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10 Dos and Don'ts To Make Sysadmins' Lives Easier

Posted by timothy on from the sorry-dave-can't-let-you-do-that dept.

CowboyRobot writes "Tom Limoncelli has a piece in 'Queue' summarizing the Computer-Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology's list of how to make software that is easy to install, maintain, and upgrade. FTA: '#2. DON'T make the administrative interface a GUI. System administrators need a command-line tool for constructing repeatable processes. Procedures are best documented by providing commands that we can copy and paste from the procedure document to the command line.'"

2 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. The Practice of System and Network Administration by XanC · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article author is also behind The Practice of System and Network Administration, truly an excellent text into the practicalities of work in IT.

  2. Windows CAL cost by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the article:

    8. [...] Similarly, use the operating system's built-in authentication system and standard I/O systems.

    This can be a bad thing if your application runs on a platform whose built-in authentication is a nickel-and-dime revenue stream for the platform's publisher. Microsoft Windows Server is like this: each user account on the built-in authentication system requires a Client Access License.