Summer of Linux

At the start of the summer I set myself a goal. Perhaps a sad one. Learn as much about Linux as humanely possible.

I did have a head-start, I’ve been using Linux for around 6-7 years, but it’s when I’m in work that my lack of knowledge really shines through. There’s a couple of guys who work with me who put me to shame, and it was getting a bit embarrasing turning to them for solutions to ‘simple’ problems.

So, I decided to start the ‘Summer of Linux’, which I aimed to focus around reworking my entire home network.

So far I’ve earned my 25m competency badge in the following:

• Mail: Exim, Cyrus, SpamAssasin, Greylistd, Roundcube
• Web: The terrible trio – Apache, MySQL, PHP
• Communication: Asterisk, SIP, Cisco Phones, Jabber
• Internet: DNS (specifically BIND), IPTables
• Networking: DHCP (specifically ISC DHCP3)
• Backups: Custom BASH script to tape (DDS4 )
• Programming: Python, BASH, ‘bits’ of Perl, PHP
• VPN: OpenVPN

I have to admit I cheated on some of the above, as I’ve obviously had experience of BASH scripting, Apache/MySQL etc within 7 years of using Linux quite extensively. However – I’ve learnt a hell of a lot more by going through everything once again (and reading page after page of man!).

Slowly but surely I’ll be putting up details of any noteworthy stuff I encountered whilst configuring the above. If you can’t find it on this page – try my blog, or indeed be lazy and use the search