Being a reseller by buying from companies like McHost, SplashHost etc. is at one level. Taking it to the next level would be, I guess, administering your own server with someone like Rackshack, ,etc.

Can anyone give me any advice on the best way to learn what it takes to be a proficient administrator? I would never even attempt to run my own until I was really comfortable with it. What's the best way to learn? Tutorials? Books?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

Vito

First you should read books about linux (or unix) system administration, network administration and security. I read those books and recommend the three of them:

* Linux System Administration (Craig Hunt's Library, Sybex)
* Linux Network Administration (Oreilly, Also available online for free)
* Hacking Linux Exposed

It will be very useful for you to read about shell scripting, shell scripts will help you to automate most of your routine jobs.

You should also read more about the packages you choose to manage the different services you are going to offer. For me, the Apache manual is more than enough, and I never needed anything else to learn it (or master it, according to BrainBench). The best information available about qmail and djbdns are available online. Depending on the packages you choose, you might want to read the DNS and BIND book (oreilly), and some book about Sendmail (I know nothing about sendmail to recommend any reading).

You will also need to keep up with all the changes, espicially on security. Keep an eye on securityfocus.com and make sure you subscribe in their mailing list.

Besides all that, the best of what you will learn will be by practice. You should arrange with a friend that is already experienced in system administration in case of an emergency, you will find that most of your job you will learn from him.

Ahmad:
Thank you so much for the info. I just picked up a book today on Linux administration. I guess that's a good start, and I'll go from there.

Thanks again for your reply.
Vito

get a box at home and install linux or FreeBsd on it... Well whatever operating system you are planning to use on your dedicated box!

Practice makes perfect and i can honestly say that most of my good friends and work mates, having working on linux for ages and there is still things they dont know...

Buy your self a shell account of some sort... Shell accounts are good to learn how to run shell scripts and other things like that, the fun part its not your server and normally you cant break it,(that depends too).

Books, tuts and HOWTO's a excellent resource to have on your side, but also a friend who knows what there doing is ten times better, there is some times one little thing that will make you pull your hair out, that a friend would laugh at you about and say, this is how you do it!

Good luck,

Thanks Choppy. I have an old 486 doing nothing here at home. I plan to install Linux and play around with it.

Buy your self a shell account of some sort...

What do you mean?


Now all that's left is to find a friend...:(

Id say install a linux flavor and skip the gui portion. Learn to work straight from the terminal and get familiar with basic commands and with editors. Also use the MAN pages. They are your friend.

Good advice.

Two years ago, I learned HTML. For 18 months I forced myself to write all my pages in raw HTML. Took a lot longer, but it gave me a good grasp. Now I use Dreamweaver, but I am easily able to understand and modify the code that it generates.

I guess the same principle holds true for Linux.

Originally posted by Choppy

[snip ..]

but also a friend who knows what there doing is ten times better, there is some times one little thing that will make you pull your hair out, that a friend would laugh at you about and say, this is how you do it!

Good luck,

You reminded me about a problem we had before and we tried everything we thought of, until a fried came and told us that the partition is full. :rolleyes:

I believe that after working with a Unix system for a long time, you will start developing a perception toward it, and can feel with your sixth sense where is the problem, when there is a problem of course.

I've been using Linux for a long time on a box at home, the problem was that I couldn't form a network. I only have one computer. There is still a lot to learn and experiment on a box that is online, like how DNS actully works on the Internet today, how IP addresses are distributed, how bandwith is calculated, how spammers work, how RBL's work, .. etc.

Well, there seems to be awful lot to learn, but I'm up fo the challenge. I love a good fight...:D

good fights are great... just loosing the sux. I don't know anything about linux but how to start GUI. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to invest into further studies (well, should have written to invest into trial and error stuff) concerning Linux but I hope you'll learn it quickly!

Originally posted by Choppy

Buy your self a shell account of some sort... Shell accounts are good to learn how to run shell scripts and other things like that, the fun part its not your server and normally you cant break it,(that depends too).



Any particular companies you suggest getting a shell account with?

OK, so I've got an old 486 I dug up out of the basement (sure glad I didn't give it away). It's got a cd drive, a floppy, video card, and two 1.7 GB hard drives. Wanting to set it up as a server to play around with, if I throw 64 MB of RAM into it, am I good to go?

As I said, it has two 1.7GB hard drives. A full installation of RedHat Linux (which I've got) takes 900 MB space. Should I just take one of the drives out and just use one?

Choppy, you said to buy a shell acount to learn with. What do you mean, buy a shell account?

Thanks for your help.
Vito

If you'd prefer not to have multiple machines / hard-disks for experimenting with multiple OS's, simply use VMware.

You can install nearly _any_ OS into a window on your desktop machine and learn to use the console from there.

You can run multiple OS's concurrently -- Win2K, FreeBSD 4.4, Red Hat Linux 7.2, etc.

I find this is usually the best way to train someone in *nix basics. They tend to not feel as overwhelmed as sitting at the $ prompt.

Pros:
They can completely destroy the virtual system tinkering around and it takes about 10 mins to wipe and do a clean OS install from an ISO.

No hardware costs, no dedicated machine.

No need to sacrifice security on existing servers in use by clients.

Originally posted by vito

Choppy, you said to buy a shell acount to learn with. What do you mean, buy a shell account?


Console access to enter commands on a Unix (Linux/FreeBSD/etc) system is referred to as "shell" access.

A "shell account" would be a login and password on a server somewhere.

The best way to learn Linux is to toss Windows out the window and force yourself to use nothing but Linux. ;)

Originally posted by jstanden
If you'd prefer not to have multiple machines / hard-disks for experimenting with multiple OS's, simply use VMware.

You can install nearly _any_ OS into a window on your desktop machine and learn to use the console from there.

You can run multiple OS's concurrently -- Win2K, FreeBSD 4.4, Red Hat Linux 7.2, etc.

I find this is usually the best way to train someone in *nix basics. They tend to not feel as overwhelmed as sitting at the $ prompt.

Pros:
They can completely destroy the virtual system tinkering around and it takes about 10 mins to wipe and do a clean OS install from an ISO.

No hardware costs, no dedicated machine.

No need to sacrifice security on existing servers in use by clients.

That is actually a very nice suggestion. I used to use VMWare, it was great, but very expensive :(.

Originally posted by ToastyX
The best way to learn Linux is to toss Windows out the window and force yourself to use nothing but Linux. ;)

That would have been great. I'm waiting for that day, when Linux has enough Arabic support in it ;)

I don't really want to spend alot. I just want to set up a barebones server that I can experiment with, learn shell commands, etc. I don't want to load any sites on it.

Can I use the hardware I mentioned in my last post? I already have the RedHat Linux ready to be installed.

It will be hard to find a box that linux doesn't run on.

With the shell account, just get any hosting package that has ssh / telnet access. You're most welcome to get one from me (hint hint) :D

Originally posted by vito
I don't really want to spend alot. I just want to set up a barebones server that I can experiment with, learn shell commands, etc. I don't want to load any sites on it.

Can I use the hardware I mentioned in my last post? I already have the RedHat Linux ready to be installed.

Yes, that hardware will work just fine for your venture into Linux. I'd go ahead and just use one of the harddrives, just me though. Have fun. :blush:

Vito, 486 will do the job as long as you dont install fancy GUI. Just use it in command line mode (shell). There's a lot of things to learn before you order dedicated server and try to menage it. If you set up a local network you can install BIND (DNS), Apache (web server), Sendmail (mail server), iptables (firewall)... and try to set them so you can access them from another computer in your network.
You'll need to read some linux books and that's the only way to start with linux administration, it is not as easy as point and click in windows. You can also use mighty google in searching for some particular problem it may occur. You can find almost anything using google. If you get some error message in linux, just type that message and hit serach button on google. I'm sure you will find at least 1000 people had same problem and somebody offering solution for that. Beside google, there's a tons of linux ralated web sites...
As for vmware (program that emulates virtual computer) I wouldn't recomand it for total newbies because it will need some effort to set networking. If you still want to give it a try, you can download time limited fully operational version from vmware.com (http://vmware.com) .
As I said before shell account is nothing else then linux command prompt, similar to DOS, but more powerfull :) If you plan to administer linux that's what you will have to learn.
When you install linux on your computer, make sure you install package called "webmin". Thats web based program for administering linux or freebsd. You can access it thrue your web browser typing https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:10000 when xxx's are the IP address of your linux box (make sure you type https ). You can do a lot of things with webmin, but learning linux shell is essential.
If you would like to order shell account, as perpetual said, you can get one with hosting package that allows ssh or telnet access, or you can order from me as I just started shell-hosting company :)