[Novalug] competent sys admins

Walt Smith waltechmail@yahoo.com
Tue Apr 28 10:48:20 EDT 2015


Wow,
I like that list.  Tells me in real terms what sys admins do
better than any job advert or anything else I've seen.
Or at least, some subset of tasks of  those mentioned.

Regarding "competent", I'm not competent enough to
competently comment.  But I must anyway, because
I like the maillist.   And am thoroughly entertained.
( for lack of any better excuse ).  Political commentary
follows:

>
Competent admins understand, at a deep level, that their first responsibility
is not their systems or their users or their organization: their first
responsibility is the entire rest of the Internet
>

Unfortunately, the rest of the Internet doesn't pay specific salaries.

>
Competent admins can install an OS, configure a web server, run a MTA,
write code in C, create shell scripts, create firewall rulesets, and more.
>

There are too many specialty areas for anyone to be competent in 
all of them.  Thats reality.   We all see big bucks for specialists
to only do certain tasks.   Now maintenance ? perhaps some.

I've seen a great deal of fundamental topics mentioned in the last few days.
Most of which I couldn't follow.   One doesn't have to be a true expert
to give back some in a session, or help in a maillist.   Unfortunately,
this group is a bit intimidating simply because there are so many
experts, so to volunteer to speak to such a group is difficult.  Specially
if they ask the "wrong question" !!!! <grin> And fire hoses are needed !!

If anyone is taking a poll, Linux "integration" has become too unified,
too complicated.  Less than the right tool for the right job.   
Too many changes for Joe Hobby to keep up.  But it's also how the 
flow of funds keep  the distro level in business (I would expect?
is this true?  How many distros are mostly volunteer these days ?
and I'd like to know the secret of keeping and getting massive 
knowledge that changes so quickly ).   Please state brain model, 
type, style and serial number.


thx for your patience,

Walt..............

---------------------------------------

From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>
To: novalug@firemountain.net
Subject: Re: [Novalug] dynamic symbolic links


Possibly, I don't know.

Competent admins think as much about abuse *by* their operations as they
do about abuse *of* their operations.

Competent admins pay as much attention to what their operation is emitting
as they do to what it's receiving.

Competent admins use bidirectional firewalls, configured default-deny
both ways.

Competent admins fully support RFC-2142 role addresses and pay attention
to what shows up there.

Competent admins monitor nanog, outages-discussion, dnsops, mailops, etc.
in order to pay attention to what their peers are saying/doing.

Competent admins actually read their logs.

Competent admins can install an OS, configure a web server, run a MTA,
write code in C, create shell scripts, create firewall rulesets, and more.

Competent admins understand, at a deep level, that their first responsibility
is not their systems or their users or their organization: their first
responsibility is the entire rest of the Internet.  It is their highest
duty to ensure that their systems/networks are not an operational menace
to everyone else, and they can and will pull their own plugs rather than
allow that to happen.

Competent admins have read "Software Tools" and "The Unix Programming
Environment" and other key books/papers.

Competent admins grasp the Unix philosophy and eschew complex tools in
favor of the combination of simple ones.

Competent admins understand why open source is a necessary but not
sufficient prerequisite.

Competent admins are judicious about software: "newer" and "bigger"
is not always better.

Competent admins have had exposure to BSD Unix and System V Unix.

Competent admins have read the manual pages for everything in /usr/bin
and /usr/sbin.

Competent admins have a skeptical attitude about security and constantly
expect to find their own mistakes.

And so on.

---rsk

----
The government is lawless, not the press (people).
( [Supreme Court] Justice Douglas re: The Pentagon Papers )



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