Linux Foundation Certified Systems Administrator - LFCS

Learn to log in to local and remote Linux systems via text mode consoles and graphical logins, using SSH, VNC, and RDP with appropriate clients.

Demonstrates logging in to Linux machines: local graphical login, remote graphical login via RDP on Windows, and remote text mode login with SSH from any platform.

Master how to access Linux command documentation using man pages, dash dash help, and apropos, then navigate pagers and tab completion with journalctl and systemctl.

Learn how to access real hands-on labs hosted on Code Cloud, requiring a separate Code Cloud account; locate labs under courses and mark them complete as you progress.

Master navigating the Linux file system tree with absolute and relative paths, using ls to reveal detailed listings, and perform file operations with touch, mkdir, cp, mv, and rm.

Discover how Linux hard links use the ln command to point multiple filenames to the same inode, enabling shared access without duplicating data, with file system limitations.

Explore how Linux uses hard links and soft links, backed by an I node, to share files across users and understand how deletion and permissions affect all linked names.

Learn to list, set, and change file and directory permissions in Linux, including owner and group roles, using chgrp and chmod, with rwx semantics and octal values.

Explore set user id and set group id permissions and the sticky bit, showing how suid/sgid elevate privileges for executables and how sticky bit protects shared directories.

Master file search in Linux using the find command to locate files by name, size, modification time, and permissions, and combine expressions with and, or, and not operators.

Explore pagers less and more for viewing large text and navigating with searches, then master vim basics like insert mode, save, quit, and basic copy-paste operations.

Learn to use grep to search text in files, wrap search patterns in single quotes to prevent shell interpretation, and use -i, -r, -o, -w, and color options.

Learn to craft search patterns with regular expressions and grep, handling IP addresses, commented lines, escaping, and extended regex, using caret, dollar sign, period, and other operators in config files.

Learn to use extended regular expressions with grep and egrep, control escaping, repetition with braces and asterisks, optional and or logic, ranges and sets, negation, and subexpressions to refine searches.

Archive and back up data in Linux using tar to create tar archives (tarballs), optionally compress to tar.gz, and copy to remote locations, while preserving permissions and ownership.

Compress and uncompress files in Linux using gzip, bzip2, xz, and zip; create archives with tar and zip, use --keep and --list options, and tar --auto-compress to simplify workflows.

Learn basic Linux backups with rsync over SSH to sync local and remote directories, and use dd for disk imaging and restoration.

Learn input and output redirection in Linux, using >, >>, |, and 2> to direct stdin, stdout, and stderr, plus here documents, here strings, and piping to combine programs.

Explore how TLS certificates authenticate websites and encrypt traffic. Use OpenSSL to create and inspect X509 certificates, generate a CSR, and understand self-signed certificate workflows and certificate authorities.

Understand how git, a distributed version control system, enables teams to track changes via local and remote repositories, showing added, removed, or modified files, who changed them, and why.

Modify changes in the working area, stage them in the staging area with git add, then commit a snapshot with a descriptive message to track project history.

Explore git branches, master vs 1.1 testing, and merging, then learn to push and pull to remote repositories, configure origin, use ssh keys, and clone.

Boot, reboot, and shut down Linux systems safely using systemctl with sudo when needed, schedule reboots or shutdowns, and use forced options and wall messages.

Explore how Linux boots with systemd targets, check and set the default target, switch between graphical and multi-user modes, and use emergency or rescue targets for debugging.

Learn to automate system maintenance with bash scripts, create and run script.sh using a shebang and executable permissions, log outputs, and manage backups with if and test.

Learn how systemd manages startup and service lifecycles in Linux, using service units to start, reload, restart, enable, disable, and mask daemons like ssh, and inspect status with systemctl.

Create a systemd service file to manage a persistent app, configure restart always, and define unit, service, and install sections with practical startup and logging behavior.

Examine Linux processes with ps and top, monitor CPU and memory, and manage signals, niceness, and foreground/background execution using renice, kill, and pkill.

Locate and analyze system log files in Linux using syslog and journalctl to filter, view, and audit authentication and sudo activity.

Schedule tasks in Linux using cron, Anacron, and at. Learn to edit user and root crontabs, use system-wide tables, and run repetitive or one-time jobs with proper paths.

Learn to install, upgrade, and remove software on Ubuntu using apt, update repositories, manage dependencies, view Nginx package files with dpkg, and use apt search and autoremove.

Configure Ubuntu's default repositories, including main, universe, updates, and noble, and add third-party sources like Docker with GPG dearmoring in sources.list.d and PPAs.

Learn to install software by compiling from source using git clone, configure, make, and sudo make install, demonstrated by building htop from its git repository.

Verify the integrity and availability of resources and processes. Use df -h and du -s to gauge disk space usage, memory with free -h, and monitor CPU load via uptime.

Explore how to change Linux kernel runtime parameters, non-persistent and persistent, using sysctl to view and set net, vm, and fs parameters, storing changes in /etc/sysctl.d with a .conf file.

Explore how SELinux provides fine-grained file and process security using user, role, type, and level labels; learn to inspect contexts with ls -Z and ps -Z.

Enable SELinux on Ubuntu by removing AppArmor, installing SELinux basics and auditd, labeling the system, and using audit2allow to build a custom policy and switch between permissive and enforcing.

Learn how docker containers encapsulate applications for portable deployments with images and tags. Explore running nginx in a container, publishing ports, detaching sessions, and building custom images with a Dockerfile.

Learn to manage and configure virtual machines on Linux with qemu/kvm and virsh, including creating domains from XML and controlling start, reboot, shutdown, and vCPUs and memory settings.

Create and boot an Ubuntu 24.04 virtual machine from cloud images, resize the disk to 10 GB, configure virt install options, and manage via virsh and a text console.

Install an operating system on a virtual machine by creating a ten gigabyte disk image, booting from an ISO, and using virt install with a web location for installation files.

Create, delete, and modify local user accounts on Linux using add user and usermod, manage passwords, home directories, shells, and expiration, and understand account and group IDs.

Create, delete, and modify local Linux groups and memberships to manage access; learn primary versus secondary groups and commands like gpasswd, usermod, and groupmod.

Learn to manage system-wide environment profiles in Linux by inspecting env vars, using $HOME in scripts, configuring /etc/environment and /etc/profile.d, and creating login scripts that log date and time.

Manage the template user environment by copying default files to new users' home directories, adding a policy readme, and verifying with ls -a and cat readme.

Configure user resource limits in Linux by editing the limits.conf file to set domain, type, item, and value, applying hard or soft limits for users, groups, or all.

Explore managing user privileges in Linux using sudo, group membership, and the sudoers file to control which users can run specific commands as root or other users.

Manage root access in Linux using sudo or su to log in as root, and learn how root passwords can be locked or unlocked, including SSH private key access.

Configure Linux systems to use LDAP for user and group data via NSS and libnss-ldapd. Automatically manage accounts across many servers with PAM and on login home directory creation.

Configure network settings on Ubuntu to understand IP addresses, IPv4 and IPv6, and CIDR notation, including network prefixes, hosts, and the basics of 32-bit vs 128-bit addresses.

Configure IPv4 and IPv6 networking on Ubuntu using ip and netplan, bring interfaces up, assign addresses, configure DHCP, and manage DNS and hostname resolution.

Start, stop, and check the status of network services in Linux using ss and netstat, inspect listening ports such as 22 and 3306, and manage services with systemctl.

Configure bridge and bonding to create virtual network devices that connect separate networks. Understand bridge versus bond, ports, bonding modes (0–6), and mode 4 IEEE 802.3 add.

Configure bridge and bonding devices on Ubuntu using Netplan. Edit bridge and bond yaml files, enable dhcp on the bridge, and validate with ip link and bonding status.

Configure a packet filtering firewall on ubuntu with ufw, enable ssh on port 22, and apply default deny rules while managing rule order for incoming and outgoing traffic.

Learn to implement port redirection and nat using iptables or nft. Enable ip forwarding and configure masquerading with prerouting and postrouting rules for remote servers.

Configure nginx as a reverse proxy and load balancer to route traffic, instantly switch servers, and distribute requests across multiple back-end servers with upstream, round robin, least_conn, weights, and backup.

Set and synchronize system time by configuring time zones and NTP servers with time date ctl and systemd timesyncd, monitoring poll intervals and NTP status to ensure accurate clocks.

Learn to configure the ssh daemon and client on Linux, including port and address settings, authentication methods (password, ssh-keys), root login control, ssh-keygen, ssh-copy-id, and per-user overrides.

Learn to partition storage for multiboot scenarios, using fdisk and cfdisk to list, create, delete, and modify partitions on /dev devices, with swap, MBR or GPT considerations.

Configure and manage Linux swap space by creating a swap partition, or a swap file, enabling it with swapon, and ensuring persistence across reboots.

Create and configure file systems on partitions using mkfs for zfs, ext4, and xfs; adjust labels, inode sizes, and other options, then verify with cfdisk.

Learn to mount file systems manually and at boot, create mounting points, verify with lsblk, and configure /etc/fstab to auto mount zfs and swap using uuids.

Learn to inspect mounted file systems with lsblk and findmnt, view mount options, and apply filesystem independent options like rw, ro, noexec, and nosuid, including remounting and fstab automation.

Learn to use NFS for remote file systems by configuring server exports, mounting shares on clients, and applying options like rw, ro, and no subtree check.

Mount remote storage with network block devices (NBD) by configuring the server and client, exporting and attaching blocks as local devices, then mount to /mnt and detach when finished.

Explore how the logical volume manager enables flexible storage by pooling disks into volume groups and creating logical volumes, resizing and extending them with new physical volumes while avoiding downtime.

Learn to monitor storage performance on Linux using iostat and pidstat to track read and write activity, identify bottlenecks, and map devices like dm-0 to their underlying volumes.

Learn advanced Linux permissions with access control lists, grant per-user and per-group access using setfacl and getfacl, and apply recursive changes; explore append-only and immutable attributes with chattr.

Linux Foundation certified systems administrator course concludes by equipping you with Linux system admin skills, deployment, automation, security configurations, networking, storage, and hands-on labs preparing you for the LFCS certification.

After finishing lfcs, pursue rhcsa with lectures, labs, and mock exams in the csa course to build linux skills, or continue devops with shell scripting, git, docker, kubernetes, and terraform.