Project — Linux Administration Toolkit¶

Intermediate portfolio build — a CLI for everyday Linux administration tasks.

Project Overview¶

Goal: Ship rebash-admin with subcommands for users, packages, services, and log rotation helpers — dry-run by default where actions are privileged.

Deliverable for your portfolio:

Entrypoint: bin/rebash-admin <command>
Commands: users, packages, services, logs, report
Shared logging, config file (config/admin.conf), exit taxonomy
Dry-run defaults for mutating commands
Smoke tests and sample config

Estimated cost: £0 (local VM).

Goals¶

Subcommands share lib/*.sh (no copy-pasted logging)
Mutating actions require --apply (default dry-run)
report writes a dated summary under out/
Unsupported OS/package manager fails clearly
README includes threat notes (what the toolkit does not do)

Stack¶

Piece	Choice
Language	Bash
Layout	`bin/rebash-admin`, `lib/`, `cmd/`, `config/`, `out/`
Privileges	sudo only when `--apply` on a lab VM

Prerequisites¶

Tutorials: Linux Admin Automation, Functions, Parameters, and Locals, Production Shell Scripting, Scheduling — cron, at, and Timers
Labs: User Management Script, Automate Software Installation, Rotate Logs, Service Health Checker
Project: Linux Automation Scripts

Milestones¶

Milestone 1 — CLI skeleton¶

case/getopts parsing, global --config, --help, --version.

Milestone 2 — Users and packages¶

Dry-run create/list/disable sketches; idempotent package install detection.

Milestone 3 — Services and logs¶

systemctl is-active wrappers; log rotate helper for lab paths only.

Milestone 4 — Report + release notes¶

Aggregate checks into out/report-YYYYMMDD.md; document cron/timer usage.

Success criteria¶

rebash-admin report runs without root
--apply is required for changes
Install via README in under 10 minutes on a clean Ubuntu VM