Sysadmins: your top 10 duties/responsibilities? Post: 37657

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Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Sysadmins: your top 10 duties/responsibilities? Post 37657 by RTM on Tuesday 24th of June 2003 04:03:39 PM

06-24-2003

Registered User

As far as I know, no.

Here are my ten:
1. Monitor status of systems I'm responsible for. Done with BigBrother (sending email and pages) and a daily 'snapshot' of the health of those systems emailed to the team. Know the commands for getting system information - save it somewhere (especially important when dealing with Volume Manager software).
2. Add/change/delete user accounts/home directories locally or in a name service.
3. (Re)Build a server - either from cd, backup tape, or in the case of Solaris, jumpstart. I believe HP uses Ignite which an SA should know.
4. Backup - know tar, cpio, ufsdump/ufsrestore, and/or any 3rd party backup software.
5. Scripting - learn vi - learn how to script in csh, ksh, sh, perl at a minimum (only because you going to have to troubleshoot someone else code at some point). Other folks will tell you not to bother with csh - but sometimes it's hard to rewrite a whole script (especially if they didn't document it at all)
6. Documentation - do it.
7. Know the services such as DNS, NIS, Mail (Sendmail or another), FTP, NFS, and printing. At some point in time, you are going to have to deal with them. So you should also know the tools that will assist you in troubleshooting them.
8. Don't depend on GUI interfaces to tasks that you won't always have a GUI interface to. Single user mode on some systems are pure command line. When it hits the fan, you need to know command line.
9. Read man pages. Read books. Keep up on security problems (on all of the major OS).
10. Learn C.

Rules to live by:

1. Never - NEVER- run a program that you can't look at the source code and compile yourself that you found on the Internet or given by a 'friend'. You will crash your server if you do. Maybe not today, but soon when you least expect it - and then you'll have to tell your boss why the server crashed (and he has the core dump of who/what/when/why/and how).
2. Don't forget that there may be more than one problem when troubleshooting - look for the easy explaination first (bad code, missing white space, bad connection).
3. Your Vendor support will first want you to add patches - unless they can prove that it will help, don't do it. It could add to the problems.

Well, I had to do this while putting a server back together so I guess I got off of the 'tasks' idea and more into what you need. The only other thing - don't always trust what the Vendor support tells you - I've crashed more servers from doing things they say will 'fix' a problem than I have on my own. Think about what they say to do and have them explain it (in writing is best! - email).

This is probably why no one puts this stuff down - it takes to long!

RTM

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LEARN ABOUT CENTOS

printmgr

printmgr(1M)						  System Administration Commands					      printmgr(1M)

NAME

       printmgr - Solaris Print Manager is a graphical user interface for managing printers in a network

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/sadm/admin/bin/printmgr

DESCRIPTION

       Solaris Print Manager is a Java-based graphical user interface that enables you to manage local and remote printer access. This tool can be
       used in the following name service environments: LDAP, NIS, NIS+, and files. You must be logged in as superuser to use this tool.

       Using Solaris Printer Manager is the preferred method for managing printer access because Solaris Print Manager centralizes printer  infor-
       mation when it is used in a name service environment.

       Adding  printer	information to a name service makes access to printers available to all systems on the network and generally makes printer
       administration easier because all the information about printers is centralized.

       Solaris Print Manager may be run on a remote system with the display sent to  the  local  system.  See  the  System  Administration  Guide:
       Advanced Administration for instructions on setting the DISPLAY environment variable.

       Using Solaris Print Manager to perform printer-related tasks automatically updates the appropriate printer databases. Solaris Print Manager
       also includes a command-line console that displays the lp command line for the add, modify, and delete printer operations. Errors and warn-
       ings may also be displayed when Printer Manager operations are performed.

       Help is available by clicking the <Help> button.

USAGE

       Solaris Print Manager enables you to do the following tasks:

       Select a Name Service

	   Select a name service for retrieving or changing printer information.

       Add Access to a Printer

	   Add printer access on a printer client using Solaris Print Manager.

       Add an Attached Printer

	   After  physically  attaching  the  printer  to a system, use Solaris Print Manager to install a local printer and make it available for
	   printing.

       Add a Network Printer

	   After physically attaching the printer to a system, use Solaris Print Manager to install a local printer  and  make	it  available  for
	   printing.

       Modify Printer Properties

	   After adding access to a printer or adding an attached or network printer, you can modify certain printer attributes.

       Delete a Printer

	   Delete access to a printer from the print client or delete a printer from the print server or from the name service environment.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWppm			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       ldap(1), lpget(1M), lpset(1M), attributes(5)

       System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration for information on LDAP server replication.

       Although  users	can  use  the LDAP command line utilities ldapadd(1) and ldapmodify(1)to update printer entries in the directory, the pre-
       ferred method is to use lpset. Otherwise, if the lpadd and lpmodify utilities are used, the administrator must ensure that the printer-name
       attribute value is unique within the ou=printers container on the LDAP server. If the value is not unique, the result of modifications done
       using lpset or the Solaris Print Manager, printmgr(1M) may be unpredictable.

SunOS 5.10							    23 May 2003 						      printmgr(1M)