Intermediate7 lessons168 minutes
Monitoring a server
Read disk, memory and load correctly, control log growth, and find out before your users do.
A server's most common outage is not an attack: it is a full disk. This course teaches how to read what the machine says about itself, then how to automate that reading so it does not depend on somebody remembering.
What you will be able to do
- Interpret df, free and load average without reaching the wrong conclusion
- Diagnose a full disk that `du` cannot account for
- Control log growth with journalctl and logrotate
- Write an automated check that alerts on what matters, and only on that
Before this course
Taken from the learning path this course belongs to: the course placed just before it. A suggested order, not a lock — nothing here closes until you have finished it.
Outline
- 01
Reading the machine
Four outputs that almost everyone misreads.
- 02
Being told
Automating monitoring without drowning in alerts.
Technical content last reviewed on 3 August 2026