You don't learn system administration from a book. The only way to learn is by experience. And I don't mean learning from adminning once Linux box at home. And listen. Listen to people with 10, 20, or more years of experience under their belt. There are places on the net where you can find them. No, not on the web. On Usenet. But don't come barging in and ask questions right away - that won't make you any friends.

Abilities needed for a UNIX sysadmin: the command line has to be dear to you. vi, because that's everyone and the other editors aren't. Be able to RTFM. But keep in mind that all soft- and hardware sucks, and all documentation lies. You need to know shell scripting (Bourne shell, because that is everywhere). Knowledge of sed/awk/Perl are definiately pres. You also need a LART, to punish your lusers with. Distrust everyone. They *will* lie to you ("no, I didn't change anything!"). Be prepared to work long and odd hours (the mailserver always goes down at 5 PM on Friday night, or 3 AM Monday morning). Your pager will go off all the time. Forget your social live - you'll see the inside of the server room most of the time you are awake - sometimes even 24 hours a day. Of course, you need to know how UNIX works. People will automatically assume you also know how each application works, even if it's a Windows application! And you'll be the one maintaining the phone system, and repairing the copier machine.

And remember, just because everyone is out there to get you doesn't mean you are paranoid!

-- Abigail

In reply to Re: OT - Unix Administration - What's needed? by Abigail
in thread OT - Unix Administration - What's needed? by TStanley

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