Recommendations for becoming a linux sysadmin?

[Matt Graham]

From: "der.hans" <PLUGd at LuftHans.com>
> Am 05. Sep, 2008 schwatzte blake gonterman so:
>> I've finally figured out where I want to go with my career, but most of
the
>> jobs I've seen require quite a bit more knowledge than I can get just on
my
>> own. Most require experience gained at a job.
> They require experience. Lots of ways to get that.

There are lots of ways to get experience, but Catbert the Evil HR Person will
usually only recognize a few of those ways as valid.  That's the main
problem.

>> I've been studying on my RHCT for about 2 months, working with the book,
>> doing the labs and experimenting on my own. I've been purposely breaking
my
>> linux install on my laptop and then troubleshooting the errors and such to
>> get a better understanding of how to fix various errors. 
> A good path. Troubleshooting is an important skill. Knowledge of how the
> OS works is also important.

Aye.  This is essentially what I did to learn almost all of what I know.
It helps to have a fair amount of free time to do all this, though.

> Something else to do is to run your own services. Setup a mail, web and
> dns server and use them for your own domain. Make sure you have a good,
> tested backup policy in place for your own boxen.

This too.  Apache is actually easier to set up IME than an MTA, and an
MTA is easier to set up than bind is.  You'll learn a fair amount from
that.  Note that most ISPs won't allow you to run SMTP or HTTP servers
that are accessible from the wide world, though.  Backups are easy.
*Restoring* from those backups, OTOH, can be a royal pain.

> Learn how to program shell, perl, php or python. Don't need to be
> excellent, but you should know at least one. Actually, you should know
> shell and at least one of the others :).

No shell = forget getting most Unixy jobs.  So learn enough shell to
be dangerous, and one of PHP, Perl, or Python.  I like Perl, but YMMV.

> Most importantly: play. Do it because it's fun.

What he said.
 
>> junior administration position, but those seem to
>> be hard to come by.
> That seems to always be the case. Look for places that have
> 24/7 support and see if you can get on the overnight team.

This is a good idea.  Except they might want more experienced people
for the night crew.  It depends on the company.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see