I’m sure that there are many takes on this, though I think it would be best if you could elaborate a bit on your situation so that answers will more closely apply.

Here are some questions that I think are of value.

How do you expect that your career will begin? This question is perhaps more for your own inner reflection, hopefully allowing for some personal discovery.

Do you have a goal for a 5 or 10 year milestone for your career as a Linux sysad?

Are you switching careers or simply beginning your career? If switching careers, what industry/industries have you worked in? Previous industry experience could help plot trajectory in a career switch.

What is you background in computing all-around? Do you have networking and/or programming chops?

What is is about Linux that interests you? Beyond Linux, any other FOSS that really interests you?

Do you have any marketable soft skills, such as being multi-linguistic?

Do you live in a metro or rural area? Willing to move?

Here’s how I became a Unix administrator long ago. Linux is more of same. I’d say it’s 2 steps. First learning to be a user, then an administrator.

I started with a CS degree, as a developer using Unix. You don’t need a CS degree for this though. It just helps to be somewhat technical.

Learning to be Linux User

I learned vi. Like really well. Learn to search and replace text, go to specific line, etc. Remember, on a Linux server, there is no GUI. You better know vi.

Learn how to customize your environment variables like PATH and ALIAS inside the shell config files like .bashrc.

Learn all the shell shortcuts like !109 to re-run the 109th command in your history, or !ps to run the last command that started with ps, or ^foo^bar to run the last command you type replacing foo with bar.

Next learn basic commands like awk/sed/grep/find/cut.

Now get really comfortable doing those same commands in a string of pipes, using xargs to turn the output of one program into the looped input of the next program.

find /home/me -name “*.conf” | xargs awk -F: ‘{print $2}’ | grep -v argh | cut -c2–10 | more

Find any file in /home/me ending in .conf, print out only the 2nd field of each file data separated by a colon, but don’t include any lines containing the word “argh,” and I only want characters 2–10. Shove it all into more so I can page through the results.

Still with me?

Now you’ve got some basic working knowledge as an end user.

Learning to be Linux Admin

Time to learn how to administer! Read a Unix/Linux operating systems book. Learn about the user space “sandbox” model, by which security is the core feature. Learn about filesystems/inodes, NFS, PAM, etc. I’m just randomly spewing out things. Basically, you need to know everything about the OS/kernel and how to monitor system resources using sar/top/dstat/iostat. 90% of the time, system slowness is due to I/O bottlenecks. IOWAIT is your new enemy.

Now after you know everything about the OS, time to learn networking. Pick up a book on the fundamentals of TCP/IP. Learn about routing protocols, what bridge vs. router is, why TCP vs. UDP, how to use netstat/tcpdump to analyze traffic, etc.

OK, you’ve read this far, so you really must want to be sys admin!

At this point, it’s time to learn how to secure Linux. Pick up more books on security. Learn how to secure the OS, what HTTPS/TLS are, and how to configure SSH for password-less access. “Least privilege” will become your mantra.

Better buy a book just on DNS and SMTP alone. These are core issue in Linux and deserve their own bible.

At this point you’ll know enough about Linux and Networking to do basic troubleshooting.

Time to pick up another book on how to kickstart OS installations automatically across the network.

Now pick another book on how to create and install Virtual Machines on your servers. Learn about KVM (free) or VMWare (not free).

OK, now you’re a basic Linux admin!

Remember what I said about CS degree not required? It does help to understand compilers and debuggers and know the basic difference between static vs. dynamically linked libraries, makefiles, etc. Long before yum and apt-get, administrators had to compile everything from source code.

Answered as: Can you give me a road map of what I need to know to be a Linux system admin (I am a programmer)?

Sure, but before I begin, I need to point out that I am a one-time President of the USENIX Association, which is the oldest and largest non-profit (501.3c) org in the world dedicated to systems, and systems administration. I’m not shilling for USENIX, although I do recommend my employees to join it. The association has helped me tremendously over my career, but of course YMMV.

Step one since you are interested in the UNIX world, get a copy of Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike’s superb text: “The Unix Programming Environment” (a.k.a. ISBN 0-13-937699-2 often referred to in the ‘biz’ as “UPE”). It can be found at most College/University libraries around the world, and at technical book stores (both brick or online). It’s also able as a PDF to be found “in the wild” by searching, but frankly, if you truly are interested, you are likely to want a real copy for your desk, along with your personal copy of K&R.😎

Step two read it and complete all of the exercises, including the ones that will teach you ed(1) and even the last one on how to use the document compilers nroff(1)/troff(1) which are now available as groff(1). Learning ed(1) will teach you how to really use the UNIX toolkit, such as find(1), sed(1), grep(1), and how to write real Bourne Shell scripts which will be the basis for many of the tasks you will need to be able to perform. [Frankly, learning BASH syntax is really not good enough - e.g. you’ll need to know the differences between the shells as you become a better and better/more experienced sys admin].

You are going to ask why? Those seem like ‘old’ technologies. But so much of the modern tools are based on what they provide. Much of the ‘magic’ when someone taught you magical UNIX/Linux incantations before will go away and a bit of ‘ah ha’ should come to you.

Step three download the booklet: “JOB DESCRIPTIONS FOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS, 3D EDITION REVISED” from the USENIX website. This was written by system admins for system admins. Note the book will describe what skills you need besides just Linux systems BTW. But Linux and UNIX skills are well covered.

The author/editor, Tina, describes a number of different types of system admin positions and the needed experiences and skills to get those types of jobs. Some of them are likely to require a college course or two and possibly an associate's degree or better. If you have no degree, that is not necessarily bad, but remember that you could be competing with people that BS/MS from very well regarded places like UC Berkeley (like the author), or CMU, and the like.

The key is if you discover a skill that is missing, then find a way to get that skill. Online courses may be good enough, but formal courses at continuing education and colleges might be needed.

BTW: one of the often discusses issues is getting a formal ‘Certification’ from Cisco, Red Hat, Microsoft, or the like. My personal experience is I have never hired anyone because they had the same nor made it a requirement. My guess is that requiring the same helps a hiring manager that does not know the technology to feel comfortable that you do. As a some time creator of some/many of these technologies, I can easily tell in an interview or other work setting the depth of an applicant's knowledge, so if you have the experience I can typically detect you know something or not.

If you have good expertise on Linux OS, Networks, Administration and Troubleshooting, you would have superb growth as a Linux Administrator/Operations Engineer/Site Reliability Engineer/Devops Engineer.

Show me some proof

There are plenty of indicators which point to the growing demand of Linux Administrator, in general folks who have expertise on building, managing, automating, troubleshooting and maintaining IT Infrastructures. Some of those are,

• This graph shows you the emergence of cloud, its growth and future predictions (Image Credits: Forrester Research, Inc. ). And when it comes to cloud, the favorite OS is Linux

• Almost all top web companies in the world including Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, and how could we forget Google, use linux based infrastructures on the server side. I dont have to tell you the size and scale at which they operate. To maintain this infrastructure, they obviously need linux geeks.
• Almost everything we do today, we have an app for it. To order food, to call a plumber, to call a cab, to track health parameters, to read books, to connect with friends etc. Now have you ever thought about how many users does WhatsApp, or Uber, or in India Flipkart, Zomato, Ola supports? Where does the data for each of them get stored, retrieved, processed? You need huge backend infrastructure, most likely on cloud, which again uses linux servers.
• A lot of devices including home routers, DTH, Smart TVs, Car Computers use embedded or a customized version of linux. Now who needs to created, manage those images? Ofcourse someone with expertise on linux.

There are lot many indicators which point to high demand in present and in future for linux administrators and likes. Above should suffice to convince you. Lets now talk about what should you know just apart from linux, which serves as a foundation.

Hot Skills

Again, if you are a Linux Systems administrator, you should definitely consider getting a better bredth on what are also tagged as Devops Tools and Practices including,

• Cloud and Virtualization : AWS, Vagrant, Openstack
• Containers: Docker and Family
• Configuration Management : Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt
• Continuous Integration/Deployment : Jenkins, Capistrano, Rundeck etc. from Admin Perspective
• Log Management: ELK Stack, Graylog2 etc.
• Performance Monitoring: New Relic, Graphite, Ganglia etc.
• Health Monitoring: Nagios, Zabbix, Sensu etc.
• Big Data Administration: Hadoop and family

If you acquire the above skills, or atleast one skill from each practice, you would have much better opportunities as Devops Engineer which is a highly pursued position. There is huge demand, and it will remain so for near foreseeable future.

My friend first you have to start with some basic course like RHCSA and RHCE. Once you will be certified in these start searching job on the basis of these courses as I have did way back after my graduation. You have to understand all the basic level concepts of OS and kernel deeply. Don't go further till you are not able to go through the basics fully because if you are not clear with basics then moving further is of no use. Try to make your self good in shell script as well. This is the thing in which if you get perfection then your life will be lot more easier as a system admin.

At last but not least at the starting stage try to focus on smaller or emerging companies because this is I am telling you from my personal experience that in smaller or emerging companies though salary is less but you will learnt a lot because they have lot of work with them. You can be make yourself perfect in Linux. Best of luck buddy.

• get acquainted with linux commandline.
• get acquainted with linux boot process (at least systemd (80%) and upstart (10%))
• get acquainted with services and ways to enable/disable/access them (ssh, firewall, database, web server, container services)
• get acquainted with ways to _restrict_ access (PAM, firewall, internal user configs,..)
• get acquainted with logs, both from system and from services - to be able to understand what’s going as expected and what’s not.
• get acquainted with ways to update the system, prefer ways that do not disrupt operation or minimize downtime, find out the lists and forums that post new CVEs for your system stack and update ASAP, report found vulnerabilities and help package maintainers to issue updates (that you would need to install)
• get acquainted with ways to provide and manage high availability.
• get acquainted with the ways to manage the system remotely - first through SSH, then through puppet or any other software.
• get acquainted with ways to store and analyze logs remotely (logstash, grafana, rsyslog, syslog-ng,..)

And that would be your start. 8-)
You would also need tons of practice and possibly help from colleagues - don’t be afraid to ask for (or, once you’re good - to propose) a helping hand.

As long as you understand security, performance and availability concerns, you’d be able to figure the right solution. Don’t forget to document the choices.

Generally I’d say:

1. General systems administration. Start here and spend 3–5 years here before specializing. The more you understand about basic and fundamental SA work, the better off you’ll be down the road. And even now there’s often a palpable need for skilled senior-level Linux SAs in many companies.
2. Security. Tightly secure systems. Very much in demand these days.
3. Programming. Embedded programming - e.g., for devices of various types, IoT, etc. - as an example but you might actually write kernel code too, if you find C/C++ programming is your bag.
4. Networking. Some SAs never end up touching network devices but most do. Learning about IP routing, switching, firewalls, load-balancers, etc. - all of which can be implemented in Linux - may very well cross your path and you might find you like networking.
5. DevOps. It’s huge and it’s important. This is where infrastructure and app deployment/monitoring/management has been and will be going for the foreseeable future. You’ll almost certainly want to learn the basics of CM tools like Puppet, Ansible, and/or Chef and a bit around coding (Ruby, Python, PHP) to enhance and deepen your understanding and usefulness. CI/CD tools like Jenkins are good to know as in many companies, startups especially, you’ll be very involved in code deployment.
6. SRE (Site Reliability Engineering). Sort of a merge of traditional SA + DevOps + networking + storage + who knows.
7. Storage. Linux is central to a lot of storage platforms these days like Gluster, Ceph, DBRD, etc. Or just knowing how to setup a basic iSCSI NAS and NFS is useful.
8. Cloud. This could be around existing public clouds like AWS and Rackspace but you could certainly specialize in private cloud solutions like OpenStack, which has most of the mindshare, or perhaps CloudStack, an Apache project that used to be called cloud.com and was purchased by Citrix some years ago and ultimately released to the OSS community.

The world of SAs has changed a LOT in the last 5 years especially. The first 15 years of my career our world was pretty traditional and predictable. The rush of cloud technologies and tools and toolkits has been truly boggling. You’ll need/want to be nimble and be willing to completely shift gears every 2–3 years. You can certainly find your niche and specialization and live there for the majority of your career but you’ll still have to fight to be relevant within that niche. The truth is that good solid technically skilled people are extremely rare. Guru level super smarties even moreso. Just make sure you have that good SA foundation and it should take you far.

Get a raspberry pi. Set it up as a workstation with monitor, keyboard, and a mouse. Install and uninstall programs. Get it on the network. Every time you run into a problem: read, read, read. Linux and UNIX manuals are dense but usually quite accurate.

At first concentrate on learning vi, bash, sed, awk, grep, sort, uniq, and wc. Also pick up an easy to learn language. I recommend Python. Then learn regular expressions in grep, awk, and Python. These are the fundamental tools of a Linux/UNIX administrator.

Once you are comfortable with Linux, buy a second raspberry pi and set it up as a headless (no monitor, mouse, or keyboard) server. Install a cloud environment on it. Learn ansible and use it to setup and modify the headless server. Learn git and use it to maintain your ansible system.

This will get you started. And it will give you a working system to test anything you are curious about. You can then go to school or specialized courses with a strong foundation. You will be able to concentrate on learning the course material and not spending the bulk of your time just getting it together.

If you pursue a career in computing of any sort you will be reading and learning a lot. The view is worth the climb…

Ouch !

That’s gonna hurt. And it ain’t gonna be easy or quick.

Unless you are willing to put yourself through the grinder, I’d say it is near impossible to make such a jump.

One without any IT experience, needs to have experience to become a Linux (or any OS) sysadmin. If it is not coming to you by education, it needs to come through lowly (grunt) work. Find a job on the graveyard shift as what used to be known as a console operator. This person comes in around 10–11 PM and until 7–8 in the morning, it sits in fromt of a screen and if something goes critical or RED on the screen, he/she follows a procedure to notify the personnel who are in charge of fixing the problem. It is a mind numbing job on most days. But when doo-doo hits the fan and the remote admin has problems accessing the site, said admins will be so willing to give a crash course on whatever ailment is out there, to this console operator, walking him/her through the troubleshooting process. Experiences like these add up over time. Not a short time but they add up. And if you are an apt pupil, you study in your free time during your shifts and enhance your knowledge. And one day, out of the blue sky, a junior sysadmin position opens and you pounce on it. If you have a good work ethic and good knowledge of the systems already, you are ahead of the curve compared to any other outsider, who may want this job.

And once hired, it is up to you to advance your knowledge, if you want to hang on to that position. As we say around here, a sysadmin’s life is never dull. You go out to lunch one day. When you come back your knowledge is stale and you are redundant. Technology changes too fast not to keep up with it. If you don;t learn continuously on this job, you are history and might as well not bother.

I have been a system administrator for a little while now, at least with a title. Before that I was a freelance administrator for multiple businesses and before that I was an administrator intern. I am a senior in college and last year I received a call from my former highschool about a job opening in their IT department. They needed a new Systems Admin and I was around when the network was initially built, so I had the most knowledge to start immediately. This isn't a huge position but I maintain a school network for around 500 students, and 60 staff members. (Kids really put stress on what you consider reliable.)

Things I've learned to do while I have been an admin:

1. Be extremely task oriented. Know how to break tasks up and get them done in faster increments. Show some kind of progress every day you're at work.
2. Make a relationship with your “end users” and understand what the user experience is like for them. Sometimes what you think is working, isn't.
3. Figure out if the solutions you're working on are really the right ones. This might be specific to my environment but I have found that often the solution in place, or the software that's most popular isn't the best way to do something.
4. Never stop learning. Software and requirements change at an incredible pace. It's impossible to know every procedure and routine for every task so make sure you know how to learn this information quickly while in the middle of a job.
5. Take methodical notes. This should probably be at the top of the list as it works with everything else here. Document everything, steps you use to solve problems, settings when you first install new software, and all your methodology for maintenance, and your routine, all of it.

I may have a different viewpoint from most administrators you'll find here, but while balancing a complicated life, college and work, you'll find that these suggestions make your work so much easier to manage and they show that you can manage tasks you're given. I now head the IT efforts of a highschool with a staff and administrative status all while I am still in college, so something must be working.

A Systems Admin has to know “a little about everything” . In my last SA job we had to know, In addition to Linux, VMware vsphere , Sans/Storage, (EMC) Fibre Channel switches, Cloud Computing , server hardware (HPE and IBM blade servers) , Windows AD (yes even for Linux Admins,) Solaris, AIX, Scripting language, in this case Perl, and Powershell etc. Middleware such as Websphere , Monitoring such as splunk, configuration management (puppet). The list goes on and on.

The list will be different for each shop. You will always be in “learning” mode, and this will continue throughout your career. It is not necessary but helpful to have a college degree to get a job. Although most colleges will be oriented towards software engineering. In lieu of that I would get some certs in the area(s) you are interested in. If it is a Red Hat shop then RHCSA/RHCE . Otherwise LPIC should help. If you have a choice, go for Python instead of Perl. It is more widely used these days.

(edit)- I’ve forgotten you also need some Networking skills. The good news is

a) You probably can get away without learning router configs. Host based networking should be good enough. In most the shops I’ve worked , the networking group was always separate. and

b) You probably don’t need to know TCP/IP 6 (yet).

I don’t really mean to discourage you. At your skill level you should be able to get at least a desktop support job. Most of the above skills can be learned on-the-job. If you are a naturally curious person this is a good career to be in. After all you are just “playing” with computers!

I’m gonna disagree with many of the comments and say that Linux administrators are NOT going away, even if we face a short-term dip.

The reason is that underneath all the automation, all the self-serving platform and all the DevOps hype, you still have operating systems, networks and hardware that can’t be abstracted away and will always require specialised knowledge that only a good sysadmin has.

Ask yourself: if today my company had to move from AWS/Azure/GCP back to bare-metal, do we have the resources and skill to do it? Most people will probably say “that’ll never happen”. I say “ha”, just watch. Nothing in IT stays the same and I’d be willing to bet that in the next 5 years we’ll see this more and more. As sometime CTO, I will always keep good linux admins on staff (especially those who know how to operate out of a data centre!) and that has paid off more than once.

I do believe the sysadmin role is evolving for the better, however. I am a very strong supporter of admins having a thorough working knowledge of programming, application development, testing and CI/CD in general. But those things don’t replace the need for core specialised competencies, like on-hands build-outs, network security, or low-level root cause analysis.

Originally answered: What I have to do or how I can prepared myself to become a Linux System Administrator?

The best asset for learning system administration is a large, diverse, and patient user community.

Get a job on a help desk and you’re golden.

This will provide you with a steady stream of interesting problems for which you’ll need to find solutions. Each time you get burned, you get experience to protect you the next time.

Work closely with other system administrators. If you can’t solve the problem yourself, watch how they do it. Ask them to explain it; both what and why.

This is partly why Quora works. There’s no reason to write about preparing to become a system administrator until someone asks the question.

Here are some of the easier computer skills to learn for someone starting a career in technology:

- Basic Software Use - Learning word processing, spreadsheets, presentations is straightforward. These are used widely.

- Database Management - Using programs like Microsoft Access or Google Sheets to setup and query databases. Not too technically complex.

- Website Design - Learning basic HTML, CSS and CMS platforms like WordPress allows building simple sites without coding.

- Cybersecurity Basics - Fundamentals of security best practices, passwords, securing devices and networks pick up quickly.

- Computer Networking - Grasping wiring, protocols, devices that make networks operate has a low barrier to entry.

- Technical Support - Troubleshooting common software/hardware problems, installing programs etc. picks up through experience.

- Digital Marketing - Skills like social media posting, analytics, email campaigns have gentle learning curves.

- Technical Writing - Explaining technology to audiences simply can be learned faster than coding itself.

- Project Management - Tools like Trello, Asana, Jira allow taking on planning, scheduling without deep tech skills.

While areas like coding, system administration require dedication, the above can result in employable skills with a few months self-study. They're great starting points for tech careers.

Learn to be great with people and brutally efficient with processes.

Gather as much knowledge as you can. Specialize. Automate anything and everything. PowerShell.

Read daily in new technologies. Demo and lab as much as you can.

IF you want certifications, study for them (no cheating) and get them.

Drink coffee. Eat bacon. Help other admins and Help Desk people grow.

Learning the basics isn’t terribly hard. The hardest skill to learn for systems administration (or anything like it) is learning how to learn. But if you have some Linux background, administration is just a natural outgrowth of being a user.

Becoming good at it is, in fact, hard. I wouldn’t be able to put a level of effort on it in retrospect because I’ve lived a charmed life. I’ve had problems that needed solving and the leeway to solve them as I saw fit.

An additional thing to consider is that there’s all sorts of admins, too. If you just have a single machine and need it to do a few simple things like host a basic website, it’s not hard at all. At least for somebody who has some basic understanding of how the internet works.

If you need to spin up a virtualized routing infrastructure using FRR on Linux that is, of course, exponentially more difficult. A lot of people never use the CLI and still consider themselves admins. I disagree, but I also don’t create the definitions.

Depends on what kind of systems you are supporting.

Some general duties most Linux admins do include.

Building servers. That is hardware up usually. You’ll order a server but typically you add hardware too it. Servers usually come with Linux already installed but it’s probably not your distro or version of your distro or not properly configured for your environment. So typically you’ll install the OS, configure it, set up the drivers and configure them.

Back ups. If you are not doing back ups and testing them, you don’t deserve the title admin.

Network security. Even if you have a network security group, the first level of defense is you.

Checking logs. Read your logs, they help you solve problems before half the department is busting your door down wanting to know why their stuff isn’t working.

Write scripts, typically in Python & PERL but dozens of other languages are commonly used and you’ll write BASH scripts fairly often.

Plan for usage. So if you have DB servers, you’ll generally set up fail over and availability for them. Watch for space usage and provide more long before the server eats up all the space. Configure the logging level to a lessor level and listen to developers scream if the logs are a threat to running the server out of disk space (never install apps like DBs & Web servers on the root partition. If for nothing else because if the logs go wild and eat up all available space, all it does is crash the web or DB server. Linux handles running out of space on the Root partition gracefully, but that’s part of the problem. You get all sorts of wonky errors that make no sense until you figure out you are out of space on the root partition. ). Generally it’s best to add drive space BEFORE you have to alter usage. However sometimes it’s just not possible due to budgets. A budget you help set with your predictions on future space usage.

Reset passwords. No matter what servers you run, somebody will find a way to forget their password.

Play with new hardware. Your an admin. You get first dibs, you have to “test” it after all :)

Making sure updates and upgrades are tested before being put on production servers.

Configuring routers, setting up printers, and similar devices.

Sit in lots of useless meetings. If you are really good you schedule some sort of outage while you are in a pointless meeting so you have to leave to solve that problem.

Dodge pointy haired bosses and intercept their shiny sales ads disguised as technology magazines before they read about some expensive and totally useless piece of software or hardware and wipe out your server budget on something you don’t need, cannot use and as often as not need plugins and additions to even make work. Which wipes out next year’s budget as well. Then you get blamed when server hardware fails because the money you needed to upgrade it was spent on a money pit project some pointy haired boss read about. If you cannot intercept their magazines then find a way to intercept their liking of that useless software. Usually logic doesn’t work since they rarely have enough technical knowledge to appeal too. Instead you have to find a way to dumb it down to kindergarten speak so they understand just how useless and expensive that junk is.

There are lots of specifics relative to what you support. If you are supporting LAMP you need specific skillsets related to the tools they are using. Perhaps RUBY or Drupel or MySQL or Postgress, etc. You may be configuring JAVA and JAVA tools as well and 100 other possible configurations and toolsets used by developers. You might be dealing with ECommerce, site certs, etc as other examples. That’s just LAMP. Cloud, LAMP, Email, storage servers, and dozens of other types of servers with specific software and needs will happen. One company might force you to set up an FTP server for example, which is a real pain because it’s a security nightmare and Windows refuses to use SFTP as a default protocol and Windows users are often about as technically illiterate as they come. So when you say SFTP their eyes glaze over like zombies under the spell of a Voodoo queen. So then you are anxiously watching FTP for the inevitable security breech and dealing with it when it happens.

Or perhaps you are supporting CGI creation servers. That means expertise in a lot of very specialized software and configuring performance for that software. Probably even a few kernel mods to make it all run as smooth as blackberry soup on a hot griddle.

Desktop support is often something thrust on you. You know servers. Servers are big bad scary things. Thus you should know how to make their desktop widgets work even when you told them not to do that specifically. I’ve found it’s best to anticipate needs and just make sure there’s a way to install safer more functional alternates and then call them standard load so nobody can argue with you about it. As much as possible I stay away from desktop support, especially Windows. Gah I feel slimed every time I have to sit down and figure out what’s wrong with a Windows machine. Logic is obviously not a prereq to be a Microsoft coder lol. It like a peak into some kind of alternate universe where the entire population was born without reasoning abilities.

On the plus side, nobody has a clue what you are doing. If you are doing it right nobody has any idea if you are playing a video game half the day or studiously working. Linux is extremely stable, robust and if you know your stuff you can anticipate most problems and fix them BEFORE they are a problem. So if you are doing your job well, you have periods of lots of free time punctuated by rare catastrophic hardware failures, major upgrades and similar times when you go home only to shower and eat and back at it. When production systems are down the company is losing money and you BETTER have them up and running ASAP. If your wife is giving birth you can still work from a lap top or better yet move her into the server room to have your child. If you are a female server admin and are giving birth and production servers are down, you best give birth ON TOP of the servers with a keyboard in hand.

Everything in the company hinges on you doing your job well. If you do, nobody even knows who you are outside of your manager and some of the upper bosses you periodically have to go beg for money for hardware from or explain just how stupid their idea is in a way that makes them think it’s their idea to nix the project. If you are not doing your job your office/cubicle is a madhouse until you are replaced by somebody who can do the job or you figure out how to do your job well.

Oh you are often quartered in with the severs so invest in a space heater and warm coat. Also learn how to make snarky remarks. You aint a *Nix admin until you can :)

If you want to be a junior Linux admin, start applying to jobs. Seriously. Start going to various user groups in your area (search Meetup) and talk with people. Chances are good that there’s an admin position open in your area. Depending on where you are, there’s more work than there are qualified people to do it. If you’re coming in cold to Linux and/or to computers in general, you may only be able to get a helpdesk job somewhere. It’s a start.

Be comfortable on the command line, know how to stop, start, restart, and configure various services, like syslog, ntp, Apache, BIND, etc. What you don’t already know, take a few hours outside of work each week to learn. If you don’t already run Linux on your home computer, start doing so - using it as your main OS will help you learn faster. _Enjoy_ the process - that’s how you really learn.

If you don’t already have an account with Amazon Web Services, get one. It’s free to use up to a certain point, and pretty much everyone uses it these days in some capacity. Spin up a couple of EC2 vms, set up an S3 bucket or two, set up an ELB, and just get a feel for how the service works. Many of the AWS services have analogs with other vendors, so if you know your AWS stuff, you’ll be able to translate it to Azure, Rackspace, or Google Compute Engine.

Having a certification is never going to hurt you, but what’s important about the certificate is the work you put in to get it. If you really use it as a chance to learn things you don’t know, it’s way better than just sitting down for the test a couple of times and barely passing.

Graduating college and going straight into an admin job is rough if you haven't paid your dues at the help desk.

I'm going to lay out a path that is pretty solid in terms of career growth as an aspiring Network Admin:

1. Join the Air National Guard/ Reserves as a 3D0x2 (Network Admin) for the practical experience and the security clearance.
2. Get your A+ cert ASAP. This will enable you to get a part time gig/ internship at the help desk so you can get your foot in the door while you're in school.
3. After you have that A+, start studying for CCNET and then the CCNA. This will come in handy when your help desk company is looking to promote from within.
4. Although you don't need a physical lab setup for passing these exams, I'd recommend buying a few switches and routers to get your hands dirty with. You can't put how many hours you logged on packet tracer on a resume but you CAN put “over 200 hours of hands on experience with CISCO equiptment.”
5. Get that Linkdin account set up and fill it with your hands on experience, certs, security clearance (almost a guaranteed job with this), and internships/volunteer work.
6. Apply for everything but don't think you're above the help desk. That's where the magic will happen for you.

Good luck, man!

Hi,

As I wrote in this Medium article a few months ago:

During the project planning stage [of my Linux in Action book], I divided the key Linux admin skills into 15 domains. I then associated each domain with the specific tools that a junior admin would expect to use. These domains and tools (illustrated below) are the overall curriculum expectations around which the book would be built.

Here’s that list of domains. I think it’s a good start for getting started as a Linux systems administrator:

Good luck!

It will require some dedication but it’s not too hard.

For starters, make sure you understand certain key subject areas:

• Understanding the relationship between Linux itself and the userland (supplied by GNU, and others). Also understanding what distinguishes different Linux distributions (package managers, choice of tools, etc).
• Experience with multiple Linux distributions. Install and experiment with CentOS/Rocky Linux/Alma/RHEL (all the same thing, really) vs Ubuntu/Debian or Arch Linux. Practice adding and removing packages, updating, configuring networking manually, enabling services like ssh, etc.
• Familiarize yourself with commonly used packages like Apache, Nginx, MariaDB and so forth. A great way to dive in is to setup WordPress on your own Linux system. It will teach you a lot. Install ‘samba’ and configure some file sharing.
• Learn how to add and remove users, set passwords, set permissions in both symbolic and octal modes. Understand the difference between soft and hard links.
• Practice your bash and bash scripting. The Advanced Bash Scripting Guide is a great resource. You don’t need to be a wizard but understanding what a return code is, how to background a job, etc is very helpful.
• Learn the basics of computer networking. Look up the difference between a hub and a switch, what a MAC address is, IPv4 and IPv6, the OSI model (7 layer). You should be able to use tools like ping, traceroute, arp, ifconfig, netstat, etc. Eventually you’ll want to understand iptables and firewalld.
• Learn a text editor. Everyone starts with ‘nano’ but you should really force yourself to learn vi (vim). It is much more powerful once you understand it a little better. Some people use emacs, that’s fine too.

Hopefully this will help to get you started. You might try using VirtualBox (it’s free) to install a Linux virtual machine to get started.

At lot depends on the kind of place you work. When I started as a Unix admin, I did a variety of things: building new systems, porting software from one language to another, setting up email services, fixing desktop systems, etc.

After doing that for a while, I went to work at a very large ISP and worked on a team that specialized in Solaris-based web servers. Once you master the skill of managing thousands of physical servers, and stamping out new web servers, it got boring very quickly. The regular hours weren’t so bad, but the on-call stuff sucked.

My next job was working at a place with a state department contract where we’d deploy systems to quite a few different countries. My windows, Linux and Solaris and hardware skills were useful designing a system that matched the intended site. It was interesting work and involved a bit of foreign travel. I also designed and maintained the virtualization infrastructure for the software testers and documentation writers/validators.

After that, I worked at a place that maintained geographically-diverse web caches, but that was fairly horrible. The company was fine, but the shift work and the boss were awful.

I now work at a place that has a dynamic environment that’s R&D focused. There’s the usual infrastructure to maintain, but I also manage the cluster computing infrastructure. We’re constantly exploring new technologies so we can more easily deploy a variety of new services.

A lot of places will be the same old thing. It’s a good environment to pick up new skills and refine old ones. No matter what you do, don’t stop learning and don’t fall into the trap of not knowing how something works. There are multiple ways to do the same tasks. Learn which ones work best for what kind of environment. Learn to script in a mainstream language such as bash, awk and python and maintain your skills.

Yes you can.

Want a fulfilling IT career? Learn Linux

How can Linux change your career?

Yes, I'm about to get a little grandiose. But I'm passionate about changing people's lives, and I've seen it happen, so at least consider this list of ways Linux can help your career.

1. Quite simply, you can get a job. Obviously, there are many, many places looking for individuals who are skilled with Linux. The links above will attest to that. But that's just the obvious answer.
2. Learning Linux helps you look at your skillset in a different light. No longer do you see yourself as a list of certifications and abilities, but rather a forward-thinking problem solver. All of your skills are just arrows in your quiver, and your brain is what makes you so valuable. Remember, a Google search can teach you how to install an Apache server, but only a well-trained problem solver can know when it's appropriate to do so.
3. You can find a job you love. Once you realize how valuable and flexible you've become, you can focus more on finding a job you love. We all need to pay our mortgage, but if your job options are broader, the chances of finding your calling are much greater.
4. You can offer employers or clients well-rounded advice. Remember from past blog posts, there are times Linux isn't the right choice. The only people who will be able to tell the difference are those familiar with Linux and the alternatives. Your Linux expertise can be invaluable to someone who is implementing a SharePoint infrastructure. Should they be using Linux-based solutions instead? Be that person who can help them decide. Your rewards will be more than just monetary. I promise.
5. Reread number 2. Truly, making the mental shift from a technician to a solutions provider is the key to success in IT. Be the answer that a Google search can't provide. You don't need all the answers; you need to know how to ask all the right questions.

As a Systems Administrator of any flavour of operating system, your biggest asset is autodidactism.

If you are an upstart in the world of Linux I suggest you start by downloading VirtualBox for your operating system [1]

Next, using Virtualbox, install a Linux OS. I suggest you start with Centos [2] because it is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Once you have your Centos running in your Virtual Box, clone it and shut it off.

Now you can dive right in the clone and try out different system administration tasks. For instance, configure your centos to allow logging in via SSH, or, clone your Centos box and have both running simultaneously and try to get SSH working between them.

Install a web server on one of them, and a database server on the other etc.

As a Systems Administrator you will often be asked to do tasks you have never done before, and yet you are expected to achieve them nonetheless. Set yourself a task, research how to do it, then experiment.

If you mess up, delete the cloned image, and reclone your original and no harm done.

You will need to keep practising. It is not a skill you acquire overnight and there are a great many aspects to systems administration. It may also be necessary to get certification.

I myself have none but I have many years of experience in lieu, so if you do not have the experience, having a certification instead may be worthwhile.

[1] Downloads - Oracle VM VirtualBox
[2] Download CentOS