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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Which Unix Certification is the most needed these days? Post 4403 by Neo on Thursday 9th of November 2000 11:48:38 AM
Old 11-09-2000
A word on 'certification' Smilie

I've been working on UNIX-based systems for over 15 years, including almost every flavor of UNIX under the sky. Never, in my career, have I meet a great UNIX person who was 'certified'. All the great system administrator and programmers have the same thing in common - a lot of reading and hands on experience on the job. There is no classroom experience that can substitute for crashing a live server for a major corporation at 3 am and having the responsibility to get it back on line before business opens or you are 'toast'.

I've worked in places where the system administator was in a training class for a week and while they were away, the backup tape for the major systems was full and ejected itself. They had a automatic email in place to warn, but they were in class Smilie Then, a consultant who was working on a difficult codeing project for a month lost her files. She went to look for the backup tape to restore the files and found the tape ejected !!!! She cried, really.

I've worked with a lot of folks over the years certified on routers, UNIX, MS, etc. I'm sorry to say that none of these people were 10 percent as competent than the people who had a passion for reading and building, hands on. Most certifications are just ways for vendors and suppliers to make money selling training papers.

Want to be great at UNIX? Get a version of UNIX (Linux, BSD, whatever), build a server from scratch and start building and writing C code. Get Rich Stevens books on system level programming and learn to program at the system level. Write your own server and client code, debug the code, work on interprocess communications, debug memory leaks, build shared libs, build static libs, fix corrupt file systems, etc.

Certification is not good for personal knowledge. It is useful when you are just starting to get your foot in the door of a company who requires certification, but you can bet your paycheck that the experts do not have these 'waste of time' pieces of paper. Do you think that Rich Stevens, who wrote the best books on UNIX is 'certified by a vendor?'
How about Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux? No, they are great UNIX people because they did not take any vendor shortcuts. Patiences, practice, discipline are what builds the foundation for being great at anything, not quick certification classes.

I recommend you go to https://www.unix.com/ and follow the link on the left side to Stevens Classics. Buy Rich Stevens books and start programming network based UNIX projects and learn the internals. This will make you a great UNIX person.

[Edited by Neo on 11-09-2000 at 11:53 AM]
 

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BACKUP_SETEXP(8)					       AFS Command Reference						  BACKUP_SETEXP(8)

NAME
       backup_setexp - Sets the expiration date for existing dump levels.

SYNOPSIS
       backup setexp -dump <dump level name>+
	   [-expires <expiration date>+] [-localauth]
	   [-cell <cell name>] [-help]

       backup se -d <dump level name>+
	   [-e <expiration date>+]
	   [-l] [-c <cell name>] [-h]

DESCRIPTION
       The backup setexp command sets or changes the expiration date associated with each specified dump level, which must already exist in the
       dump hierarchy.

       Use the -expires argument to associate an expiration date with each dump level. When the Backup System subsequently creates a dump at the
       dump level, it uses the specified value to derive the dump's expiration date, which it records on the label of the tape (or backup data
       file). The Backup System refuses to overwrite a tape until after the latest expiration date of any dump that the tape contains, unless the
       backup labeltape command is used to relabel the tape. If a dump level does not have an expiration date, the Backup System treats dumps
       created at the level as expired as soon as it creates them.

       (Note that the Backup System does not automatically remove a dump's record from the Backup Database when the dump reaches its expiration
       date, but only if the tape that contains the dump is recycled or relabeled. To remove expired and other obsolete dump records, use the
       backup deletedump command.)

       Define either an absolute or relative expiration date:

       o   An absolute expiration date defines the month/day/year (and, optionally, hour and minutes) at which a dump expires. If the expiration
	   date predates the dump creation time, the Backup System immediately treats the dump as expired.

       o   A relative date defines the number of years, months, or days (or a combination of the three) after the dump's creation that it expires.
	   When the Backup System creates a dump at the dump level, it calculates an actual expiration date by adding the relative date to the
	   start time of the dump operation.

       If the command is used to change an existing expiration date associated with a dump level, the new date applies only to dumps created after
       the change. Existing dumps retain the expiration date assigned at the time they were created.

OPTIONS
       -dump <dump level name>+
	   Specifies the full pathname of each dump level to assign the expiration date specified by the -expires argument.

       -expires <expiration date>+
	   Defines the absolute or relative expiration date to associate with each dump level named by the -dump argument. Absolute expiration
	   dates have the following format:

	      [at] {NEVER | <mm>/<dd>/<yyyy> [<hh>:<MM>] }

	   where the optional word at is followed either by the string "NEVER", which indicates that dumps created at the dump level never expire,
	   or by a date value with a required portion (<mm> for month, <dd> for day, and <yyyy> for year) and an optional portion (<hh> for hours
	   and <MM> for minutes).

	   Omit the <hh>:<MM> portion to use the default of midnight (00:00 hours), or provide a value in 24-hour format (for example, "20:30" is
	   8:30 p.m.).	Valid values for the year range from 1970 to 2037; higher values are not valid because the latest possible date in the
	   standard UNIX representation is in February 2038. The command interpreter automatically reduces later dates to the maximum value.

	   Relative expiration dates have the following format:

	      [in] [<years>y] [<months>m] [<days>d]

	   where the optional word in is followed by at least one of a number of years (maximum 9999) followed by the letter "y", a number of
	   months (maximum 12) followed by the letter "m", or a number of days (maximum 31) followed by the letter "d". If providing more than one
	   of the three, list them in the indicated order. If the date that results from adding the relative expiration value to a dump's creation
	   time is later than the latest possible date in the UNIX time representation, the Backup System automatically reduces it to that date.

       -localauth
	   Constructs a server ticket using a key from the local /etc/openafs/server/KeyFile file. The backup command interpreter presents it to
	   the Backup Server, Volume Server and VL Server during mutual authentication. Do not combine this flag with the -cell argument. For more
	   details, see backup(8).

       -cell <cell name>
	   Names the cell in which to run the command. Do not combine this argument with the -localauth flag. For more details, see backup(8).

       -help
	   Prints the online help for this command. All other valid options are ignored.

EXAMPLES
       The following example associates an absolute expiration date of 10:00 p.m. on 31 December 1999 with the dump level "/1998/december":

	  % backup setexp -dump /1998/december -expires at 12/31/1999 22:00

       The following example associates a relative expiration date of 7 days with the two dump levels "/monthly/week1" and "/monthly/week2":

	  % backup setexp -dump /monthly/week1 /monthly/week -expires 7d

PRIVILEGE REQUIRED
       The issuer must be listed in the /etc/openafs/server/UserList file on every machine where the Backup Server is running, or must be logged
       onto a server machine as the local superuser "root" if the -localauth flag is included.

SEE ALSO
       backup(8), backup_adddump(8), backup_deldump(8), backup_listdumps(8)

COPYRIGHT
       IBM Corporation 2000. <http://www.ibm.com/> All Rights Reserved.

       This documentation is covered by the IBM Public License Version 1.0.  It was converted from HTML to POD by software written by Chas
       Williams and Russ Allbery, based on work by Alf Wachsmann and Elizabeth Cassell.

OpenAFS 							    2012-03-26							  BACKUP_SETEXP(8)
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