Confronting your ignorance may mean stepping back to "Hello World!".
Do you remember the first few steps in learning to program? In any system it's the slow build up one piece at a time - as if you're a mason building a wall.
If you're working on a new system it may begin with a new installation - one you are uncertain of, an installation that you have no direct control over.
The temptation is to charge right in with systems thinking - when you have to start one step at a time - steps you may have forgotten.
Print, Hello World.
Read a file. Print a file.
It's quite likely that there will be failures at this point which you haven't seen in a while - and error messages that don't make sense.
If you've been working with a system that has a stable installation you're probably not used to missing components - there may even be real bugs in the new code.
Because of this, you're going to have to step back to building a foundation of things that you know work. Like a mason constructing a footing before she begins laying bricks.