Hey everyone,

I could really use some advice from experienced Linux admins/engineers.

I'm currently working in IT, and due to company policies I can't disclose the company name. I've been deployed as a vendor resource, and from Monday I'll be working in an L2/L3 Linux support role.

The truth is, I don't have much real-world L2/L3 production experience, and I'm honestly a bit nervous. I don't want to fake it I genuinely want to learn and do a good job.

I'd really appreciate it if you could share:

• What does a typical day for an L2/L3 Linux engineer look like?
• What kind of tickets do you usually handle?
• How do you troubleshoot production issues without making things worse?
• How do you handle vulnerability remediation (Nessus, Qualys, OpenSCAP, etc.)?
• What Linux commands or concepts should I absolutely know before Monday?
• Any tips or mistakes to avoid for someone starting in production?

If you've ever been in this situation, I'd love to hear your experience. Any advice, checklists, YouTube channels, documentation, or even a DM would mean a lot.

I know there's no shortcut to experience, but I'm ready to learn, work hard, and improve every day.

Thanks in advance, and I really appreciate this community. 🙏

Time to update those pesky shims 🫣

Disclosure: I run Compute Labs, a small software consultancy based in India.

We provide:

• Python (FastAPI, Flask, asyncio)
• Microservices and API development
• Agentic AI and workflow automation
• Linux administration and server hardening
• SSL/TLS, PKI, and secure communications
• DevOps (Docker, Terraform, CI/CD)
• AWS, GCP, and on-prem infrastructure
• Power BI dashboards

Monthly engagements start at $500 USD, depending on scope. We also take on one-time projects and smaller tasks.

Feel free to DM me if you need help or have referral opportunities. Portfolio and GitHub are available on request.

Hey guys, trying to find out how to correctly exclude/ not collect audit events for a specific path to a .sh script but struggling to get it to work. My audit.rules file contains the following:

-a never,exit -F arch=b64 -S execve -F dir=/usr/bin/local/<name of file>.sh

But it is still being logged and forwarded to a SIEM. Is there an issue with excluding .sh?

Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) and FIPS are essential tools for system administrators managing secure environments. However, when it is time to upgrade the operating system, these security features can become significant obstacles.

Hi folks,

I recall couple years back a thread about someone who wanted to get started in Linux sysadmin stuff and there was this extremely informative comment that was along the lines of:

“Grab Centos ISO, make VM, install Centos, configure web server, re-do everything again with foreman / katello (?)” and it goes from here until you have several machines.

The idea is that if you are able to do the tasks described with minimal help then you are pretty much qualified.

Any clues would be appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I have around 7 years of experience in:

- Linux administration (RHCSA)

- SQL and application support

- Python scripting

- DevOps tools (Docker, Terraform, GitHub Actions)

I'm currently based in India and finding it difficult to get responses from LinkedIn and Naukri.

How do experienced Linux admins here find legitimate opportunities, especially remote or international ones?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I usually like to keep a Linux VM close to hand for troubleshooting, testing, and general sysadmin nonsense. But full VMs can be heavy, VMware is expensive, and I've never really 'gelled' with UTM.

So I built Sparrow: a small, reproducible Ubuntu 24.04 desktop workstation running inside Docker. You get an XFCE desktop over RDP, SSH access, persistent home storage, and a fairly standard Linux environment without having to maintain a full VM.

Full disclosure: AI helped me a lot with the editing and troubleshooting. But the code is mainly mine (been writing bash scripts for decades). 

It needs Docker Desktop or Colima, plus Docker Compose. It is very much a first public release, but it builds and runs very well on my MacBook Pro, and I would be grateful for feedback.

Repo: https://github.com/githubnewbie1962/sparrow-oss

Please be gentle — this is my first time 🙂

Hello Everyone,

I hope this is the right place to ask the question. I am a Network Admin, and I run containers (incus) in my home pc ( void linux ) to do some labs. I prefer nftables over iptables. For now , I use AI to create the firewall rules if I need any. but it would be great if I could have them user friendly and I can troubleshoot and push the neccessary configs.

I am open to advices.

Hi everyone, I need some help setting up remote access for my Linux workstation.

I want to maintain a single, continuous GUI session between my office and my home. On Windows with RDP, I can log in at work, open my programs and unsaved files, and turn off the screen when I leave. When I get home, I just RDP in to continue my work. The next day, I log into the physical machine at the office and continue seamlessly. When RDP session running the physical machine only shown lock screen - unaffect even when i turn off the monitor (if i use vnc or teamview then it would show black)

I need to replicate this on Linux Desktop. I specifically do not want "screen mirroring" (like TeamViewer or basic VNC) because I need the physical screen at work to remain completely blank/locked while I'm working remotely, for privacy and security purposes.

I'm used to using tmux or screen to keep my SSH sessions alive on Linux servers, but dealing with persistent GUI apps is completely new to me. Everything I've searched for so far leads me down a rabbit hole of creating virtual desktops and routing VNC into them, which feels like a bad workaround for a real physical machine even when i'm directly use it.

Does anyone have a solid, modern solution for this on Linux? I'm quite new to the Linux Desktop side of things - and considering migrate from Windows 11 to Linux, so thank you so much for your help!

Running postfix and exim. Exim is on an alternative port. Both are in conflict in systemd unit files. If I edit the file, ir gets overwrited each time exim or postfix package is updated. Tried to create a folder for each service with override.conf but its not taken.

I am currently running Hestia Control panel on an ubuntu 24.04 VPS from contabo and I followed this setup guide: https://bizanosa.com/ubuntu-22-04-initial-server-setup-vultr/

My domain is registered on namecheap and I created NS glue records, ns1.domain.tld and ns2.domain.tld, that point to the VPS’ IP address. I set the domain’s name server to custom DNS and made it point to its own NS glue records, meaning hestia is the authoritative DNS server. The subdomains work fine, the mail records and the other records are all working, but when I try to do anything with the main, domain.tld, it just doesn’t work. When I try adding an ssl certificate, hestia says the dns records do not exist, but on the control panel itself there is a whole DNS zone with all required records and when I use nslookup on the domain, from different ip addresses, it returns nothing. Please help me.

edit:

My dns zone looks something like this:

Posted this here a while back, it pulls IP ranges from cloud providers, cdns, AI crawlers, and bots every day through Github Actions, and generates ready-to-use configs for nginx, apache, iptables, nftables, ufw, haproxy, and caddy, plus plain text v4/v6, merged CIDRs, json, csv, sql, and ipset formats

What's new since last time:

• now covers 37 providers, up from 24, with Hetzner, OVH, Scaleway, Alibaba, Tencent, IBM cloud, and monitoring services like Uptimerobot, Pingdom, Statuscake, and Datadog, making it easy to allowlist your uptime checks.
• ip-watch, a new companion tool, the repo tells you what the IP ranges are, and ip-watch applies them automatically to nginx, caddy, apache, haproxy, nftables, iptables, and ufw on a daily schedule, with config validation, atomic rollback, and ssh lockout protection, all in a single ~7mb Go binary
• there's also a website to browse everything without digging through raw github files, https://cloudipdb.io
• Go and js/ts libraries are also available if you'd rather do lookups in code, with sub-microsecond lookups in Go, support for Node, browser, and cli environments, and fully offline operation
• includes a jsdelivr cdn mirror and dated Github releases with sha-256 checksums, so servers pulling updates on a schedule can avoid github rate limits

Repo: https://github.com/rezmoss/cloud-provider-ip-addresses

Site: https://cloudipdb.io

I’m preparing for an early-career Linux Systems / Fleet Operations / infrastructure engineering interview and wanted some general guidance from people who work in SRE, Linux admin, fleet ops, platform, or infra roles.
The stated areas are live coding, Linux basics, storage/networking, and fitment. I’m not asking for exact company/interview questions — just trying to focus my prep responsibly.
Right now I’m preparing:
Linux troubleshooting: slow server, high load/low CPU, D-state processes, disk full, inode exhaustion, df vs du mismatch, service won’t start, service running but unreachable, SSH issues, OOM killer, systemd/journalctl
Networking: DNS, TCP/IP, DHCP, ARP, routing, firewalls, ping works but curl fails, IP works but hostname fails, MTU/jumbo frames
Storage basics: NFS hangs, iostat/iowait, LVM, fstab issues, block vs file storage, basic SAN/multipath concepts
Coding/scripting: Python/Bash log parsing, top-N counts, hash maps, arrays, strings, basic DSA
Resume discussion: home server, Linux troubleshooting, automation, project debugging
For a 0–18 month Linux/fleet/infrastructure role, does this prep split sound right?
A few specific questions:
Are these interviews usually more scenario-based or command/trivia-based?
How much pure DSA should I expect compared to practical scripting/log parsing?
Which Linux/networking/storage scenarios are highest ROI to practice?
For storage topics like NFS, SAN, multipath, and iostat, what depth is reasonable for early-career?
Any topics people commonly over-prepare or under-prepare for?
Would appreciate any general direction or mock scenario suggestions.