[ale] somewhat OT: sysadmin must-knows?

[James S. Cochrane]

I'll take a different track here.  For one thing, I DON'T administer 
primarily Linux boxes, largely because it's still difficult to convince 
some folks in management at big companies to give it a try.

1)  Know the structure of Unix systems, from the primary filesystems and 
their uses to where various common applications (sendmail, apache, etc) 
like to have configuration files.
2)  Have a basic understanding of C, you may never program in it, but it's 
VERY helpful to understanding how Unix works and particularly understanding 
some of the technical publications you'll find yourself accumulating.
3)  I don't have the purple book, I have multiple editions of Essential 
System Administration.  After almost nine years, I mainly use it to remind 
myself of how to do things on OS's I haven't touched in a while, and even 
there I'm frequently dealing with stuff beyond the scope of ANY general 
Unix admin book.
4)  bash, ksh, and perl are all good to know, learn at least the basics of 
csh because some vendors still use it.
5)  Know how to do tasks manually, but your boss will be much more 
impressed if you can walk in and setup a boot/install server for your 
environment to speed deployment of new or replacement systems, whether it's 
kickstart, jumpstart, NIM, etc...
6)  Understand that very FEW companies really do IT right, and get used to 
living with it, and learning how to make do.  Linux can be helpful here, IF 
you're careful about it.  You'd be amazed how many companies will spend 
large chunks of money to hire people and then give them crappy equipment to 
do their jobs with.
7)  Document, document, document.  There are too many details that go on 
for anyone to remember them all, good documentation can save your @ss, poor 
documentation can kill you.  At minimum, document your preferred method of 
building servers, how you back them up, how you plan to recover them, what 
changes to default configurations you make, etc..  3am is NOT the time to 
try to remember that little change you made to a server six months 
ago...  A good change management system can be an aid to proper documentation.
8)  Know the impact to the company of the servers you administer.  If your 
power guys screw up and you've got to recover multiple systems, which ones 
do you concentrate on first?
9)  Learn how to speak to noncomputer people.  I've seen a LOT of good 
ideas get shot down because the IT person wasn't putting it in language 
that management understood.
10)  Getting into IT isn't as easy as it once was, and the dream jobs are 
fewer and harder to find.  Don't expect to be making megabucks to start, or 
even after a few years (hell, I'd like to get back to what I was making in 
1999, and I've been doing this a while).   Be prepared to sweat (skull 
sweat at least), and realize that most sysadmins spend a fair portion of 
their time worrying about hardware as much as software.   Even if you have 
a support contract, most of the big vendors have cut their support 
engineers back to the point that it'll frequently be faster to do stuff 
yourself, especially for new installations.  And don't count on the support 
engineer REALLY knowing what they're doing, many of them are little more 
than parts-swappers and don't know how to REALLY troubleshoot a problem 
down to the true root cause.
11) Do NOT exaggerate your experience when trying to get a job.  If I'm 
doing a technical interview, and someone tells me they're a certified 
Solaris administrator, but they can't explain disk slicing, I'll downcheck 
them.  If they can't create a tar file of multiple specific directories or 
subdirectories, I won't believe they have prior system administration 
experience, and will downcheck them.  I'd rather hire someone who shows 
interest and initiative and has little commercial experience than someone 
who has commercial experience but can't handle situations that weren't 
covered in a vendor training class.  If I ask what kind of computers you 
run at home, you need to at LEAST have a dual-boot system, if you don't 
have multiple systems on different OS's.

James

At 12:13 AM 11/12/2004, jay wrote:
>For everyone who doesn't know me, name is Jay Loden, I'm a student and
>assistant systems administrator at Elon University (NC), and I need your help
>and advice.
>
>I just kind of "fell into" my job with systems administration, much the 
>way  I
>got involved with Linux, and it turns out I like both.  I am graduating in
>May and I want to work in systems administration (or indeed anything where I
>can use Linux daily).  Here's the problem: I'm graduating with a degree in
>Corporate Communications.
>
>Basically, I need to teach myself every scrap of useful information I can 
>cram
>into my brain before May about being a sysadmin, because I'm sure haven't
>gotten it from my classes!  What I'm looking for is helpful suggestions, i.e.
>books I need to read, skills I need to have, experience that's critical, etc.
>
>I am working on honing my Python scripting skills (with the hope of being a
>competent Python programmer by May), and I am rapidly learning as much as
>possible about Linux in general, but I know that there are bound to be things
>I'm neglecting or unaware of that are essential sysadmin know-how.  I would
>love to hear from systems administrators out there on the list...how did you
>get into your field?  What do you think I need to know? How can I learn it
>best?  Is getting involved with OSS projects helpful (e.g. helping with a
>distro)? What options are there for a guy with only a small amount of
>"official" sysadmin experience who's willing to learn fast and hard?
>
>Thanks in advance and I apologize for the lengthy mail!
>
>-Jay
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