Phase 1: Linux Bash and Networking fundamentals

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.

How to break down this phase

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

Order	Topic
1	Introduction to Bash Commands
2	Introduction to Bash Scripting
3	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	Fundamentals of computer networking	You'll learn the fundamental principles of computer networking to prepare you for the Azure admin and developer learning paths.	Read this after the previous video.

Projects

Here are some projects to reinforce what you've learned in this phase. I recommend blogging or creating video content on your projects.

Title	Resource
Deploy a Linux VM using a CLI to any Cloud Platform	Ubuntu on public clouds
Setup a LAMP server	Configure the VM deployed previous to be a LAMP server
Convert video files	Checkout ffmpeg use it to write a script that converts a .mov file to mp4
Test your Bash skills with OverTheWire!	Bandit

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 :)