Linux DevOps: ship it, automate it
You can run a server. Now let's talk about how software gets onto servers, over and over, safely. DevOps is what happens when the people who write the code and the people who run it stop throwing work over a wall and build one pipeline together. On Linux, that means containers, automation and a lot of text files in git. If you like making a computer do the boring parts for you, you'll like this path.
Is this path for you?
You're ready if these sound familiar (each links to the lesson that teaches it):
- Managing services and reading their logs (Linux Basics, lesson 14, Linux Sysadmin, lesson 4)
- Writing a small bash script with
ifandfor(Linux Sysadmin, lesson 13) - Committing, branching and pushing with git (Git, lesson 1, Git, lesson 2)
- Running an Alpine container with podman (Linux Sysadmin, lesson 16)
Missing one? Go take that lesson first. Everything here builds on it, and the lessons are waiting whenever you want them.
What's ahead
| Lesson | You'll learn to… | The challenge |
|---|---|---|
| Build & run | ||
| lesson 1: your own image | write a Containerfile, build and tag images, publish ports, read container logs | Ship a website as an image, then roll out version 2 the right way |
| lesson 2: compose | run a multi-container app from one file: service names, networks, volumes | A counter app and its database. Make the data survive, then break the networking on purpose. |
| Automate & ship | ||
| lesson 3: CI pipelines | write a GitHub Actions workflow, read runs with gh, lint with ShellCheck | Red, green, red, green: let CI catch two real bugs |
| lesson 4: Ansible | inventories, ad-hoc commands, facts, playbooks and templates | Turn a blank Rocky server and a blank Ubuntu server into web servers with ONE playbook |
| lesson 5: secrets & config | keep config in the environment and secrets out of git, and rotate after a leak | A password was committed. Un-leak it. |
| lesson 6: deploy strategies | blue-green behind an Apache reverse proxy, smoke tests, rollback | Ship v2, catch a bad release, roll back in seconds |
How this path is different
- Rebuild, don't repair. In Linux Sysadmin you logged in and fixed things by hand. Here, you change the recipe and build a fresh copy, so the fix is written down, reviewed and repeatable.
- Everything is a file in git. Containerfiles, pipelines, Ansible playbooks. If it isn't in git, it didn't happen.
- Still both families. Rocky shops lean on podman and Ansible (both made by Red Hat). Ubuntu shops often use Docker. You'll see both, and why the commands are nearly the same.
DevOps has a lot of buzzwords and a new tool every week. Don't chase them. Every one of them sits on the Linux you already know: processes, files, permissions, networking, and a shell script somewhere underneath. Learn why each step exists, and a new tool is just a new way to write down the same steps.