Re: [PLUG] LINUX ADMIN ADVICE

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>]

In no particular order and in response to comments scattered
throughout the thread:

- I worked for Evi Nemeth a very long time ago.  There's a good
reason her name is listed first on those books.

- DevOps is simultaneously just a buzzword (we were doing most of it
a very long time ago -- and it's not a coincidence that Gene Kim's
name is all over it, because he was an undergrad employee of the
computing center where I was a systems programmer) and a useful
approach to bringing concepts like revision control into systems
and network administration.

- Don't just learn Linux.  Learn at least one Unix.  At the moment,
I'd recommend any of the extant BSDs.

- Know how to script.  That includes having a working knowledge of
most the commands in /usr/bin, including awk, sed, and friends.

- Learn how to use make/Makefiles.  Learn how to build software
packages such as Apache HTTPD, BIND, postfix, etc., from source.
Learn how to do it on more than one architecture.

- A working knowledge of IP networking is highly useful.  Someone
who can use tcpdump to snapshot a problem is probably halfway to
solving it.

- Baseline competency in system admin requires being able to build,
install, and run common services, e.g., HTTP, DNS, SMTP.

- Get used to learning on-the-fly.  There's probably a README,
a FAQ, a tutorial, a manual page, a mailing list.  Practice this
skill by picking something that sounds interesting and trying
to climb its learning curve.

- "Cloud security" is an oxymoron.  There is no such thing.
Never put anything in the cloud that can't be fully exposed
to the entire world.

- As a system/network admin, your personal computing environment's
security matters.  Yes, you ARE a target.  Try to be a poor one.

---rsk
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