Engineering Roles line, station 1 of 8
TechOps: Linux, Networks and IT Operations
Keep a company's technology running: Linux, shell scripts, networks, accounts and MFA, a fleet of devices, and a service desk that handles incidents and changes well.
- 6lessons
- 3.5 hto read and do
- Beginnerlevel
- 6podcast episodes
- 9checked exercises
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
Behind every store till, scanner and laptop is someone who keeps it running. TechOps and IT operations teams look after servers, networks, accounts and devices, and they are the first people called when something breaks. This course teaches the fundamentals the job needs, from opening a terminal for the first time, and the habits that make a calm, trusted operator.
You join the TechOps team of Mangrove Market, a fictional grocery chain with 320 stores, about 400 checkout tills and about 1,000 handheld scanners. You investigate a slow store server from the Linux command line, write a safe Bash script that checks disks and cleans up logs every night, trace a till that cannot reach the price service through DHCP, DNS, routing, firewalls and the VPN, run joiners, movers and leavers with single sign-on and MFA, roll out a scanner update in waves with health gates, and work tickets the way a good service desk does: incidents, problems and changes with a rollback plan.
Each lesson has diagrams, quick checks, a Build it section you can follow on any Linux machine or virtual machine, practice tasks with auto-checked exercises that run in your browser, flashcards and a podcast episode. The capstone is a real-looking investigation: tills in 40 stores drop off the network every Monday at 8:00, and you prove why, fix it with a proper change and write the incident report.
What you will be able to do
- Work on a Linux server from the command line: files, permissions, processes, disks, services and logs
- Write small, safe Bash scripts for daily checks and clean-ups, and schedule them with cron or systemd timers
- Trace a network problem layer by layer through IP addresses, DHCP, DNS, routing, firewalls and VPNs
- Run joiners, movers and leavers with single sign-on, phishing-resistant MFA, least privilege and access reviews
- Manage a fleet of devices and roll out updates in waves with health gates, and run incidents, problems and changes with a service-management process
Syllabus
6 stops, about 3.5 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
Linux from the command line
Every Mangrove store has a small Linux server in the back office, and when it struggles, the tills and scanners feel it. This lesson teaches you to log in safely, find your way around, read the signs in processes, disk, services and logs, and fix common problems without creating new ones.
LinuxIdentity and access
Shell scripting for daily jobs
Every store box needs the same small jobs done every night: check the disk, clear old logs, report problems. This lesson teaches you to write those jobs as short Bash scripts that stop when something goes wrong, never delete the wrong file, and run on a schedule without anyone watching.
Shell scriptingLinux
Networks from the till to the data centre
When a till says "prices offline", the fault can sit in a cable, a lease, a name, a route, a firewall rule or a VPN tunnel. This lesson shows how each of those works in a Mangrove store, and gives you a calm, bottom-up method to find which one broke.
NetworkingDNSLinux
Accounts, SSO and MFA
Every till login, scanner sign-in and admin password at Mangrove Market is a door into the business. This lesson shows how TechOps gives each person the right doors on their first day, changes them when they move, closes all of them on their last day, and makes stolen passwords far less useful.
Identity and accessIT service management
Looking after 1,400 devices
Mangrove Market's stores run on about 400 tills and about 1,000 handheld scanners. You cannot walk up to each one, so you manage them from one console. This lesson shows how to keep that fleet known, configured, patched and safe without breaking a trading day.
Device managementIT service managementIdentity and access
Incidents, problems and changes
A service desk that treats every call the same way drowns on its first busy Saturday. This lesson gives you the simple process most IT teams use: sort every ticket into the right kind, set its priority from impact and urgency, fix the cause once instead of fifty times, and change live systems with a plan to undo the change.
IT service managementIncident managementChange management
Capstone: Fix the Monday morning till outage
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Fix the Monday morning till outage
Every Monday at about 8:00, the tills in 40 of Mangrove Market's 320 stores lose their connection to the price and payment services for around ten minutes, and the tills fall back to offline mode just as the stores open. The other 280 stores are fine. What you know: the 40 affected stores all got a new router model in a single wave four weeks ago, configured from one template; on those routers the WAN DHCP lease is 7 days and the site-to-site VPN rekeys its tunnel every 168 hours, both counted from the moment the routers were first switched on together, on a Monday at 8:00; router logs from store-0142 show 'DHCP: renewing lease on wan0' at 08:00:01 followed by 'IKE: rekey failed, peer unreachable' and the tunnel coming back at 08:09:40; the store box's journal shows the till sync queue growing from 08:00 to 08:10. Investigate as if you were on the team: write down the checks you would run from the till up to the data centre and what each one shows, prove the cause from the evidence, design the fix as a proper change with a test and a rollback plan, add a check that would catch it if it ever happened silently again, and write a short blameless incident report.
You will hand in
- An investigation log: each check from the till to the data centre (commands or tools, expected result, what the evidence shows), ending with the proven cause
- A change request for the fix: what changes, risk, test plan in one pilot store, schedule outside trading hours, rollout in waves and a rollback plan
- A small script or monitoring check (with a short explanation) that alerts when a store's VPN tunnel drops or tills switch to offline mode
- A one-page blameless incident report with impact in numbers, a timeline, contributing factors and actions with owners and dates
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 6 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 3 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Do I need any experience?
No. The first lesson starts from opening a terminal and reading a file. A computer where you can install a Linux virtual machine helps for the Build it sections, but every auto-checked exercise runs in your browser.
How long does the course take?
About 4 hours for the six lessons with their checkpoints and practice tasks, plus roughly 60 to 70 minutes of podcast episodes if you listen to all of them. Allow 3 to 5 hours for the capstone.
Does it prepare me for certifications?
It covers much of the ground of entry-level IT support, Linux and networking certificates, and the incident, problem and change lesson follows the ITIL style of service management. It teaches the job rather than an exam, so use a certificate's own syllabus to fill any gaps.
Why Linux and Bash, when many offices run Windows?
Most servers, routers and cloud systems run Linux, and Bash scripts are everywhere in operations. The ideas (permissions, services, logs, scripting safely, networks, identity, devices and change control) carry over directly to Windows and PowerShell.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How does the final exam work?
You get 15 questions drawn at random from a larger bank. You need 70% to pass. If you do not pass, you can try again after 24 hours. The exam is graded on the server and you never see the answer key.