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Linux & Bash Scripting Roadmap
Complete Linux and Bash roadmap for DevOps engineers. From basic commands to advanced shell scripting, system administration, performance tuning, and automation.
3–5 months
8 phases
FoundationIntermediateAdvancedExpert
Phase 1
Linux Fundamentals
The filesystem, users, and the shell
Foundation3–4 weeks
What to learn
- Filesystem hierarchy — /etc, /var, /proc, /sys explained
- File and directory operations — cp, mv, rm, ln, find
- Permissions — rwx, chmod, chown, SUID/SGID, sticky bit
- Users and groups — useradd, usermod, sudo, /etc/passwd
- Package management — apt, yum/dnf, snap, pip
- Man pages and help — man, tldr, --help patterns
Key tools
bashvimtmuxsshman
Phase 2
Shell Scripting Basics
Automate repetitive tasks with bash
Foundation3–4 weeks
What to learn
- Variables, quoting, arithmetic, and parameter expansion
- Conditionals — if/elif/else, test expressions, [[ ]]
- Loops — for, while, until, break/continue
- Functions — defining, local variables, return values
- Input/output — read, echo, printf, stdin/stdout/stderr
- Exit codes — $?, trap for cleanup on exit
Key tools
bashshellcheckbats (bash testing)
Phase 3
Text Processing & Pipelines
The Unix philosophy: small tools, chained together
Intermediate2–3 weeks
What to learn
- grep — patterns, context (-A/-B/-C), recursive (-r)
- awk — field splitting, conditions, print formatting
- sed — substitution, deletion, in-place editing
- cut, paste, sort, uniq, wc, head, tail
- xargs — converting stdin to command arguments
- jq — parsing and transforming JSON from CLI
- Pipes and process substitution — <(), >()
Key tools
grepawksedjqxargs
Phase 4
Process & System Management
Own every process running on your servers
Intermediate2–3 weeks
What to learn
- Process lifecycle — fork, exec, signals (SIGTERM, SIGKILL, SIGHUP)
- systemd — unit files, service management, journalctl
- Cron and systemd timers — scheduling recurring jobs
- Background jobs — &, nohup, disown, bg/fg, screen/tmux
- ulimits — file descriptors, process limits, /etc/security/limits.conf
- Boot process — BIOS/UEFI, GRUB, init, target units
Key tools
systemdjournalctlcrontmuxhtop
Phase 5
Networking from the Terminal
Debug any network issue without leaving the shell
Intermediate2–3 weeks
What to learn
- ip, ifconfig — interfaces, routes, ARP table
- ss, netstat — listening ports, established connections
- nc (netcat) — port scanning, quick file transfers, debugging
- curl, wget — HTTP testing, downloading, API calls
- dig, nslookup — DNS resolution debugging
- tcpdump — packet capture and analysis
- SSH — tunnels, port forwarding, ProxyJump, agent forwarding
Key tools
curldigtcpdumpncssh
Phase 6
Performance Analysis & Tuning
Find the bottleneck before your users do
Advanced3–4 weeks
What to learn
- CPU analysis — top, htop, mpstat, perf stat, load average
- Memory analysis — free, vmstat, /proc/meminfo, smem
- Disk I/O — iostat, iotop, fio for benchmarking
- Network performance — iperf3, nethogs, ss -s
- strace and ltrace — syscall tracing for debugging
- perf — CPU profiling, flamegraphs with FlameGraph tool
- Linux tuning — kernel parameters via sysctl
Key tools
perfstraceiotopvmstatsysctl
Phase 7
Advanced Bash & Automation
Scripts that run in production reliably
Advanced3–4 weeks
What to learn
- Error handling — set -euo pipefail, trap ERR, descriptive exit codes
- Argument parsing — getopts, usage() function, positional params
- Logging — timestamped log functions, log levels, tee to file
- Idempotent scripts — safe to run multiple times
- Parallel execution — xargs -P, GNU parallel, background jobs
- Script testing with bats-core — unit tests for shell scripts
- Portability — POSIX compliance, macOS vs Linux differences
Key tools
shellcheckbats-coreGNU parallel
Phase 8
Security Hardening
Harden Linux servers against common attacks
ExpertOngoing
What to learn
- SSH hardening — key-only auth, disable root, change port, fail2ban
- Firewall — iptables / ufw / nftables rules and persistence
- File integrity monitoring — auditd, tripwire
- User privilege management — sudo policies, least privilege
- SELinux / AppArmor — mandatory access control
- Security scanning — Lynis, OpenSCAP for compliance checks
- Log monitoring — central logging, anomaly detection
Key tools
fail2banufwauditdLynisauditctl
Interview Prep
DevOps Interview Prep Bundle — 1000+ Q&A
Every topic on this roadmap has interview questions in the bundle — Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, CI/CD, Linux, SRE, FinOps, System Design. Grab it before your next interview.