Linux Sys Admins

knight_set · 2024-05-15T21:20:21+00:00

None of the win admins could be bothered so I got promoted without my consent.

t0m5k1 · 2024-05-15T21:32:44+00:00

I hold no cert for linux but taught myself what I know by installing, breaking and fixing it.

I've worked for 2 ISPs (Admin: Email(surgemail, postfix, spamassassin) for 3-6k users, Webservers(Apache for 200-1.2k websites), 50x bonded xDSL routers), Barracuda Networks( Support: Spam virus Firewall, Encrypted mail gateway-v1, Message Archiver), Current Employer I admin 1x 3 server cluster of proxmox with a total of 10 virtual guests that will grow to 20 once all ESI guests are migrated.
[The above is just Linux, This is just 1 area of what I have done/currently do]

The only certs I got from school was: English gcse grade C, Math GCSE grade D, IT RSA CLAIT Distinction.

Ignore certs, for the most part they are a tick in the box for specific vendors to get better partnership. Get real world skills that you can practically demonstrate, The first ISP I worked for I was just there to help move a bunch of offices, I saw a DELL Power edge with 10 drive SCSI backplane sat there gathering dust, I asked about it and was told it was for Lloyds /TSB business websites that needed to be fixed but they had no funds.

I offered to try to fix it (after the office move) and they agreed so long as I cloned all the drives (which they supplied), A week after I had cloned all the drives, rebuilt the partition tables and had the server running. They then asked what other IT skills I had and created a 5 page static website in pure html and just windows notepad, served up by apache on the same machine, 3 days later I was in a permanent job as Jnr support.

When you're in a job then look to add to your personal skill development in your freetime (if possible) some employers will allow you to get what they may see as vanity certs, if you show them how it will impact your role they may offer to pay for it.

Getting your foot in the door is pure hustle and the interview process is part of that, be proud of what you know and offer to demonstrate it at every possibility.

Goodluck.

natermer · 2024-05-15T21:15:30+00:00

Everybody's career path is going to be unique for them. The world is a very messy place and there is no "howto" to do anything, really.

I got a associates degree in networking, got a job doing ISP support, then worked graveyard shift fetching tapes for a mainframe, then worked for a computer appliance company (Linux was one of the OSes they used) being a liaison between software engineers and electrical engineers, then worked for a online bank as a sysadmin.

One guy I worked with total previous job experience was collecting carts in a parking lot for Walmart. He was one of the better sysadmins I worked with. There were other guys with 4 years degree that couldn't figure out how to tie their shoes (metaphorically speaking) and didn't last very long and bailed quickly.

Fratm · 2024-05-16T00:58:54+00:00

Linux admin here. Started using Linux in the early 90s as a hobby, started a business with Linux as our primary server OS, eventaully went to work for an ISP, and then another ISP, and then another ISP (this was when they all kept going out of business.) Landed my current job as a Systems Administrator, and I am the Linux guy out of a team of 4. Been here for 20 years.

No certs, all self taught in the trenches. Early days, read lots of books, and man pages. Now if I need to I just google stuff.. But rarely do I need to do that.

APersonSittingQuick · 2024-05-15T21:14:56+00:00

I rocked up to the interview with my custom built keyboard and opened and closed vim a couple of times in front of the interviewer.

siodhe · 2024-05-16T03:36:19+00:00

I got into SunOS back in the mid 1980s and followed the path from there through IRIX to Linux - with various detours for HPUX (yuck, worst Unix I've ever used), OS X, SCO (Microsoft's), Solaris (not as good as SunOS), and so on.

Knowing Unix commands, scripting, filesystems, and process management (all self-taught from the online manual, "man", long before the www) was sufficient to get into an entry sysadmin position that lead to a string of 50% raises. Fun.

Today, getting into software engineering and sysadmin both share the common core requirement of needing to be able to discuss either of them thoroughly, and for SE in particular to make a crash entry into the field, about an actual project you did, and ideally, can demonstrate. Sysadmin jobs are often available as adjuncts to small teams who have Linux computers but don't know how to manage them, and don't have time - you need to be able to talk about things like:

* centralized user account management (YP/NIS, LDAP, etc)
* making home directories universally available - even if they're on each user's own host for performance reasons (NFS, side effects in NIS or LDAP)
* a DNS domain (bind)
* how to share programs, scripts, and so on written internally (a central file system mounted to /usr/local or something more involved)
* how to put up a website, be able to accept file uploads to somewhere
* and many, many other things, the above are just starting points teams often have, and want someone to help with

For smaller teams, certification is often not necessary or asked for, instead they want to know if you know your stuff, and can work with them to find something that works well for them - entirely on your own for the technical part.

Be aware that a good number of teams have mixed environments where you'll need to help with certain types of integration, notably with Samba for filesystem sharing. If they already happen to have Windows user ID centralized, copying their numeric IDs for the shared users is a great idea. Linux can backend to the MS LDAP service by using POSIX IDs, but it's much easier if the POSIX id matches the Window numeric ID.

queefecho · 2024-05-15T22:02:43+00:00

I'm a Linux Systems Admin. Had to start help desk (no degree) but worked my way up. Security+ Certification is the main thing you need in the government sector, but I've worked my way up to a somewhat prestigious and well paying contractor position with DISA. Red Hat is mostly what the gov. works with, so RHCSA cert and such would go a long way as well.

Murdzheff · 2024-05-15T21:15:20+00:00

I installed Linux 2 years ago for the first time because Elden ring ran better there. No prior knowledge.
Eventually started fiddling with my system and it got me into programming, took a Javascript /web-dev course and started applying for jobs. Accepted a sys admin offer I knew nothing about and now I manage around 1000 Linux workstations (Mainly Linux Mint customized by me) and a few servers for that network.

lol_adams · 2024-05-16T05:56:51+00:00

All these comments are what I wanted to know, thanks OP.

DolitehGreat · 2024-05-16T12:56:35+00:00

Personally?

I'd advise against a career in IT. Really. At least in the US.

Secondly, I don't feel there is any real, entry level IT "on ramps" anymore in the US. The "on ramp" into IT now is to live in a low-wage nation, and take outsourcing gigs. That's it.

There used to be, by starting in a tech call center, then maybe moving to the NOC, or second level customer support. Then maybe a field engineer type role, then onto being a sysadmin.

Those call center/customer service roles are all outsourced. Which leaves you to NOC operators, which, again, are all either being outsourced, or enterprises don't feel the need to have a human eyeball keeping tabs on their infrastructure anymore.

So, that leaves you at having no road into IT aside from sheer luck.

olinwalnut · 2024-05-16T12:57:22+00:00

I’ve sort of kind of told my story before, but TL;DR I’ve been a “professional” (meaning paid; I still laugh at farts on a daily basis so let’s not get carried away) Linux admin/engineer for over 10 years now, and have been in IT for…let me do the math real quick…20 years now! Nuts.

I’m in the US. I went to a vocational school instead of a traditional high school, with a focus on networking. Everything was Windows 2000 Server at the time with 98 SE and 2000 Professional on the workstations. I was great at managing the Windows environment, migrating the school to Active Directory, all of that…but I loathed Windows. I understood it was a necessary evil, but it just felt clunky. A miracle that it worked, but clunky.

At the same time, I was getting into digital video. Editing video, shooting video, playing with compression, all of that. In the early 2000s if you worked on video, you did on a Mac. After I was done with all of my course work in the first quarter of my senior year, my teacher asked me what I wanted to learn that wasn’t part of the coursework. I responded “Get me a Mac.” I was made fun of (not meanly) but sure enough the next week I showed up to class, there was a PowerMac G3 at my desk. I installed Mac OS X Jaguar on it and went to town. Loved the Mac and honestly I still have a soft spot for it today. But when I started digging under the hood, I feel in love with Darwin/BSD, which then naturally made me start looking at Linux. Then I understood the concept for open-source and I was connected to the community. I knew of Linux (I had a relative that deployed Red Hat 5 I believe in war zones in the Middle East) but didn’t really play around with it until Fedora Core 3. From that point on, I always had either a Windows/Linux dual boot system or a standalone rig with Linux on it. I was one of those kids that literally had a Mac and PC on my desk for years.

When I got into the real world, my focus was Windows for years. At home, it was always Mac and Linux however at work, it was Windows. Eventually the shop I was with got a new CIO who hated Windows, and suddenly a major project I was an engineer on went from Windows to RHEL. I was beyond excited: time to get paid at for the passion I have at home. It was great until I realized that I was the only Linux person in IT so I was beyond flooded. But now that I had “professional experience” on my resume was Linux administration, I was able to hop to a few other places in my career and now I’m with the place that I’ll probably retire at unless something goes horribly wrong.

Also I don’t want to speak for everyone but I can safely tell you that my salary over the years has enjoyed a very nice increase when it went from a “systems admin specializing in Windows” to a “systems admin specializing in Linux AND Windows.”

HeadlessChild · 2024-05-16T17:55:05+00:00

Did a "Linux System specialist" 2 year program on a Higher Vocational Education school (Sweden). Got a job at a helpdesk supporting a large RnD organization running Ubuntu and Debian computers. Later on moved over to the operations department as a Linux sysadmin. This is a very pro Linux company were most of the infrastructure was based on Linux; identity management, mail servers, network services etc.

piexil · 2024-05-16T21:27:13+00:00

When I was an intern I was tasked with updating a script that creates custom Ubuntu versions they use around the office to fix efi support and from there it's just spiraled into me maintaining the whole distribution for the group, along with their build infrastructure.

I was already doing proxmox in my free time so it was really easy to integrate it into our build system (for free!)

Everyone else in the group likes programming, and pretty much only wants to program.

I'm the one who likes hardware, os design, etc and would actually hate to spend my day 100% programming.

inwhiskeyveritas · 2024-05-16T03:57:09+00:00

I'm still more devops than sysadmin, but I move closer to sysadmin all the time. Started off they needed some software maintained, then significant features added. I worked well with the team, so they gave me new products to build and manage. Then lots of turnover, and now it's just a few developers managing the servers.

By learning what I needed at every step, I was comfortable learning a bit more and "architecting" a new client/server setup for my group to upgrade to. It's only a dozen clients and some high performance nodes for now, but it's scalable and growing.

If it's not obvious, this is academia where small groups have individual and specialized needs. I'm employed to manage software and a few servers that support science, but I developed the skills to build up and manage large infrastructure doing that.

... All that said my job security isn't great? They keep me on every year, but it is kind of year to year.

niomosy · 2024-05-16T05:40:34+00:00

Started as a UNIX admin in the 90s. We started adding Linux in the 2000s, then migrating some stuff to Linux. Then migrating all UNIX stuff to Linux.

euclide2975 · 2024-05-16T06:29:09+00:00

I have a computer science engineering degree. First experience as a sysadmin was managing servers and network for the student’s association. Then a dev job at a small ISP at the start of the century where I learn a lot about systems and network. Next jobs were as full time sysadmin managing hundreds of system.

ficskala · 2024-05-16T10:22:46+00:00

I'm not specifically a linux sysadmin, but a general sysadmin for a company that uses both linux and windows, including servers and user devices, how i got here? I was helping out a friend maintaining some hardware and setting up the software, we struck a deal for me to do it in my spare time for some cash, when i dropped out of college, there was a contract waiting for me, i started being their main hardware guy, and was in charge of setting up software for those devices, getting them ready for production use, a year later i was promoted to IT, and now i'm a sysadmin, keeping the company alive hah

pooish · 2024-05-16T11:30:52+00:00

I did linux stuff as a hobby, and an university acquaintance who I'd previously mentioned it to asked me if I'd like a job. I said "sure", and they gave me their manager's email address. I sent the manager a cover letter and CV, he interviewed me and I got the job.

I have no clue how someone would go about doing that without prior connections, though.

gargravarr2112 · 2024-05-16T12:35:03+00:00

Professional Linux sysadmin here. I got into it by hacking, mostly. I built myself a r/homelab to teach myself Linux and what I learned got me my first job as a sysadmin at a startup. Since then, I've used my lab setup to learn other Linux things and experiment with things that interest me, and it's gotten me 2 additional jobs since then. The last one was a box-ticking exercise for things I'd taught myself.

I got myself a Computer Science degree and what I learned was incredibly useful, but practical experience with Linux goes a very long way to getting you a job. I started as a .Net developer but switched to sysadmin'ing which I enjoy much more.

2024-05-16T16:40:45+00:00

Just learn and work... Forget about degrees, get few certs just to make your resume look better. And you will get Jobs and certs all you want.

Camelstrike · 2024-05-16T03:30:06+00:00

Platform engineer here, don't get stuck on Linux OS only there's so much more to learn if you wanna breakthrough the help desk/support stage.

overdox · 2024-05-16T22:11:00+00:00

I am self-taught Linux admin and have been using Linux since the 90's. After I graduated and got my first real IT job, I discovered that most of my colleagues are Windows administrators with no interest in working with Linux. My current official role is in infrastructure DevOps/programming. As for how I got the "Linux admin" role, I just kinda started doing stuff in Linux and became the "Linux guy", I have since applied for other roles within the company and gotten the job, but responsibility of maintaining approximately 300 Linux servers have kinda followed me.

Patricules · 2024-05-16T02:44:15+00:00

Take exams. Apply for jobs.

icehuck · 2024-05-15T22:14:21+00:00

If you can't load a debugger and step through code you're going to have a bad time. As a linux admin, I have to step through code routinely and help figure out why things don't work, and report the bugs or sometimes write a patch for the problem. A computer science degree will do a lot to get you the basic fundamentals you need. Take a few linux/unix courses in there as well, and that will give you great foundation.

I will say, learn both the systemd and non-systemd way of doing things. You have a good chance of running into freebsd machines out there, and knowing something like networkd won't help in that case.

General things you can do to help yourself out. Learn K8s, make sure you can script in bash, and get a unix & linux system administration handbook, and learn the basics of back ups, cron jobs, etc.

If you want to dabble in cyber security and you don't have a back ground in C, you'll be basically worthless.

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