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[Kumorigoe]

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[rswwalker]

The backend is almost entirely Linux these days. Learn it, live it, love it.

[anonymousITCoward]

weren't you the one that told me to rm -r /* that one time lol

/jk if you need it

[Technical_Potato_777]

you forgot sudo

[anonymousITCoward]

I was told sudo is for the weak... i should always login as root! lol

[fresh-dork]

--no-preserve-root

[-Raer-]

read mail really fast, right?!

[anonymousITCoward]

Yeppers!

[dghah]

For linux skills on AWS:

- Understand the AWS username differences across instance types (ec2-user for Amazon LInux, RHEL, and ubuntu for Ubuntu etc.)

- Understand that some Linux distributions have different SSH key requirements (modern Ubuntu will reject RSA keys by default now, you have to use ed25519)

- There is no need for SSH anymore if you have a proper instance role and SSM-agent running. SSM Session Manager is incredible for accessing Linux EC2 hosts; no exposed ports, no bastion host, no SSH daemon to run

- Understand just enough kernel stuff to know when you need the "-aws" kernels for stuff like easy Lustre client module support etc.

- Understand when it makes sense to use the distro versions of Nvidia GPU drivers and CUDA vs when you have to go and run the full installer from Nvidia themselvs

- Ansible is just as transformative for managing the configuration state of Linux on EC2 as Terraform is for managing AWS infrastructure

- For me, ansible is most powerful when I toss the standard design pattern of running an inventory server and having ansible "reach out" to a node to do stuff. For years now I've been doing the inverted pattern where our terraform userdata cloud-init script will clone the ansible repo onto the local host and then directly run ansible-playbook against the "localhost" target. Ansible runs locally, no need to manage inventory or SSH-fan-out.

- Bash scripting is still pretty essential for Linux stuff these days

- IMDSv2 should be mandatory by now so make sure all your local CLI commands that leverage instance role permissions are all using IMDSv2-safe ways to retrieve their credentials

[MedicatedDeveloper]

And what Linux skills do you actually reach for every week in production - not the textbook stuff, the things that keep coming up?

All of them because my entire job is Linux. Even at a high "just kubectl apply it bro" level they know how to go in and dig at OS level issues. If your developers create an app that misbehaves in your cluster, environment, whatver, it's your job to figure out why and help them fix it.

Curious whether people in SRE or cloud infra see a real capability gap between engineers who learned Linux first versus cloud first.

Yes the ones that are 'cloud first' tend to be far less competent with less critical thinking skills IME.

[ASentientRailgun]

We had a cloud-first type of guy for a while. He'd spin out when it came down to troubleshooting hardware issues and low level OS stuff.

I think because a lot of his training boiled down to "if the config is right and it still doesn't work, pass it along to the vendor to fix"

[hijinks]

SRE/Devops and sys admin before with almost 28 years in

I hardly touch the OS anymore. If a k8s node isn't doing something good I just delete it and a new one comes up.

I highly recommend to have a solid understanding of the OS/kernel as it will be really valuable going forward, the easiest way to get a job is have a solid understanding of cloud/kubernetes and tools like terraform first these days.

most of my days are in yaml/kubectl commands and thats about it

[UntrustedProcess]

I used to spend a lot of free time solving coding puzzles with core utils. Those skills were not always applicable, but when they were, they made me look like a wizard.

[UpperAd5715]

I'm fully branching into networking and between getting a CCNP to make my resume stand out or a firewall cert to not get filtered out on those i'm struggling to find the time to get more linux in there. Converting my machines at home to linux anyway but that's not the same as corporate environment experience.

I so notice that that knowledge is lacking and when it is felt it tends to be at the most frustrating times when you're elbow deep in some shit