Garanti del Talento

dgt_sys04 – Logs

Module Title: dgt_sys04 – Logs

Description:

“dgt_sys04 – Logs” is a module for IT professionals and system administrators on the management of logs on Linux systems. This module covers the tools, commands and best practices involved in handling and administering logs.

As everywhere in the Academy, theory comes first: you learn where Linux writes its logs, how the systemd journal and syslog work and why rotation matters. In practice, you investigate in natural language. You ask the machine questions such as “show me the failed SSH logins of the last hour and tell me which IPs they came from,” then read the commands it used, check that it searched the right sources and time window, and verify its conclusions against the raw log lines.

Module Objectives:

By the end of this module, participants will be able to:
– Understand the importance and function of logging in system administration.
– Recognize what key command-line utilities such as cat, less and more do when the machine uses them to read and analyze logs.
– Understand advanced log management with tools like journalctl and rsyslog, well enough to direct and verify the machine’s queries.
– Identify the standard directories where logs are stored on a Linux system and understand their structure.
– Have the machine implement log rotation with logrotate, and review its configuration to ensure good performance and efficient use of storage.

Module Contents:

  1. Introduction to Logging in Linux:
  2. The importance of logging for security, troubleshooting and compliance.

  3. Overview of the different types of logs available on Linux systems.

  4. Basic Log Reading Commands:

  5. How cat displays the content of log files.
  6. How less and more provide paginated viewing and searching through large log files.

  7. Describing what you are looking for precisely, so that the machine’s log analysis is efficient and focused.

  8. Advanced Logging Tools:

  9. In-depth exploration of journalctl: viewing, filtering and managing logs from the systemd journal.

  10. Introduction to rsyslog: how syslog is configured and used for centralized logging solutions.

  11. Understanding Log Directories:

  12. Locating standard log directories such as /var/log.

  13. Identifying specific log files related to system services, e.g. kernel, authentication.

  14. Log Rotation and Management:

  15. Why log rotation is needed to prevent disk space exhaustion.
  16. Asking the machine to configure logrotate for automated log file management and checking the policy it writes.

  17. Best practices for setting up and maintaining log rotation policies.

  18. Natural-Language Sessions & Case Studies:

  19. Exercises in which you carry out log management tasks by instructing the machine and verifying every step it takes.
  20. Real-world scenarios and case studies illustrating effective logging strategies.

Target Audience:

This module is intended for system administrators, IT professionals and anyone responsible for Linux-based systems who manages their logs. A basic understanding of Linux commands and file systems is helpful but not mandatory.

The students can push their exercises to the Academy DevOps & SRE Git project. For this module, create a folder with your username as its name in the following subfolder: https://github.com/Garanti-Del-Talento/gdt_academy