DEV Community: Sandesh

# 🚀 From Commands to Confidence: My Week with Linux Scripting

Sandesh — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 21:02:59 +0000

Hello Peeps!

It’s been a great week of learning — and more importantly, using what I’ve learned. Like I said earlier, I’ve been feeding my brain a ton lately, and it finally feels like I’m flexing those muscles the right way. These mini projects have been a game-changer in making things concrete in my head.

So, I started working on putting my so-called Linux mastery to use…

Let me correct myself — I thought I had mastery. 😅

But the moment I started building something real, I realized:

“Oof, I’ve got work to do.”

And honestly, I needed that reality check. These projects are what give me the right to say,

“Yeah, I know a few things about Linux.”

I’m not a master yet — keyword: yet — but I’ll get there. Slowly. Surely.

I made myself a promise, and I’m keeping it.

(Sorry for the motivational rant — just hyping myself up here 😄)

🛠️ Project 1: Auto-Provision Me (Shell Scripting)

I started working on a shell scripting project I call Auto-Provision Me, where I built a Bash script to set up a DevOps-ready Linux environment from scratch — safely and repeatably.

🔧 Features:

✅ Package Management (apt install, remove, purge, autoremove)
🔐 Firewall Setup using ufw with SSH-only default rules
👤 User & Group Creation with validation
📦 Restrict Tools to Groups (e.g. podman → devops)
🧪 Dry Run Mode for safe testing before execution
📜 Logging with timestamps to ~/provisioner/install.log
📚 DevOps Tool Installer with interactive CLI menu

👉 Check it out:

🔗 Auto-Provision Me on GitHub

😵‍💫 Challenge of the Week: Users, Groups & The Podman Mystery

One thing I wasn’t too comfortable with — and honestly, kind of scared of — was dealing with users and groups.

Creating users, setting up groups, assigning permissions... it all felt like a permissions mess waiting to explode. 🧨

But once I got over that wall of fear?

It wasn’t nearly as bad as I imagined.

Actually... I kinda enjoyed it.

Yep — me, having fun playing system admin. 😎

It felt good to flex control and make the system obey. Like I was the boss of my own mini server universe.

👻 Then came the Podman Ghost Hunt…

So I’m cruising along, feeling good. I write a clean, reusable function to install packages using apt.

First test? Let’s try installing Podman.

💥 Boom. Right in my face.

E: Package 'podman' has no installation candidate

Wait, what!? 😳

“What do you mean you don’t have Podman? This is Ubuntu 24.04!”

Naturally, I dove headfirst into the rabbit hole 🕳️🐇.

I discovered:

The package likely wasn’t present in the system’s default APT registry
I needed to add an external registry manually
Learned all about GPG key authentication 🛡️
Understood how Linux verifies trust using signed packages
Even found where those keys live (/etc/apt/keyrings) 🔑

At this point, I was geeked out, ready to go full wizard 🧙‍♂️.

I told myself:

“Let me just try one last time... sudo apt install -y podman”

And guess what?

🎉 IT. JUST. WORKED.

No fix. No registry. No GPG key.

Just installed.

I was like:

“Bro... the universe just trolled me.” 😭

At that moment, I swear all the stars aligned.

Should’ve bought a lottery ticket. 😂

I still don’t know what changed. Maybe the cache updated. Maybe the package gods blessed me.

But I don’t care — because that deep dive taught me a TON.

Sometimes, the bug disappears, but the lessons stay.

📈 Project 2: Monitor Health

Next up was a fun one — building a Bash-based system health monitor. This script gives me insights into how my system is doing and can even run on a schedule using cron.

🧰 Features:

📊 Full System Health Checks (Disk, Memory, CPU, Users, Services)
🚨 Alerting when thresholds are breached (Disk > 80%, Memory < 20%, CPU Overload)
📃 Summary Report
🔁 Cron-based Daemon Mode
🧹 Log Management with Timestamped Logging
🆘 Built-in Help Menu
🪵 Clean Logging Format with [INFO] and [ERROR] tags

👉 Check it out:

🔗 Monitor Health on GitHub

💭 Final Thoughts

With these two mini projects in the bag, I’m feeling so much more confident than I did last week.

Projects like this give me perspective — it’s one thing to learn theory, but implementing it teaches you 10x more.

That doesn’t mean we skip the theory — without it, I wouldn’t know where to start or what to build. But this has been a solid exercise in turning theory into real-world execution.

If you’ve done similar projects (or are working on something cool), share them with me! I’d love to check them out, learn from them, and stay motivated.

🧠 What’s Next? Time to GIT Going!

Next up, it’s time to GIT going — literally. 😄

I’ve used Git before, but now I want to dive deeper into the fundamentals and advanced usage — rebasing, hooks, cherry-picking, all that fun stuff.

Because let’s be honest, when you think you know Git...

Git hits back. 😅

But I’m here for it.

Thanks for tagging along, and if you checked out the projects — thank you.

If you left a ⭐ or dropped a comment — you're the real MVP.

Stay sharp. Stay curious.

And remember — even when the package “has no installation candidate”...

👉 You’ve got this.

🔐 Linux, Locked and Loaded: A DevOps Primer Before I Git Going

Sandesh — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 19:30:37 +0000

👋 Hello Peeps!
Well, what do you know—I finished the Linux course way earlier than expected!
My goal was to wrap it up before the end of next week, but thanks to a happy little network outage at work (shoutout to IT—you’re doing your best, legends 💻🔥), I had some unexpected downtime and decided to power through.

🧠 Real Talk
To be honest, I skipped a few overly deep sections—because hey, I'm not trying to become a full-blown sysadmin.
My focus is learning just enough Linux to troubleshoot like a boss, understand what’s going on under the hood, and be self-sufficient in a DevOps role.
Maybe that decision will bite me in the butt later… but for now, I'm rolling with it. 😅

💪 Brain Gains (and Retention Plan)
Right now, my head is loaded with Linux knowledge, and I don’t want it to evaporate into the ether ☁️💨
So I’m planning a mini project to practice everything I’ve learned—flex those mind-muscles and make things stick.
I’ll keep you posted on that! 🛠️📓

🚀 Not Rushing, Just Launching Right
I’m super eager to jump into Git, pipelines, Kubernetes, cloud, Docker, and all those DevOps goodies, but I’m not rushing it.
I want to do it right, not fast—because if I skip the basics now, I’ll be forced to loop back later, and that’s just a time-wasting headache.
So yeah, slow and steady but with fire. 🔥🐢

📚 My Linux Learning Assets
Here are my notes and a cheat sheet I made to help me (and maybe you too!):

📓 Full Linux Notes: Linux_basics.md

🧠 Quick Glance Cheat Sheet: devops_linux_skills_checklist.md

🧪 What’s Next?
I’ll be doing a mini project to practice these Linux commands in real-world scenarios.
It might not be a big show-off project, but it’s for muscle memory and confidence.
Then it’s GIT time—my next step on the DevOps ladder. 🔧⏫

🎉 Final Words
Thanks for tagging along—it’s been a fun ride so far!
Next up, we Git serious. 😉

Stay tuned, stay sharp, and stay caffeinated! ☕💻

Sharpening My Linux Skills for DevOps: Commands, Concepts & Notes

Sandesh — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 14:46:13 +0000

👋 Hello, peeps!

I wanted to be thorough, do my best, and maybe even become the best source of knowledge — if not for others, at least for myself, right? It’s all about building confidence and really believing in your own skills.

Even though I already had some knowledge of Linux and commands (and yes, I use a fair bit of them at work), I realized I was mostly stuck using just a few common ones. You know the drill — tailing logs, grepping for stuff, quick file edits. It’s easy to fall into a routine and never really explore the full toolbox Linux gives you.

For example, I rarely touched anything related to networking, user management, or system connections — mainly because my work didn’t require it. But I felt like if I really want to grow, I should revisit the foundations and get them right. Because we all know — a solid foundation is everything when it comes to mastering any skill.

🧠 Why I'm Refreshing My Linux Skills
That brings me here: I decided to go back and refresh my Linux knowledge properly — with intention and structure. I grabbed a course on Udemy that I honestly think is incredibly well done:

📚 Complete Linux Training Course to Get Your Dream IT Job in 2025:

Every section is detailed and easy to follow — even though I’m watching it at 1.75x speed (don’t judge, it still works 😄).

I actually completed most of the course earlier — I just had the disk management section left. But here's the catch: I had been taking notes directly in Udemy while watching the videos, and it became a nightmare to go back and review them. Scrolling through long, messy text blocks was painful.

So I figured, why not just start over — not from the very beginning like setting up the environment, but from the core command sections — and this time take proper notes in a way I can actually use later. Also, let’s be honest — part of me was punishing myself for not doing it right the first time 😅.

📝 Sharing My Notes (You're Welcome 😉)
As I’m going through the course again, I’m now creating clean, structured notes in Markdown format — easy to read, easy to revise, and perfect for anyone else who wants to follow along.

You can find my notes here (WIP):
📄 Linux Notes
(Note: link to GitHub)

🚧 Disclaimer: These notes are not yet complete. I’m currently at Section 5 of the course and will be updating them regularly over the next few days.

🛣️ What’s Next
My goal is to finish the entire course by the end of next week and then move on to Git.

Now, Git is something I already use and understand to some extent, but I want to go deeper — refresh the basics and build a stronger, more complete understanding. Because again... strong foundations matter.

🔑 A Quick Tip for Anyone Studying
When you're learning Linux — type out the commands. Practice is everything. Use man or --help if you get stuck or want to dig deeper. Even in the future, it’ll save you tons of time. 🙌

📌 Thanks for reading! Follow along as I dive deeper into DevOps and share everything I learn.