[TriLUG] Learing linux....good projects on my test box?

Rosenstrauch, David david.rosenstrauch at credit-suisse.com
Fri Jan 13 10:59:27 EST 2006



> I am a windows/as400/cisco/motorola  system admin who finally 
> decided to
> pick up linux and REALLY try and learn it.

> Anyways back 
> to the topic.  I
> am trying to find out a few good projects I can do to my home 
> machine to
> learn linux form a system adminstrator point of view.  So far I have a
> Centos box here at work with Apachee/Snort/MySQL/Base loaded 
> up, and a Red
> Hat 9 box at home. My home machine is a true lab box as in I 
> can crash it
> and I won't loose sleep.


I was in your place not very long ago, and what I decided to do to learn Linux was to setup a box at home that was a combo of:

1) the main server for all the machines on my home LAN, and
2) my family's presence on the internet
3) my personal web-based mail server
4) my personal development server

It later also became:
5) a backup site for a friend

Each of these targets forced me to learn how to set up and adminster more and more services, such as:

#1: I learned basic Linux installation and operation, LVM, DNS (dnsmasq), DHCP (also dnsmasq), firewall (Arno's, shorewall, firestarter, etc.), samba, and ssh
#2: I learned Apache and a photo album package (gallery, php)
#3: I learned squirrelmail (more php), exim, courier, courier IMAP, fetchmail and more
#4: I learned xinetd, VNC, CVS, subversion, darcs, tomcat, jetty, mysql
#5: I learned FTP (vsftpd)

etc.

Along the way - due to various other experimenting, and frequent use - I also picked up loads more knowledge and skills on numerous other topics (bash scripting, GNU screen, pros and cons of various distros, user-mode linux, etc.)  After working on this stuff daily (you really *should* try to use and learn this stuff every day) for a few years now, I've gotten pretty knowledgeable.  I don't profess to be a SysAdmin extraordinaire, mind you, but I do know my way around a Linux box and the command line very well now.  Plus, I've got a great server up and running and hosting all my stuff!

Hope there's some useful knowledge and examples in here that you can use as a guide.  Feel free to follow up on or off-list if you have any additional questions.

DR

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