OpsQuest
Broken Linux machines for learning operations work. Each lab starts a private machine in your browser with something already wrong: a service that will not start, a disk that keeps filling, a deploy that shipped the wrong build. You fix it with the same commands you would use at work, then press Check my work. The checker looks at the machine itself and tells you which part is not fixed yet.
How a lab works
- Open a lab and press Start lab. A container boots with the problem already set up. Plain Linux labs take a few seconds; Docker and Kubernetes labs take about 30.
- Read the ticket. Investigate in the terminal. There is no single right command.
- Press Check my work. If a goal is not met, the checker says which one and why. When you pass, the lab shows other fixes that also work.
Hints open one at a time. Every lab has a Theory tab with the background, and the book chapters that cover it properly.
Where to start
| If you are… | Start with | Level | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| New to the command line | Find the latest handoff | Easy · Do | 10 min |
| You know Linux, try a real outage | It works when Ivo runs it | Medium · Fix | 25 min |
| You run containers at work | 3,112 events vanished in a release | Medium · Fix | 30 min |
| You want the hardest one | Friday evening, everything at once | Hard · Boss incident | 60 min |
The setting
Every lab happens at Northstar Parcel, a made-up regional parcel carrier with seven depots, a few dozen servers, and the usual history of quick fixes. You join as the newest member of the platform team. The tracks follow your first months: the shell on your first morning, then the old server room, the network, Git, containers, the pipeline, and finally a Friday evening when everything breaks at once.
The people and systems recur from lab to lab. Mara runs the on-call rotation, Ivo writes most of the backend, Sasha owns the platform, and Priya is the one person in security. Waybill tracks parcels, Ledger settles payments with carriers, Docklight queues warehouse events, and Gatehouse is the edge proxy in front of all of it.