Re: How to become a System Administrator?

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Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 07:54:17 GMT

And somewhere around the time of 04/02/2004 12:10, the world stopped and
listened as New Guy contributed the following to humanity:

> Gurus,
>
> I will be finishing college with (hopefully) my bachelor in computer
> sciences in hand. I want to become a Unix system administrator.
>
> I have worked in school on different flavors, mostly HP-UX but our
> teacher never got into deep about any topics. We touched hardware,
> network but did mostly shell scripting.
>
> What is the best curriculum that you suggest so I can best prepared?
> Should I focus on programming? Performance tuning? Backup and
> recovery? High availability?
>
> Please provide me with some pointers. I am very "wet behind the ears"
> and appreciate all the help I can get.
>
> Thanks!
>
> ks

I do my own sysadmin work on my LAN at home going on 5 years now. The
title of System Administrator is a varied one. Here's a list of things
that I do:

1. Write sh/ksh script programs and C/Pascal binary programs.

2. Install, configure, change, upgrade, and remove software.

3. Install, configure, and upgrade the operating system.

4. Configure and compile a custom kernel to match the system hardware
and any additional options that me/users/system might need.

5. Maintain system security (proxy, firewall, etc).

6. Maintain the LAN, the Switch, and any devices connected to it.

7. Perform routine backups, and restore the system in case of failure.

8. Maintain the following services: DNS, DHCP, NTP, NAT, PPP, SMTP,
POP3, NNTP, HTTP, FTP, SSH, Telnet, NFS, NIS, IRC, Samba, etc.

9. Tune the system for maximum performance.

10. Teach people how to utilize the system efficently.

11. Help users on performing tasks.

12. Correct system problems that users report.

And the list goes on and on and on. You need to be willing to learn new
things, and you need to be willing to go out and research information on
your own about how to do things.

The best bet for you would be to buy a couple of books on Unix. I
recommend something from either Sobel, or O'Riley. Get a computer,
install Unix on it (FreeBSD would probably be best as it is a good
system to learn on.) such as one of the BSDs, Linux, or Solaris x86, sit
down at the machine and play with it. That's how I learned.

Remember, it does take alot of effort to get things up and running, to
learn about the system, to learn how it works, and how to fix it when
something breaks. We were all "wet behind the ears" once, we were all
beginners once. So relax and take your time.

-- 
Daniel Rudy
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