02-06-2011
Unix/Linux System Administrator - Study Advice
Hello all,
I really hope that this is the right Forum to post this kind of a question...
I have been working in the IT support industry for nearly 3 years now. I started of providing end-user support. So enough to say that I provided my fair share of "have you tried turning it off and on" solutions and did more password resets then is medically healthy for one... Anyway, to make a long story short I am now supporting HP-UX and Linux (SUSE and Red Hat) in mostly business critical environments for a living.
Although I am very happy with my current job I do of course sometimes wonder what my next position might be... And this is exactly where I need some help with. The logical next step (in my opinion at least) is to become a (Junior) System Administrator (which has been pretty much my goal when I started 3 years ago). However, providing support for Unix/Linux issues is obviously quite different from actually managing a couple of these servers. I must say that over the years I have become quite good at researching issues and documenting solutions... But at the same time I do not feel overly confident about mu administration skills.
So what I really like to know (hopefully from some experienced Unix/Linux system administrators) is how to proceed to the next level. How do I move from a support job into a administrator job? Or maybe even better, how did you manage to get there?
What I am especially interested in is:
- what certificate/course would you recommend me taking?
- what topics should I focus on?
- what else do you recommend me doing to make the transition as smooth as possible?
I was thinking to do the following:
- try to get the RHCSA (or possibly RHCE) certification under my belt
- focus on shell scripting (maybe Perl)
What are your thoughts? Keep in mind that I am currently living and working in Europe (not sure if that makes a difference?).
Thanks in advance for your time and suggestions!
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LEARN ABOUT REDHAT
pserver
PSERVER(1) pserver PSERVER(1)
NAME
pserver - NetWare print server
SYNOPSIS
pserver [ -S server ] [ -h ] [ -U user name ] [ -P password | -n ] [ -C ] [ -q queue name ] [ -c command ] [ -j job type ] [ -t timeout ] [
-d ]
DESCRIPTION
pserver is a program that connects to print queues on NetWare servers and feeds incoming print jobs to the Linux printing system.
OPTIONS
-h
-h is used to print out a short help text.
-S server
server is the name of the server you want to use.
-U user
user is the print server name at the server.
-P password
password is the password to use for the print server at the server. If neither -n nor -P are given, and the user has no open connection
to the server, pserver prompts for a password.
-n
-n should be given if the print server does not require a password.
-C
By default, passwords are converted to uppercase before they are sent to the server, because most servers require this. You can turn off
this conversion by -C.
-q queue name
queue name is the name of the print queue you want to service.
-c command
When a job is received from the print queue, pserver forks off a new process, and feeds the job file to stdin. command is the printing
command that is executed for each job. The default command is 'lpr'.
You can insert several flags into the command, preceded by %. These are replaced with values retrieved from the queue structure for the
print job.
%u: This field will be replaced by the name of the user who posted this print job.
%d: This field will be replaced by the job description field of this print job.
-j job type
Each job in a NetWare print queue has a job type. For print jobs, this corresponds to the number of the form the job should be printed
on. You can tell pserver that it should only receive jobs for one specific form from the queue. The default is -1, which means that
everything is received.
-t timeout
Pserver is not informed by NetWare servers when new jobs arrive. So a polling scheme has to be used. When there are no jobs to service,
timeout tells pserver how long to wait between two requests. The default is 30 seconds. When a job is finished, pserver asks the NetWare
server immediately for a new job, and does not wait timeout seconds.
-d
Normally, pserver daemonizes itself. -d tells it not to do so. This is useful if you want to see the diagnostic messages that are
printed when a error occurs.
SEE ALSO
nwclient(5), slist(1), pqlist(1), ncpmount(8), ncpumount(8)
CREDITS
pserver was written by Volker Lendecke (lendecke@math.uni-goettingen.de)
pserver 10/22/1996 PSERVER(1)