Linux Server

It’s very hard to try to summarize the Linux skills needed in order to perform at a decent level as a DevOps engineer. That said, there are for sure two topics that are frequently needed:

1. Being able to review and characterize a Linux server. From the (shell) command prompt, you should be able to quickly review a Linux server and find out what’s its purpose, how busy it is and if the main applition(s) has obvious errors. See Quick Linux Server Review for example.
2. Parsing logs. For instance, given a web server log, finding the number (or rate) of 500 HTTP errors during a unit time.

1.1 Objective: Characterize a Linux Server

What’s its purpose, is it busy, does it have errors?

Run the Linux Server Review scenario to get a Linux server and follow its Server Review Guide to achive this objective.

1.2 Objective: Parsing Logs and Metrics

Use commands like: find, grep, cut, uniq, awk, sed, etc to slice and count fields from log files.

Some good exercises are “The Command Line Murders” , “Saskatoon”: counting IPs or “Lhasa”: Easy Math