Introduction

Todo

Explain “What is Ops School?”

Goals and Focus

To have a complete syllabus for training smart persons with high potential who already have a basic understanding of Linux or other UNIX variant, to become strong junior systems administrators. This course will focus on the Linux platform as a basis for competency in any UNIX ecosystem.

Usenix defines the sysadmin role as:

Familiarity with an operating system and its commands/utilities at a user level; ability to edit files, use basic utilities and commands, find users’ home directories, navigate through the file system, install software on workstations, and use I/O redirection; some understanding of how user authentication happens in a directory service context. Ability to identify/locate shared resources and perform simple tasks (e.g., manipulate jobs in a print queue, figure out why a network file system isn’t available).

—Usenix, Job Descriptions for System Administrators, 3d Edition Revised

Our goal is to teach these topics, but also to provide a good understanding of how the components work, which enables the students to continue to grow their skills and contributions.

Our focus is any person who has an interest in operations. There are often personality traits which allow people to understand the role of a systems administrator more easily, but the material should be easily accessible to anybody who wishes to learn about it.

The required minimum skill level before participating will be as follows:

  • Has installed Linux or other UNIX variant
  • Is comfortable with, or even prefers, working on the command line
  • Has a basic understanding on navigating the filesystem, and the most basic tools (ps, ls, top, etc).

Syllabus layout

As we create this syllabus, there will inevitably be items which are found to be too advanced for a first pass but should be kept and taught as a progression into an intermediate systems administrator.

  • Junior topics are labelled “101”.
  • Intermediate topics are labelled “201”.
  • Senior topics are labelled “301”.

Contributions

Ops School is a community driven effort, and we always need people to contribute. Currently we need people who are able to fill in areas in our documentation - whether it’s a little or a lot, everything helps.

How we’ll organize work

This is a living document. We write headings and their breakdowns as bullet points. We turn each bullet point into the material we want people to read. That’s right. The syllabus IS the course. For now, at least, until we find a better way.

You should start writing the actual material to be taught right into this syllabus. We’ll worry about formatting and things later. As you write, remember that “101” material is aimed at people who are working up to being junior sysadmins. They’re mostly blank slates.

How to contribute

You can find the documentation source on GitHub and send pull requests:

Please fork the repo to your own account, create a branch, make your changes there, and issue a pull request from your fork/branch to opsschool:master. Be descriptive in your commit message for anything non-obvious.

If all of this git and GitHub stuff is a little overwhelming, take a look at GitHub’s documentation. If you have still have questions after reading that, please feel free to join #opsschool on irc.freenode.net and ask your questions there. We’ll be glad to help you get your patches merged–but please remember that many of us are busy ops professionals, so we may not respond immediately.

If you’d like to join the mailing list, email avleen@gmail.com.

Rewards for contributions

We have a special reward for reaching either of the following goals with your contributions:

  • 10 pull requests totaling 50 or more lines changed
  • 1 recorded Ops School video

For completing either of these, you will receive a dozen freshly baked cookies, made fresh for you by a professional baker, and a 3-inch die-cut sticker of the Ops School logo.

Once you reach either of these, please fill in the OpsSchool rewards form and we will get your reward over to you!

Ops School Videos

In collaboration with O’Reilly Media, we are filming the Ops School curriculum to provide another method of learning for students. Filming happens approximately every 3 months in New York or Silicon Valley.

O’Reilly is publishing the videos online, in individual form and in package form. Any profits which would be made by Ops School are donated to non-profit organisations which aid in learning for low-income persons.

Video can be short (10-20 mins), or longer. Depending on the content in the video, some presenters choose to use slides, while others prefer screen-casting live demonstrations. Some videos may not need any supporting material at all!

The next scheduled filming is at the Santa Clara Hyatt, from Monday June 17th 2013 to Friday June 21st 2013. Filming slots are available all day.

The topics which have already been filmed are:

  • Boot Process 101
  • DNS 101
  • Filesystems 101
  • MySQL 101
  • Nagios 101
  • Networking 101
  • Outage Investigation 101
  • Package Management 101
  • Shells 101
  • SSH 101
  • Application Level Monitoring
  • Careers In Operations
  • Operable Service - What People Expect From an Operable Service
  • Productivity Tools and Techniques
  • The /proc Filesystem
  • Web Flow - The Life of a Web Request

If you are interested in filming, please contact Avleen Vig (avleen#gmail.com) or open an issue on the Github project.

How to write sections

In order to help students learn as much as possible, we are taking the following approach to the curriculum (this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but an encouraged guideline wherever possible):

  • Approach your writing in three steps:
    1. Tell students what they’re going to learn
    2. Teach them what they need to know
    3. Tell them what they have learnt
  • As much as possible, treat this as an interactive exercise. For example if you are writing about virtual machines, don’t just write about virtual machines. Have the student create a virtual machine, and then explain what just happened. Don’t tell students that package managers install packages, have them install a few packages and then explain how the package manager did its thing.

Please read the Conventions topic for some style guideline and preferences.

Overwriting existing content

There are times when you will want to update or replace sections of text written by others. When doing so, follow these guidelines to ensure your changes are integrated smoothly:

  • Submit your pull request
  • Reference the original author in your commit

We’ll wait a few days (up to one week) to let the original author comment, if we feel there may be anything contentious in the commit. For most simple and straightforward commits, we’ll simply accept the commit.

Credits

If you contribute to this document and would like your name in lights (or, at least, written down somewhere) please add it here along with an email address and any affiliation:

Name Company
Avleen Vig <avleen@etsy.com> Etsy, Inc
Patrick McDonnell  
Michael Rembetsy <mcr@etsy.com> Etsy, Inc
Magnus Hedemark <magnus@yonderway.com> Wireless Generation
Ariel Jolo <ajolo@sysarmy.com.ar> sysARmy
Ryan Frantz <ryanleefrantz@gmail.com> Crabby Admins (www.crabbyadmins.org)
Mike Fiedler <miketheman@gmail.com> Datadog
Nathan Milford <nathan@milford.io> Outbrain, Inc.
Patrick Cable <pc@pcable.net>  
Benjamin Krueger <benjamin@seattlefenix.net> Sourcefire, Inc
Mårten Gustafson <marten.gustafson@gmail.com>  
Phil Hollenback <philiph@pobox.com>  
Adam Jacob <adam@opscode.com> Opscode, Inc.
Mark Imbriaco <mark@github.com> GitHub
James Turnbull <james@lovedthanlost.net> Puppet Labs
Scott Nyce <snyce@codetwit.com> TiVo, Inc.
Christian Paredes <cp@redbluemagenta.com> Amazon
Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org>  
Stephen Balukoff <sbalukoff@bluebox.net> Blue Box Group
Evan Pettrey <jepettrey@gmail.com> LOPSA
Khalid Maqsudi <khalid7621@hotmail.com> Ashford.com
Paul Graydon <paul@paulgraydon.co.uk>  
Harold “Waldo” Grunenwald  
Martin Gehrke <martin@teamgehrke.com> LOPSA
John Boris <jborissr@gmail.com> LOPSA
John Dewey <john@dewey.ws> AT&T
Carolyn Rowland <unpixie@gmail.com>  
Jordan Dea-Mattson <jdm@dea-mattson.com> Numenta, Inc.
Sean Escriva <sean.escriva@gmail.com> Heavy Water Ops
Adam Compton <comptona@gmail.com>  
Franck Cuny <franck@lumberjaph.net> SAY Media
Chris Nehren <cnehren@omniti.com> OmniTI
Brian Rak <dn@devicenull.org>  
Divij Rajkumar <drajkuma1@gmail.com>  
Aslan Brooke <aslandbrooke@yahoo.com> ZynxHealth.com, InfoQ.com
Glen Kaukola <gkaukola@cs.ucr.edu>  
Spencer Krum <krum.spencer@gmail.com> UTi Worldwide Inc.
Jeremy Grosser <jeremy@synack.me> Uber Technologies, Inc.
Hugo Landau <hlandau@devever.net>  
Konark Modi <modi.konark@gmail.com> MakeMyTrip.com
Josh Reichardt <josh.reichardt@gmail.com> thepracticalsysadmin.com
Ben Reichert <ben@benreichert.com>  
Simon Aronsson <simon.aronsson@gmail.com> itshale.com, simonaronsson.se
Andrew Langhorn <andrew@ajlanghorn.com>  
Abubakr-Sadik Nii Nai Davis <dwa2pac@gmail.com>  
Mike Julian  
Bram Verschueren  
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