Creating Your Own Server: how to setup your lab in
AWS
Azure
Digital Ocean
Google Cloud
others
Get to know your server
Starting with ssh-ing in and some simple commands like:
ls,
uptime,
free,
df -h,
uname -a.
Extensions on doing passwordless login with public keys and and an ssh config file.
Basic navigation
Basic navigation, the "man" pages, file hierarchy
Power trip
Working with sudo, uptime, timezones, changing your hostname
Installing software, exploring the file structure
Using 'apt' to find and install sotware.
Use of mc to explore the filesystem.
Looking at the contents of:
/etc/passwd,
/etc/ssh/sshd_config and
/var/log/auth.log
More or less
Using more, less and navigating in these.
Dotfiles, history, tab completion, and using the nano txt editor
Learning vim, the minimal knowledge, but also via vimtutor
The server and its services
Installing Apache2, stopping and starting, altering the content, reading logs
The infamous "grep" and other text processors
Hands-on with text tools like grep, cat, more, less, cut, awk and tail - and piping of course. (and a wave to awk and sed)
Diving into networking
Looking at open ports with with ss, and a nod to netstat, install nmap and test. Install ufw, set up, enable and test etc. Discuss security resonsibilities as the sysadmin.
Getting the computer to do your work for you
Covering cron, at, and systemd timers
Finding things
Finding things with: locate, find, grep, which
Transfering files
SFTP, the technology, clients, and copying up and down
Who has permission?
Permissions, users, groups, (ACLS and SELinux in the Extension)
Users and Groups
Using adduser, visudo to setup up a restricted "helper" to manage our host
Deeper into repositories
Repositories in more detail, how to enable "Multiverse", the role of PPAs in Ubuntu, enabling and installing from them
Archiving and compressing
Understanding and using tar and gzip
Build from the source
Installing from source.
Discussion, using wget to get a tarball, tar to extract and then configure, make and install.
Discussion of security, maintenance issues.
Log rotation
Log management and rotation, logrotate
Inodes, symlinks and other shortcuts
Inodes, hard links symlinks and stat
Scripting
Understanding how scripting work in Linux, the shebang, permissons and $PATH. A couple of simple sample scripts based on the filtering of logs we've been doing. Resources to explore further.