Linux Server Basics Every Web Developer Should Know

The first time I SSH'd into a production server I was terrified of breaking something. These fundamentals removed most of that fear.

Know where you are

pwd, ls -lah, and cd sound trivial, but orienting yourself before you act prevents most mistakes.

Permissions are not optional knowledge

Understanding chmod, chown and the user/group/other model explains the majority of "it works locally but not on the server" bugs.

Read the logs

When something breaks, the answer is almost always in journalctl or under /var/log. Learning to read logs calmly is the real skill.