As a Systems Administrator you will be expected to fix any and all problems that occur with the computer systems under your control. For most of us mere mortals it is simply not possible for us to know everything that is required. Instead the Systems Administrator must know the important facts and be able to quickly discover any new information that they don’t yet know. This chapter examines the sources of information that a Systems Administrator might find useful including
§ ,
§ ,
§ , and
§ the Internet.
As the semester progresses you should become familiar with and use most the information sources presented here.
Belonging to a professional organisation can offer a number of benefits including recognition of your abilities, opportunities to talk with other people in jobs similar to yours and a variety of other benefits. Most professional organisations distribute newsletters, hold conferences and many today have mailing lists and Web sites. All of these can help you perform your job.
Professional organisations a Systems Administrator might find interesting include
§ Systems Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU, http://www.sage-au.org.au/),
§ Systems Administrators Guild(SAGE) (the American version of SAGE-AU, http://www.usenix.org/sage/),
§ Australian UNIX Users Group (AUUG, http://www.auug.org.au/),
§ (ACS, http://www.acs.org.au/),
§ Usenix (http://www.usenix.org.au/),
§ Internet Society of Australia (http://www.isoc-au.org.au/)
This list has a distinct Australian, UNIX, Internet flavour with just a touch of the USA thrown in. If anyone from overseas or from other factions in the computer industry (i.e. Novell, Microsoft) has a professional organisation that should be added to this list please let me know (d.jones@cqu.edu.au).
The UNIX Guru Universe (UGU http://www.ugu.com/) is a Web site which provides a huge range of pointers to UNIX related material. It will be used throughout this chapter and in some of the other chapters in the text.
The Resource Materials section on the 85321 Web site for week 1 has a page which contains links to professional associations and user organisations.
SAGE stands for Systems Administrators Guild and is the name taken on by a number of professional societies for Systems Administrators that developed during the early 90s. There are national SAGE groups in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
The Australian SAGE group was started in 1993. SAGE-AU holds an annual conference and distributes a bi-monthly newsletter. SAGE-AU is not restricted to UNIX Systems Administrators.
Both and have a presence on the WWW. The Professional Associations page on the 85321 Web site contains pointers to both.
The ACS is the main professional computing society in Australia servicing people from all computing disciplines. The flavour of the ACS is much more business oriented than SAGE-AU.
The ACS is also moving towards some form of certification of computing professionals and some jobs may require ACS membership.
For more information refer to the (http://www.acs.org.au/).
There are various UNIX user groups spread throughout the world. AUUG is the Australian UNIX Users Group and provides information of all types on both UNIX and Open Systems. Usenix was one of the first UNIX user groups anywhere and is based in the United States. The American SAGE group grew out of the Usenix Association.
Both (http://www.usenix.org/)and (http://www.auug.org.au/)have WWW sites. Both sites have copies of material from the associations’ newsletters.
It should be noted that both user groups have gone beyond their original UNIX emphasis. This is especially true for Usenix which runs two important symposiums/conferences on Windows NT.
When a new computing person asks a technical question a common response will be RTFM . RTFM stands for Read The Fine (and other words starting with f) Manual and implies that the person asking the question should go away and look at documentation for the answer.
Not long ago RTFM for a Systems Administrator meant reading the on-line man pages, some badly written manual from the vendor or maybe, if lucky, a Usenet newsgroup or two. Trying to find a book that explained how to use cron or how to set up NFS was a difficult task.
However the last couple of years has seen an explosion in the number of books and magazines that cover Systems Administration and related fields. The following pages contain pointers to a number of different bibliographies that list books that may be useful.
UNIX, Systems Administration and related books.
The Resource Materials section for week 1, on the 85321 Web site and CD-ROM,
has a collection of pointers to books useful for 85321 and Systems
Administrators in general.
Over the last few years there has been an increase in the number of publishers producing UNIX, Systems Administration and network related texts. However one publisher has been in this game for quite some time and has earned a deserved reputation for producing quality books.
A standard component of the personal library for many Systems Administrators is a collection of O'Reilly books. For more information have a look at the O’Reilly Web site (http://www.ora.com/).
There are now a wide range of magazines dealing with all sorts of Systems Administration related issues, including many covering Windows NT.
Magazines
The 85321 Web site contains pointers to related magazines under the Resource
Materials section for week 1.
The Internet is by far the largest repository of information for computing people today. This is especially true when it comes to UNIX and Linux related material. UNIX was an essential part of the development of the Internet, while Linux could not have been developed without the ease of communication made possible by the Internet. If you have a question, a problem, need an update for some software, want a complete operating system or just want to have a laugh the Internet should be one of the first places you look as a Systems Administrator.
So what is out there that could be of use to you? You can find
§ software
§ discussion forums, and
§ information.
Each of these is introduced in more detail in the following sections.
By this stage it is assumed that you should be a fairly competent user of the Internet, the World-Wide Web, email, Usenet news and other net based resources. If you are a little rusty or haven’t been introduced to many of these tools there are a large number of tutorials on the Internet that provide a good introduction. A good list of these tutorials is held on the site (http://www.yahoo.com/).
There is a large amount of "free" UNIX software available on the Internet. It should be remembered that no software is free. You may not pay anything to get the software but you still have to take the time to install it, learn how to use it and maintain it. Time is money.
GNU software (GNU is an acronym that stands for GNU's Not UNIX) is probably the best known "public-domain" software on the Internet. Much of the software, for example ls cd and the other basic commands, that comes with Linux is GNU software.
The
A copy of the GNU manifesto is available on the 85321 Web site and CD-ROM under the Resource Materials section for this week.
Probably the biggest advantage the Internet provides is the ability for you to communicate with other people who are doing the same task. Systems Administration is often a lonely task where you are one of the few people, or the only one, doing the task. The ability to share the experience and knowledge of other people is a big benefit.
Major discussion forums on the net include
§ Usenet news
§ Mailing lists
§ other discussion tools
An Introduction to Usenet News
If you require it the 85321 Web site and CD-ROM has a reading which provides
an introduction to Usenet News.
Some of the more useful newsgroups for this subject include
§
comp.os.linux.*
There are a large number of newsgroups under this heading discussing most Linux
related topics.
§
comp.unix.*
Another large collection of newsgroups talking about UNIX in particular. Useful
groups include comp.unix.questions for
general UNIX questions and comp.unix.admin
for Systems Administration type questions.
§
aus.computer.linux
An Australian Linux newsgroup.
2.1
There is a newsgroup called comp.os.unix.
Like many newsgroups this group maintains an FAQ. Obtain the comp.unix.questions
FAQ and answer the following questions
- find out what the rc stands for
when used in filenames such as .cshrc
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1
- find out about the origins of the GCOS
field in the /etc/passwd
file
For many people the quality of Usenet News has been declining as more and more people start using it. One of the common complaints is the high level of beginners and the high level of noise. Many experienced people are moving towards mailing lists as their primary source of information since they often are more focused and have a “better” collection of subscribers and contributors.
Mailing lists are also used by a number of different folk to distribute information. For example, vendors such as Sun and Hewlett Packard maintain mailing lists specific to their operating systems (Solaris and HP-UX). Professional associations such as SAGE-AU and SAGE also maintain mailing lists for specific purposes. In fact, many people believe the SAGE-AU mailing list to be the one of the best reasons for joining SAGE-AU as requests for assistance on this list are often answered within a few hours (or less).
Mailing lists
One good guide to all the mailing lists that are available is Liszt, mailing
list directory (http://www.liszt.com/).
The UNIX Guru’s Universe also maintains a directory of mailing lists related to Sys Admin.
There are also other forums that may be useful for Systems Administrators and make use of technology other than Usenet news or mailing lists. These forums often use IRC or Web-based chat facilities.
There is a huge collection of resources for Systems Administration, UNIX and Linux. The resource materials page on the 85321 Web site contains pointers to some of them.
A good Systems Administrator writes tools to help automate tasks. Most of the really good tools are freely available and can usually be found via anonymous FTP.
Linux would not have been possible without the Internet. The net provided the communications medium by which programmers from around the world could collaborate and work together to produce Linux. Consequently there is a huge collection of Internet based resources for Linux.
The best place to start is the Linux Documentation Project (LDP). The aim of this project is to produce quality documentation to support the Linux community. The original LDP page is located at .
A mirror of the LDP pages is maintained on the 85321 Web site and a copy of these pages can be found on the 85321 CD-ROM.
A major source of information which the LDP provides are the HOW-TOs. HOW-TOs are documents which explain how to perform specific tasks as diverse as how to install and use StarOffice (a commercial office suite that is available free, for evaluation) through to detailed information about how the Linux boot-prompt works.
The HOW-TOs should be the first place you look for specific Linux information. Copies are available from the LDP Web pages.
This version of the text is written as a companion for RedHat Linux. As a result it will be a common requirement for you find out information specific to RedHat Linux. The best source on the Internet for this information is the RedHat site, http://www.redhat.com/. Most of you may have already referred to this site to find out about any of the errata for your version of RedHat.
If at anytime you are having difficulty solving a Systems Administration problem your first step should be to RTFM. The fine manual might take the form of a book, magazine, newsletter from a professional organisation, a newsgroup, mailing list or WWW page. If you need an answer to a question it is probably available from one of these sources.
Professional organisations for a Systems Administrator includes the ACS, SAGE-AU, SAGE, Usenix and AUUG. IN particular the SAGE groups are specific to Systems Administration.
Find a question from one of the Linux or UNIX newsgroups mentioned in this chapter. Post the question and your answer to your group's mailing list.