Hi guys, welcome to the server admin profile.

Server admin hopefuls need to familiarise

themselves with linux. Get a linux distro and install it in such a way that it dual boots with
windows. If you are facing issues then you could go for installing a linux distro on VMWare
Player though this is not recommended. A good distro to pick would be Ubuntu or Linux Mint. If
you are one of those adventurous ones, you could try Fedora (though I wouldnt recommend it for
beginners)
Learn basic shell scripting with bash. Learning python will be useful.
What you could start off with: (i.e. No deadlines here)
After installing it figure out the how the file system is organised and how to perform basic file
management tasks with the terminal such as figuring out the current directory you are in ,
navigating through directories, getting a list of files and directories within a given directory,
copying and moving file( check renaming of files along with this one

You will notice initially that linux doesnt allow you to perform certain operations on specific
directories: Thats where users, groups and permissions comes in to the picture. Learn how to
create,delete and modify users and groups. Figure out what file permissions are and how you
can change their ownership.
Further tasks coming up. Here are some useful links :

Bash Scripting for beginners

This one is slightly faster

Users and Groups

The linux filesystem

For those of you facing trouble in ubuntu:

Ask Ubuntu

PS: I know this sounds like an overkill. But you have time till around the last week of this month to
figure all this out. Feel free to ping us personally on facebook or post a comment here. Our fb
profiles : Shreyas and Brahan