Phase 1: Linux Bash and Networking

Author: GPS

How does this phase apply to Cloud?

The cloud is a bunch of Linux Servers networked together. Learning the fundamentals of how networking works, and how to interact with these servers via commands, and automating those commands via a script, is what this phase is about. If you're already a Linux admin or network engineer, you can apply your skills to the cloud.

Along side learning to code (Bash is code), you'll need leverage Git. It's the most popular version control tool and one of the DevOps practices. It is used to manage and share your code. GitHub is one of the most popular repository hosting service.

Take some time now to create a GitHub account if you don't already have one. It'll be your code portfolio and this is how you showcase projects on your resume.

How to break down this phase

I would suggest spending time on these three topics and this timeline:

Order	Topic
1	Introduction to Bash
2	Introduction to Networking

Of course feel free to spend as much time as you'd like, people have asked for a timeline and breakdown so I've added it.

Resources

Topic	Title	Notes	Tips
Bash	Linux Basics for Hackers	This book made learning Linux FUN! It's pretty easy to follow and take a chapter day by day.	You don't need to read the whole thing, the first 9 chapters cover most of what you need to know.
Bash for Beginners	YouTube Video Series	An introduction to Bash!	A 20 part YouTube series covering the fundamentals of Bash.
Networking	Computer Networking Course - Network Engineering	You'll learn the fundamental principles of computer networking to prepare you for cloud.

Capstone Project: CloudUploader CLI

A bash-based CLI tool that allows users to quickly upload files to a specified cloud storage solution, providing a simple and seamless upload experience similar to popular storage services.

Your tool should be able to upload a file:

clouduploader /path/to/file.txt

Steps:

1. Create a GitHub repo for your project, make sure to leverage branches and commit your code often.

2.. Setup & Authentication:

-   Choose a cloud provider (e.g., AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage).
-   Setup authentication. For instance, with Azure, you'd use `az login` to set up your credentials.

3. CLI Argument Parsing:

   • Use bash's built-in $1, $2, etc., to parse command-line arguments.
   • $1 could be the filename or path.
   • Optionally, allow additional arguments like target cloud directory, storage class, or any other cloud-specific attributes.

4. File Check:

   • Before uploading, check if the file exists using [ -f $FILENAME ].
   • Provide feedback if the file is not found

5. File Upload:

   • Use cloud provider CLI to upload the file.

6. Upload Feedback:

   • On successful upload, provide a success message.
   • If there's an error, capture the error message and display it to the user.

7. Advanced Features (Optional):

   • Allow multiple file uploads at once.
   • Add a progress bar or percentage upload completion using tools like pv.
   • Provide an option to generate and display a shareable link post-upload.
   • Enable file synchronization -- if the file already exists in the cloud, prompt the user to overwrite, skip, or rename.
   • Integrate encryption for added security before the upload.

8. Documentation:

   • Write a README.md file that explains how to set up, use, and troubleshoot the tool. Include a brief overview, prerequisites, usage examples, and common issues.

9. Distribution:

   • Package the script for easy distribution and installation. You can even provide a simple installation script or instructions to add it to the user's $PATH.

Things you should be able familiar with at the end of this phase

Commands

• Navigate with the cd command.
• How to list the contents of a directory and using the ls command.
• Create, copy, move, rename, directories and files with mkdir, cp, rm, and touch commands.
• Find things with locate, whereis, which, and find commands.
• Understand how to learn more about commands with the which, man, and --help commands.
• Familiar with finding logs details in /var/log
• How to display the contents of a file with cat, less, more, tail, head.
• Filtering with grep and sed.
• Redirection of standard input, output and error with > operator and tee command.
• How to use pipelines with the | operator.
• Manipulate files with nano or vim.
• Install and uninstall packages. Depends on distro, debian based use apt.
• Control permissions with chown, chgrp, chmod commands.
• Creating users and the sudo command.
• Process management with ps, top, nice, kill
• Manage environment aud user defined variables with env, set, export commands.
• Add directories to your PATH.
• Compression and archiving with tar, gzip, gunzip.
• How to access a Linux server with ssh.

Networking

Concepts you should be familiar with.

• OSI Model
• IP Addresses
• MAC Addresses
• Routing and Switching
• TCP/IP
• TCP and UDP
• DNS
• VPN tunneling
• TLS and SSL

Bash Scripting

• What is a shell?
• What is Bash?
• Why does a script have to start with #!?
• What is a variable and how to use them
• How to accept user input
• How to execute a script

Certifications you might want to look into

There are several Linux certifications and you can chose to study for any of them, but a lot of them cover WAY more than what you need to know for a solid foundation and are more focused on Linux administration.

• LPI
• RedHat
• Linux Foundation
• Comptia Linux+

There are also TONS of networking certifications out there, and similar to the Linux ones, they are more focused on giving you a lot of knowledge so you can become a networking engineer/specialist, again at an introductory level, it's a little overkill. If you did want to get one, take a look at the Cisco certifications which are pretty much industry standard and/or Comptia Network+

At the end of the day, if you want to take them, go for it :)