UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

so I have taken on the task of running a few workshops / teaching sessions.


we have three new unix people, they have the basics sorted, CD, PWD, LS and such.
we are looking at people who have been doing helpdesk untill two months ago.

I have given them a few session:
file systems, what lives where and why
kernal , what is it and why we care.
process control, what's running and how to stop it.




the questions is what other topics should i cover ?.....
what skills do you expect from a new sysadmin ??
what do you find a new sysadmin always fails at?

You should maybe start off with teaching them something about security, then touch on security a bit, and end with a session on security.

Just kidding, but it always seems to be lacking. Especially if you read through these forums (hope I don't get burned for that, haha)

Depends on your flavor of unix, but:

1. Building a host.
2. Hardening a host (there's that security thing again).
3. Mirroring (including recovery from a failure).
4. Fixing sendmail the right way.
5. Maybe a bit on DNS (again, depends on your deployment)
6. Whatever name service you're using.
7. You didn't mention any network stuff. So plumbing an interface, ping, routing, snoop, debuging ssh.
8. If they support users? Maybe print stuff, setting up filters, enabling printers, canceling/moving jobs...
9. Backup environment.
10. Logging, what gets logged where and how to increase it.
11. Performance tools (iostat, vmstat, sar, prstat, etc...).
12. Misc investigative tools, pfiles, lsof, ipcs...

I tend to be somehow a bit paranoid, have you tried to put a production box back in order when a newcomer has touched it and refuses to admit... I have and lost 3 months of my time on it...
The worst is you cannot imagine what a person with no clear knowledge can do...and often without realizing the potential harm...
So I believe before talking administration, you should have a very good basic knowledge of unix and scripting, that is wrting very simple shells and being confident when using vi,
It is also basic ways of working: always make a copy of a file before editing and modifying...
Once you are confident about the persons knowledge and know you can trust,can you start by some administration tasks: users creation, backup/restore, file-systems, reading logs and daily tasks, then boot process/shutdown, system initialization, and network, then adding devices, sofware install and patching...