Overview

Module 1: The Essentials (The "I'm Not Lost" Phase)

Goal: Navigate the filesystem and manage files without a mouse.

The Filesystem Hierarchy (What is /etc, /home, and /var?)

Create a directory in your home folder called practice.

Inside practice, create a file named my_notes.txt.

Write "Linux is powerful" into that file using the command line.

Find every file in the /etc directory that ends in .conf.

Challenge: Append the word "Completed" to my_notes.txt without opening a text editor.

Goal: Understand who can touch what. This is the core of Linux security.

Root vs. Standard Users (sudo)

Permissions: Read (r), Write (w), Execute (x).

Changing ownership: chmod and chown.

Managing users: useradd, usermod, passwd.

Create a new user named developer.

Create a folder called /project_alpha.

Change the permissions so that only the developer user can read and write to it, but nobody else (not even their group) can see it.

Give the developer user the ability to run commands as sudo.

Goal: See what the computer is doing under the hood.

Monitoring: top, htop, df -h (disk space).

Process Management: ps, kill, systemctl (starting/stopping services).

Networking: ip addr, ping, ssh.

Package Management: apt (Debian/Ubuntu) or dnf (RedHat/Rocky).

Install the apache2 (or httpd) web server.

Use systemctl to check if it's running. Stop the service and verify it's down.

Identify which process is using the most CPU on your system right now.

Find your VM's internal IP address.

Goal: Make the computer do your job for you.

I/O Redirection: >, >>, | (The Pipe).

Bash Scripting basics: Variables, Loops, and If statements.

Cron jobs: Scheduling tasks.

Write a script named backup.sh that copies everything in /home to a folder called /backup.

Make the script executable.

Schedule a cron job that runs this script every night at 2:00 AM.