My CS degree is a BA too. I had to take 1/3 of my credits outside my division (since CS is Science Division, this meant either Social Studies or Fine Arts). There were also specific course requirements for taking humanities, foreign languages and arts courses. My understanding is that BS degrees don't require as much work outside the major.
As much as a drag as those outside requirements sound, it really it did prepare me well for the real world. As a systems administrator, there's obviously lots of CS/IT things that I have to do, but there's also lots of things outside CS/IT that I have to do. When I have to justify a big purchase, I need to put it into terms that non-CS people understand. When someone comes to me about improving data flow off a biochem instrument, I need to be able to figure out what they need, and frame the options in terms of what they can understand.
I believe NT 3.5 also was ported to the MIPS processor too. I wonder what our processor market would look like if Microsoft had kept up the multi-platform support.
We have an RFID-based card access system where I work. The local stations keep a log of all cards allowed on a particular door in the last six months, so it'll open the door for those cards even if the network is out.
Since Nagios can execute arbitrary scripts, couldn't you rig up a Perl script using Test::Harness and WWW::Mechanize to parse the web app and catch the return codes off that script?
As a professional sysadmin, I've only built a custom kernel if there was actually some real gain to be had. Otherwise, it just makes installing updates harder. Anything that makes a box unique is one more thing that can break in a pre-packaged update. In modern hardware there's not much to be gained by paring down the kernel, and vendor kernels I've seen are heavily modularized anyways.
In all seriousness though, for those of us with machines in Indiana, we've been hit with this DST nonsense twice in the past year. At this point I kind of wish all the time we've wasted could be billed to our elected politicians.
You can mount filesystems with the noexec flag, which will prevent files from being executed. Have user directories mounted like that, and just have executables where users can't write to.
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Better support for repetition would be nice. I have a fair number of events that repeat, but not according to the patterns that they specify.
Queue the shameless plug....
I've been working with my advisor and a couple other students on a portable cluster of these things. We've got eight nodes in a Pelican box, and it's just small enough to be taken as airplane carry-on. We've finally worked out all the hardware issues (diskless booting, consoldiated power supplies, etc.), and now we're moving on to making the software easy to manage. Pretty sweet, over all.
When I was doing data-comm cable installation for a school district we had to install conduits (for long runs) or sleeves (for short runs) between walls to keep in compliance with commercial electrical code. There also couldn't be air flow between rooms because of commercial fire code, so we ended up sticking Hilti fire caulk into all the conduits after we pulled cable. This turned into a PITA when we had to rip it out to lay more cable after our contract changed though.
We've written some self-rolled C code and Perl scripts to pull data from the Weatherduck, stuff it into a Postgres database, and trigger an alarm if the temperature or humidity get outside a certain range. Here's a link to our CVSWeb.
The basic procedure is that you pipe output from monitor into db_interface, and then run alert as a separate process. You can use the CGI script to generate GNUPlot graphs from a web form, or you can invoke it directly with graph.
I live in Richmond, IN, and the local electric company Richmond Power & Light was sitting on an ungodly fast SONET ring (655 Mbps). They installed it in the mid '90s in an attempt to get into the CATV business, which flopped in front of the PUC. After years of using it for nothing more than monitoring their power substations over RS-232 (~9600bps for a few dozen substations), they're now getting into the wireless Internet business. They sell equivalents of fractional T1, full T1, and I believe are coming out with a wireless equivalent T3. The reliablity is superior to the reliability on the T1 lines from Verizon. They're just now finishing negotiations with the PUC for rolling out residential wireless access. It's all very cool.
Go with tapes. Now that LTO/Ultrium is out, DLT-IV is dirt cheap for both tapes and drives. You can fit up to 40GB compressed on a single cartridge, it's been tested to last for decades if kept well, and it can take a whole lot more abuse than other tape technologies.
Do not IM him (and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow).
IM is one of the most useful things for us. A substantial number of us travel and work on the go (conferences, presentations, etc.), so it's a good way to conference with a group without having to pay for a conference call and without the delay of email. Even when we're all in town, a couple of us walk/bike so things get dicey when the weather is bad. IM lets us communicate and work from home. We frequently deal with sensitive things (like code we have on an NDA), but an internal JabberdJabber server with TLS enabled solves that one easily.
You'll probably spend less by selling your existing cards and going with one that build all that stuff in. That said, the one with everything built in is also going to be less replaceable than an individual card.
We use Net Squid to do that. Essentially it's a PC acting as a transparent bridge sitting in the middle of the fiber uplink from each dorm. It uses a combination of Snort, Squid , and IPTables. If a computer starts misbehaving, it'll get added to a block list for 15 minutes, which will allow access only to a web page that downloads our site-liscensed copy of Sophos Antivirus.
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My CS degree is a BA too. I had to take 1/3 of my credits outside my division (since CS is Science Division, this meant either Social Studies or Fine Arts). There were also specific course requirements for taking humanities, foreign languages and arts courses. My understanding is that BS degrees don't require as much work outside the major.
As much as a drag as those outside requirements sound, it really it did prepare me well for the real world. As a systems administrator, there's obviously lots of CS/IT things that I have to do, but there's also lots of things outside CS/IT that I have to do. When I have to justify a big purchase, I need to put it into terms that non-CS people understand. When someone comes to me about improving data flow off a biochem instrument, I need to be able to figure out what they need, and frame the options in terms of what they can understand.
I believe NT 3.5 also was ported to the MIPS processor too. I wonder what our processor market would look like if Microsoft had kept up the multi-platform support.
We have an RFID-based card access system where I work. The local stations keep a log of all cards allowed on a particular door in the last six months, so it'll open the door for those cards even if the network is out.
Since Nagios can execute arbitrary scripts, couldn't you rig up a Perl script using Test::Harness and WWW::Mechanize to parse the web app and catch the return codes off that script?
As a professional sysadmin, I've only built a custom kernel if there was actually some real gain to be had. Otherwise, it just makes installing updates harder. Anything that makes a box unique is one more thing that can break in a pre-packaged update. In modern hardware there's not much to be gained by paring down the kernel, and vendor kernels I've seen are heavily modularized anyways.
In all seriousness though, for those of us with machines in Indiana, we've been hit with this DST nonsense twice in the past year. At this point I kind of wish all the time we've wasted could be billed to our elected politicians.
Making solar cells is not exactly a green process. Algae beats solar in that respect.
Maybe the North Koreans just discovered Mexican food. We've all been there before, I think. Maybe all this will just "blow over". :)
You can mount filesystems with the noexec flag, which will prevent files from being executed. Have user directories mounted like that, and just have executables where users can't write to.
Better support for repetition would be nice. I have a fair number of events that repeat, but not according to the patterns that they specify.
Bzzt. The IUPAC name for H2O is water, regardless of state.
Queue the shameless plug.... I've been working with my advisor and a couple other students on a portable cluster of these things. We've got eight nodes in a Pelican box, and it's just small enough to be taken as airplane carry-on. We've finally worked out all the hardware issues (diskless booting, consoldiated power supplies, etc.), and now we're moving on to making the software easy to manage. Pretty sweet, over all.
No. I'm still on TWM. :)
When I was doing data-comm cable installation for a school district we had to install conduits (for long runs) or sleeves (for short runs) between walls to keep in compliance with commercial electrical code. There also couldn't be air flow between rooms because of commercial fire code, so we ended up sticking Hilti fire caulk into all the conduits after we pulled cable. This turned into a PITA when we had to rip it out to lay more cable after our contract changed though.
Get some wiring duct or raceway. It's compact, easy to use and looks good. I use stuff from Panduit, but I'm sure other people make it too.
They tend to have everything you need. Here's some suggestions: Essential System Administration TCP/IP Network Administration Check out the rest of the sysadmin selection at O'Reilly.
We've written some self-rolled C code and Perl scripts to pull data from the Weatherduck, stuff it into a Postgres database, and trigger an alarm if the temperature or humidity get outside a certain range. Here's a link to our CVSWeb.
The basic procedure is that you pipe output from monitor into db_interface, and then run alert as a separate process. You can use the CGI script to generate GNUPlot graphs from a web form, or you can invoke it directly with graph.
I live in Richmond, IN, and the local electric company Richmond Power & Light was sitting on an ungodly fast SONET ring (655 Mbps). They installed it in the mid '90s in an attempt to get into the CATV business, which flopped in front of the PUC. After years of using it for nothing more than monitoring their power substations over RS-232 (~9600bps for a few dozen substations), they're now getting into the wireless Internet business. They sell equivalents of fractional T1, full T1, and I believe are coming out with a wireless equivalent T3. The reliablity is superior to the reliability on the T1 lines from Verizon. They're just now finishing negotiations with the PUC for rolling out residential wireless access. It's all very cool.
Here's some links.
Go with tapes. Now that LTO/Ultrium is out, DLT-IV is dirt cheap for both tapes and drives. You can fit up to 40GB compressed on a single cartridge, it's been tested to last for decades if kept well, and it can take a whole lot more abuse than other tape technologies.
Who read the title as "A Look Inside the Labs of Anus"?
/. with a hangover....
I guess it's what you get for reading
You'll probably spend less by selling your existing cards and going with one that build all that stuff in. That said, the one with everything built in is also going to be less replaceable than an individual card.
We use Net Squid to do that. Essentially it's a PC acting as a transparent bridge sitting in the middle of the fiber uplink from each dorm. It uses a combination of Snort, Squid , and IPTables. If a computer starts misbehaving, it'll get added to a block list for 15 minutes, which will allow access only to a web page that downloads our site-liscensed copy of Sophos Antivirus.
What's wrong with forwarding all mail from your mail server to your ISP's mail server?
I keep a spare around for just that reason. It's kind of pricey, but worth it.