Overview

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This course introduces the core responsibilities of a working Linux administrator — managing who can access a system, and keeping that system running smoothly — helping you move from command-line basics into real, day-to-day administration. You'll begin with users and groups, learning how Linux identifies accounts, where it stores user and group information, and how to inspect identities and sessions. From there, you'll create, modify, and remove users and groups, work with UID and GID, set password policies, and configure sudo for safe, auditable privilege escalation. The course then moves into process management, where you'll explore the process lifecycle, inspect and search running processes, examine process metadata, and control processes using signals and job control — including running tasks in the background and keeping them alive after logout. You'll also monitor CPU, memory, and disk resources to assess system health. Finally, you'll manage services and daemons with systemd, control boot configuration, and debug using logs from journald. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Create, modify, and remove Linux users and groups using core administration tools. - Inspect user identities, sessions, and the system files behind accounts. - Configure sudo access and audit privilege escalation safely. - Inspect and control running processes using signals and job control. - Monitor CPU, memory, and disk usage to assess system health. - Manage services and daemons with systemd and debug logs using journald. Designed for aspiring and working system administrators, DevOps engineers, and IT professionals ready to move beyond the basics, this course gives you the practical control needed to run real Linux systems. You should be comfortable navigating the Linux command line, as covered in Introduction to Linux. Take the next step in your Linux journey and learn to administer systems the way professionals do.

Syllabus

Linux User and Group Administration

This module introduces how Linux manages users, groups, identity files, and permissions in a multi-user environment. Learners explore /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group, UIDs, GIDs, and account types before practicing user and group management with common administration commands. The module also covers sudo configuration, privilege escalation, and least privilege practices for secure system access.

Process Management and Job Control

This module explains how Linux runs, tracks, and controls processes across the system. Learners examine process states, PIDs, parent-child relationships, the /proc filesystem, signals, and priority management. They also practice controlling foreground and background jobs using tools such as jobs, bg, fg, nohup, and disown for effective process handling.

System Monitoring and Service Management

This module focuses on monitoring system performance and managing Linux services. Learners work with disk, memory, CPU, and I/O monitoring tools to identify resource usage and troubleshoot issues. The module also introduces systemd, including service states, unit files, systemctl, journalctl, and boot targets for managing services and daemons confidently.

Course Wrap-Up and Assessment

This module is designed to assess learners on the core Linux administration skills covered in the course. Learners bring together user and group management, sudo configuration, process inspection, job control, system monitoring, and service management. Through a roleplay activity, practice project, graded assignment, and summary video, learners demonstrate their ability to manage users, control processes, monitor system resources, and troubleshoot Linux services effectively.