NT servers were named after ducks (Huey, Dewey, Louie, Launchpad, Darkwing)
In early days, UNIX hosts were rodents or other critters. (mole, weasel, ferret, groundhog)
As the number of servers grew, we started an 'early space program/rockets' theme. (mercury, apollo, atlas, titan, saturn, redstone, etc.)
One machine got named 'bigdog' after Purdue All-American Glenn Robinson. (I thought a Purdue basketball theme would've been funny, but it never took off. Guess 'joe-barry-carrol.lib.purdue.edu, mount.lib.purdue.edu, wooden.lib.purdue.edu didn't have the right ring.)
At some contract work I did before the company hired a full time sysadmin, we used a 'Watergate' theme. (somebody named a machine haldeman and *poof*, erhlichman, liddy, woodward, bernstein, etc. popped up shortly afterward)
Our environment in my department at Purdue uses am-utils extensively for our NFS handling. Home directories, group file repositories, and shared software installation.
Am-utils is well suited to what we use it for (or perhaps what we do is determined around what am-utils can do, hmm.) Some examples of what we use it for:
Home directories. Home directories come from either of two central fileservers (with the RAID), or if the user's a disk hog, their home directory can be served from their workstation. Amd lets us just forget where something is physically stored and let amd deal with finding/home/psmith. Our group file storage areas work the same way.
Shared software installation. Rather than install matlab, OpenPBS, PVM, MPICH, etc. on every system, am-utils lets us install software in a common amd mountpoint, and amd handles the behind-the-scenes stuff to make sure it mounts the version for the proper architecture. Basically, it maps people's requests for/package/matlab to fileserver:/net/fileserver/package/matlab/${os}
Add in the cross-platform-ness (we mix SunOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, and AIX in our am-utils environment), and I'm most pleased with it.
Granted, I'm sure you know of its benefits, but as to its reliability and efficiency, I've got no gripes. Any speed/flakiness issues I've encountered are most likely issues with the underlying NFS implementations, and those have really been pretty few and far between.
AMS is nifty not only because of the physics involved, but as a great way to make use of accelerator labs that might otherwise be closed..
Our lab here at Purdue, PRIME Lab, is a great example of this, retooling an older tandem accelerator lab for a new use as funding for nuclear physics began to dry up, and other similar facilities around the country closed. We've even got one of the accelerators with the highest energies of any AMS facility in the US by reusing the facility in this way.
This program does not support a "wheel group" that restricts who can su to super-user accounts, because that can help fascist system administrators hold unwarranted power over other users.
Myself, I tend to be one of the aforementioned fascists, so in the past I've installed a version of su that's wheel group-aware.
Now, you can enable 'wheel group only' behavior with PAM.
> SSN numbers are not private. What could happen when someone transposes a number on a form, puts in a wrong SSN number in a database or gives a false SSN number?
You mean like when the IRS sent a refund check to me for the amount that my sister should have gotten?
All they did was typo a digit. Took quite a few letters to resolve too.
I don't that that most of Purdue is going to be too influsenced by the Microsoft shoveware. Purdue's certainly Unix/mainframe -centric, I don't see the infrastructure going over to NT.
At the Libraries, the bulk of our setup is AIX, though we do run NT workstations for our staff. And as web-browser terminals. What a waste.
I'm a CPT alum, and I really worry about the NT-centricness in CPT. It'll no doubt produce PHB's and people who know nothing about anything that doesn't have the Windows logo on it. They still do a pretty good job of giving an education, but it could very easily become MS 'training'.
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Am-utils is well suited to what we use it for (or perhaps what we do is determined around what am-utils can do, hmm.) Some examples of what we use it for:
- Home directories. Home directories come from either of two central fileservers (with the RAID), or if the user's a disk hog, their home directory can be served from their workstation. Amd lets us just forget where something is physically stored and let amd deal with finding
/home/psmith. Our group file storage areas work the same way.
- Shared software installation. Rather than install matlab, OpenPBS, PVM, MPICH, etc. on every system, am-utils lets us install software in a common amd mountpoint, and amd handles the behind-the-scenes stuff to make sure it mounts the version for the proper architecture. Basically, it maps people's requests for
/package/matlab to fileserver:/net/fileserver/package/matlab/${os}
Add in the cross-platform-ness (we mix SunOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, and AIX in our am-utils environment), and I'm most pleased with it.Granted, I'm sure you know of its benefits, but as to its reliability and efficiency, I've got no gripes. Any speed/flakiness issues I've encountered are most likely issues with the underlying NFS implementations, and those have really been pretty few and far between.
Our lab here at Purdue, PRIME Lab, is a great example of this, retooling an older tandem accelerator lab for a new use as funding for nuclear physics began to dry up, and other similar facilities around the country closed. We've even got one of the accelerators with the highest energies of any AMS facility in the US by reusing the facility in this way.
Nothing to wonder about, really.
the "Deb" in Debian is Ian's wife.
Look at it here on ZD Net
Myself, I tend to be one of the aforementioned fascists, so in the past I've installed a version of su that's wheel group-aware.
Now, you can enable 'wheel group only' behavior with PAM.
From Don Bluth, I believe.
http://www-4.ibm.com/softw are/developer/library/jfs.html
> SSN numbers are not private. What could happen when someone transposes a number on a form, puts in a wrong SSN number in a database or gives a false SSN number?
You mean like when the IRS sent a refund check to me for the amount that my sister should have gotten?
All they did was typo a digit. Took quite a few
letters to resolve too.
Fah
I don't that that most of Purdue is going to be too influsenced by the Microsoft shoveware. Purdue's certainly Unix/mainframe -centric, I don't see the infrastructure going over to NT.
At the Libraries, the bulk of our setup is AIX, though we do run NT workstations for our staff. And as web-browser terminals. What a waste.
I'm a CPT alum, and I really worry about the NT-centricness in CPT. It'll no doubt produce PHB's and people who know nothing about anything that doesn't have the Windows logo on it. They still do a pretty good job of giving an education, but it could very easily become MS 'training'.
Essential System Administration, by
Aeleen Fritsch