Skip to main content
skill CX Codex

system-admin — Claude Code skill: Linux admin and monitoring

A skill that hands your agent the commands for checking a Linux box: load, memory, disks, systemd units. Useful when a server starts acting up.

Install into Claude Code · Skills CLI (Vercel) All methods and platforms ↓
npx skills add chaterm/terminal-skills --skill system-admin -a claude-code
Open on GitHub

What system-admin does

The skill gives the agent a working set of Linux inspection commands. It covers system and kernel version, hostname, uptime and load, plus CPU, memory and disk details. For live numbers there is top, htop, vmstat 1, iostat -x 1, iftop and nethogs. For history, sar breaks down CPU, memory and disk activity.

A separate section handles systemd: check a unit's status, start and stop it, enable it at boot, list every service. Two scenarios come ready to run. The health check prints load, memory, disk usage and failed units in one pass. The high-load walkthrough starts with uptime, then sorts processes by CPU and by memory with ps aux --sort.

A troubleshooting table at the end maps symptoms to commands: sluggish system, full disk, memory pressure, a service behaving oddly. Several tools it reaches for — htop, iotop, iftop, nethogs, ncdu, sar — are not part of a minimal distro install, so on a fresh machine the command may simply not be there. Worth checking the list before you let the agent start diagnosing.

What it helps with

  • get a quick read on load, memory and disk across a server
  • find the process eating CPU or RAM
  • check which systemd services have failed
  • pull historical load data with sar
  • figure out what is filling up a disk

Example prompts for the agent

  • run a health check on the server: load, memory, disk, failed services
  • the server is slow, find the processes using the most CPU and memory
  • show me the status of the nginx service and its recent journalctl logs

How to install system-admin

1Skills CLI (Vercel)

npx skills add chaterm/terminal-skills --skill system-admin -a claude-code

2Manually: put the files in place

~/.claude/skills/system-admin/SKILL.md

Copy the whole skill folder; for one project use .claude/skills/system-admin/

Step by step, with commands for each platform: How to install skills in Claude Code: five ways

Questions about system-admin

How do I install system-admin in Claude?

Run npx skills add chaterm/terminal-skills --skill system-admin -a claude-code. The skill file lands at ~/.claude/skills/system-admin/SKILL.md.

What does system-admin do?

It supplies the agent with Linux administration and monitoring commands: system and hardware info, live and historical resource monitoring, systemd service management, and fixes for common failures.

Which utilities does the skill need?

Core commands like uptime, free, df and systemctl are present almost everywhere. Tools such as htop, iotop, iftop, nethogs, ncdu and sar often have to be installed separately.

Source text

SKILL.md · Apache-2.0
---
name: system-admin
description: Linux system administration and monitoring
version: 1.0.0
author: terminal-skills
tags: [linux, system, monitoring, admin]
---

# Linux System Administration

## Overview
Core commands and best practices for Linux system administration, including system information viewing, resource monitoring, service management, etc.

## System Information

### Basic Information
```bash
# System version
cat /etc/os-release
uname -a

# Hostname
hostnamectl

# Uptime and load
uptime
```

### Hardware Information
```bash
# CPU information
lscpu
cat /proc/cpuinfo

# Memory information
free -h
cat /proc/meminfo

# Disk information
lsblk
df -h
```

## Resource Monitoring

### Real-time Monitoring
```bash
# Comprehensive monitoring
top
htop

# Memory monitoring
vmstat 1

# IO monitoring
iostat -x 1
iotop

# Network monitoring
iftop
nethogs
```

### Historical Data
```bash
# System activity report
sar -u 1 10    # CPU
sar -r 1 10    # Memory
sar -d 1 10    # Disk
```

## Service Management

### Systemd Services
```bash
# Service status
systemctl status service-name
systemctl is-active service-name

# Start/Stop services
systemctl start/stop/restart service-name

# Boot startup
systemctl enable/disable service-name

# View all services
systemctl list-units --type=service
```

## Common Scenarios

### Scenario 1: System Health Check
```bash
# Quick health check script
echo "=== System Load ===" && uptime
echo "=== Memory Usage ===" && free -h
echo "=== Disk Usage ===" && df -h
echo "=== Failed Services ===" && systemctl --failed
```

### Scenario 2: Troubleshoot High Load
```bash
# 1. Check load
uptime

# 2. Find high CPU processes
ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -10

# 3. Find high memory processes
ps aux --sort=-%mem | head -10
```

## Troubleshooting

| Problem | Commands |
|---------|----------|
| System lag | `top`, `vmstat 1`, `iostat -x 1` |
| Disk full | `df -h`, `du -sh /*`, `ncdu` |
| Memory shortage | `free -h`, `ps aux --sort=-%mem` |
| Service abnormal | `systemctl status`, `journalctl -u` |

© terminal-skills · Apache-2.0 · chaterm/terminal-skills

Similar skills

All skills for DevOps and infrastructure →

Project sponsors

Companies that keep this analytics open
Gold sponsor

Impressions, clicks and code copies — open statistics. We keep the numbers public for the same reason NeBlask itself is public. Become a sponsor