This question comes up often : how does one get started in the world of Linux sysadmin. And to be honest, I dont think there is a clear answer to that. The state of Linux certification is not ideal. There are a few courses one might get onto, like the RHCE. But doing those without any background info will leave you unable to really get the full benefit since they all makes assumptions : that you are already aware of the basics.

One way to start off in sysadmin, is to grab a good book about the topic. Then install and run through the various install options and get a couple of VM's setup with your favourite Linux distro. Start with one distro and stay with that one distro for the first few months atleast. But its also important that once you are familiar with the basics, you do move onto some other distro and see how things work there. One cant really put down into words or ever really express easily that the bottom line is Linux. No matter what distro you move onto, the only thing different would be how things are laid out and general communication around the platform - the main OS is Linux, and that never changes.

While you work with a new platform, its quite important that you really get involved with it and an easy way to do that is to look at what you are doing now, whatever platform that might be on, and try to do the same thing, in the same way on the Linux machines. Once you can get the basics in place, you should really switch to using that linux install as your main workstation. While this might not give you much in terms of low level admin abilities, it will give you a user perspective on things. And I have always thought that the best admins are those who consider the user pespective, the developer perspective and then the platform ( and admin ) perspective. End of the day, lets not forget that the computers are here to do a job, and the admins role is to make sure that the job is done to its best ability. But dont lose context : the aim is still to run that job.

In the early days of my Linux experience, I used to find it hard to relate to other people's applications and what they might be doing with their computers and their networks. It was hard since I wasent actually in those roles, so even coming up with situations was hard. And looking for experience-situations I realised that the best way to get one's hooks into an app was to join the mailing list for that app. And work on some of the issues that people brought up, ask questions about why certain things were being done in a specific way and to look at bug reports that people were posting about that app - since that clearly showed how that app was being used 'in the real world', and it gave me a very good foundation to build on. About 14 years later, I still think that the usergrounps for specific apps are the best way to really learn about the app, how its managed, what best practises around that might be and what the developer / user perspective is for those apps.

Finally, being able to program and write real code helps. Dont believe the people who go around saying that admin needs no coding. On the other hand, speak to some of the good sysadmin people around ( and there are plenty ): pretty much everyone will tell you that they spend between 40 to 60% of their time writing scripts and working with apps where knowing the basics of development help. I am not saying that a certification in Java is needed, but having a good understanding of the basics for bash and atleast one of python,perl or ruby should be considered essential. The traditional mindset of unix/c still exists, but not many sysadmins these days need to get down to driver level development, and most functional code that sysadmins need to work with are well handled in the bash, ruby, perl and python worlds.

- KB