I have some familiarity with Linux, but I want to start learning it, in more detail, now. I will install something like VirtualBox from Oracle, with Centos, as distro, I think. I've been already testing something like this, end I ended up picking Centos for this. I have some time that I can invest in this, and I want to do it very good. I will be getting up to 10 separate books from Amazon (the best), if needed, and going over all of them. In general, I am a webmaster, and I want to learn Linux and server administration, in order to be able to do everything that is needed on unmanaged hosting plans. I want to get any plan that may be needed (unmanaged, and at a good price), install everything that is needed there, make sure it is secure, be able to fix anything that comes up (like support tickets with managed hosting), and so on. I dont want to be learning unnecessary things, as I am not a programmer or anything like that, even though I am familiar with php and mysql. I would like to know Linux and command line, and server administration (Apache and Nginx) would be the most important part. Whatever may be needed for running websites, is what I want to learn, but not necessarily like Linux programming, lets say. Please let me know, what would be the best way to go, with this, and if you know about any good books for it, please let me know too. Thanks.
I prefer debian stable but it's a personal choice. Following the perfect howto ipsconfig guides here will give you a a complete server for mail, web, dns and multi-client hosting. Also another reason I like debian is because on top of debian I can install proxmox. Proxmox is a browser based kvm/openvz virtualization solution. So at the office I run proxmox and then I run a virtual vpn server, a virtual ISPConfig debian installation, a virtual samba server, a virtual FreeSWITCH voip server, ..... And best for learning? I'd say learning by doing
From what I learned is you go with what fits your goal. In the past I had to switch from ScoUnix, RHEL, to Fedora, Centos and Ubuntu. I have tried other distros like FreeBSD but ultimately it comes down to what you want to archive. Bottom line is all *nix share same shell commands and ways to get around what makes it different across I have noticed is different software or panels we need to learn, and that can be 30+ other software like installing, setting up, managing soft. such as mysqll apache, proftp, ispconfig3, cpanel, firewall, iptables, cron, phpmyadmin, dns, proxy, and many many other things that might or might not be covered in just one book. Getting into managed hosting and charging people that alone will put a lot of pressure on you for up-time and keeping the sites up. If your server will not get hacked surely your wordpress, joomla, or drupal can, especially now-a-days with so many plugins for WP, not updating or patching. It is almost a must to have some sort of backup plan to recover and also pentest your server/sites using various tools like Kali, MetaSploit and misc tools against your own servers to make sure you're covered. I have found out that using tools as simple as a 'text' file with special notes, references and howtos really help. You forgot a certain command to do something you got it, it is there and quick Ctrl+F to find desc. and various ways to do it. You also learn when you get hit with a problem and have to google, or forum your way to an answer. Another great way is a local college or lab you can take some courses or even online, there are plenty of free options like Khan or Coursera. You might also want to check YouTube for Linux Channels, there are 100s and good ones. There are also free PDF/Books that are offered free through Creative Commons. Another fun way is this forum, I frequently check the "New Posts" skim through what seems to be interesting or might apply to me and I read it. If it is something that I might need to check later or might def. happen in the near future I 'watch' or 'subscribe' to the feed and get notified if additional answers were posted or ways around the problem. Subscribe or read other hosting forums, WHT is a big one and the last thing to do is fork out the 5 bucks a month to spin off a cheap VPS in the real world and not locally, start experimenting. One word of caution is that this is a bit time consuming and one can get lost in it, you can spend hours, days on something and suddenly wipe and start all over again, so, make sure you are ready It's fun and fulfilling when you create things and heartbreaking and scary when things go wrong, or broken.
@DDArt - Thanks, very good info here. One thing that people recommend, and that I've already checked out is free trial and paid subscription to SafariBooksOnline.com. A lot of good it titles there. As far as the cheap VPS, people recommend Amazon Cloud, they offer 12 months trial, free of charge. There is something like this by Google too. They offer 1 month for free.
Hi, I've used debian since 5-6 years. I like it but it lacks of a sort of wiki/how-to like centos/RHEL System Administrator's Guide or SUSE Administration Guide. However, you can find various debian documentation online on blogs or forums. I suggest you to test you configuration on a home laboratory before put everything online. Virtualbox or something like this could be useful to become skilled on Linux. Regards, L.
