/learnlinux

A hands on lab teaching the most important basics of Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Apache License 2.0Apache-2.0

Welcome to the lab

Welcome to a hands on introduction of Linux. The lab is made for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, so if you run this on something else not all learnings applies. Don't worry, you can download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 free, see below.

  • For someone without any or little previous Linux experience, it takes approximately 6 hours to complete.
  • If you have some previous Linux experience, it takes approximately 4 hours to complete.

This guide does not assume that you know Linux. Neither is it a complete introductions to everything. It will hopefully work as a foundation for you, as you go on to learn more 😃

This includes:

* Command line fundamentals
* Exploring the operating system
** Filesystems
** Processes
** Hardware
** Logs
** Common services
* Security features
* Troubleshooting and performance tuning

Before you get started

Get free Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

If you have not been provided a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 instance by people guiding you through this workshop, you can download Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for free. Follow below two steps to do that.

  1. Register a free user on https://developers.redhat.com
  2. Go to https://developers.redhat.com/products/rhel/download, download an ISO file and install RHEL on a VM of yours.

It's not a competition

If you run through this lab copying and pasting commands blindly into a prompt, you will learn very little. Try to understand what you are doing, when possible. A lot of effort has gone into the text, take time to read what it says and you will end up learning much more.

👍 When you can, try to figure out what command to run, before you go on to show what command to run. Also, first look at your own output from the command before you compare it with the expected output.

Contribute improvements and fixes!

If you run through this lab and find errors or things which can be improved. Create a pull request! Thanks 😃

Lab graphics

In this lab, we use some basic graphics to make the lab easier to understand. Such as:

💥 This is something which you have to do.

⭐ If you have time, you can also do this.

❗ Take careful notice of this, or you may fall on your face.

👍 This text contains information about a best practice.

Here is some code that you need to run
Here is an example of expected output when running commands

❗ If something goes wrong

If by some reason you get stuck in a lab - then here's what you should do. Follow below steps 1-5. Do not skip any steps if not told to.

  1. Linux is case sensitive, that means that Cat, cat and CAT are three completely different things. As a guiding rule, only use small letters.
  2. If you do not understand what to do in a lab, or do not understand what you are doing, skip immediately to step 5. Also, the authors of this lab apologize for that. The purpose of this lab is so that everyone can do it and understand it.
  3. Chances are that you have simply not followed the lab instructions. Start by reading the lab instructions again, carefully.
  4. If you are sure that you are doing things as described in the labs, perhaps you typed something wrong or had a copy-paste accident. Double checking your files content and comparing them with the content described here in the lab. If you typed things manually, try doing a clean copy-paste from the lab page instead.
  5. Ask the person beside you if that person also had an issue with what you are doing. If so, that may indicate there is actually something wrong.
  6. Raise your hand and someone will come and help you :)

Preparations to do the lab

❗ To get started with the labs, you first need to get your assigned username and servers. This will be provided to you by the people who operate this lab.

❗ Do not skip any labs, the labs depends on the previous ones to be completed. You need to do them in order, sequencially.

❗ On purpose, security in this lab has not been made a priority, that is so you as a student get more freedom to learn. You have passwordless admin access via sudo on all systems. With that said, if you do something which is outside of the labs and break your systems, you get to keep all the pieces ;)

💥 Make sure you have the required tools to do the lab. The tools are listed below:

Let's get started

To go to the first lab in this hands on workshop, click here: Go to the next lab, lab 0