InternshipAll 30 tasks, level by level
The real graded Linux Administration tasks the portal assigns, grouped into three levels.
The portal assigns these Linux Administration tasks. Finish Level 1 before Level 2 and Level 2 before Level 3. Your mentor may mark some tasks as required for the certificate.
Level 1: Foundations (12 tasks)
| Task | What to do |
|---|---|
| Install Linux | Install Ubuntu Server or Rocky Linux in VirtualBox or WSL, and document the steps in a repo named linux-admin-internship. |
| Filesystem and navigation | Explain the Linux directory tree (/etc, /var, /home, /usr, /tmp) and practise ls, cd, pwd, cp, mv, rm, find and tree. |
| Files and text | Use cat, less, head, tail, grep, wc, sort, uniq, cut and awk to answer 10 questions about a sample log file. |
| Users and groups | Create users and groups, set passwords and expiry, add a user to sudo, and remove a user safely. |
| Permissions | Explain rwx, chmod (numeric and symbolic), chown and umask, and set up a shared folder for a team group. |
| Package management | Install, update and remove software with apt or dnf, and explain repositories and keys. |
| Processes | Use ps, top, htop, kill, nice and jobs to find and control a CPU-heavy process. |
| Services with systemd | Start, stop, enable and check services with systemctl, and read their logs with journalctl. |
| Networking basics | Use ip, ss, ping, traceroute, dig and curl to check addresses, open ports, DNS and HTTP. |
| SSH | Set up SSH key login between two VMs, turn off password login and explain why. |
| Editors | Edit configuration files with vim and nano, and write a cheat sheet of the commands you used. |
| Shell scripting | Write a Bash script that takes a folder name, counts files by type and prints a report. |
Level 2: Building real features (10 tasks)
| Task | What to do |
|---|---|
| Disks and LVM | Add a virtual disk, partition it, create an LVM volume, format and mount it, and add it to /etc/fstab. |
| Scheduled jobs | Schedule a backup script with cron and a systemd timer, and show the logs of both. |
| Backups | Back up a folder with tar and rsync to another VM, then restore one file and the whole folder. |
| Web server | Install Nginx or Apache, host two websites on one server with virtual hosts and set up HTTPS with a self-signed or Let's Encrypt certificate. |
| Database server | Install MySQL or PostgreSQL, secure it, create a user with limited rights and take a dump backup. |
| Firewall | Configure ufw or firewalld to allow only SSH, HTTP and HTTPS, and test from another machine. |
| Log management | Set up log rotation with logrotate for an app log and search logs for errors by time. |
| Monitoring | Check CPU, memory, disk and load with free, df, du, vmstat and iostat, and write a script that emails or logs an alert above a limit. |
| Hardening | Apply 10 hardening steps (updates, SSH settings, fail2ban, removing unused services) and record each one. |
| NFS or Samba share | Share a folder from one VM and mount it on another with NFS or Samba, with correct permissions. |
Level 3: Professional work and capstone (8 tasks)
| Task | What to do |
|---|---|
| Automation with Ansible | Write an Ansible playbook that sets up users, packages, a firewall and a web server on two VMs. |
| Containers | Install Docker, run Nginx and a database in containers, and explain how containers differ from VMs. |
| Troubleshooting drills | Fix 5 broken setups you create on purpose (full disk, stopped service, wrong permission, bad DNS, port in use) and write each fix. |
| Boot process | Explain BIOS/UEFI, GRUB, the kernel and systemd targets, and recover a VM after a bad fstab entry. |
| Performance tuning | Find what slows a busy server (CPU, memory, disk or network) using tools like sar or iotop, and tune one setting. |
| Documentation | Write a server runbook: setup, users, services, backups, monitoring and recovery steps. |
| Certification prep | Make notes and 30 practice tasks for the RHCSA or LFCS exam topics. |
| Capstone: managed server | Run a hardened Linux server with a website, database, backups, monitoring, firewall and Ansible setup. Submit the repo, runbook and a 2-minute video tour. |