Labs to Practice

Seven scenarios, in order. Each one builds on the last — do them on WSL, an Azure VM, or play-with-docker.com.

Scenario 1 — Find your way around #

• Open a terminal
• Print your current directory
• List all files, including hidden ones
• Navigate to /etc and list its contents
• Come back home

Scenario 2 — Create and manage files #

• Create a folder called myproject, go inside it
• Create three empty files: app.txt, config.txt, log.txt
• Write the word “hello” into app.txt, then print its contents
• Copy app.txt to backup.txt
• Delete log.txt

Scenario 3 — Permissions #

• Create script.sh, write echo "I am a script" into it
• Try running it with ./script.sh — it will fail
• Give it execute permission, then run it again — it should work
• Check what the permission looks like with ls -la

Scenario 4 — Search and filter #

• Go to /var/log (or any folder with log files)
• cat a file, then grep for a specific word inside it
• Run tail -f on a log file and watch it live

Scenario 5 — Processes #

• Run top and observe what’s running
• Find the PID of any process with ps aux
• Kill a non-critical process by PID
• Run ping google.com & in the background, then bring it back with fg

Scenario 6 — Install something #

• sudo apt update, then install curl
• Use curl to fetch https://example.com
• Install nginx, then check it’s running with ps aux | grep nginx

Scenario 7 — SSH into a machine #

• Spin up a free Azure VM (or any remote Linux box)
• SSH into it from your terminal
• Create a file on the remote machine
• Copy it back to your local machine using scp
• Exit the SSH session