Mastering the Linux Command Line Course

Lesson 1 • Anatomy of a Shell Command

Breaks down command syntax into command, options, and arguments. Provides the mental model students apply to every command in the course.

Lesson 2 • Accessing the Terminal

Teaches methods to open and connect to a terminal on local and remote systems. Directly enables hands-on practice throughout the course.

Lesson 3 • Shell Types and Configuration Files

Introduces Bash, Zsh, and other shells, plus startup files that configure them. Students understand how their environment is initialised.

Lesson 4 • Understanding the Linux Operating System

Covers Linux architecture, kernel role, and distributions. Establishes the conceptual foundation needed before touching the command line.

Lesson 1 • Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

Maps the standard directory tree from root to leaf directories. Students understand where system, user, and application data reside.

Lesson 2 • Creating and Removing Files and Directories

Teaches touch, mkdir, rm, and rmdir with safe usage patterns. Builds the core file-creation and cleanup skills used in every workflow.

Lesson 3 • Copying, Moving, and Renaming

Covers cp and mv for duplicating and relocating files. Students learn to restructure directory layouts without data loss.

Lesson 4 • File Viewing and Content Inspection

Introduces cat, less, head, tail, and file for reading content. Connects to later chapters on text processing and log analysis.

Lesson 1 • Understanding Permission Bits

Decodes read, write, and execute bits for owner, group, and others. Provides the conceptual model for all permission management tasks.

Lesson 2 • Sudo and Privilege Escalation

Introduces sudo for running commands with elevated privileges safely. Students manage administrative tasks without logging in as root.

Lesson 3 • Ownership with chown and chgrp

Covers transferring file ownership to users and groups. Connects ownership control to multi-user and service account scenarios.

Lesson 4 • Special Permission Bits

Explains setuid, setgid, and sticky bit and their security implications. Students recognise and apply these bits in system administration contexts.

Lesson 1 • Transforming Text with sed and awk

Introduces stream editing with sed and field processing with awk. Students perform substitutions, deletions, and column extraction on text data.

Lesson 2 • Pipes and Command Chaining

Teaches the pipe operator and logical connectors &&, ||, and ;. Students compose multi-step commands that pass data between tools.

Lesson 3 • Sorting, Counting, and Comparing

Covers sort, uniq, wc, cut, and diff for data summarisation. Students quantify, deduplicate, and compare text datasets in pipelines.

Lesson 4 • Filtering with grep and egrep

Covers pattern matching with grep using basic and extended regex. Students extract relevant lines from files and command output.

Lesson 1 • Functions and Script Organisation

Teaches defining reusable functions and structuring larger scripts. Students modularise logic for readability and maintainability.

Lesson 2 • Script Structure and Execution

Covers shebang lines, script permissions, and execution methods. Students create and run their first scripts correctly from the start.

Lesson 3 • Variables and User Input

Teaches variable declaration, quoting rules, and reading user input. Students write scripts that accept and process dynamic data safely.

Lesson 4 • Loops and Iteration

Covers for, while, and until loops for repetitive task automation. Students iterate over files, ranges, and command output efficiently.

Lesson 1 • Signals and Process Control

Covers sending signals with kill and killall to control processes. Students terminate, pause, and resume processes safely.

Lesson 2 • Scheduling Tasks with cron and at

Covers crontab syntax and at command for time-based automation. Students schedule recurring and one-time jobs reliably.

Lesson 3 • Persistent Jobs with nohup and screen

Introduces nohup, screen, and tmux for session-persistent processes. Students keep jobs running after terminal disconnection.

Lesson 4 • Foreground and Background Jobs

Teaches job control with &, fg, bg, and jobs for multitasking. Students run long tasks in the background without blocking the terminal.

Lesson 1 • Network Interfaces and Configuration

Covers ip, ifconfig, and hostname for viewing and setting network config. Students identify interface addresses and connection states.

Lesson 2 • Secure Remote Access with SSH

Covers SSH key generation, config files, and tunnelling. Students connect securely to remote hosts and forward ports safely.

Lesson 3 • Inspecting Network Activity

Covers ss, netstat, and tcpdump for monitoring connections and traffic. Students detect unexpected connections and capture packets for analysis.

Lesson 4 • Connectivity Diagnostics

Teaches ping, traceroute, and mtr for testing network paths. Students isolate where connectivity failures occur in a network path.

Lesson 1 • Regular Expressions in Depth

Teaches POSIX and Perl-compatible regex for grep, sed, and awk. Students write precise patterns for complex text extraction and transformation.

Lesson 2 • Advanced Variable Techniques

Covers parameter expansion, arrays, and associative arrays. Students manipulate complex data structures entirely within the shell.

Lesson 3 • Error Handling and Debugging Scripts

Introduces set -e, set -x, and trap for robust script behaviour. Students detect, report, and recover from errors in production scripts.

Lesson 4 • Here Documents and Process Substitution

Covers heredocs and process substitution for flexible input handling. Students feed multi-line data and command output into tools seamlessly.