Intermediate5 lessons126 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
Outline
- 01
Reading the machine
Three outputs that almost everyone misreads.
- 02
Being told
Automating monitoring without drowning in alerts.
Technical content last reviewed on 3 August 2026