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

Greg Brown gwbrown1 at gmail.com
Fri Jan 13 08:22:48 EST 2006


Cool man, welcome to the Linux pack.  There are tools in newer distributions
past RH 9 that make life so, so much easier.  That said, there is something
to be said about building packages "the old way" where when you attempt to
install something from RPM but can't and you have to dig, dig, and dig somre
more to figure out in what package "wtf.h" is located and how to install it.

First thing I'd suggest with the home machine is upgraded to the latest
Fedora core, if you want to stay with RedHatish Linux, or go with CentOS, or
Debian sarge.  It might not even hurt to give FreeBSD or OpenBSD a slice of
the HD to see how that side of the world lives.

For projects start with the sql/php stuff, that is always fun, and maybe try
to create a samaba shared drive.  After that try a domain controller maybe.
There are so many cool things you can do with Linux it is hard to pick a
good starting point.  Just make sure you download a "live" CD at some point
too, Knoppix is my weapon of choice though a lot of people swear by Ubuntu
Live.  Once you get the hang of Knoppix you won't know how you lived without
it as a sysadmin.  Have a trashed system that you need to recover files
from?  With Knoppix you just boot the CD, mount the harddrive by
double-clicking on it then start the Samaba server.  From there you mount
the drive that wouldn't boot across the network via the Samba box and
volia!  You can back up the critical files from the machine and proceed to
rebuilding all within 30 minutes.  It's sweet.

Anyway, welcome.

Greg

On 1/13/06, Chad Thomsen <chad.thomsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am a windows/as400/cisco/motorola  system admin who finally decided to
> pick up linux and REALLY try and learn it.  By the way the power and
> flexibilgy of Linux rocks, and I REALLY like the fact that I can teach my
> self all kinds of stuff with out having to purchase some super expensive
> developer pacakage (Microsoft Visual Studio).  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.   As far as reading materials I have the
> "Introduction to Linux" PDF found all over the internet, and Red Hat 9
> unleashed.  I have also put Cygwin on my win box at work so I could get
> mor
> comfy with the shell.
>
> As far as future projects, I figured I would start by setting up
> Apachee/Coppermine/MySQL (or use Gallery) to set up an internet site with
> a
> buch of photos since I like to tinker with photography when not riding
> mountian bikes or doing system admin type work.  I also figured I would
> teach myself PERL so I can do some administrative type scripting on my
> Linux
> boxes.  Is PERL the way to go?  I ask this because Windows, which I am
> most
> familiar with, allows you to script in a few languages (java, vbscript,
> and
> others if you install add ons).
>
> Sorry if this post sounds really "newbieish" but I don't really have many
> folks to talk to about Linux as I am an army of one at work when it comes
> to
> operating systems and networks.  Any opinions would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Chad
> --
> TriLUG mailing list        : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ  : http://trilug.org/faq/
> TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/
>



More information about the TriLUG mailing list