Linux Mastery Journey: Week 2 of 90 Days Explained

🚀 From Commands to Automation: My Linux + Bash Journey | Week 2 of #90DaysOfDevOps By Suyash Dahitule “Linux is just a terminal until you make it dance.” This week, I made it dance. 💻💃

As part of my #90DaysOfDevOps challenge, Week 2 was a deep dive into the soul of DevOps — Linux and Shell scripting. I started with just commands and ended up automating user management, backup strategies, and even deploying a simple site using NGINX. Here's how that transformation happened...

👥 Demystifying Users, Groups & Permissions I began by exploring how Linux handles users and groups. Sounds basic, right? But beneath that simplicity lies a powerful permission system.

I created users and groups using useradd and groupadd.

Learned how /etc/passwd and /etc/group files work.

Assigned sudo access and learned to restrict SSH access securely.

Practiced setting granular permissions with chmod, chown, and ls -l.

🔐 It felt like unlocking the gate to Linux’s core access control. Security and structure — all in one.

🔍 Log Files, Sed, Grep & Awk — The Real DevOps Spy Tools Next, I put on my detective hat and dove into log file analysis.

Ever tried understanding a 10,000-line log file? That’s where grep, awk, and sed became my best friends.

I filtered logs to spot errors instantly.

Used awk to extract timestamps and log levels.

With sed, I redacted IP addresses to maintain data privacy.

And for fun: found the most frequent log entries using sort, uniq, and some bash wizardry.

I didn’t just read logs — I tamed them.

💽 Volume Management – A Little Like Disk Jenga What’s DevOps without knowing where your data lives?

I created new directories and mounted loop devices to simulate disk volumes.

Used df -h and mount to verify and explore system storage.

It gave me a real feel for how DevOps folks manage persistent data across servers and containers.

🧠 Storage is not just space — it’s structure, it’s access, it’s control.

🧠 Bash Scripting – My First Real Automation Superpower Then came the big shift: I went from writing individual commands to building automated scripts.

✅ User Management Script: Create/delete users

Reset passwords

List accounts

Display help All through a single interactive script!

✅ Directory Backup Script: Backed up a given directory with a timestamped folder

Rotation logic that kept only the last 3 backups

Used date, mkdir, cp, and ls like a pro

These weren’t just scripts — they were my first taste of automated infrastructure. 🔁

🔁 Loops & Functions: The Soul of Every Script Learning about loops (for, while, until) and functions gave me superpowers.

bash Copy Edit greet_user() { echo "Welcome, $1!" }

for name in Alice Bob Charlie; do greet_user $name done Writing reusable, clean, and logical code in bash made me appreciate scripting as a real programming language.

🌐 Bonus: A Little Taste of NGINX To wrap it up, I installed NGINX and deployed a basic static web page. Served my own index.html, explored config files, and even played with reverse proxy basics.

NGINX was my first step into the world of web servers and load balancing — and it felt powerful.

🎯 Final Takeaway from Week 2 Linux isn’t hard. It’s just… honest. Bash isn’t slow. It’s just… minimal.

And that minimalism gave me maximum control this week. From creating users to managing volumes, analyzing logs to writing scripts — this was the DevOps foundation I never knew I needed so badly.

🔜 Up Next: CI/CD, Git Workflows, and DevOps Pipelines! The momentum is real. Week 3 starts tomorrow with hands-on Git, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and CI/CD principles. It’s about to get fast, visual, and powerful. 🚀

📣 Want to follow along? I’m sharing every step of this challenge with #90DaysOfDevOps, #LearnInPublic, and #TrainWithShubham. Let’s learn, share, and grow together. 👨‍💻💬 Have feedback? Want to share your DevOps story? Feel free to reach out or drop a comment!

🔗 Check out all my #90DaysOfDevOps updates on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/suyashdahitule

Published on Hashnode by Suyash Dahitule