Linux sysadmin

[kingcook]

Can anyone recommend a good course/book/exam that will help me become a good Linux sys admin?

I'm primarily a Perl developer but have done lots of work with Linux, like installing the O/S, installing/compiling software, iptables, networking, setting up web servers, databases, user/group admin, LVM.

One of the things I lack knowledge of is tuning the system for performance. I know how to run "top" but not sure what to do with the info!

[RasputinDude]

You may want to look at the RedHat Certified System Administrator course.

Red Hat | Training | Red Hat Certified System Administrator

[kingcook]

You may want to look at the RedHat Certified System Administrator course.

Red Hat | Training | Red Hat Certified System Administrator

Can do pretty much all of that already (but self-learned). It would be like my old college days where the tutor was trying to teach me how to program, but I knew more than him

Cheers for the link though, i'll dig around for a more advanced stage.

[RasputinDude]

Ultimately, there's no substitute for experience. If you can do most of that already, then you're most of the way there.

After that, I would suggest that most of your issues will be around topology, infrastructure and trying to keep rubbish application suites going. Oh and users, of course. No-one has yet found a way to get rid of the users stuffing things up.

[petergriffin]

Ultimately, there's no substitute for experience. If you can do most of that already, then you're most of the way there.

After that, I would suggest that most of your issues will be around topology, infrastructure and trying to keep rubbish application suites going. Oh and users, of course. No-one has yet found a way to get rid of the users stuffing things up.

^ This.

And: If you learn RHEL, you know RHEL, if you learn Slackware you know Linux.

[Addanc]

LPI

[RasputinDude]

And: If you learn RHEL, you know RHEL, if you learn Slackware you know Linux.

I have a certain amount of empathy with this statement. But let's face it, RHEL is a much more marketable skill than 'knowing slackware linux'.

[b0redom]

Ahh yes. I can see the conversation with the pimp now.

"I need someone with Centos or Redhat Enterprise Linux."
"I have Slackware - that's basically the same with a different kernel and config files in different places."
"Ah yes, but they say they want Centos or RHEL. I guess you're not a good fit. Goodbye."

[administrator]

IMO it would just depend on what you are looking to improve in terms of performance. If your system is running databases and top is showing they are hogging resource then it is that the code is not well optimised, that the database system is not optimised for the hardware or that the hardware is not good enough to meet the demands placed upon it.

As others have said a lot of this comes down to experience, knowing a bit about sysadmin is good, being able to identify if the database queries or the code layer are causing a problem can be worked out a lot of the time by examining slow queries - mtop I find really hand to indentify DB issues. Other times speed of system is simply down to disk IO and the only way to speed up systems is to improve hardware (use of SSD or SAS instead of SATA for example) but it really does depend on what you have running and where you are seeing bottlenecks.

Here are a few bits from my bookmarks:
20 Linux System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know
https://lwn.net/Articles/387202/
Postfix Performance Tuning

From what you have said you can do already you pretty much are a sysadmin. If you want to get work in this field then I guess it is the same as any new skill, blag a lower level position, learn as much as you can and after a year or two go contracting

[Cliphead]

From what you have said you can do already you pretty much are a sysadmin. If you want to get work in this field then I guess it is the same as any new skill, blag a lower level position, learn as much as you can and after a year or two go contracting

+1

VM's are your friend if you don't have spare hardware. I now use VM's to clone production systems so any signifcant changes can be tested before deploying on a live server. I also use the same to test new server OS versions, updates / upgrades and just about anything else that might make a performance improvement (other than physical hardware). Love my job as a sysadmin and I learn something new every day.

PS Security is just as important as performance tweaking and that's a whole topic in itself.