered. They do most of the military IT training. It's mentored also, so if you have a question you just ask. I paid $1800 for a full year to everything they offer. There parent company is Skillsoft,which is really who the courses are offered through. You also get a full year access to their book library which is quite extensive. As others have said, install Linux on your network, fedora, suse and also some like debian, Linux from scratch, gentoo.

I'd try the Redhat training

[Kevin]

I did the Oreilly labs on, it's ok...but kind of skimpy on the deeplinux OS knowledge. It briefly covers email and apache as well.

I personally do better in a classroom, especially if it's "hands on" than with online learning.

Setting up a home system is quite easy, especially with the big distro's today.

Best Training, or best Learning?

[libertarian]

Well,

Red Hat's training was great. I was in about the 2nd RHCE Training classes ever given, and one of the first few RHCEs. The people that had previous *UNIX* experience, AIX, Solaris, etc. all passed. The people with Ms.-only experience didn't.

I recommend BOTH home set up and use of Gentoo, Debian, AND Red Hat, to see how they all 'do it' with their distros. AND get a lab going at work, AND take an off-site training class. The new Red Hat certification tracks look strong.

Let's see...

[Da VinMan]

"Love to Learn Linux" has an employer who is willing to be decent with him and train him into the position. And you want him to tell them that they were wrong to treat him like a human being instead of as an interchangeable cog???

What are you on?!

I personally encourage my clients to show their employees loyalty. Employees will fall all over themselves to make a company successful when that company's leadership gives the employees what they need to succeed, treats them like human beings, and challenges those employees to excel without slave-driving.

There are worse pains that a company can suffer besides admin snafus. Even a completely irrecoverable server configuration does less damage to a company than disgruntled/disloyal employees.

Re:Let's see...

[cballowe]

Not quite accurate about interchangable cog. I'm saying that the best way to learn is to work with a mentor. Having the mentor in a position under the mentee isn't going to raise the morale of the new person.

You're quite right about employees being better when given what they need to succeed and challenged etc. I'm stuck in corporate hell half the time doing contract work. I see companies bringing in teams of consultants to drive projects without getting their core employees involved. But hitting the ground running for employees without the necessary experience will lead to mistakes that are hard to correct later.

You need to bring in someone with the knowledge of what is right, as well as the experience to know WHY it is right. So many projects now completely ignore the question of "Why?". All the training in the world won't convey why - just how. This will be good for everybody.

The only thing that would make this into an interchangable cog type of position is the fact that I do suggest moving the person from a senior admin. on the windows side to a junior admin on the linux side. People hate to take pay cuts - I suppose the company could keep the pay the same and bring in he senior guy even higher, but companies hate to do that.

Learning Linux

[matria]

Install at home, and download the Rute User's Guide.

I took some courses from the O'Reilley Learning Lab and consider it a very large waste of the money. I was disappointed in the course material, which was often contradictory, outdated, and sometimes just plain wrong. The certificate I got wasn't even worth framing. I suppose if you are starting from zero it might be useful, but there are far better (and free) lessons and tutorials, and plenty of forums and newsgroups for newbies if you need help, not to mention your local Linux user's group.

Nothing beats water to learn swimming,

[Qbertino]

and nothing beats sparing to learn fighting. Ergo: Ditch your home Windows and install Debian, Gentoo or LFS and get it on. Go cold trukey and ridd Mickeysoft instantly. That's how I learned. That of course won't suffice for your boss, so I'd suggest you ask him to pay you a LPI training or something. You can get tons of LPI training material of the web. I recommend IBMs websites. They alone have lots of LPI stuff.
Don't focus on a commercial distro. OSS works differently from proprietary software, as do its training mechanisims. With a RH or SuSE training you'll end up paying more and learning less.
My 2 cents.

Re:Nothing beats water to learn swimming,

[russint]

Actually, sparring is kind of useless if you want to learn real-life fighting. The only way to learn that is to do some (lots of) real-life fighting. So, install linux at home and piss of LOTS of people that will try to hack you.

Try Rute by Paul Sheer

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a lot of things mentioned here are true, and there is propably not "a best way". The best way, is the way you feel comfortable with. I just want to add my little piece to this issue.

Check out a FREE 600 pages book named Rute by Paul Sheer.

You can download it from different sources (ask google).Here's a link:
http://www.tech-geeks.org/contrib/mdrone/LinuxWork shop/rute.pdf

It's very very good and for FREE!
Worth looking at

Greets
M

Online free browsable courses

[jio]

I have a few courses that I teach here in the Netherlands, feel free to browse them online (I have the slides freely available).

http://www.schabell.com/course

Good luck and feel free to contact me,
erics

Pick an old book

[iNiTiUM]

In addition to choosing a difficult distro to start with, pick up an older unix book. Something mid-80s or earlier. Why? Those books have more useful commandline tricks, simple stuff that is often overlooked in the modern day age of pointy-clicky. Scrounge your used book stores for a copy of "A Practical Guide to UNIX System V" for starters. I also scored a whole accounting box full of HP-UX manuals awhile back, many many neat tricks, mostly forgotten shell script kung-fu. You'll quickly pick up what still works and what doesn't. Basic commandline zen goes lightyears, especially if you plan to work with other variations of *n?x...

Hell, just install FreeBSD and bookmark the online handbook...

Learn vi

[iNiTiUM]

Learn vi. Vi may be hard at first but it is very useful. the linux version is generaly vim. You may also use gvim but it's better to kick yourself in the ass and learn it if you are to become a Unix sysadmin.

YES! Learn vi. Learn how the /etc/rc.d/ or /etc/init.d tree works, then learn enough of vi to be proficient. vi is the only text editor that ships natively with any unix-like OS out there*. No matter what type of system you're set down in front of, they all have a /etc/ tree, and they all have vi. Furthurmore, most all config can be done via /etc/ + vi.

* At least: Linux, *BSD, HPUX, IRIX, Solaris, Tru64, and AIX.

Selfstudy is not a realy good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

I was in similar situation. I was thinking, that I can learn it alone (using available books and so) - forget about it. You can work with the linux, without attending in any course. And learn what you need. Problem is, that you will have many holes in your knowledge. Sometimes very big. I suggest you to go at mininum to any elementary Unix course. (I attended courses on University) and this was my realy starting point. After that I was realizing, that now I understand many things also from Mac OS, Windows and Linux environment). After you begin with these basics, you can continue with online courses.

What I would do

[brrrrrrt]

I don't know you, but I know what would work best for me in your situation.

Look for a friendly nerd in a company in your geographical area who is experienced with Linux.

Ask him to teach you the basics, agree a couple of days per week when you will just sit behind a Linux system together for an hour or so after work, and pay him some money for it.
Then practise what you've learned during the day.

After that, ask what he's been up to during the day and ask him to show you how he did it, why he didn't do it another way, and just ask a thousand questions about everything.

This, together with practising with your O'Reilly books, will get you going I'm sure.

And don't forget to give your Friendly Nerd some geek toys now and again, like laser pointers, Linux t-shirts, lava lamps, swiss army knives with built in USB drives and so on! (thinkgeek.com)

GUYS GUYS GUYS SETTLE DOWN HERE!!!

[DenDave]

HE's gotta figure out his usage profile.. compiling gentoo will do nothing for him if he needs to ldap accounts into single logon kerb5 auth netlogons.. ok!!

Those of us who started from the "old school" hard distro's understand what's under the hood, but the day has come that "clickologists" (read-mcse folks) must join the fun... They ain't geeks, don't scare em off with compiler sex.

Buddy, take one of the major vendor courses, be it SuSE/Novell, IBM or Redhat. Go with a distro that suits your companies needs, whilst I am a RedHatter since the beginning of time, I must admit that SuSE/Novell may be the ticket for a Windows-Clicker who needs Tux and needs it fast. They simply have easy to learn tools and minimal CLI config. Of course if you like CLI you can CLI all you want but I am jsut outlining your options.

Yes, install it at home, do that today, heck do it now. You will learn always more by playing with it.

Most of all, have fun!! Linux puts YOU in the driver's seat and it is back to GIGO and bye bye to BSOD!

Oh, yeah, and don't forget that any questions you will have can and will be answered for free by the community... welcome aboard buddy!

This is fascinating but...

[Singletoned]

Is anyone going to actually answer the question of which course is best?

I'm interested in taking a course in Linux as well. Installing your own Linux system may be a great way to learn, but it doesn't look very good on a CV.

So which is the best Linux course (particularly online ones)?

Certification

[LarsWestergren]

I've passed the 101 test for LPI Level 1 certification, and in one hour I'm going to take the 102 test. The LPI certificate is a good general indicator of how much you know of Linux, but I must say I'm a bit disappointed in the tests. There is quite a lot of "sausage stuffing" knowledge, such as memorizing standard ports, location of files, lots of command line commands and worst of all, command line parameters.

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:Certification

[Specter]

**bias alert: I volunteer for LPI**

If you didn't like our exams, then you're probably not going to like Linux+ at all. Linux+ is, or was, targeted at entry level Linux users and not system administrators. We actually recommend it as a starting point for people who are completely unfamiliar with Linux prior to moving onto our exams.

Many people have good things to say about the RCHE, although I'm not convinced that it's any better an indicator of ability or success than our exams, although it is both a lot more expensive and not distribution neutral. RH is very impressed with the hands-on requirements of their certification, but to the best of my knowledge the jury's still out on whether it's actually any better in certifying ability than a regular computer based test. Personally I think they get a lot of lift by riding the coat tails of the CCIE which also has hands on components and is a VERY highly respected certification for Cisco.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the exam items are the way they are because we can demonstrate psychometrically that people who know this material also know how to do the technical tasks of the job of Linux System Administrator.

Jared

Re:Certification

[LarsWestergren]

If you didn't like our exams, then you're probably not going to like Linux+ at all. Linux+ is, or was, targeted at entry level Linux users and not system administrators. We actually recommend it as a starting point for people who are completely unfamiliar with Linux prior to moving onto our exams.

Actually I liked the 102 test better, though it was much more difficult than I expected (failed... first test ever I think). I'm not happy with all questions, but I can't go into specifics of course. :-)

Yep, talked to a friend who had done a course in Linux+, she was very disappointed, said it was not what she had expected. More Linux user than administrator knowledge, as you said.

Do the LPI goals have to be standardised on Open Source products and languages? Otherwise I miss questions on running Tomcat and/or JBoss, something I've been required to do on all my sysadmin jobs.

Also ssh key management... but I should probably take this to the website.

Thanks,
Lars

Re:Certification

[Specter]

Lars,

Some of the other packages you specify could be covered as a level three exam. The yet-to-be-developed L3 exams are intended to be more specific and in-depth on subjects that are not necessarily the "core" of Linux. I believe the first L3 is going to be security related and any others will be dictated by demand.

(It costs, literally, hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop an exam, so we need to be sure that there's at least some demand for an exam before we develop it.)

The website is a good place to start and you might also want to sign up to the mailing list lpi-discuss. Best of Luck!

Jared

It is all self-training.....

[hajihill]

What takes years to realize completely is that any good training is really geared at teaching you how to teach yourself.

Learning at some point always becomes a self-run enterprise, and if you never learn that you are handicapped forever.

Learn how to teach yourself first and every class you ever take will be review.

LPI certificates

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd grab some books that prepare you for the LPI 101 and 102 courses, study those and then take those exams. Apart from the RedHat trainings, these are pretty much the only things that are pretty similair all over the world and thus recognized should you do a job interview somewhere else lateron.

I took both when I became sysadmin at my place of work, and it covers most of the basics of adminning a Linux system. Most of it is based on RedHat-style distro's which is logical since these together have the largest userbase in enterprise Linux.

Get an OLD laptop

[w1r3sp33d]

Why try to convince your boss to buy you a laptop? I started off with a Compaq 133 I assembled out of spare parts of three dead laptops coming out of the field. I used it to run all kinds of distro's mostly Slackware 3.X and it was a great way to learn, eventually I got x running and a pcmcia wireless card.

Nowadays I would suggest starting off with Damn Small Linux as a hd install dual booting with something "hard" like LFS (see flamewar above) or Slackware.

Once I was really comfortable running Linux on that little laptop, and some easy distros on my desktop (Mandrake, SuSE, RH, etc) then I setup my main work laptop as dual boot and started learning how to use it as a daily client machine. Don't discount this step. I had to setup for network printers, samba shares, office suite, email, it was actually a bit of work in my environment but by 2002 I used RH over 80% of the time both in the field and in the office. Now the only difference is I have gone full circle to Slackware (9.1 currently) and I love this distro although SuSE will probably be next given what is going on with Novell.

Jesus Shaves

[Anonymous Coward]

The beard is a lie.

Best RedHat eLearning Kit

[stock]

The best way to learn the RedHat line of Linux distro's is to start with that old P133 or PII 400 and install redhat 5.2 on that machine. RedHat 5.2 is not flooded with tons of software packages, but by installing 5.2 you will get to learn the essentials of how a redhat distro works. Next install redhat 7.3 on a PIII box as server. When one has mastered those 2 editions, proceed to fedora core 2 and/or RHEL3.x

Robert

Gentoo & LPI

[TwinGears]

Easy to administer, good to learn and very nice performance. LPI training is some thing I am tackling very soon and I have to say it's worth looking at.

Bad Educational Experiences

[shoemakc]

Look, i've heard quite a few comments about formalized education providing students with only a very narrow set of skills. If that's been your experience, then I'm sorry; you've recieved some shitty education.

Good education, be it in admining, programing, engineering, humanities, whatatever...should provide you with a broad set of fundamentals and the skills and confidence needed to learn the more specific practical stuff on your own. Over the long term, a class that deals with linux fundamentals and why things work the way they do, and where to find additional help is going to be far more useful then a course that just provides checklists for setting up and running apache.

-Chris

Identical troll , different day

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, try pasting some phrases from this post into Google - for example
"integrate the shareware version of Linux"
which caught my eye for some reason.

Nice to see some re-use though, well done for that.

MCSE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm a self-tuaght MCSE from a few years back and am now a self-taught Linux admin. One does wonder if the MCSE-slaggers on /. are real IT workers with experience to base their bias on, or just students who think they know it all :)

I agree that the exams, when I did them on NT4, were rubbish, but the learning process - if you study the material propoerly - does force you to cover topics that you might otherwise ignore.

We all know that Windows is boring and easy, but that doesn't make all MCSEs stupid.

Re:MCSE

[Clover_Kicker]

>if you study the material propoerly - does force you to cover topics
>that you might otherwise ignore.

Yeah, but the MCSE focuses on some really stupid minutia, and ignores a lot of important things.

Quick, what's the maximum length of an IDE cable?

Many moons ago, before the MCSE became popular, I sat down and did a sample test for the MSDOS exam. I failed, because I had never used whatver lame backup utility was bundled with DOS 6.22, and there were several questions about it.

I immediately got my co-worker the DOS guru to write the sample test, which he of course failed, for the same reason.

That's the only time I've ever heard anyone refer to the bundled DOS backup utility - a topic best ignored.

Re:MCSE

[TClevenger]

Exactly. I failed a sample test back in the Windows 95 days because I had to tell them which keystrokes will get me Safe Mode, or Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Did you know that each one has a different set of keystrokes? I always just hit F8 and selected from the list.

I got burned on the same test because I had to look at a the dropdowns to figure out whether they had the options under the Tools menu, File menu or Edit menu (because of course PC apps can put them anywhere.)

Go to India!

[Anonymous Coward]

My company has just outsourced all its training to India, it is much cheaper. Try these guys for RedHat. A colleague said the course was excellent and the massage girls in the hotel most accomodating.

Oh, please!

[OhHellWithIt]

Don't throw me in that briar patch!
(Around here, they've got that stupid NT stuff!)

SAIR Certification

[Muddle]

SAIR

Start with a hard distro...

[KermitJunior]

I would recommend you start with Gentoo and move to Debian or Suse.

Before I'm modded flamebait, here's why:
1)Gentoo has some of the best install documents in the Linux community
2)It requires that you set up a lot of things by hand (system logger, kernel if you choose expert, etc)
3)It has some of the best forums/support around. Even Gentoo critics admit this.

After you get gentoo working on your box, wipe it and reinstall. After the fourth or fifth time, you'll actually have learned something. Then wipe and install Debian:
1) Debian has the largest volunteer following.
2) Deb has one of the simplest updgrade paths
3) If you choose stable, its old but very secure.
4)Suse is pretty darned awesome, too.
5)Then make a customized patched kernel for the heck of it.

Just my two cents. I took the Gentoo->Debian Road for the simple reason of learning and it helped.

Re:Start with a hard distro...

[zardinuk]

You didn't say why NOT to stick with gentoo. It has a pretty big following, maybe not the BIGGEST but it's sufficient. How is the debian upgrade path any simpler than gentoo? It seems the only reason someone wouldn't use gentoo is because of the lack of installer.

I use gentoo for everything, and portage is the most incredibly useful tool ever to come out of the linux community IMO. I haven't even bothered with Debian since about 1998, so enlighten me if you please.

Re:Use it at home/Choose your curriculum

[dbcookcan]

I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. I might add though that you should have a good idea of what your curriculum might be.

Take a look at the RHCE curriculum from Red Hat. I was very impressed at the breadth of the program while still maintaining an open-source fairly platform agnostic approach to learning *ix. In other words, they make you learn how/why rather than being a vendor sponsored marketing/upgrade program. FWIW I also thought I needed to put my $ where my mouth was so I took the RH300 fast-track course and I must admit is was _tough_ based on the mandatory elements in the exam. I think they did a good job and I'm proud to say I passed this program.

P.S. MCSE = Must Consult Someone Else

Unix Tools On Windows

[stan_freedom]

Along with other /. recommendations, I suggest the user install a Unix toolkit on his Windows workstation at work. Then he can experiment with Unix/Linux tools in a "friendly" environment as well as compare them to Windows commands.

In particular, I suggest the user becomes familiar with the vi editor, as it will be required for many tasks, and is the most difficult of the basic sysadmin skills to master.

Three words: LFS

[toolshed7]

Linux from Scratch. I learn more about linux and which commands to use than any other tool. You learn the actually commands, because there is no X at first, there is no distro tools. You learn the terminal and how linux works...but let me tell ya...it is not hard, but time consuming..if u think u know linux...try lfs.

Linux learning

[flipperman]

Having just gone through your exact situation, I feel at least somewhat qualified to give my opinion. I found lsf to be very useful. If you are like me (just in my forties) then you probably have some ancient experience with the DOS command line. I would strongly recommend going cold turkey and not using the GUI in whichever distro you choose as your learning environment. I also strongly recommend a subscription to the O'reilly safari bookshelf and the following three books: the infamous 'cowboy' book, "running linux" and the pocket guide of same, and the "essential system administration' pocket reference. I fouund the sys admin ref book to be especially useful because of it's task based format. This is stuff that we do on a daily basis with a straightforward way of doing it. Anyway, just my two cents. Best of luck to you.

Get RedHat training/certification

[walterbyrd]

I don't like the vendor specific aspect but:

- the training and the exam is "hands on" and therefore better respected.

- when you get the cert, you have something to show for your effort.

- if you were paying for the training yourself, then I might agree with all the "set up your own network" posters here. But since your employer is paying, I'd go with redhat. Besides, I think your present experience is way past the "set up your own network" stage.

Re:Use it at home (ADMIN it)

[gosand]

As someone who learnt Linux at home, then took some classes, then became an instructor, I think most people who learn from home's knowledge holes are gaping.

As a lot of people have. There are few who know it all, the key is knowing what you don't know, and learning what you need to know. Do I need to set up an LDAP server at home? Or a Mailserver? Or how to portmap my jigger to my thingamabob using Skalzor's port analyzer? Yes, I could probably learn all these things, but would I unless I needed to? Those are holes, but they may not need to be filled.

Basic stuff like quotas. How the kernel knows where the root partition is. What the difference between the exire time in an SOA record and the TTL in the zone file is.

Sorry, but you don't need to know any of that to be a sysadmin. You need to know how tools like netstat, nmap, etc work. You need to know grep, awk, sed, vi, ssh, and a host of others. You can easily learn those at home. There are things you may need in a "real job" that you might not learn at home, like how to set up a mail server, or how to set up a website. Sure, you CAN do that stuff at home, but you may not. If you have never set up a mail server, there is a LOT to learn. You don't want to do trial-and-error at a place of business. There should be classes out there that address this exact problem - "The 20 Things You Need to Know to be a Linux System Administrator in a Business".

I have been using Linux for 6+ years, and Unix before that. I am still learning things. I just wiped my main machine (Redhat 7.3) and installed Mandrake 10.0 on it. It was a learning experience. Things just work a little differently. I used to have a nice fetchmail/pine setup going, but it took me several days to get it back. WTF is this Postfix thingy? What pieces do I need, which ones can I disable? Hmm, kmail works but pine doesn't? All little things that had to be figured out, and there was nobody breathing down my neck about it either. FYI - you can get pine working with maildirs without patching it with this nice little hack. Many thanks to the author, I was pretty much at the end of my rope with this one.

That is what I like about Linux - when it works, it works well. When it doesn't work, it is fixable. Yeah, I could have just switched to mutt or some other text mail reader that supported Maildirs, but I am stubborn and knew there had to be a way to get it to work. And I like pine!

"Easy" distributions are hard enough

[DogDude]

I disagree. As a Linux newbie, I've tried Mandrake and SUSE in the past month, and there was plenty that I couldn't figure out. They're difficult enough without introducing more problems. I gave up on these two distributions after installing Firefox on both of them, then spending several hours trying to find the program to run after I installed it. No shortcuts anywhere. No idea what path it installed into. Couldn't even find an executable file on the drive! I think that a distribution even MORE user unfriendl than these would be so damn frustrating, that any nrmal person would throw the comptuer through a window.
I say if you want to start at home, start on an empty box, with the easiest one out there, to see if you can figure out the basics (I couldn't, but then again, my job isn't being an admin, so I wasn't willing to work for days and days on it). Once you get stuff figured out on something like Mandrake, THEN install a harder one.

Use At Home, Get O'Reilly's LPI Cert Guide

[saudadelinux]

From Amazon That way, you'll have a somewhat more structured learning path.

Experiment

[hunte]

Try to replace a typical Windows Server of your Company.

You can learn more with simple tasks: implement a little samba configuration, a
simple apache+php site with some users auth (htaccess), a print server, etc...

You can "build" your linux skills really fitting your needs, try to look at
The Linux Documentation Project...

The distro is not really important. Form the Windows world I can suggest a modern distro, based on
RPM or DEB (like RedHat, Mandrake, Debian...).

If you work for Company (so Oracle DB, Qlogic Hardware, etc...), probably you can choose RedHat (or Tao Linux http://taolinux.org/...)

Important MEssage from Redmond, WA

[borg007]

Bill Gates asks: Why don't you find another job that still uses Windows?

Linux Administration Tutorials

[adgriffi]

I would say install linux at home (try something like Gentoo Linux), and spend a lot of time working with it.

There is a set of tutorials going from Basic to Advanced Linux Administration linked here, and a direct link to the tutorials here.

Good luck and enjoy Linux - it can be a lot of fun!

the way all those angry little characters say...

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFM l4m4h!$%£

Learn an editor

[chud67]

As a linux sysadmin you will be editing a lot of config files, so one of the most important things you can learn is a text editor. Most of the admins I work with use Vi, and I recommend it highly. An excellent book that can help you learn is "Vi Improved" by Steve Oualline. If you just read the first couple of chapters you will probably know enough to get by quite well in Vi. If you read the whole book you will be a true "power user" of Vi. Best of luck to you. Enjoy the ride!

Don't Eat The Elephant In One Bite

[theManInTheYellowHat]

Try a small distro and make it a print server for your home network. Then make it a SMB server and then maybe a database server or mail server.

Focusing on small facets of the problem will allow you understand the problems at hand.

I also think that some of the full blown distros will have gui's that will trick you into thinking that you understand what is going on (just like Windows) when you rely on good docs and CLI with error messages you get a clear understanding of the fundamentals.

Yggdrasil!!!!

[KlomDark]

That's what first brought Linux into my mental event horizon. I'd been reading HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, then was reading something computer related a week or so later, and the word Yggdrasil caught my eye in "Yggdrasil Linux". I had to find out what this was! So yah, I'm old - I remember it. :) What ever happened to it? Was it the thing that should not be?

Re:Use it at home (ADMIN it)

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think you need to know quotas to be a sysadmin? Or basic kernel setup? So how is your network in Fantasyland doing these days? Seriously, congratulations on getting your basic mail function running, you must be teh 3733t h4x0r for sure.

RTFM

[tburt11]

When I started learning (Unix at UCSB) in '81, a printout of the UNIX man pages was about all there was. Plus the Richie "C" book and some Guides.

Start with the basics. Learn vi and shell scripting. Read every (basic) man page you can find. Try all the options. Then try to accomplish something with what you have learned.

Give yourself a few years to come up to speed. It won't happen overnight.

Remind me

[nightsweat]

Remind me to never take a job at a place you've just left.

If you're in charge of systems, you have a responsibility to do things right. "Good enough" ends up being "f*cking expensive" to maintain and upgrade two years down the road.

Re:Remind me

[tverbeek]

Remind me to never take a job at a place you've just left.

Why, do you think I somehow infect my employers with this attitude before I leave? I don't like to settle for "good enough" and it's one of the reasons I'm not at that place any more. I was one of the guys pushing to "do it right" whenever possible. But if settling for "good enough" and saving some money in the short term is the only way to ensure that company exists two years from now, then it's a perfectly sound business strategy, and I'm adult enough to recognise that even if I don't like it.

If you're in charge of systems, you have a responsibility to do things right.

If you're in charge of systems, you have a responsibility to run them the way the owner of those systems wants them run. A techie who insists on "do it right" when there simply isn't time or money for that, and the boss simply wants "good enough", will be invited to leave... and appropriately so. It's like a neat freak being married to a slob: it's good for neither of them. So get out of there and find someone you're compatible with.

Re:Remind me

[nightsweat]

Over 18 years, I've cleaned up behind enough "good enough" installs to know that you can always do the job right. It's your job not only to run the systems but to educate the business about what the right solution is. If you don't push back when you get an absurd request you're just filling a chair.

If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it over?

Re:Remind me

[tverbeek]

Over 18 years, I've cleaned up behind enough "good enough" installs to know that you can always do the job right.

Over 20 years, I've seen that in the real world, sometimes you can't. Time and money are finite, and when there isn't enough to "do it right" (e.g. no time for training, no money to hire a consultant), and "don't do it" isn't an acceptible option, then "good enough" is necessary. I'm not talking about incompetence or apathy (which seems to be the problem you've been cleaning up after), but about when hack work is actually the best solution possible.

It's your job not only to run the systems but to educate the business about what the right solution is. If you don't push back when you get an absurd request you're just filling a chair.

And what (besides poor reading skills) leads you to believe that I don't understand - and do - that? The fact that I've sometimes lost that argument, and then did what the winning side wanted... that's not "just filling a chair", it's "doing my job". If I were to keep insisting that we do it right or not at all, I'd have to hit the highway (by their choice, not mine).

If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it over?

Would you care to join me in this conversation? Who said anything about doing it over? I'm talking about situations in which you barely have a chance to do it once, and management (having been educated by me about the realities of what they're demanding) knows that you're not going to get a chance to go back and do it again, but that's what they decide to do because that's better for the company than not doing it at all. Maybe you've been lucky enough never to have been in that situation (which is why you seem to be superimposing events from your own history over what I'm describing), but that doesn't change the fact (and my original point) that some employers do value a techie who can pull off "good enough" work when there isn't time to "do it right", and despite the fact that this isn't the way you - or I - would want to work, it's how the world sometimes works. Remind me not to turn to you for help next time I'm in a situation like that.

The correct answer is "All of the Above" (& be

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I would strongly urge you to do both. Get a cheap computer and install Linux on it at home or at work (2 computers is even better, plus a Windows and Mac box, but go with what you can). Install RedHat if that's what you'll be using at work, otherwise go with whatever you like. (I think SuSe is a rising star for business, though!)

Then sign up for a course. For your main course, do not choose an e-course. You want to sit in a classroom with a real instructor on their network.

Meanwhile, play with your Linux stuff at home/work, and write down all your questions. Ask them at the class if they don't get covered there.

If you can find anyone with an old set of _Unix Review_ magazines, read those. There is a ton of excellent info there.

Look into the local Unix and Linux groups, and check those out. Since you don't seem to have a good relationship with a guru, you can at least start getting to know some - and they will come in handy.

Finally, I love anything at all by O'Reilly (www.ora.com). They really are responsible for a huge percentage of the *nix knowledge a lot of us know. There are other good books, too, but ORA has more of the good stuff than anyone else.

5 commands to Linux Mastery

[sloth jr]

ls
cd
mv
cp
man

Start with "man man". Most important man variation is "man -k someconcept" - eg, "man -k kernel". This will show man pages that purportedly have something to do with someconcept (in reality, that have "someconcept" as a substring in their description).

These 5 commands can help bootstrap anyone on a linux or unix system (unless you are so unfortunate to have a box that does not contain man pages).

sloth_jr

Just change the back slash to forward slash

[sparkywonderchicken]

I thought it was that simple.........

A machine at work, and at home.

[blanks]

Have your company buy a few development machines. Choose a distro to use, and install it on these machines, as well as one at home. Pick a subject that you would need to tackle, for example setting up a webserver. read the docs that come with your linux distro, and just take the steps, its one of the best ways to learn linux, learn by using it, and you will also learn the steps you will need to your job too. Then you can start learning the more difficult tasks, and once your company is ready to make the change, so you will (and other people in your department, if any).

Drivel and Screen Graffiti

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading through several screens of "responses" I conclude that most of you have not actually answered the original question.. What you need to remember is that in the real world, a business cannot easily afford downtime in its IT systems.. and needs as close to a full a guarantee that it can rely on its systems and its people to perform in a way that allows the business to function. Taking a chance on "Self taught at home" is not going to fly with the managers.

find a LUG

[Anonymous Coward]

The consensus seems to be to use all of the resources at hand -- which is a very geek thing to do. That said, I'll throw out another resource -- the local Linux User Group. As a repository of knowledge and a resource a LUG can be phenominal.

Re:Use it at home (ADMIN it)

[gosand]

You don't think you need to know quotas to be a sysadmin? Or basic kernel setup?

It might be nice, but gee, it really depends on what kinds of systems you are administering now, doesn't it? You think that basic kernel setup is something that a newly converted MS Admin needs to know? (original question here)

So how is your network in Fantasyland doing these days? Seriously, congratulations on getting your basic mail function running, you must be teh 3733t h4x0r for sure.

Typical AC. Brag about yourself, demonstrate what a small world you live in, then insult others - all cloaked in Anonymity. Boy, you really got me there - you made it seem like I thought I was being an etite (sic) hacker. I get it, funny. Wow, are you clever. You are so much better than me. You are Captain Kirk, to my uhh, I don't know, I don't watch that stupid show. Someone help me out here. You are a veteran, I am a newbie, right? That is why you responded, after all, to demonstrate to the world how great you are. Instead of being helpful, you can sit in your anonymous world and role-play. Thank you for not coming out into the real world, we are doing just fine without you.

They should Fire you

[mrnick]

They should FIRE you and HIRE someone that has the proper skills. There are so many unemployed people out there just waiting for a job like yours. Heck they could most likely hire in someone for less than you are being paid. I have seen way too many people jump on the IT BOOM era with MCSE in hand screaming Yahoooo all the way. Problem is many of those people that truly need to be displaced into another industry have miraculously hung onto their jobs taking away from the people that have real skills. If you have been in IT for 5 years and all you know is Microsoft Windows you might think of working in the fast food industry or retail sales. I hear Home Depot is hiring. Any Linux Administrator could do your MS Windows Admin job with one hand tied behind his back. I got MCSE certified in 3 days and I didn't know any more about windows when I went in than after I came out. I learned how use a keyboard with DOS and a mouse with win 3.1 and those are truely the only skills you need to be a MS Windows Admin.

If I was your boss I would FIRE FIRE FIRE YOU!

Nick Powers

The best training isn't at home

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't agree more. The chances are that the "problems" that you have to solve at home are different to those at work. It's not just that you've a more complex network at work, you're (hopefully) doing different stuff there.

For example. at work I'm sure you'll have some applications that are distributed as binaries only; installing those and not losing complete control of the versions of other software on the box (couoraclegh) may well be a challenge, it's unlikely that you'll get that at home. You'd "just use an other application" - but that isn't an option if "the business runs on it".

Another, very important, problem that you probably won't face at home is Explaining To Someone Else How The Hell It All Works.

Courses augment, not replace, self-learning

[KWTm]

Agree with parent: classroom/formal learning has its place.

Consider this: you've been a geek, and a Windows admin-geekfor 5 years. Admittedly, you are capable of learning rapidly just from books and experimenting. So, fine, you can do it the "sink or swim" way with Slackware or Gentoo or Linux From Scratch, and at the end of that you can emerge triumphant from the guts of Linux knowing that you really know the system well. But wouldn't it be much faster to go through the formal training, to give yourself structure and direction in learning? With a bit of classroom learning, couldn't you direct your self-learning that much better? (Admittedly, one of the drawbacks with classroom learning is that it can hold you back, so make sure that you get your own computer in classroom learning so that you can zoom off on your own rather than wait for the lecturer to get through the topics in his/her slow plodding way.)

Build a new machine

[phorm]

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.

Which is why I used a spare PC, and others I know picked up cheap used ones. You don't need superduper hardware to run 'nix as a server, and in fact the most expensive part is often the monitor. In fact, starting a new PC from scratch is a bit easier and has its own benefits - mainly that once your down, you have a spare machine to use as a personal NAT/FTP/webserver, etc etc.

I got started in 'nix when I built my own cheapee webserver on a P200 I had laying around. You can pick one up in the buy-and-sell for peanuts, or if you want a desktop a P2/400 /w 128MB+ (256 recommended) will do just fine.

Stupid Nerd

[Run4yourlives]

This is why they don't let people like you near the money.

Do you have any idea how much it costs to hire a person these days, both in up front costs and other employee's (as in HR) time?

Don't you think it would be cheaper to hang on to the person you know and trust by simply retraining them?

Ok so you're probably trolling... but there are many out their that do think exactly like your comment... usually unemployed, because although they know a lot about the computer world, they know nothing of business.

Continued learning

[phorm]

For any linux admin, if you stopped learning when you finished your course (or started a job), then you're probably not a great admin.

Nobody "knows it all." You might know enough to get the job done, but there are almost endless avenues which one can explore to enhance that knowledge (get the job down better, faster, or in a more automated fashion). If anything, I've learned more/faster since I took up my primary SysAdmin-style job.

Also, if you can handle stress... the fastest way to learn how something works is to have it not work. I've speed-learned any number of things when an odd problem came up (and there have been some very unusual ones).

So really, a quick course will get you quickly started, and fill in some of the basics that might require some personal stumbling. There's enough new to learn and enough personal habits to develop that for most people, as long as you're willing to realize that there is more to learn and go for it.

Once you've got your basic CLI args, config files, etc... you can always move into learning more about BASH scripts, PERL, new applications, and various other avenues (and let us not forget, cool new games, of course).

Using at home != learning to network admin

[snosql]

You need to familiarize yourself with the unix feel as most here have suggested. But if you are going to be sys admin, *just* installing/using on your home machine won't do you a whole lot of good. Using != administering. I don't use NIS or LDAP at home on linux, but I do at work. I don't evern bother with NFS at home though I do use a trivial Samba setup. There are a lot of things you might do when administering a network of linux/unix machines that you wouldn't do when using linux as your desktop os at home. i.e., I know window quite well, and have used for long time, but I couldn't administer it for shit (services/security/updates). A couple of suggestions: 1. take a ADMIN course as you are looking into. I would install linux as a desktop os at home to familiarize yourself with it for a month before taking the admin course. the more familiar you are with it the more you will get out of the admin course. I would install a "just works" distro like Mandrake/Suse/RedHat, as most likely your course will focus on Suse or Redhat anyway. Take debian/slack/gentoo later ( you may find them easier than M/S/RH once you know linux). 2. install linux at home on *multiple* machines. Two should be enough. set up stuff that you would use in industry like NIS/LDAP, NFS, etc, etc. No matter what, you will learn more on the job than anywhere else so...

If you have only one system?

[Potader]

When I made the switch to linux, I had only one system. I bought a set of removable HD cases and had a drive for Linux and a drive for Windows. I started out mainly running Windows as my primary OS, then I would shutdown, switch out the drive and boot linux (don't know which flavor - but I installed it from floppies). Then I would decided what I wanted to accomplish - format a floppy, start X, email, browser, dialup, etc. When done - successful or not, I'd would switch back to Windows. As time went on I found the the uptime on the Linux drive was longer and longer. Soon I was running for weeks, then months without swapping drives back to Windows. Now, of course, I don't use anything but Linux.

As far as "what" to focus on first - shell commands. You need to know how to delete, edit, copy, create files before you go mucking around with network settings. Knowing what's under the hood becomes a real plus when something stops working from the web browser or GUI utility.

LILO and root partition

[phorm]

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.

Indeed, you would likely be on the right track with this and find what you need... but for those that don't know, check /etc/lilo.conf

# Specifies the device that should be mounted as root. (`/')
#
root=/dev/hda2

# Specific LILO OS options
image=/path/to/kernel #usually /vmlinuz
label=Linux
read-only


So Mr. High-and-mighty parent before you seems a bit off himself. You see, the kernel doesn't really need to know where the root partition is (it should be mounted when you compile the kernel, as per /etc/fstab). However, the boot loader (generally lilo/grub) does need to know, and just by knowing lilo and seeing the comments or samples in lilo.conf your average admin could figure *that* one out...

Now, it seems to me that I've forgotten a bit about quotas. I'll have to go read up on that, I'd expect to have it down again in about, oh... 30-50 minutes.

More info please

[dinog]

I'm sure you would get better information from the Slashdot readership if you gave a few more details :

First, you don't tell us what distros you are considering. If it is Red Hat, then Red Hat training would be more useful than if you were going to use Suse for example.

Second, you give us no info about what you will be doing, and what your company will be doing on Linux. You say you are an administrator, but administering programmers and techs is a slight bit different that administering general office workers and non-techs. Also, is the system primarily for web, programming, databases, graphical design, or what ? If you need to handle office workers using Open Office, you might want a different distro than if you are running a bank of high volume web servers. You would also want to focus your learning a bit differently in each case.

Given that, I'd go with any distro specific training if it exists. I'd also look into learning the tools you may put on top of Linux. If you are going to use Apache or MySQL, then there a general Linux class will NOT cover the details adequately. You should look into additional training for any such tools and applications you may be using on top of Linux.

Also, the home learning crowd are right to a point. If you have a good home setup, you will have the option to play with the setup without fear of destroying essential data or looking silly when you try things for the first time. Reinstalling Linux because of such a mistake may be a lesson well learned, and perhaps good practice at a reinstall/recovery scenario. Also, it will teach you a little about learning on your own. Every answer is not in a book. If you depend too much on formal training and books, you may not cope well with situations not covered in such material.

Finally, I found in school that the classes were pretty much BS, but a few of the instructors were real gems. The best are often the most difficult, but also are open to debate. They force you to think for yourself, and don't rely much on the books. Often they expect you to know what is in the book, and the class goes forward from there. Instructors who only cover the book(s) are often a waste of your time.

Dean G.
There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.--George

Re:Use it at home (ADMIN it)

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo.

learning by doing is best

[JimmytheGeek]

The current schooling model (US k-12+) is actually intended to make people dumber. Literacy and math skills can be learned in very little time, but they usually aren't. So why is school done that way? Hmm. Probably the real lessons are in conforming to the demands of arbitrary authority. There's some history to this - as the U.S. education system developed, it copied Prussia, which CONSCIOUSLY lifted elements from Sparta.

The way people learn is by copying models that solve problems. They adapt those solutions to other things, and ka-BAM! Subject matter expertise. This is part of perl's success - there is a vast repository of stuff that does stuff, and the duffer/dillitante (me) can learn a lot very quickly by seeing what's up.

I took a program in network administration - almost entirely useless. But when I started solving problems in an internship, I picked up mad skeelz.

I think man pages would be more powerful if they routinely included examples of the most common usages of the command the man page describes. Some do.

I took an MS Authorized/Authored course along the standard 1 week lines (is it likely that every subject would fit into a 1 week module? Or is there procrustean marketing going on?). Good teacher, interesting war stories, course = teh sux0r.

I went to SANS, and had a great time in the IDS course. The difference was the orientation toward solving problems. Do things with tcpdump - grab every packet where the foo bit of the bar byte-offset-from-zero is flipped. Do things with Snort. I had a decent grounding in IP, and it got a lot stronger because rather than an abstraction, the knowledge let me answer questions - what is this traffic trying to do? What is weird about it?

So if you can find a class where the elements answer questions and solve problems, it will be worth doing. Something that is just an overview is useless. I think a "install a file server with proper regard for security and maintainability" is a good problem to solve.

tldp and others

[sad_]

is right here get the plucker files, put them on your pda. instant linux knowledge available anywhere, anytime.

as a distro, take a pick from one of the (easy) favourites: RH, suse, mandrake and learn the basics. don't use X, there is a console alternative for almost everything. when you got the console in your fingers it is time for your exam!

I Just started about 6 months ago...

[Team_Peppy]

I just got into Linux back in March, when I took a new Systems Admin job. I was a Windows Admin at my old job for the past 4 years, but my new job required more. We already had a Linux e-mail server in place running postfix. So I had to learn Linux in a hurry.

I purchased an older laptop at a garage sale for about $50 (pentium 233) and installed/re-installed Libranet(Debian) about a dozen times. The first 6 or 7 times I used GUI, since I was used to it and it helped me understand the boot process. The last 6 or 7 times, I used the command line to learn that mode. If you have more money, then I would set up a couple computers or a network and play with it. This way you could experiment with stuff at home first before using it in the workplace.

As soon as I started my new job, I put together a Linux desktop for everyday usage. I purchased a brand new system in pieces/parts, threw everything together and have been using it ever since. One thing I've learned is that the only true way to learn something is to dive in head first, especially in the workplace.

Next, I found out where the local LUG (Linux User Group) was located. I have gone to 2 of the meetings and learned a boatload of stuff. I've also made good friends with a couple of the other attendees, who have a lot more Linux-smarts than I, and I use them for serious questions/feedback when I run into problems.

I have also learned to utilize the distribution forums and other web sites like linuxquestions.org for a general idea of where I can find the right answers.

I have done a lot over the past several months, as I'm getting more knowledgable in Linux, like I just added an Anti-virus program to the e-mail server and cut viruses on the desktop to almost nothing, and I'm also throwing a lot more open source programs on new Windows boxes that I am setting up (like Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, and Clam for windows). I am currently working on setting up a proxy server with Dan's Guardian and Squid. I'm using the LUG for help with it, and I think it will be well worth the time invested.

I'd also like to take a class to learn some of the things I'm probably missing on a daily basis, but that will come in time. I really feel Linux is the way to go. With all of the different distro's out there, there is sure to be one that will be suited for you or your business' needs.

God Bless Linux and America, the land of opportunity and open source!

And Good Luck!

Yes, but it's not fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Although it's true that this is the way business works it still does not make it fair. When it comes down to it this guy most likely is not going to be able to be retrained. If he is he will NEVER have the skill set that someone that has been working with Linux for years that is currently looking for work could bring to a companies IT department.

Who cares how business works. Let's think about how the economy works. Who deserves the job more? The unemployed qualified person or this guy that most likely has never logged into a UNIX/LINUX machine? The economy would be better served if he moved onto another profession and let someone that deserves the job have it.

I total agree with the previous posters comments. He obviously has the pulse of the IT industry. These IT wannabes should go back to what they do best wanting to be! An MCSE and a quarter will buy you a phone call, or at least it should.

BLah!

The Linux Documentation Project

[Anonymous Coward]

The guys at TLDP have done a great job at piecing it together for the newbie. They also have things on advanced topics for high levels of experience. I suggest you visit their Guide's section. Pick up "Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide" @ www.tldp.org/guides.html, it's the right place to start.

Re:Use it at home (ADMIN it)

[Nailer]

> Basic stuff like quotas. How the kernel knows where the root partition is. What the difference between the exire time in an SOA record and the TTL in the zone file is.

Sorry, but you don't need to know any of that to be a sysadmin.

Don't apologize, that's only your opinion. It's existence doesn't prove my opinion wrong, nor do your arguments.

Do you think setting up a fileserver is or is not a common system adminsitration task?

Why does learning scripting tools make you a competant systems adminsitrator? Is awk required to be a good sysadmin? I know plenty of folk who know quite little awk and are very well regarded as admins.

There are things you may need in a "real job" that you might not learn at home, like how to set up a mail server, or how to set up a website.

Why would a potential administrator want to learn sed or awk more than how to set up a mail server? Since setting up a mail server has a practical outcome, whereas learning sed on its own doesn't, I doubt they'd find the motivation. My personal experience with lots of new admins (confession time: I train for Red Hat) shows that very few self taught admins have sed and awk skills, though they're much mroe likely to have tried setting up, say, Samba or Postfix.

Learning Varies

[AndyCanfield]

Different people learn in different ways, and they come out knowing different things. Most of the posters here learned on their own, and that's best, for them, because that's the kind of people they are. I learn best by reading the reference manual cover to cover (ever read the man pages in alphabetical order?). Remember, though - any book on Linux you see in a bookstore is obsolete. Some people learn best sitting in a class; I learn nothing sitting in a class. A college degree in Computer Science teaches you something valuable - it teaches you how to debug the damned program at 4AM. Classes teach facts; experienced teaches skills. Skills are more important. Remember - the first actual user will do something you never dreamed of. If your company judges on what certificates you've got, take the classes and get the papers. If the company judges on what you can do, just do it. Alone, quietly, invisibly. Don't let the boss hear you screaming.

User Mode Linux

[infolib]

set up a small network at home

And do it using User Mode Linux. UML is loosely spoken a way to simulate linux machines on top of another machine. Then you'll only need one machine, and you can experiment without needing to reinstall - backing up/restoring a UML machine is a matter of copying a single file.

Personally I've learned a lot from the Rute Linux Tutorial though it's a bit dated now.

No, it proves....

[fejes]

It proves that if you're smart, you don't need a CS degree.

Any idiot can get a CS degree, and any smart person can do the job of a CS person...

However, a smart person with a CS degree will do pretty well.

LPI Training

[pozitron]

I think the Linux Professional Insitute (LPI) certification is the best vendor neutral ticket out there. LPIC Level 1 certification is two exams LPI101 & 102 aimed at Junior Sysadmins, you'll need several years' hands on Linux experience before you start reviewing the exa objectives. More information ay http://www.lpi.org

Best Training in Linux Administration?

[bsnoel]

Our company found ourselves having to support more and more vertical apps running on Linux servers. The problem was we did not possess any real working knowledge of Linux. So, my employer sent me to the CompTIA Linux+ training class, primarily because it was the only Linux training available in our geographic area at the time. One nice thing about the class is that it is not distribution specific. The Linux+ class provided enough hands on training in the basics of Linux to get me started. After completing the class I no longer felt like I was stumbling around in the dark. Armed with a new basic understanding of Linux I felt confident enough to load Linux on my machines at home and start to really dig into Linux on my own. I'm still not an expert, but I've come a tremendous distance in a short time thanks to the Solid foundation that the CompTIA class provided me. I cannot say the CompTIA Linux Training is the best, but it is a good place to start if you are new to Linux.

LinuxCertified

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are considering a training class - in my opinion the absolute best Linux sysadmin class is offered by LinuxCertified. I have taken two of their classes. After being bitten very hard by another training vendor, I can recommend them without reservation.

http://www.linuxcertified.com/