The little admin guide available at docs.linuxfabrik.ch since 2020-12-01 is not a comprehensive introduction to Linux. It helps us solve many of our daily tasks in a "best practice" way.
The handbook covers the topics that come up again and again in the day-to-day work of a Linux admin: cheat sheets, howtos, tips and tricks plus the necessary background information. Some of the content originated in Markus Frei's CentOS books and has grown over the years into a curated collection.
Our Linux System Engineers use the handbook daily as an internal reference. When somebody rolls out a particular piece of software for the first time, there is a step-by-step guide. When somebody sets up a familiar stack for the tenth time, the procedure is traceable and reproducible.
We decided early on to make this collection public. Open source thrives on shared knowledge, and well-documented setup guides are rare in practice. Many projects describe what something is, but not how it actually runs day to day. Our docs try to deliver both.
Main areas:
Embedded into the handbook is also the official documentation for our own open source projects:
We write the content in reStructuredText, in the same workflow we use elsewhere: straight from the editor (Sublime Text, vim) and versioned in Git. Sphinx with the readthedocs theme renders the RST files to HTML.
The content is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. It may be edited and re-published as long as the author is credited and the result is shared under the same licence.
The docs are not finished and are never complete or free of errors. They grow with every new customer setup, every new distribution and every best practice that has proven itself in production. Feedback is welcome.
