Slashdot Mirror

System Admins should follow a formal code of ethics, just like any other profession. (i.e. accountants) Obviously, they do not always do so.

One good start might be to look at existing codes of ethics from professional bodies, like SAGE. Here is theirs

Get a copy of _The Practice of System and Network Administration_ by Thomas A. Limoncelli and Christine Hogan. Read chapter 15 (Help Desks) and implement it faithfully. For real-world system and network administration topics, this is the best book I've run across. There's a FreshMeat review available.

There's also a website at www.sysadminfocus.com, but get a dead-tree copy as there's not much on the website.

Then, get involved in SAGE and USENIX. These are common problems, and talking about them with a body of folks who know how to solve them is going to much more productive than posting to Slashdot ;-)

You can vist the System Administrators Guild at sageweb.sage.org

a sysadmin has to be ethical.

I imagine that's why the System Administrators Guild has a SysAdmin Code of Ethics.

Hmm. I wonder if BOFH's also have their own code of ethics too?

In general service check plugin coding is well within the skill-set of a good systems adminstrator. Am I saying your admin isn't good if he can't do it...well, yeah, I am. And so does the System Administrators' Guild:

SAGE Job Descriptions

Now if he just doesn't have time, that's another issue entirely. Then you just need to hire someone to help him. As someone who's had to implement both free monitoring systems (spong, big brother, netsaint, etc) and commercial ones (unicenter, ms mom), I can guarantee that the amount of additional work required to set up and maintain the free packages will be much less than that needed for their commercial counterparts in many cases.

That's not to say the free packages are *always* best - the commercial packages often have access to greater depth of monitoring information via expensive licensing and documentation. For example, if you want to really closely monitor Oracle or SQL server - really in-depth stuff - then a commercial package is going to require a lot less cost than the free packages.

Geoffrey's Geek Guide
... Ably assisted by Ledger, the Wonderfully Balanced Dog. Welcome To My Geek Guide;
This Week's Top 5 Geek Sites; Past Masters Of Geek; What Geeks Do For Romance; ...
www.ausmall.com.au/geek/ - 7k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Geoffrey's Geek Guide - Geek Sites Of The Week 14th-20th August ...
Geoffrey's Geek Guide - Geek Sites of the Week
14th-20th August 1996. 14th-20th August 1996. ...
www.ausmall.com.au/geek/geek10.htm - 17k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from www.ausmall.com.au ]

TechTV | Give Us Geek Sites or Give Us Death
You are here: Home > TV Shows > The Screen Savers > Interact > Give Us
Geek Sites or Give Us Death, ... Give Us Geek Sites or Give Us Death, ...
www.techtv.com/screensavers/interact/ story/0,24330,3319391,00.html - 33k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

Sitereview.org: Interesting news & geek sites: page 1
... OpSys, ...Operating Systems: Linux, BSD... Geeknews, ...Interesting
news & geek sites. Sitereview, Create, ...a voting account (optional). ...
sitereview.org/Geeknews.php3 - 23k - Cached - Similar pages

Bote's Sign Pages: Links to road geek sites
Links to other sites by road geeks. Last ... you! Plus, a number of excellent
links to other road sites, especially concerning Florida. ...
pages.prodigy.net/bote/links.html - 11k - Cached - Similar pages

SAGEwire | What online geek sites do you watch?
... Privacy and Legals. What online geek sites do you watch? ... Of course, what geek doesn't
read Slashdot. I'm talking about other, possibly lesser known, sites. ...
sagewire.sage.org/Ask/02/11/15/2217224.shtml - 30k - 9 Dec 2002 - Cached - Similar pages

ZorKa.Com - Geek Sites
... Category->Geek Sites. Sites only a true computer geek would appreciate.
Links. Sexiest Geek Alive (118) Description: Are you a sexy geek? ...
www.zorka.com/index.php/links/view/11 - 11k - Cached - Similar pages

Megarad Technologies - TOP GEEK SITES - 1.8
... 43, Progenic A resource for technology news sites. 0, 0. 44, TechSeekers.net Tech
news and reviews with an Irish slant /, 0, 1. 45, geeknik dot net i'ma geek, you're
a ...

If OpenSSH has not been ported, buy a copy from the various proprietary vendors, or hire someone to port OpenSSH.

REAL sysadmins would port it themselves.

'There is a special privilege on NT called "Backup Operator" - it allows you to copy any file to tape, or back again, but does not let you read the file.'

The idea of having a special privilege that allows a user to copy any file to tape or back is neither new, nor unique to NT. In fact I've worked on Unix boxes that had something remarkably similar. (Look up CMW before you claim that Unix doesn't prevent Root reading certain files. This Grade of Security exists but is such a pain to use it's limited to very specialised uses, HP-UX CMW, SCO CMW and Trusted Solaris are the only implementations I know of right now...)

But what happens when a "Backup Operator" copies a disk to tape, takes the tape to a Unix box, and DD's the tape into a file. They can then go through, modify that file and DD it back onto the tape.

Sure it's far fetched, but if I wanted to boost my salary by hacking the payroll records then I could do it that way. Of course I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing.

People might also want to check out the SAGE Code of Ethics.

Z.

'There is a special privilege on NT called "Backup Operator" - it allows you to copy any file to tape, or back again, but does not let you read the file.'

The idea of having a special privilege that allows a user to copy any file to tape or back is neither new, nor unique to NT. In fact I've worked on Unix boxes that had something remarkably similar. (Look up CMW before you claim that Unix doesn't prevent Root reading certain files. This Grade of Security exists but is such a pain to use it's limited to very specialised uses, HP-UX CMW, SCO CMW and Trusted Solaris are the only implementations I know of right now...)

But what happens when a "Backup Operator" copies a disk to tape, takes the tape to a Unix box, and DD's the tape into a file. They can then go through, modify that file and DD it back onto the tape.

Sure it's far fetched, but if I wanted to boost my salary by hacking the payroll records then I could do it that way. Of course I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing.

People might also want to check out the SAGE Code of Ethics.

Z.

The SAGE Code of Ethics seems useful for this situation.

Canon 2, "A system administrator shall not unnecessarily infringe upon the rights of users", seems to apply to this particular case. The relevent portion is:

"System administrators will not exercise their special powers to access any private information other than when necessary to their role as system managers, and then only to the degree necessary to perform that role, while remaining within established site policies. Regardless of how it was obtained, system administrators will maintain the confidentiality of all private information."

I read that to mean that if there is a site policy regardign email, the ethical thing to do is to follow the policy. Failing the existence of a policy, the ethical thing to do is to not infringe on the rights of the users.

In this article I write about some of the most common mistakes that I see on resumés, and how you can avoid them.

I proofread resumés for friends... a lot. With the economy heating up I'm getting asked to more frequently. I find that technical people often have difficulty "selling" themselves. While "The Practice of System and Network Administration" (co-authored with Christine Hogan) has tips on hiring sysadmins, we didn't include specific resumé-writing tips. Therefore, I thought it might be useful to write down the thoughts I have in this area. (Our negotiation section does have tips on how to negotiate your salary, but that's putting the cart ahead of the horse.) How do employers process resumés?It's important to write your resumé to be useful from the perspective of your potential employer. In writing they say, play to your audience.

That is, an action film is expected to have an explosion or something major in the first scene, a romance is expected to introduce at least one of the main people in the first 5 minutes, Steven King always includes the elements that his fans expect. A resumé has to be written for its audience too. What are the audiences of a resumé?What makes writing a resumé difficult is that there are two audiences.

First is the non-technical HR clerk that receives the resumé. If it gets past the clerk, it will arrive at the desk of the person that will be your future boss. Your resumé has to have the elements that will please both of these people: The HR clerk The first person to see your resumé, sadly, is a non-technical clerk who is handed 10,000 resumés a day and a list of positions that need to be filled. This person does the first level of sorting. Your job is to make sure you get through this person's selection criteria. The problem here is that this person doesn't know the difference between UNIX and Solaris, or that if someone knows Solaris 2.5 then they are hirable for a Solaris 2.6 job. Luckily, this person only reads the top part of every resumé, so you make make sure that you have "Objective" and "Skills" sections made just for him/her. Don't say "Solaris 2.6", say "Solaris 2.x" or just "Solaris" (people have forgotten about Solaris 1.x by now).

The Hiring Manager Each pile that the clerk created is handed to an appropriate "Hiring Manager." This person does understand the technology that you'll be working with, or at least they think they do. The rest of the resumé must be in their language. The most common mistake that I see is that people don't write anything for the clerk. Therefore, their resumé never gets to the hiring manager.

The "Objective Statement" and "Skills" section at the top of your resumé is what the clerk reads. Make sure your resumé has these sections and make them clear. Typically I see resumés without an "Objective Statement" at all! Tip 1: A good "Objective" statementA good objective statement tells a plainly-stated title you would like ("UNIX programmer", "CGI Developer", "Project Manager", etc.) and a couple skills that you have ("excellent writing skills", "experience with digital audio technology", "experience with large development projects", etc).

If you aren't sure what your title is called, look at a couple job advertising web sites to fill you in.

You can also specify what industry or department you want to be in ("financial services", "telecommunication", ".COM", etc.).

Here are some good ones that I've seen:

1. Objective: A position as a Senior UNIX/Linux Developer that lets me utilize my years of experience in the TDM cellular technology.
2. Objective: A position as a Project Manager in the EDA industry that lets me utilize my excellent communication and presentation skills.
3. Objective: A position as a Junior UNIX/Solaris Sysadmin (SAGE Level II) in the financial services industry that lets me utilize my superior Solaris knowledge.
4. Objective: An entry-level position as a HP-UX/UNIX Sysadmin that enables me to demonstrate my ability to learn on the job.

• Objective: I am an expert in building large, scalable services based on open protocols.

How could the clerk classify such a resumé?

A better statement would have been: "A senior architect of UNIX-based email and web services that lets me utilize my experience in building extremely scalable systems with high up-times." He did change his resumé to something similar, and soon started getting phone calls. Tip 2: A good "Skills" sectionUse buzzwords. There is a reason for them, it makes communication faster. I hate "buzzword compliant" presentations, but only when they aren't adding any value to the statement. When they appear on a resumé they do add value because the clerk undestands them. Better-trained clerks are given a list of synonyms. For example: they might be told "We need a Solaris sysadmin... but that means anyone that mentions Sun, SunOS, or UNIX should be considered. Oh, other synonyms for UNIX are: AIX, Linux, IRIX... a person that knows any of those but wants to learn Solaris is fine for this position." However, that doesn't always happen so it is ok to be a little redundent: I include the word UNIX in addition to the name the vendor uses (i.e. "Solaris/UNIX" or "Red Hat/Linux/UNIX").

List the best skills first. I see many "skills" sections that list 20 operating systems or 20 languages or 20 vendors and that's a fine way to show that you have a lot of experience over many years. However, the person reading your resumé is only going to read the first 3-4, so make sure those are the ones you want to work in.

A friend listed the languages she knew in the order she learned them. Which of the these two would a clerk find most useful if he/she was told to find a "Windows C++ programmer"?

BASIC, Pascal, C-64 BASIC, AppleBasic, Cobal, Fortran, C, awk, C++, Visual C++, Perl

Perl, Visual C++, C++, awk, C, Fortran, Cobal, AppleBasic, C-64 Basic, Pascal, BASIC.

While I'm at it, I believe one should delete the super-old technologies like Commodore 64 and Apple II unless, of course, you are applying to work someplace that still uses those technologies.

A concise way to list skills is to group them. The first example below is the most concise, the others are longer.

Skills:

Operating systems: Unix (FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux), Windows 95/98/2000/NT, and others.

Here are some other good examples of "Skills" listings that I've seen:

Skills:

Operating systems: Unix (FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux), Windows 95/98/2000/NT, Cisco IOS 7.x-12.x, plus some experience with AIX, HP-UX, OpenVMS, NetBSD, OpenBSD and others.

Programming Languages: Perl/CGI/mod_perl, C/C++, HTML, Unix shells and tools, awk/sed, SQL, Python, Pascal, BASIC.

Network Products: Cisco Routers, Cisco Switches, Cisco PIX Firewalls and Cisco IP Telephony equipment (ICS7750); Checkpoint FW-1; Linux/Unix firewalls (IPFilter, IPFW); Avaya Cajun products; Network General Sniffer, tcpdump, Ethereal, Snort.

Network Technologies: FastEthernet, Gigabit Ethernet, FDDI, OSPF, BGP, ATM.

Tip 3: ClassificationsIf you are a sysadmin, use the SAGE Job Classifications to describe yourself and/or the position you are looking for. More and more HR departments are using them, and certainly the cool companies that you want to work for are using them. However, explain enough so that someone that hasn't read http://sageweb.sage.org/resources/publications/8_j obs/ will understand what you mean. That's why the above example was redundant: "a Junior UNIX/Solaris Sysadmin (SAGE Level II)". Tip 4: Pick a good filenameNever use a filename like resume.doc when sending your resumé as an attachment. Name the file something like resume_tom_limoncelli.doc so that if the HR person saves it, he or she will be able to easily tell yours from someone else's...and your resumé won't be overwritten the next time someone else sends them a file called resume.doc. (Thanks to my friend Tina for this tip.) ConclusionA good resumé is your key to finding a new job. However, you'll never find a job if your resumé doesn't reach the right people. Making your "Objective" and "Skills" sections complete and accurate is how you make sure it reaches the right people. Tom Limoncelli is co-author of The Practice of System and Network Administration with Christine Hogan, Director of Network Operations at Lumeta Corp. and maintains www.EverythingSysadmin.com. He can be reached at talsagewire@whatexit.org.

SAGE, the Systems Administrators Guild has a junior-to-mid-level professional certification for systems administrators now, called cSAGE.

Unlike vendor/product certifications, this cert is designed to assess your ability to perform in an IT role -- namely, systems administrator -- rather than your ability to memorize features and functions of a particular product. It tests troubleshooting skill, background knowledge of process and procedure, and general junior-to-mid-level sysadmin proficiency, both in general and specific to Unix (they're working on a Windows module and several other, higher-level "merit badge" modules).

Definitely go to college and get a bachelor's. The subject doesn't matter. The important thing is that you learn how to think critically, and that you learn how to learn. THAT is the true purpose of a college education.

Beyond that, find a senior-level admin who will mentor you (the SAGE organization has a mentoring program). Get a professional, not a vendor, certification (SAGE also offers a professional certification program).

• Medicine is a field which requires certification. Writing code is not a profession in that sense. There is no body analagous to the American Medical Association or the IEEE that regulates best practices, standards,ethics. There is no journal of the American Coders Association
• Certification is a tricky business for technical, rapidly changing fields; any sysadmin aware of the SAGE Certification program should know about the long, hard road to determining what makes a certified sysadmin.
• Most coders don't even participate in the Association for Computer Machinery, the first computer professional organization.
• The low barriers to entry for coders make regualtion damn near impossible. It's a lot like the repeated attempts to unionize sex workers: there's always another eighteen year old waiting in the wings to take the work and do a miserable job. I have way more respect for the average sex worker than coders - competetion makes them good at what they do. Most coders get paid either way. But that's a different rant.
• Who determines the public good? This is ostensibly the work of the government, but occasionally falls to non-governmental organizations like the AMA. This is not a job for the self-righteous /. community. Is spyware harmful? I think so, but most people either aren't aware or are indifferent. This isn't a technocracy, which despite what some readers might think is a good thing - technical people can't govern any better than anyone else, and frequently do worse.

• Nice idea, but you can't get there from here.

  Some days it's horribly obvious that too many /. readers really don't know any serious computer professionals. These aren't new issues, but they've never been brought to the attention of this community.

How can this article ignore two of the most important certifications on the market right now, LPI and cSAGE??

They're both platform-independent, they're both psychometrically valid, and they're both of paramount importance to anyone looking to run computer infrastructures that include *nix systems.

cSAGE is an entry-level exam designed to certify competence in the practice of systems administration, and it was developed by the community, just like LPI (in cSAGE's case, it was developed by the community of systems administrators and the folks at USENIX and SAGE - The Systems Administrators Guild.

Isn't everyone tired of taking exams designed to test your ability to memorize trivia about a vendor's products? Why would you want yet another certification just because vendor $FOO has cranked out a new version of their widget? Wouldn't you rather have certifications that are designed to qualify your ability to do your job, rather than your ability to memorize?

That's exactly what cSAGE is all about.

I'm an admin now, soon to get the coveted Senior prefix on my title, and I still don't even have a degree. Hell, I only have a GED, I got where I did on tenacity, skill and perseverence, in that order.

A good skills inventory to try and achieve can be found in the job descriptions made available by S.A.G.E. which is the System Administrators Guild. Knowing your shit is far more valuable than having certifications claiming you know it. If you want to go for Solaris careers, Sun certs are semi-worthwhile but expensive to get the training for, as opposed to learning on the job and then just passing a test.

There are many routes in, however trying to start at a junior admin level is probably the easiest. That or find a company with a NOC and try and get in there. The position usually means a fair degree of visibility in terms of technical skills without having the pressure of your future immediately riding on unpolished skills. That's how I ended up as an admin in fact. I was hired into the NOC, learned Perl and did some administrative scripting that people found valuable, then won a few technical debates to prove I knew what I was talking about.

Sounds like someone at IBM just read a load of Mark Burgess papers and found their next marketing angle. Interesting that one of their ideas for "autonomic" optimisation is for the system to clone and run several OS images...just like recent AS/400 models can do! These and other great ideas coming soon from an (IBM) mainframe near you! Presumably they'll be open sourcing all their mainframe technology so that the effort isn't impeded by "proprietary standards"?

Cynicism apart, it's a laudable initiative if it results in a large kick to existing research in these areas. SAGE are also turning their attention to the process of automating and scaling system administration tasks (see recent discussion on sysadmin "research" on sage-members list).

OTOH, I can think of a large part of the IT industry - those vendors with profitable integration services business units - who possibly won't be throwing their lot in with IBM on this one.

Ade_
/

--

If you're valued enough, and good enough at your job this is not a problem. SAGE (SysAdmin Guild), IIRC, has some articles on this and what it boils down to is: nobody is forcing you to do anything. Refusal to do this is defensible. This is a management issue, not a technical one. You are a technician, not a manager.

Don't preach, don't condescend, and don't moralize. Simply and quietly refuse to do it. By not making a big stink about it you cost no-one any face. The first, second or third sysadmin that refuses to do this will make them reconsider, and not even bring the topic up in the future. Sing the company song and in every other way be a team player, just quietly refuse to do this one thing.

PS: Make very sure your own house is clean before you attempt this. If they do find anything remotely questionable in your mailbox, you'll be out in a heartbeat--with good reason.