Online courses for UNIX administration vary in terms of quality and features. The most basic course will instruct you how to manage a UNIX powered server. But accredited programs provide more than that.
Course Overview
Contents will depend on the site. The most comprehensive of them will focus on the basics of network administration. This will be followed by topics on booting and shutting down and root (superuser) account. Succeeding chapters focus on the UNIX Filesystem, hardware devices and drivers.
Enrolled students will also learn about disk structures and partitions, backups and archiving. There will also be topics on periodic jobs, communicating with users and UNIX system logging. Students get training on how to add hardware and work with process control. Users will be given access to console and account levels so they can conduct various tasks.
These programs include a brief history of the operating system, interacting with other users and shell scripting/programming. There are also classes about processes, jobs, filters, pipes and I/O redirection. Students are also going to learn how to handle files, directories and work with system commands.
The vi text editor is studied as well as how to log in and out. Some courses also teach them basic concepts about LINUX. There are also topics about the sudo program, managing other system user accounts and a step by step guide for booting.
Requirements for Students
These courses assume you have working knowledge of UNIX. You cannot be an administrator until you have a firm grasp of the fundamentals. If not, you must take up a course that covers the basics of UNIX operating systems. Knowledge of Korn shell scripting is also required. Some study programs include these topics in their curriculum.
Other Information
Free courses can be studied anytime and with no time limit. Other sites have time restrictions (i.e., two weeks). These classes also provide technical support for enrolled students. This is usually not provided in free courses.
In addition, these classes use forums so students can interact with their teachers. These classes also have videos and other multimedia features. Sites also let you print their files for future reference. This is also ideal if you want to study when offline.
Online courses for UNIX administration should have more than just hands-on exercises. They should allow you to link up to a UNIX system on their site. This will put your newly learned skills to the test.