Kicked my course off today - grep101.com - with lessons starting Monday. I think I've got the pricing right to attract a good class of keen learners for this first run through...
I'm considering signing a couple of my employees up, but I'm reading the description:
you'll be expected to learn and use grep, ssh, apt-get, tail and man
I also see that restarting services is in there.. however I don't see anything that tells me any details about what the course actually covers.
You also don't mention what flavor of Linux you're using for teaching.
Also, launching this, and then starting the lessons only 1-2 business days later? You either don't want a lot of people to sign up... or I can't think of another reason to do that.
Exactly. Using this first course to iron out the bugs in the process. Please go to the site now - its switched to taking registrations of interest, and "I'm considering signing a couple of my employees up..." tells me you're exactly the the sort of person that we need to continue the conversation with.
- big no-no - which flavor you will be using? RHEL? Ubuntu? FreeBSD? Let's say I sign-up and it turns around that there will be RHEL tooling. Well - money wasted if I standardize on Ubuntu.
>> use grep, ssh, apt-get, tail and man to administer, monitor and extend your server.
- lack of proper course description - the above is not enough. How about setting properly iptables and kernel config (to ensure network security)? how about properly hardening web server? Install from ports won't cut it. How about proper partinioning to ensure no executable bits? etc etc etc
- who are you and how I can be sure that what you teach is best practices and not some oldish shmaboodle fairy tales?
Would the above be addressed positively - I would pay more... and more... and more...
I really like the idea. I think receiving a curated list of links[1] to web resources (docs, tutorials and howtos) would be sufficient to learn common sysadmin tasks.
The initial learning curve might be hard for some people though. What is bash? What are commands? How do you cd,mv,cp etc. What is /? What is /etc? etc...
I'm currently between two jobs and have a lot of free time. While not really in need for that sort of courses, I might consider giving it a try but I'm unable to find any information on the stuff taught.
Fair point. It's dark where I am, so sleep is called for, but when I wake I'll add in some extra detail to the launch page.
To give you an idea, here's some headers for the days:
1 Accessing your New Server
2 Basic navigation, cd, pwd etc
4 Installing software, exploring the file structure
5 more, less, nano, tab completion, history and "dot files"
9 cron, contab, /etc/cron.daily anacran and "at"
19 Automation - using logrotate
The site has now switched to taking registrations of interest for our upcoming courses in the new year - please sign up to that if you're interested at all in this approach.
Like a lot of startups have found, it's hard to know exactly what you've got until it's already underway - and your input will drive the direction this goes.
To answer a couple of points that have come up: (a) Participants on this first course will be using Ubuntu Server LTS, but the course material is based around them having _two_ servers one Debian-flavoured, one RHEL-flavoured. At this level its more about getting them familiar with Linux as a whole, assuming that they may need to support multiple versions. (b) In my day job I act as sysadmin for 20-odd production systems, ranging from PC104 systems running Slackware, to RHEL 6 systems, (c) I've run many technical training courses in the past.
It is very good for people to learn how to use specific tools like grep, ssh, tail and the command line interface in general. That said, together with a course like this, one should, really, really find a real world website/group to support.
I have yet to find a shortage of friends, family and hobby groups around me who want someone who can take care of their website/hosting/and so on. Its like learning to cook; there are always someone who want free food. By taking responsibility for a website, one is very much more invested to "get it to work", and learn around 85% of what syadmin really is about.
Absolutely. At least in this case participants do have a working remote server of their own for their duration - a big step up from either a server "just in class" or a Gnome box on their desk.
Great idea, and interesting model for a course. This is really an ability that many good developers lack. The downside on your marketing approach for me is having to pay $20 for something without having any idea about how the classes are. A cool model is letting the first user try one class first, before signing up :)
Besides that, as I said, its a very cool idea, and I wish you good luck with your project!
Yes, I see that, but these daily "bites' really are just that. For example, the first simply gets you pointed toward PuTTY, provides some reading on SSH, and asks to to logon and use passwd to change your password.
And yes, there will be monitoring and chasing up of anyone who isn't doing their tasks :-)
(the original concept was to report on you to your SO!)
No, each day's task will have you leave evidence that you've completed it (a directory created, application installed, etc) so that "we" can judge progress.
The "daily tasks have some general tips and a series of link to online resources that should make them easy to complete.
I signed up to 'keep myself honest' on my commitment to migrate my websites from my Bluehost account to my 3 month old Linode. I'm somewhat comfortable with CLI, but need to fill in some holes and get the practice.
Sysadmin skills isn't about using tools, it is about understanding how they work and why it is so.
Sysadmin's understanding isn't about memorizing apt-get or yum install, is mostly about ./configure --help ,)
After you will be able to build from the sources full LAMP stack, understand dependencies and cross-references, realizing the amount of crap^Wcode apache+php uses - this will be something to start with (integrating Informix or Oracle support is a bonus,)
The next step is to understand and internalize what is the difference between mod_php and fastcgi configurations - why they are different, how to enable caching, how it works, what are persistent connections to DB, etc.
The next level - be able to visualize in your mind the flows of data, and follow requests through all the layers - OS, http-server, fast-cgi transport, scripting engine, database-connection, table storage (realization that MyISAM engine or MongoDB are using table-level locking is a sign that you're on the right way).
Then, you must be able to separate the flows, partition the data, at least understand that /var/log and /var/db/mysql on the same disk slice is a sign of stupidity.
Then comes access patterns - how often the data are accessed, when changes occur, how often they are synced, etc (here comes caching and replications, then sharding).
This ability, to understand, trace and see patterns makes one sysadmin.
After that you might say that you kind of sysadmin.) Learning ssh is nothing. Googling is enough.
For a Windows server admin like myself, this course sounds ideal, the things you mention are important no doubt but how important are they for a person just starting out?
I agree with this statement, you have to start somewhere and many a Windows admin don't use command-line now. So essentially a beginner's course in command-line tools, i.e. beginning system administration, not only is good for Linux but can strengthen a Windows admin by helping them not be afraid of cmd.exe.
The course description sounds essentially the same as just following HOWTOs (which is how I taught myself the basic tools involved in sysadmin-ing many years ago). Just follow these old tutorials and save $20.
There are certainly tons of free resources out there, but I'm busy enough that $1/day for 20 days of emails with directed tutorials is more than worth it. Those howto's look like a great resource for more detailed (and varied) info, but I just need someone to guide me (and gently prod me) through the basics.
It does but many people lack the confidence to undertake something like learning a daunting new task on their own, having a class with a guiding direction from people smarter than you is always a good thing.
you'll be expected to learn and use grep, ssh, apt-get, tail and man
I also see that restarting services is in there.. however I don't see anything that tells me any details about what the course actually covers.
You also don't mention what flavor of Linux you're using for teaching.
Also, launching this, and then starting the lessons only 1-2 business days later? You either don't want a lot of people to sign up... or I can't think of another reason to do that.