Unix System Administrators?

[viscousmemories]

I've been fascinated by Unix since I discovered the Internet back in '94, and took an Introduction to Unix course at the local community college. However I've only barely dabbled in it, and I totally bombed a recent phone interview for an entry-level "junior sys admin" position because I couldn't answer a few simple questions about how to monitor system performance.

The sad fact is I've forgotten almost everything I once knew about Unix. I use Cpanel to administer the website, and I only use our Debian Linux server at home to store files on. So while I can use basic IP and directory system commands, I don't know much else.

So here's my question(s). Does anyone know some good online resources to learn Unix/Linux system administration, and/or what kinds of things should I study if I want to get a sys admin job in the not too distant future (for any of you who happen to do or have done such a job)?

[Scotty]

<sigh> Sorry, everything I have learned is from OJT (On the job training), and maybe a mix of classes here and there.
I do either more or less then some UNIX system-admins. I will monitor and write scripts to monitor systems, set up email servers, deploy software to the application servers, configure apache, DNS, do simple Router configs (Cisco, but I am not good at that), backups, PC/Mac support for users, firewall configurations, Deploy java apps, set up Tomcat servers, all on various *Unix systems.

I can help if you have a problem, but telling you what a good resource is (in books) is something I have little knowledge of, I just buy books on a subject (like Apache) when I need it, then it is all for reference material.

-Scott

[wade-w]

Well, I learned by installing and running Linux. Even though GNU stands for "Gnu's Not Unix" it's based on System V UNIX, and so are all of the major flavors out there in the business world. Make yourself use the command line instead of GUI based administrative interfaces. Keep in mind that Unix is not a single OS, rather it is a family of OS's that share common roots. As for the questions about monitoring system status, well, that can vary somewhat depending on the particular flavor of Unix and whether or not the installation has third party monitoring software. But the standard basic utilities for that are vmstat(1) and iostat(1).

The thing about Unix is that the learning curve is fairly steep in the beginning. But once you catch on to the general philosophy of how things work, it suddenly becomes fairly easy. It was never intended to be "easy to learn." It was, however, meant to be powerful and flexible once you do learn it. The very first order of business for learning about Unix is to get used to reading what are called "man pages." This refers to the online Unix manual, which can be accessed by using the man(1) command. At a command prompt, type man man to get started. This will display the Unix Manual entry for man(1). man(1) is, imo, the single most important command in all of Unix.

That said, damn vm. I'd kill for a chance at even an entry level Unix sys admin position, even though I have 8 years of experience.

[viscousmemories]

Thanks for the tips, guys.

Wade the phone interview I had was with Lunarpages, the company where HH is hosted.

Click here (http://www.lunarpages.com/jobs/show.php?id=4) to read the job description and click "apply now" at the bottom to apply. It took 'em a week or two to contact me, but I'm pretty sure I would've gotten the job if I had known the answer to more than one of the five or so questions. :P

[Godless Wonder]

I learned on the job, (but I haven't been a unix system administrator in a long time and enough has changed that I'd need to study up.)

There's a book, one of the authors is Evi Nemeth... let's see
here it is (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130206016/qid=1102799301/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-5707578-2124825?v=glance&s=books). That book is very broad, and pretty deep too, and covers lots of concepts and things that a unix sys admin needs to know, and is generally considered a classic among such books. There seems to be a Linux specific book by the same author(s) (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130084662/qid=1102799301/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-5707578-2124825?v=glance&s=books) which might be good, I don't know since I haven't read it. The two of them together are probably somewhat redundant, but if that's a job you want, probably both would be valuable.

Some experience programming is good to have too, since a lot of what a unix system administrator does is write lots of scripts to automate things, or generally help out whoever it is that's actually using the computers to do real work (for instance you may get called on to help write some scripts to automate some build process or something.)

My experience in the admin field is from 1992 -- 1997 or so, and that was a different era. Back then, the unix system administrators seemed like they were the ones that knew all about the system moreso than anybody else around. Nowadays, administration is often viewed more as a grunt-job, especially if there's a lot of windows machines around, and so there tends to be less knowledgelable people doing the job.

Depends on the shop though. Some shops run a very loose ship, with people doing whatever they want, and administration being an afterthought, and some shops may be run very tightly. Often it depends on the application. (e.g. you can bet Citibank runs a very very tight ship on systems for certain of their applications, and you can bet you won't be getting a job on those particular ships of theirs first thing off, nor would you want it.)

I think it might be fair to say that "the golden age" :tmroll: of unix system adminstration is over, now that linux has commoditized the market. Windows never had a really strong system administration tradition and mindset like unix did (on windows, it seems always an afterthought) and people coming from that world to unix often don't seem to have any grasp of what a system administrator would or should be doing.

[seebs]

The down side of the current market is that there's not as much high-paying work for really good sysadmins... The up side is, there's getting to be more work lying around to be done. It's just hard to get people to recognize or admit that a good sysadmin will make a difference.

[Corona688]

If you want to learn UNIX, my suggestion would be to install Gentoo (www.gentoo.org). It's a distro similar in some ways to debian; you work with things at a very low level. Hell, their idea of an installer is to boot you to a bash prompt from CD to let you partition your drive as you see fit, then dearchive a big tarball onto it.

The difference is, it comes with some very good documentation and walkthroughs that a newbie could follow, a smart software package system that doesn't pretend to be an operating system(they've even ported it to macos), and has a very newbie-friendly set of forums (forums.gentoo.org). Basic questions get real answers, not "stfu and read the manual n00b'.

It'll be a fair amount of work, but if it doesn't teach you about UNIX, nothing will.

[Corona688]

Wow. I killed the whole forum, for a solid week. :blink:

[livius drusus]

Wear it with pride, Forum Killer. :winner:

[viscousmemories]

:chuckle:

Thanks for your posts folks. You too Corona. :D

I didn't mean to ignore any of you I just have a short attention span...

[noblesavage]

Don't know how much you want to spend, but you can take online courses through Oreilly and U of Illinois

http://oreilly.useractive.com/courses/sysadmin.php3

[Corona688]

I stopped having any faith in online computer-based computer training when I realized that no matter how good the traning software is, using the actual software you want to train for is better. A particularly ironic moment was when I had to fix glaring bugs in HTML layout to get some shockwave-flash based linux training software to work under linux.

[noblesavage]

I stopped having any faith in online computer-based computer training when I realized that no matter how good the traning software is, using the actual software you want to train for is better. A particularly ironic moment was when I had to fix glaring bugs in HTML layout to get some shockwave-flash based linux training software to work under linux.

The courses through Oreilly give you a root account on a server. So you are using the real software. I haven't personally taken them, but I have heard that they are good. I have learned most of what I know, and I don’t claim to be an expert, just by playing with various linux distros and reading books to un-fuck myself when I screw stuff up; that and a lot of “man” pages.

[viscousmemories]

Those look really cool and reasonably priced. Thanks for the tip, NS. I can't really afford it at this juncture but if I decide to go that route I'll definitely give that a closer look.