Topics / #sysadmin

Sysadmin projects on GitHub

Resources and tools for system administration and server management.

As of , the most-starred Sysadmin projects on GitHub are the-book-of-secret-knowledge (250.7K stars), the-art-of-command-line (162.5K stars) and frp (110K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 205 Sysadmin repositories with 4.3M stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 16 was the-book-of-secret-knowledge, with +311 stars in a day.

205Projects
4.3MStars in total
+1.7KStars in a day

Hot right now

Most stars gained in a day · Oct 16

The all-time top

Top 100 of 205 · by stars

  1. #1 · trimstray/the-book-of-secret-knowledge

    the-book-of-secret-knowledge

    A massive curated collection of lists, manuals, cheatsheets, blogs, hacks, one-liners and CLI/GUI/web tools that the author gathers from everyday sysadmin, DevOps and security work.

    250.7K
  2. #2 · jlevy/the-art-of-command-line

    the-art-of-command-line

    A single-page guide collecting essential command-line tips, tricks, and notes for using Bash on Linux and other Unix-like systems, from basics through advanced scripting and debugging.

    162.5K
  3. #3 · fatedier/frp

    frp

    frp is a fast reverse proxy that lets you expose a local server sitting behind a NAT or firewall to the internet, forwarding TCP, UDP, HTTP and HTTPS traffic, with an optional P2P mode for direct client-to-client transfers.

    110K
  1. 4

    nvm

    95.6Knvm-sh/nvm · Shell

    nvm (Node Version Manager) is a POSIX-compliant bash script that lets you install, switch between, and manage multiple versions of Node.js on the same machine.

  2. 5

    netdata

    81Knetdata/netdata · Go

    Netdata is an open-source, real-time infrastructure monitoring platform that collects per-second metrics, visualizes them, and detects anomalies with machine learning.

  3. 6

    Ventoy

    80.1Kventoy/Ventoy · C

    Ventoy is an open source tool that creates a bootable USB drive which can boot directly from ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files without extracting or reformatting them.

  4. 7

    ansible

    71Kansible/ansible · Python

    Ansible is a radically simple IT automation system for configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad-hoc tasks, network automation, and multi-node orchestration.

  5. 8

    prometheus

    66.6Kprometheus/prometheus · Go

    Prometheus is a systems and service monitoring tool: it scrapes metrics from configured targets at set intervals, evaluates rule expressions over that data, displays results, and fires alerts when conditions are met.

  6. 9

    winutil

    64.4KChrisTitusTech/winutil · PowerShell

    Chris Titus Tech's Windows Utility (WinUtil) is a curated compilation of Windows system tasks: it streamlines installs, debloats with tweaks, troubleshoots, and configures Windows updates.

  7. 10

    PowerShell

    55.8KPowerShell/PowerShell · C#

    PowerShell is a cross-platform automation and configuration tool/framework that includes a command-line shell, a scripting language, and a framework for processing cmdlets, optimized for structured data like JSON, CSV, XML and REST APIs.

  8. 11

    lazydocker

    53.2Kjesseduffield/lazydocker · Go

    Lazydocker is a simple terminal UI for both docker and docker-compose, written in Go with the gocui library - 'the lazier way to manage everything docker', as its tagline goes.

  9. 12

    kubernetes-the-hard-way

    50.4Kkelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way

    A step-by-step tutorial that walks you through bootstrapping a Kubernetes cluster manually, without any automation scripts, so you learn how every component actually works.

  10. 13

    brew

    50KHomebrew/brew · Ruby

    Homebrew is a free, open-source package manager that lets you install, update and manage command-line tools, libraries and apps on macOS and Linux straight from the terminal.

  11. 14

    terraform

    49.9Khashicorp/terraform · Go

    Terraform is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently, letting you describe cloud and on-prem resources in declarative configuration files instead of clicking through consoles.

  12. 15

    tmux

    49.9Ktmux/tmux · C

    tmux is a terminal multiplexer that lets you create, access, and control multiple terminals from a single screen, and detach/reattach sessions later.

  13. 16

    hacker-scripts

    49.9KNARKOZ/hacker-scripts · JavaScript

    A comedic collection of sysadmin automation scripts inspired by a viral forum post about a build engineer who scripted away every annoying chore, from faking late-night SSH activity to auto-replying to panicked client emails.

  14. 17

    gogs

    47.9Kgogs/gogs · Go

    Gogs is a self-hosted Git service that lets you run your own GitHub-like platform on your own server, written in Go.

  15. 18

    acme.sh

    47.8Kacmesh-official/acme.sh · Shell

    acme.sh is a pure Unix shell script client for the ACME protocol that automatically issues, renews, and installs free SSL/TLS certificates from CAs like Let's Encrypt or ZeroSSL.

  16. 19

    cli

    46.7Kcli/cli · Go

    GitHub CLI (gh) is GitHub's official command line tool that brings pull requests, issues, and other GitHub concepts to your terminal, right next to git and your code.

  17. 20

    fd

    44.8Ksharkdp/fd · Rust

    fd is a command-line program for finding entries in your filesystem - a simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to find, with sensible defaults for the majority of use cases.

  18. 21

    pm2

    43.3KUnitech/pm2 · JavaScript

    PM2 is a production process manager for Node.js and Bun applications that keeps them running forever, reloads them without downtime, and includes a built-in load balancer.

  19. 22

    rufus

    38Kpbatard/rufus · C

    Rufus is a free utility for Windows that formats and creates bootable USB flash drives, used to make installers for Windows, Linux, FreeDOS and other bootable ISOs.

  20. 23

    awesome-docker

    37.1Kveggiemonk/awesome-docker

    A curated ('awesome list') index of Docker-related projects and resources: engines, image builders, registries, orchestration tools, networking/security tooling, desktop/terminal UIs and learning materials.

  21. 24

    node

    36.4Kinkonchain/node · Shell

    A Docker Compose setup for running an Ink node (an Ethereum L2 built on the OP Stack), including the execution client, rollup node, and monitoring stack.

  22. 25

    awesome-sysadmin

    35.4Kawesome-foss/awesome-sysadmin

    A curated list of free and open-source sysadmin tools, covering everything from backups and configuration management to monitoring, CI/CD, virtualization, and VPNs.

  23. 26

    web-check

    35.1Klissy93/web-check · TypeScript

    Web-Check is an open-source OSINT dashboard that lets you analyse any website: it pulls IP info, SSL chain, DNS records, cookies, headers, server location, and more into one report so you can understand its tech stack and security posture.

  24. 27

    btop

    35Karistocratos/btop · C++

    A terminal resource monitor that shows usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes. It is the C++ version and continuation of bashtop and bpytop.

  25. 28

    k9s

    34.8Kderailed/k9s · Go

    K9s is a terminal UI that lets you navigate, observe and manage Kubernetes clusters in real time instead of typing raw kubectl commands.

  26. 29

    glances

    33.8Knicolargo/glances · Python

    Glances is an open-source cross-platform system monitoring tool, a top/htop alternative that shows CPU, memory, disk, network, containers, sensors, and running processes in one dashboard, reachable via terminal, web UI, API, or an MCP server for AI assistants.

  27. 30

    certbot

    33.3Kcertbot/certbot · Python

    Certbot is EFF's command-line tool that automatically fetches a free TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt and deploys it to your web server to enable HTTPS, and it can also work with any other certificate authority that speaks the ACME protocol.

  28. 31

    podman

    33.1Kpodman-container-tools/podman · Go

    Podman (the POD MANager) is a tool for managing OCI containers and images, volumes, and pods — groups of containers managed together. It is built on libpod, a container lifecycle management library included in the same repo.

  29. 32

    WindTerm

    32.5KkingToolbox/WindTerm · C

    WindTerm is a free professional SSH/Telnet/Serial/Shell/Sftp client and terminal built for DevOps, combining remote connections, a local shell and file transfer in one application.

  30. 33

    minikube

    32.2Kkubernetes/minikube · Go

    Minikube runs a local Kubernetes cluster on macOS, Linux, or Windows so developers can build and test Kubernetes applications on their own machine.

  31. 34

    dokku

    32.2Kdokku/dokku · Go

    Dokku is a Docker-powered PaaS (Platform as a Service) - a self-hosted, minimal Heroku alternative that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications on your own server.

  32. 35

    nginx

    31.9Knginx/nginx · C

    NGINX ('engine x') is a free, open source web server, load balancer, reverse proxy, API gateway and content cache — described as the world's most popular web server.

  33. 36

    How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

    31.8Kimthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Server

    This is a long-form, evolving how-to guide (written as a GitHub README) that walks you through hardening a self-hosted Linux server, step by step, from SSH to firewalls to intrusion detection.

  34. 37

    helm

    30.3Khelm/helm · Go

    Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes. It manages Charts — packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources — so installing and managing applications in a cluster works like apt, yum or homebrew on your system.

  35. 38

    90DaysOfDevOps

    29.8KMichaelCade/90DaysOfDevOps · Shell

    A structured learning curriculum for DevOps that grew out of a personal 90-day public learning challenge, now covering principles, processes, tooling, and real-world use cases like Kubernetes, Terraform, and Ansible.

  36. 39

    ProxmoxVE

    29.8Kcommunity-scripts/ProxmoxVE · Shell

    A community-maintained set of one-command install scripts for Proxmox VE: paste a single line into your Proxmox shell and it sets up a popular self-hosted service as a ready container or VM.

  37. 40

    v2ray

    29.7K233boy/v2ray · Shell

    A one-click install and management script for V2Ray proxy servers, letting you set up and run multiple VMess, VLESS, Trojan and Shadowsocks configurations on your own Linux server through a single command-line tool.

  38. 41

    openwrt

    28.8Kopenwrt/openwrt · C

    OpenWrt is a Linux-based operating system built for embedded devices, mostly routers, that replaces a single static vendor firmware with a fully writable filesystem and its own package manager so you can customize the device however you want.

  39. 42

    setup-ipsec-vpn

    28.7Khwdsl2/setup-ipsec-vpn · Shell

    A set of shell scripts that turns a fresh Linux server into your own IPsec VPN server in minutes, with IPsec/L2TP, Cisco IPsec and IKEv2 modes. Traffic is encrypted so nobody between you and the server can eavesdrop.

  40. 43

    nginxconfig.io

    28.3Kdigitalocean/nginxconfig.io · JavaScript

    A free web-based NGINX configuration generator by DigitalOcean: you pick what your server needs and it produces a tuned config for your use case.

  41. 44

    SwitchHosts

    27.3Koldj/SwitchHosts · TypeScript

    SwitchHosts is a free, open-source desktop app for managing your hosts file: keep several hosts profiles and switch between them in one click from the main window or system tray.

  42. 45

    nixpkgs

    26.5KNixOS/nixpkgs · Nix

    Nixpkgs is a collection of over 140,000 software packages that can be installed using the Nix package manager, and it also implements NixOS, a purely-functional Linux distribution built on top of those packages.

  43. 46

    beszel

    26.3Khenrygd/beszel · Go

    Beszel is a lightweight server monitoring platform with a friendly web interface. It tracks historical metrics and Docker container stats, sends alerts, and is ready to use out of the box.

  44. 47

    Scoop

    24.7KScoopInstaller/Scoop · PowerShell

    Scoop is a command-line installer for Windows that lets you install apps from the terminal with minimal friction, similar to Homebrew on macOS.

  45. 48

    dockge

    24.6Klouislam/dockge · TypeScript

    Dockge is a self-hosted, reactive web manager for Docker Compose stacks: from a browser you create, edit, start, stop, restart and delete compose.yaml stacks, update images and watch progress in real time.

  46. 49

    watchtower

    24.6Kcontainrrr/watchtower · Go

    Watchtower automates Docker container updates: push a new image to your registry and it pulls it, stops the old container and starts the new version in its place.

  47. 50

    awesome-sysadmin

    24.4Kkahun/awesome-sysadmin

    A curated, categorized list of open-source sysadmin tools and resources, covering backups, monitoring, configuration management, DNS, security, networking, and dozens of other admin topics.

  48. 51

    neofetch

    23.7Kdylanaraps/neofetch · Shell

    Neofetch is a command-line system information tool written in bash 3.2+. It displays your operating system, software and hardware info in an aesthetic, visually pleasing way, next to your OS logo.

  49. 52

    osquery

    23.7Kosquery/osquery · C++

    osquery is a SQL powered operating system instrumentation, monitoring, and analytics framework: it exposes your OS as a high-performance relational database you can query with SQL.

  50. 53

    eza

    23.6Keza-community/eza · Rust

    eza is a modern replacement for the venerable ls command: a file lister for the terminal with colours, icons and more features and better defaults.

  51. 54

    anubis

    23.5KTecharoHQ/anubis · Go

    Anubis is a Web AI Firewall Utility that weighs the soul of incoming connections with challenges to protect upstream resources from AI scraper bots — built to defend the small internet from endless storms of AI-company requests.

  52. 55

    vector

    22.7Kvectordotdev/vector · Rust

    An open-source, high-performance observability data pipeline: it collects, transforms, and routes your logs and metrics to any vendors you choose, so you keep control of your observability data. It is maintained by Datadog's Community Open Source Engineering team.

  53. 56

    bcc

    22.7Kiovisor/bcc · C

    BCC (BPF Compiler Collection) is a toolkit for creating efficient kernel tracing and manipulation programs on Linux using eBPF. It also ships a large collection of ready-made tools for I/O analysis, networking, and monitoring.

  54. 57

    witr

    22.7Kpranshuparmar/witr · Go

    witr answers one question: 'why is this running?' Point it at a process, port, container, or file, and it traces the exact chain of supervisors, services, and shells that started it.

  55. 58

    macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide

    22.6Kdrduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide · Shell

    A community-maintained guide collecting techniques for improving security and privacy on macOS, written for Apple silicon Macs.

  56. 59

    postgres

    22.4Kpostgres/postgres · C

    PostgreSQL is an advanced open-source object-relational database management system - a full SQL database server you run to store, query and manage application data.

  57. 60

    Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller

    21.9KBCUninstaller/Bulk-Crap-Uninstaller · C#

    Bulk Crap Uninstaller (BCU) is a free, open-source Windows uninstaller built for removing large amounts of applications with minimal user input. It also cleans leftovers and detects orphaned apps.

  58. 61

    containerd

    21.4Kcontainerd/containerd · Go

    containerd is an industry-standard container runtime — a daemon for Linux and Windows that manages the complete container lifecycle of its host: image transfer and storage, container execution and supervision, and low-level storage and network attachments. It's a CNCF graduated project.

  59. 62

    goaccess

    21.1Kallinurl/goaccess · C

    GoAccess is an open source real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer. It parses your web server access logs and shows HTTP statistics live, either in a terminal UI or as an HTML dashboard in your browser.

  60. 63

    openvpn-install

    20.6KNyr/openvpn-install · Shell

    A shell script that automatically sets up your own OpenVPN road warrior VPN server on Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, CentOS or Fedora.

  61. 64

    tiny11builder

    20.6Kntdevlabs/tiny11builder · C#

    tiny11builder is a PowerShell script that automates building a trimmed-down Windows 11 ISO by stripping out bloatware like Edge, OneDrive, Xbox apps, Clipchamp, and more.

  62. 65

    ContextMenuManager

    20.3KBluePointLilac/ContextMenuManager · C#

    ContextMenuManager is a Windows tool that lets you enable, disable, and customize right-click context menu items for files, folders, new-item menus, send-to, open-with, custom file formats, IE, and WinX menus.

  63. 66

    kubectx

    20Kahmetb/kubectx · Go

    Two tiny command-line helpers for kubectl: kubectx switches between your Kubernetes clusters (contexts) and kubens switches the active namespace — no more typing long kubectl config commands.

  64. 67

    trojan

    19.8Ktrojan-gfw/trojan · C++

    Trojan is a censorship-circumvention proxy — an 'unidentifiable mechanism' built to get your traffic across China's Great Firewall (GFW).

  65. 68

    docker-mailserver

    19.6Kdocker-mailserver/docker-mailserver · Shell

    A production-ready, fullstack but simple mail server — SMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP, anti-spam and anti-virus — that runs entirely inside a single Docker container.

  66. 69

    cadvisor

    19.5Kgoogle/cadvisor · Go

    cAdvisor (Container Advisor) is a daemon that collects, aggregates and exports resource usage and performance data for running containers, such as CPU, memory, network and historical usage statistics.

  67. 70

    fail2ban

    18.8Kfail2ban/fail2ban · Python

    Fail2Ban is a daemon that scans log files like /var/log/auth.log, spots hosts making too many failed login attempts, and bans them by updating system firewall rules for a configurable amount of time.

  68. 71

    Windows10Debloater

    18.8KSycnex/Windows10Debloater · PowerShell

    A PowerShell script/utility that debloats Windows 10 by removing pre-installed apps, stopping some telemetry, preventing Cortana from being used as your search index, and disabling unnecessary scheduled tasks.

  69. 72

    telegraf

    17.9Kinfluxdata/telegraf · Go

    Telegraf is an open-source agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics, logs, and other arbitrary data. It ships with 300+ plugins covering system monitoring, cloud services, and messaging.

  70. 73

    ctop

    17.8Kbcicen/ctop · Go

    ctop is a terminal tool that shows a top-like, real-time overview of metrics for all your running containers, plus a detailed single-container view.

  71. 74

    apprise

    17.6Kcaronc/apprise · Python

    Apprise is a Python library and CLI for sending push notifications to almost every popular service — Telegram, Discord, Slack, Amazon SNS, Gotify and many more — through one common URL-based syntax.

  72. 75

    aws-cli

    17.3Kaws/aws-cli · Python

    The unified command line interface for Amazon Web Services — one aws command in your terminal to manage AWS services, published by the official aws organization.

  73. 76

    ZeroTierOne

    17.2Kzerotier/ZeroTierOne · C++

    ZeroTier is a smart programmable Ethernet switch: it makes your devices, VMs, containers, and apps talk to each other as if they all lived in the same data center or cloud region, wherever they physically are.

  74. 77

    wtf

    17.1Kwtfutil/wtf · Go

    WTF (aka 'wtfutil') is a personal information dashboard for your terminal, giving at-a-glance access to your important but rarely-needed stats and data. It is free and open-source and is used by thousands of developers and tech people.

  75. 78

    rdpwrap

    16.9Kstascorp/rdpwrap · Pascal

    RDP Wrapper Library enables Remote Desktop Host support and concurrent RDP sessions on Windows editions that normally restrict it (like Home editions), for home use.

  76. 79

    systemd

    16.8Ksystemd/systemd · C

    systemd is the system and service manager for Linux — the init system that brings the OS up at boot and supervises services while it runs.

  77. 80

    kops

    16.7Kkubernetes/kops · Go

    kOps (Kubernetes Operations) is a tool that creates, upgrades, and manages production-grade, highly available Kubernetes clusters, and also provisions the underlying cloud infrastructure for them.

  78. 81

    lynis

    16.5KCISOfy/lynis · Shell

    Lynis is a security auditing and hardening tool for Linux, macOS, BSD, and other Unix-like systems. It scans the host it runs on for vulnerable software, misconfigurations, and weak settings, and gives hardening tips while also assisting with compliance testing (HIPAA, ISO27001, PCI DSS).

  79. 82

    hammerspoon

    16.3KHammerspoon/hammerspoon · Objective-C

    Hammerspoon is a bridge between macOS and a Lua scripting engine, letting you automate and control your Mac through extensions that expose system functionality to Lua scripts.

  80. 83

    openvpn-install

    16.2Kangristan/openvpn-install · Shell

    An installer script that sets up and manages your own OpenVPN server on a Linux machine you control — a VPS, a dedicated server or even a home computer — and generates client config files for every device you want to connect.

  81. 84

    packer

    15.8Khashicorp/packer · Go

    Packer is a tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. It is lightweight, runs on every major OS, and builds images for multiple platforms in parallel.

  82. 85

    salt

    15.7Ksaltstack/salt · Python

    Salt is an event-driven automation engine built on Python to deploy, configure and manage complex IT systems at scale — and keep every component of your infrastructure in a consistent desired state.

  83. 86

    awx

    15.6Kansible/awx · Python

    AWX is a web-based user interface, REST API, and task engine built on top of Ansible — a self-hosted control center for launching and managing Ansible automation from a browser.

  84. 87

    fabric

    15.5Kfabric/fabric · Python

    Fabric is a high-level Python library for executing shell commands on remote servers over SSH and getting back useful Python objects, built for automation and deployment tasks.

  85. 88

    dashboard

    15.4Kkubernetes-retired/dashboard · Go

    Kubernetes Dashboard is a general-purpose, web-based UI for Kubernetes clusters. From a browser you can manage the applications running in the cluster, troubleshoot them, and manage the cluster itself.

  86. 89

    duf

    15.3Kmuesli/duf · Go

    duf is a terminal utility for checking disk usage and free space — a user-friendly, better-looking alternative to df for Linux, BSD, macOS and Windows.

  87. 90

    cockpit

    15.2Kcockpit-project/cockpit · Python

    Cockpit is a web-based graphical interface for administering Linux servers: an interactive dashboard in your browser that talks directly to the operating system.

  88. 91

    public-image-mirror

    15.2KDaoCloud/public-image-mirror · Shell

    It is a public mirror service for container registries (like gcr.io, ghcr.io, docker.io, quay.io) run by DaoCloud, meant to speed up pulling images for users in China where those registries are slow.

  89. 92

    Proxmox

    15.2Ktteck/Proxmox · Shell

    A collection of shell scripts for Proxmox VE that let you interactively create and configure LXC containers and virtual machines, offering both quick default setups and advanced customizable ones.

  90. 93

    clashctl

    15Knelvko/clashctl · Shell

    A Shell toolkit that one-click deploys and manages mihomo/clash proxy environments on Linux, handling the core, Web dashboard, and all runtime dependencies.

  91. 94

    sampler

    14.8Ksqshq/sampler · Go

    Sampler is a terminal tool that repeatedly runs shell commands and turns their output into live visualizations like charts and gauges, with optional alerts, all configured through a single YAML file.

  92. 95

    openvpn

    14.7KOpenVPN/openvpn · C

    OpenVPN is an open-source VPN daemon — a background service that creates a secure, encrypted tunnel over the public internet, so your device can reach a private network as if it were directly connected.

  93. 96

    kamal

    14.6Kbasecamp/kamal · Ruby

    Kamal is a deployment tool that lets you ship web apps packaged as Docker containers to any server, from bare metal machines to cloud VMs, with zero downtime.

  94. 97

    xpipe

    14.6Kxpipe-io/xpipe

    XPipe is a connection hub that lets you access your entire server infrastructure (SSH hosts, Docker, Kubernetes, VMs, cloud servers, WSL, and more) from one local desktop app, without installing any agent on the remote systems.

  95. 98

    QloApps

    14.4KQloapps/QloApps · PHP

    QloApps is a free, open-source hotel management and reservation system: a booking engine plus a Property Management System (PMS) that powers your own hotel booking website.

  96. 99

    coredns

    14.4Kcoredns/coredns · Go

    A fast and flexible DNS server and forwarder written in Go, built as a chain of plugins — each plugin performs one DNS function. It is a graduated Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) project.

  97. 100

    winsw

    14.4Kwinsw/winsw · C#

    WinSW is a small wrapper executable that wraps and manages any application as a Windows service, under the permissive MIT license.

Showing the 100 most-starred of 205. See every one in the catalog.

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