Need to know technologies for junior sysadmins

This may sound silly coming from someone who's been a Linux admin as long as I have, but I wish I had spent more time learning about scripting, especially in Bash (and at the time, Perl, but now Python). I was well into my career before I realized the power of bash when coupled with command-line parsing tools like sed and awk. Admittedly, the roles I'd had before that were not Linux-centric. I learned from another admin when I landed my first Linux administration job how much time I could really save by learning to script repetitive tasks. The power of a for loop at a bash command line, or parsing command line output with sed and awk… Once I learned those skills, it opened a new world to me. The same can be said today about automation with tools like Ansible.

Anthony Critelli (Sr. Systems Engineer, Datto Inc.):

For me, the answer is definitely Ansible. I remember rebuilding my personal web server about 7 years ago, and I wrote this long and complex bash script to create users, install and configure software, and prepare everything to "go into production." As I showed my work to a friend, he said "Cool, but why didn't you just use Ansible?" My first reaction was "Well, this is just a simple web server. Who needs a complex configuration management tool?" Then I decided to run through some basic Ansible tutorials, and my approach to systems administration was changed forever. Ansible's power is in its flexibility; it has the ability to orchestrate across multiple systems, perform configuration management, and even execute one-off tasks. I think everyone should at least run through some Ansible tutorials early in their career to get a feel for the power of simple configuration management linux administrator.

Joerg Kastning (System Administrator, Bielefeld University):

After I read your question at first I thought about big things like Linux in general or learning shell scripting. But while these are important technologies it felt somewhat unspecific. Now, I'm sure to say that I wish I had heard about the command-line tool 'timewarrior' way earlier.

At work, I track how much time I spend on different projects or topics. Before I knew timewarrior I used text files, spreadsheets, HTML forms with databases, or simple paper to do so. And each time I had to leave my terminal to do so.

Timewarrior changed my way of tracking time per project. Now it's quick and easy and happens in my working space the terminal.

Well, I guess it's time to write an article to introduce this great tool.

Also, as Anthony said before, Ansible, is for sure a tool each sysadmin should at least have looked at once. Deploying my blog with Ansible was one of the first things I did to get familiar with some of the concepts and modules.