From sage-members-owner Fri Jan 2 09:21:46 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA23524 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 2 Jan 1998 09:21:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from labyrinth.com (root@morass.labyrinth.com [192.107.48.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA23508 for ; Fri, 2 Jan 1998 09:21:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from quagmire.labyrinth.com (quagmire.labyrinth.com [192.107.48.3]) by labyrinth.com (NO SOLICITING) with SMTP id KAA26053; Fri, 2 Jan 1998 10:18:20 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19980102101550.00d43d58@labyrinth.com> X-Sender: barb@labyrinth.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Fri, 02 Jan 1998 10:15:50 -0700 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Barb Dijker Subject: SAGE Publication Series Editor Cc: wnl@groupsys.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Happy New Year. To start it off right, SAGE is please to announce that Bill LeFebvre has been selected as the new SAGE Series Editor. As the Editor of the series, Bill will be coordinating the topics, content, and authoring efforts of the SAGE Short Topics in System Administration publications. Bill is most well known for having moderated the sun-managers mailing list and authored the "top" program. He's also a frequent tutorial instructor for USENIX. http://www.groupsys.com/wnl.html If you are interested in contributing in any way to the SAGE short topic series, contact Bill directly, wnl@groupsys.com. Barbara L. Dijker barb.dijker@labyrinth.com - NeXT mail and MIME able ========================================================== Labyrinth Computer Services, PO Box 4626, Boulder CO 80306 Voice: +1 303 589 2327, FAX: +1 303 443 9718 Web: http://www.labyrinth.com From sage-members-owner Sun Jan 4 21:42:02 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA04902 for sage-members-outgoing; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 21:42:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from cybers61d202.tor.shaw.wave.ca (0@cybers61d202.tor.shaw.wave.ca [24.64.61.202]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA04893 for ; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 21:41:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from acli@localhost by acli.interlog.com id <34210-4278>; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 00:38:06 -0500 Message-ID: <19980105003803.46690@ada.acli.interlog.com> Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 00:38:03 -0500 From: Ambrose Li To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: uucp map question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.81 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Sorry for this mail; this is probably a stupid question. I am wondering what is the impact of the lack of an uucp entry in the global uucp maps for a site without any uucp links. From the docs that I discovered recently, the lack of an uucp entry seems to be a problem. If I should make a uucp entry for my site (a Canadian site with a .com domain name), should I send my entry to the Canadian map coordinator or just send it to the global map coordinator? Thanks in advance for any info or pointers. Regards, -- Ambrose Li > home > acli@{acli.interlog.com,cybers61d202.tor.shaw.wave.ca} > work > acli@mingpaoxpress.com > permanent > ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca > Microsoft is not the answer > Microsoft is the question > No is the answer From sage-members-owner Mon Jan 5 14:02:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA08588 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 14:02:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from tanis.cso.niu.edu (szkola@tanis.cso.niu.edu [131.156.1.91]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA08579 for ; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 14:02:45 -0800 (PST) Received: (from szkola@localhost) by tanis.cso.niu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA17295 for sage-members@usenix.org; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 15:58:42 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.2-beta-111397 [p0] on Solaris X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 15:58:42 -0600 (CST) Organization: Northern Illinois University From: Dan Szkola To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: January chigrp meeting Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Please join us at our next meeting: Disaster Recovery Curtis Preston, Collective Technologies January 8, 1998 7:00-9:00 pm Illinois Institute of Technology - Rice Campus Abstract Designing a disaster recovery system is very complex. This talk will present an overview of the six revolving steps of the process. What attendees will learn: 1. The types of data that are usually forgotten in a typical disaster recovery plan, and how to preserve each of them. 2. Methods of documentation that lend themselves to easy disaster recovery. 3. The proper design of an off-site storage system, and what methods to use in selecting an off-site storage vendor. There are essentially six (revolving) steps to designing a disaster recovery plan: 1. Define acceptable loss 2. Backup everything 3. Make everything as organized as possible 4. Protect against disasters - natural & otherwise 5. Document what you have done 6. Test, test, test About the Speaker Curtis had been digging around in the trenches of backup and recovery for several years. He has done everything from swapping to tapes to designing large scale backup & recovery systems. He has designed such systems for a number of fortune 500 companies, and speaks around the world about backup & recovery. He is currently finishing a book for O'Reilly and Associates called "Backup & Recovery Handbook." This book is due out some time in 1998. Socializing Following the presentation we will gather at Cozymel's, a Mexican restaurant in the Danada Shopping Center at the intersection of Butterfield and Naperville Road. Directions 201 East Loop Road Wheaton, Illinois 60187-8489 630.682.6000 >From the North: Take Naperville Road south from Roosevelt Road to East Loop Road. Turn left at the traffic light on East Loop Road. The road curves past a large apartment complex on your right. The campus is on your left about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the South: Take Naperville Road north from the Naperville-Lisle area. Cross Butterfield Road and pass the shopping center at the corner of Naperville and Butterfield roads. Turn right at the traffic light at East Loop Road and proceed past a large apartment complex on your left and a shopping center on your right. The campus is on your left, about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the East and West: Take the East-West Tollway (I-88) and exit northbound at Naperville Road and follow the directions above. If coming from the North-South Tollway (I-355), exit westbound at Butterfield Road and proceed to East Loop Road. Make a right turn at East Loop Road; the campus is on your right after about about a block. --- Dan Szkola EMail: dszkola@niu.edu Systems Programmer Northern Illinois University Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze - Hellman's Mayonnaise From sage-members-owner Fri Jan 9 08:35:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA25727 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 08:35:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA25711 for ; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 08:35:45 -0800 (PST) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id JAA10858 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 09:28:34 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from lamb.sas.com (root@lamb.sas.com [192.35.83.8]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA10846 for ; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 09:28:27 -0500 (EST) Received: from mozart (wether.sas.com [192.35.83.7]) by lamb.sas.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id JAA10004 for ; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 09:28:35 -0500 (EST) Received: from ntmail04.pc.sas.com by mozart (5.65c/SAS/Domains/5-6-90) id AA27142; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 09:28:34 -0500 Received: by ntmail04.pc.sas.com with Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49) id ; Fri, 9 Jan 1998 09:28:36 -0500 Message-Id: <3B625EDAF601D111BA1500A0C933CD0DE11427@ntmail03.pc.sas.com> From: Heather Flanagan To: "'ncsa-announce@nando.net'" Subject: North Carolina System Administrators (NC*SA) meeting - January 12 , 1998 Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 09:28:31 -0500 X-Priority: 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > >The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators > organization > >(NC*SA) will be Monday, January 12, 1998 , at 6pm. Details about the > >meeting, our technical program and directions to our meeting location > are > >provided in this note. We hope to see you there!! > > > > > > North Carolina > > System Administration Interest Group > > > Monday, January 12, 1998 > > Research Triangle Institute > > Research Triangle Park, NC > > > > 6 PM - General Session > > > > > Presenters: You! > We're trying something a bit different this month - an open, somewhat moderated > general discussion session. We'll be discussing sendmail, general job issues, > and whatever else you all think up! So come armed with the topics of your > choice, and we'll see you Monday night! > >============================== > > > >Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the > topic of > >the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If > you > >have any questions please contact: > > > > Heather Flanagan > > SAS Institute Inc. > > SAS Campus Drive > > Cary, NC 27513 > > (919) 677-8000 x5522 > > heflan@unx.sas.com > > > >============================== > > > >For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our > >Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list > has > >been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system > >administrators > >from the state of North Carolina. > > > >Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": > > > > mail majordomo@nando.net > > Subject: > > > > subscribe ncsa-discussion > > > >After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info > file for > >our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving > other > >files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation > material > >from past technical programs are available for retrieval via > Majordomo!!) > > > >============================== > > > >Directions to Research Triangle Institute > >(http://www.rti.org/images/campus.gif) > > > > From I-40 west of RTP (e.g. Chapel Hill): > > > > Get onto I-40 heading east. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - > Durham > > Freeway - North (towards Durham). Stay in right lane. Shift > > right as soon as possible after merging with traffic coming > off > > I-40 westbound. Exit to the right at the next exit > (Cornwallis > > Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right > and > > cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) > After > > turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right > > lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. > > Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus > > Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use > > the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main > > entrance. > > > > From I-40 east of RTP (e.g. Raleigh): > > > > Get onto I-40 heading west. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - > Durham > > Freeway - North (towards Durham). Shift to rightmost lane > > as soon as possible Exit to the right at the next exit > (Cornwallis > > Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right > and > > cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) > After > > turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right > > lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. > > Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus > > Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use > > the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main > > > entrance. > > > > From north of RTP (e.g. Durham): > > > > Get onto NC-147 - Durham Freeway - south. Exit at the > Cornwallis > > Road exit. At the top of the exit, turn left to cross over the > > bridge. After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately > > to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute > Drive. > > Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus > > Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use > > the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main > > entrance. > > > >********************************************************************* > ** > >Heather Flanagan Associate Systems > Programmer > >SAS Institute heflan@unx.sas.com > >(919)677-8000 x5522 > From sage-members-owner Tue Jan 13 15:52:11 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA22230 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 13 Jan 1998 15:52:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.108.223.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA22221 for ; Tue, 13 Jan 1998 15:52:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.108.223.121]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA03362 for ; Tue, 13 Jan 1998 15:47:36 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA25719 for sage-members@usenix.org; Tue, 13 Jan 1998 15:49:13 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199801132349.PAA25719@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Member Survey from the SAGE Board To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 15:49:12 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Dear SAGE member, The SAGE Executive Committee would like your input on a few things. These questions are on controversial topics, and are framed to give us as clear a picture as we can get in murky waters. Please take a few minutes to participate. Email your response to halm@usenix.org. We will be collecting responses until 28 January 1998. For background on the questions on certification please refer to the articles in ;login: in the past couple of issues. This topic, and the email address forwarding issue, were discussed at some length at LISA during (and after) the SAGE Public Meeting. This survey is only being sent to SAGE members (sage-members@usenix.org). It is for internal use by SAGE only. Individual responses will not be made available to anyone, but the aggregated data will be published (probably by me in a ;login: article). Thank you very much in advance for your participation! As usual, you're welcome to write me on anything that is on your mind with regard to SAGE. HM 1 a. I would like to see certification of system administrators in some form. b. I would not like to see certification of system administrators in any form. c. Undecided. 2 a. I prefer comprehensive certification. b. I prefer single-topic certification. c. I prefer some combination of comprehensive and single-topic options. d. I prefer a certified education program over certification of sysadmins. e. Opposed. f. Undecided. 3 Certification is to me and my employers/clients: a. Not a consideration. b. A minor consideration. c. A significant consideration. d. Essential for employment or advancement. c. No opinion. 4 a. I would like to see an email forwarding service provided via USENIX. b. I would not like to see an email forwarding service via USENIX. c. Undecided. 5 a. I would subscribe myself to an email forwarding service via USENIX. b. I would not subscribe myself to an email forwarding service via USENIX. c. Undecided. 6 To me SAGE's continued involvement in standards development (POSIX, IPv6, etc.) is: a. Not important. b. Of minor importance. c. Very important. c. No opinion. 7 SAGE publishes articles on varying topics in ;login:. I: a. always read or review the SAGE articles in ;login:. b. occasionall read or review the SAGE articles in ;login:. c. never read or review the SAGE articles in ;login:. 8 I find the SAGE articles in ;login: to be: a. extremely valuable or informative. b. sometimes helpful or worth reading. c. not usually valuable or informative. 9 The "Short Topics in System Administration" series is a collection of booklets designed as reference information, not necessarily technical nor "how-to". They do not cover topics that are likely to require constant update as technology changes. a. I would like booklets that cover "how-to" on technical subjects. b. I prefer to cover technical subjects by other means or publications. c. No opinion. 10 Please suggest topics you would like covered by Short Topics booklets. 11 A series of "How-To Notes" is being contemplated, where small teams of SAGE members would write up basic directions on what to do to get, install and configure basic software packages, operating systems, etc. a. This is of value. b. This is not of value. c. Undecided. 10 Please suggest topics/packages you would like covered by How-To Notes. 11 The SAGE Code of Ethics is currently a document with explanatory text, available from the SAGE web page. It carries no "requirement" status, nor enforceability. a. The Code of Ethics should be given increased visibility and emphasis. b. The Code of Ethics should be kept to the position it currently holds. c. The Code of Ethics should be given decreased visibility and emphasis. d. No opinion. -- | Hal Miller (HAM10) System Administrator | President, SAGE-US | | Tera Computer Company hal@tera.com | voice: +1(206)490-2063 | | 2815 Eastlake Ave E | fax: +1(206)325-2433 | | Seattle, Washington 98102-3027 | page: 800-759-8888 PIN: 1106182 | From sage-members-owner Wed Jan 14 13:38:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA13654 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 14 Jan 1998 13:38:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from epx.cis.umn.edu (root@epx.cis.umn.edu [128.101.83.4]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA13645 for ; Wed, 14 Jan 1998 13:38:22 -0800 (PST) From: djb@epx.cis.umn.edu Received: by epx.cis.umn.edu; Wed, 14 Jan 98 15:35:00 -0600 Message-Id: <00134bd2f84016871@epx.cis.umn.edu> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 98 15:35:00 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: TCSA meeting January 15 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The Twin Cities System Administrators (TCSA) group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to system and network administrators in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The meetings are free and open to the public. TCSA meetings are on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. We will meet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (southwest corner of Summit and Cretin) in building OWS room 250. Next Meeting: January 15, 1997: Various topics The agenda for this month includes one or more of the following topics: - System Administration at Internet Service Providers Sysadmins at local ISPs will talk about their computing environment and challenges. Informal discussion of modem technology. - Introduction to computing programs at St. Thomas - Questions and Answers Bring up your own questions and help with the answers in a general discussion of system administration issues. Tentative Meeting Schedule - February 19, 1998: TBD - March 19, 1998: TBD Directions to the University of St. Thomas (Summit & Cretin): - From East I-94: Going east on I-94, take the Cretin-Vandalia exit. Go right (south) about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. The OWS building is on your right. - From West I-94: Coming west on I-94, exit at Cretin-Vandalia. Go left (south) on Cretin about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. The OWS building is on your right. - From the south on I-35E: Take 35E north to the Randolph Avenue exit. Make a left on Randolph (crossing over 35E) and follow it about two miles to Cretin Avenue. Turn right onto Cretin and go about 1.5 miles to Summit Avenue. Turn left into St. Thomas just before Summit. The OWS building is on your right. - Parking: Park in any lot near the OWS building. Go to OWS room 250 and get a visitor parking permit for your car. - Web maps are at: Map to St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/dirst.html Map of St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/stmap.html For more information on TCSA, check out our web site: http://www.tcsa.org/ To subscribe to the TCSA mailing list (from a Unix system): echo "subscribe tcsa" | mailx majordomo@tcsa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@tcsa.org or contact: Dave Bianchi 612-644-7843 -- Dave Bianchi djb@colltech.com Work: 612-957-4532 Collective Technologies djb@epx.cis.umn.edu FAX: 612-957-4195 A Pencom Company Pager: 612-818-7162 From sage-members-owner Tue Jan 27 10:55:20 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA27762 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:55:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from dragonfly.wolfram.com (root@dragonfly.wolfram.com [140.177.10.12]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA27751 for ; Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:55:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from wolfram.com (euanf@wopr.wolfram.com [140.177.10.29]) by dragonfly.wolfram.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA01895; Tue, 27 Jan 1998 12:51:54 -0600 (CST) Received: from localhost (euanf@localhost) by wolfram.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA18472; Tue, 27 Jan 1998 12:50:31 -0600 Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 12:50:31 -0600 (CST) From: Euan Fernsler To: SAGE-Members@usenix.org cc: Euan Fernsler Subject: Cell Phones and Pagers Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi, I'm not sure if this is kosher (it isn't terribly related to UNIX), but I have a series of problems that I need to resolve with my companies Cell Phones, Pagers, and other Telecom/Phone related stuff. Any ideas on good reference areas? I've dealt with the local telco and local vendors (IL) but I get the feeling they are often as clueless as I (or worse). I supremely appreciate any suggestions this list provides. Thanks and Santih. Euan Fernsler Telecom/MAC/whatever Wolfram Research Inc. From sage-members-owner Wed Jan 28 06:59:26 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA03366 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 06:59:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from wugate.wustl.edu (wugate.wustl.edu [128.252.120.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA03357 for ; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 06:59:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from michelob.wustl.edu (michelob.wustl.edu [128.252.130.10]) by wugate.wustl.edu (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA16609; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 08:55:57 -0600 (CST) Received: by michelob.wustl.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA18127; Wed, 28 Jan 98 08:44:30 CST Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 08:44:29 -0600 (CST) From: "Jeff \"Forest Creature\" Hargiss" Subject: Re: Cell Phones and Pagers To: Euan Fernsler Cc: SAGE-Members@usenix.org, Euan Fernsler In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk this is the only telephony group that i am familiar with. if they do not have your answer, they should be able to point you down the right path. http://www.ctitek.com/ On Tue, 27 Jan 1998, Euan Fernsler wrote: > Hi, > I'm not sure if this is kosher (it isn't terribly related to UNIX), but I > have a series of problems that I need to resolve with my companies Cell > Phones, Pagers, and other Telecom/Phone related stuff. > > Any ideas on good reference areas? I've dealt with the local telco and > local vendors (IL) but I get the feeling they are often as clueless as I > (or worse). > > I supremely appreciate any suggestions this list provides. > > Thanks and Santih. > Euan Fernsler > Telecom/MAC/whatever > Wolfram Research Inc. > > ================================================================================ www.hargiss.com www.kokomo.com dod#829 A 32-bit patch for a 16-bit GUI shell running on top of an 8-bit operating system written for a 4-bit processor by a 2-bit company who cannot stand 1 bit of competition. -Rev. Pee Kitty, on Windows 95 From sage-members-owner Wed Jan 28 09:42:01 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA11952 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 09:42:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from life.ai.mit.edu (life.ai.mit.edu [128.52.32.80]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA11921 for ; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 09:41:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu (soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu [128.52.32.48]) by life.ai.mit.edu (8.8.5/AI1.17/ai.master.life:1.20) with ESMTP id MAA24772; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 12:37:14 -0500 (EST) From: "Leonard H. Tower Jr." Received: (from len@localhost) by soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu (8.8.4/8.8.4AI/ai.client:1.5) id MAA25020; Wed, 28 Jan 1998 12:37:13 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 12:37:13 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801281737.MAA25020@soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu> To: euanf@wolfram.com, hargiss@michelob.wustl.edu Subject: Re: Cell Phones and Pagers Cc: SAGE-Members@usenix.org, euanf@wopr.wolfram.com Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk There are a number of USENET newsgroups that deal with telephony. Most have "telecom" in their names. The three that are most netwide are: alt.dcom.telecom comp.dcom.telecom comp.dcom.telecom.tech They also exist in regional and national hierarchies, e.g pdx.telecom uk.telecom for Portland, OR and the United Kingdom. The level of discussion is relatively high. best -len http://www.ai.mit.edu/~tower/home.html From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 3 17:35:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA19760 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Feb 1998 17:35:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA19741 for ; Tue, 3 Feb 1998 17:35:11 -0800 (PST) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id SAA10159 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Tue, 3 Feb 1998 18:02:49 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from lamb.sas.com (root@lamb.sas.com [192.35.83.8]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id SAA10153 for ; Tue, 3 Feb 1998 18:02:47 -0500 (EST) Received: from mozart (wether.sas.com [192.35.83.7]) by lamb.sas.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id SAA13223 for ; Tue, 3 Feb 1998 18:03:35 -0500 (EST) Received: from ntmail04.pc.sas.com by mozart (5.65c/SAS/Domains/5-6-90) id AA19399; Tue, 3 Feb 1998 18:03:34 -0500 Received: by ntmail04.pc.sas.com with Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49) id ; Tue, 3 Feb 1998 18:04:21 -0500 Message-Id: <3B625EDAF601D111BA1500A0C933CD0DFC6746@ntmail03.pc.sas.com> From: Heather Flanagan To: "'ncsa-announce@nando.net'" Cc: "'triangle.talks@usenet.unx.sas.com'" Subject: North Carolina System Administrators (NC*SA) meeting - February 9 , 1998 Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 18:04:19 -0500 X-Priority: 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators organization (NC*SA) will be Monday, February 9, 1998, at 6pm. Details about the meeting and directions are provided in this note. We hope to see you there! Students with Access to Technology: The Duke University SWAT team North Carolina System Administrators Interest Group Monday, February 9, 1998 Research Triangle Institute Research Triangle Park, NC 6PM - General Session Abstract: All of us have been in situations where there were just not enough sys admins to do the job required of them. At Duke University, where every semester thousands of students come in needing accounts and asking myriad setup questions, this problem is magnified. The Duke SWAT team - Students with Access to Technology - is one of the ways they are handling this. They train students to handle the day-to-day help that the other students need. We have several members of the SWAT team, students and system administrators, coming in to tell us how they developed this idea, training issues, and more. Presenters: Philip Vergis is currently the manager of Technical Support for OIT at Duke. Philip has an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as an MBA, from the University of New Hampshire. He has been working at Duke University for just under two years, and worked previously at the University of New Hampshire and IBM. Kevin Cheung is currently a sophomore at the Duke University School of Engineering and one of the student leaders for the SWAT team. He is pursuing a double major in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Kevin was a SWAT co-ordinator for SWAT 97. During the summer he wrote an Automatic Ethernet Configuration Program and assisted in SWAT planning. During freshmen orientation Kevin along with Bill Chen directed a staff of 30 SWATters to assist around 850 freshman and 200 upperclassmen in installing and configuring their ethernet cards. During the year Kevin works at the Office of Information Technology Helpdesk providing both phone and e-mail support for the Duke Community. Bill Chen is currently a senior at Duke University's Trinity College and the other leader of the SWAT team. He is pursuing a BA majoring in history and minoring in political science. Bill was a SWAT97 co-coordinator and currently serves as the coordinator of Ongoing SWAT - the current program to ensure student connectivity. Bill has worked SWAT since its inception two years ago and seen the influence technology has on organizations. During the academic year, Bill works both at the Office of Information Technology and Duke University Computer Repair. >============================== Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic of the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact: Heather Flanagan SAS Institute Inc. SAS Campus Drive Cary, NC 27513 (919) 677-8000 x5522 heflan@unx.sas.com ============================== For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list has been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system administrators from the state of North Carolina. Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": mail majordomo@nando.net Subject: subscribe ncsa-discussion After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info file for our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving other files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation material from past technical programs are available for retrieval via Majordomo!!) ============================== Directions to Research Triangle Institute (http://www.rti.org/images/campus.gif) From I-40 west of RTP (e.g. Chapel Hill): Get onto I-40 heading east. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Stay in right lane. Shift right as soon as possible after merging with traffic coming off I-40 westbound. Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From I-40 east of RTP (e.g. Raleigh): Get onto I-40 heading west. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Shift to rightmost lane as soon as possible Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From north of RTP (e.g. Durham): Get onto NC-147 - Durham Freeway - south. Exit at the Cornwallis Road exit. At the top of the exit, turn left to cross over the bridge. After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From sage-members-owner Sun Feb 8 13:31:48 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA12936 for sage-members-outgoing; Sun, 8 Feb 1998 13:31:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA12927 for ; Sun, 8 Feb 1998 13:31:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (psasolar-psi [204.217.199.14]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id PAA07022 for ; Sun, 8 Feb 1998 15:28:21 -0600 (CST) Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 15:28:20 -0600 (CST) From: "Carolyn M. Hennings" X-Sender: cmh@psasolar To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: chigrp February Meeting Details (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from QUOTED-PRINTABLE to 8bit by usenix.ORG id NAA12928 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Carolyn M. Hennings cmh@colltech.com Collective Technologies http://www.colltech.com a pencom company ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 04 Feb 1998 13:38:14 -0600 (CST) From: Dan Szkola To: chicago-sagelocal@usenix.ORG Subject: February Meeting Details Forgive me if you have seen this information already: Please join us at our next meeting: Introduction to DNS Gordon Galligher, Collective Technologies February 12, 1998 7:00-9:00 pm Illinois Institute of Technology - Rice Campus Abstract The Domain Name Service (DNS) and its implementation in BIND, is one of the easiest programs to configure incorrectly and not really know it. There are a number of areas where you think that things are working correctly, you are getting names resolved, but suddenly things stop working and you do not know why until you restart the name server. You might attribute that to a memory leak or other problem with your machine, until it happens again, right around the same amount of time from the first one. Once you start looking at the zone file, the log files, you see where things are really screwy. This presentation covers the “gotchas” and other aspects of DNS implementations that can cause major problems. Topics to be covered include: How Resolutions Work [Non-]Authoritative Data Types of Name Servers Resource Records Sendmail Interaction Important Files for UNIX BIND Domain Delegation Security Implications BIND v8 Highlights Microsoft DNS Highlights (on NT) Intended Audience: This presentation will provide background on the basics of DNS for people new to the topic. People who have worked with DNS will find the presentation valuable in helping identify the source of problems they may have had. The speaker also includes topics on the latest developments in DNS for more advanced participants. About the Speaker Gordon is a Principle Consultant for Collective Technologies, having eleven years of experience planning, managing, and supporting large heterogeneous UNIX and Windows environments, with strong skills in network services support. Socializing Following the presentation we will gather at Houlihan's, a restaurant in the Shopping Center at the intersection of Butterfield and Naperville Road. Directions 201 East Loop Road Wheaton, Illinois 60187-8489 630.682.6000 >From the North: Take Naperville Road south from Roosevelt Road to East Loop Road. Turn left at the traffic light on East Loop Road. The road curves past a large apartment complex on your right. The campus is on your left about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the South: Take Naperville Road north from the Naperville-Lisle area. Cross Butterfield Road and pass the shopping center at the corner of Naperville and Butterfield roads. Turn right at the traffic light at East Loop Road and proceed past a large apartment complex on your left and a shopping center on your right. The campus is on your left, about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the East and West: Take the East-West Tollway (I-88) and exit northbound at Naperville Road and follow the directions above. If coming from the North-South Tollway (I-355), exit westbound at Butterfield Road and proceed to East Loop Road. Make a right turn at East Loop Road; the campus is on your right after about about a block. --- Dan Szkola EMail: dszkola@niu.edu Systems Programmer Northern Illinois University When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, "Did you sleep good?" I said, "No, I made a few mistakes." -- Steven Wright From sage-members-owner Sun Feb 15 10:11:39 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA00252 for sage-members-outgoing; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 10:11:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA00243 for ; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 10:11:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA11012 for ; Sun, 15 Feb 1998 13:08:13 -0500 Message-Id: <199802151808.NAA11012@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: "Best of LISA papers" opinions requested Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 13:08:13 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Folks - Someone at a SAGE BOF held at the recent Usenix Security conference suggested it would be good to have a "Best of LISA papers" list - someplace you might point sysadmins who weren't up on the literature to keep them from re-inventing the wheel (or at least give them ideas about where the potholes might be). For example, the "swatch" paper from LISA VII changed the way I do things: Automated System Monitoring and Notification With Swatch, Stephen E. Hansen & E. Todd Atkins Stanford University What are the papers that have influenced _you_ the most and you think that everyone should read? The ideas that you couldn't wait to get home and implement? Let me know. Once I've got a few, we'll put up a web page. Pat Wilson paw@usenix.org || paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 17 17:56:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA03734 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 17:56:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from rigel.dartmouth.edu (rigel.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.204]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA03725; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 17:56:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from rigel.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rigel.dartmouth.edu (8.8.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA18195; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:53:11 -0500 Message-Id: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: SAGE, certification, and you Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:53:10 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Listen up, folks - this is important! During our January meeting, the SAGE Board did its annual planning and goal-setting exercise. Often, nothing earth-shattering occurs. This time, however, we took the Certification bull by the horns and have made a Plan. We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a "profession" entails certification - careers without such things are generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between MDs and morticians, for example). On the other hand, it's possible to have certification without it being mandatory (one doesn't have to be a Realtor(TM) to sell property), or without accredited education (it's still possible to become a lawyer by "reading" law in Vermont). We certainly aren't yet ready to think about a certification _mandate_ for members. However, somewhere along the line, that question will resurface. In the meantime, other agencies are stepping in to fill the "breach" and setting up certification efforts of their own. It's our belief that, if any _meaningful_ skills assessment program for our industry is going to emerge, SAGE (as the professional association) needs to be involved - as a coordinating body, if nothing else. We have waffled about this for far too long. What we concluded was that it should be possible to have some sort of low level (SAGE I, core competency) certification, and then develop programs for education (at least) and certification (perhaps) in special topic areas (e.g the Merit Badges, renamed). Member response to the recent survey (posted last month to sage-members@usenix.org - if you're not on the list and care about SAGE, sign up[1]!) indicated that most respondants preferred a "single certification plus special topics" structure. Look for activity on this (especially in the core competency arena) in the next few months. We anticipate that our decision will be controversial. However, we do all agree on the necessity for extra-curricular education and evaluation for our members, and by making such programs official we may be able to set standards which help us, our employers (both present and future) and the industry. We await your feedback (on sage-members@usenix.org, or directly to us at sage-board@usenix.org). Your SAGE Board [1] by sending mail to majordomo@usenix.org containing the line "subscribe sage-members" From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 17 20:37:40 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA11110 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:37:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA11101 for ; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:37:36 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom7.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id UAA17407 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:34:22 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802180434.UAA17407@netcom7.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:34:22 PST In-Reply-To: Pat Wilson "SAGE, certification, and you" (Feb 17, 8:53pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk To the SAGE Board and my fellow SAGE members: I must strongly oppose any effort by SAGE to establish certification for System Administrators. The SAGE Board has no mandate, no authority, and no reason to take on this responsibility. In the announcement from the Board, Pat mentions that "most respondents preferred a 'single certification plus special topics' structure". But how many respondents and/or their employers considered certification for System Administrators an important/desirable objective? Would the SAGE Board be willing to publish the complete results of the survey? Finally, and this cuts both ways, do we believe that this survey in fact represents any statistically valid sample? Furthermore the argument based on the phrase "advancement of Systems Administration as profession" in our mission statement is an absolute canard. I'd far rather modify our mission statement than be forced by a semantic argument to implement a certification system for our membership. I'm also interested in Pat's assertion that "other agencies are stepping in to fill the 'breach' and setting up certification efforts of their own". What are we talking about here outside of the efforts of certain vendors (Microsoft, Sun, Cisco, etc.) to establish certification efforts to churn out little technical marketing robots? One might also ask, who is SAGE to set and enforce a standard for certification? We represent a small fraction of the total practicing Systems Administrators in North America, much less globally. Outside of a fairly small and homogenous niche population, we have little or no recognition. Not exactly an auspicious certification body. So why should SAGE even want to create a certification program? So we are taken more seriously? Do you and especially those outside of the technical arena take credentials like CCIE and ECNE seriously or even know what they imply? Will certification help employers make hiring decisions? Not hardly, since all they can do is select from candidates who have demonstrated their ability to regurgitate pat answers into a test booklet. Will certification improve salaries in our profession? On the contrary, I predict salaries (particularly for more junior folks) will actually decline significantly as "certified" people flood the market. There's another financial issue lurking just around the corner. Typically, certification programs imply expensive training and expensive examination fees (which are often recurring since your technical certification becomes "out of date" every couple of years). This seems like a mechanism to move money from the pockets of our membership and their employers into the pocket of whichever training organization (which, let's face it, probably won't be SAGE or USENIX) happens to be handling the certification system. It seems like the SAGE Board is decidedly not acting in the best interests of its constituency here. If SAGE really wants to help advance System Administration as a profession, let's not rob our membership. Let's publish more great informational material-- more short topics books, longer works. Let's fund development and projects which advance our knowledge of managing different types of systems in different environments, and which makes that job easier. Let's offer more training opportunities and new conferences (like a Networking LISA) all over the globe. So, here's the bottom line. Tell my why we should pursue certification. Then prove to me that any significant number of people want it. Then demonstrate to me that SAGE is the right organization to establish certification in our profession. Hal Pomeranz, Founder/CEO Deer Run Associates LISA'97 Co-Chair and candidate for the USENIX Board From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 17 22:30:30 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA15680 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:30:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (sirocco.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.27.12]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA15671 for ; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:30:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) by sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id BAA27474 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 01:27:10 -0500 X-SMTP-Posting-Origin: amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 01:28:53 -0500 (EST) From: Ron Hall cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: <199802180434.UAA17407@netcom7.netcom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I've been lurking far too long...time to step in to it... This is in response to M. Pomeranz's reply to Ms. Wilson and the board. What follows is one SAs' opinion, but the disclaimer below says it all :) Certification is indeed a wonderful ideal to shot for. It is an idea and an ideal to strive for. Unfortunately within the vacuum of Sage-space (whatever that is probably about 4000-6000 active paying members) we do not come close to representing the needs/wants/desires/goals etc. of all global SAs. Within our own treehouse we can set levels and award certificates, but who will recognise them? Certification is a process. Processes are built on solid, global, accountable structures. Somebody has to ratify these processes and that somebody is usually not 1 or 2 body corporate, but a whole raft of people. If you've how IETF meetings work (or not work), then you know what I mean. One cannot have a certification process without some level of accountability established from without. In this way fairness is designed into the process. Even if SAGE spearheaded a drive for certification, who would pick it up and give it the global spin it needs? I don't know and I'm fairly sure the board doesn't really know. All-in-all the question is moot. The original mandate of educationg SAs to be the best SAs they can be and giving credence to SA as a profession is still a good one. We can do more for the cause by publishing top-notch works, giving top-notch conferences and seminars, making things relevant in today's ever growing heterogeneity. This we can do, this we have done and this we can continue to do. I personally do not want to see cookie-cutter SAs out there diluting the marketplace, armed with only book-learning and test scores. This frightens me somewhat, in that a junior-level SA sans benefit of any real hands-on (and relaistically in the certification process how much hands-on are they going to get?) experience - sally forth, armed with root passwords, upon unsuspecting network of users/machines/services. This is one of my worst nightmares!! The reality of the job of SA is that is is very much like a guild. Yes book-learning helps, but oral traditions and hands-on experience will teach one more, twice as fast, than remembering something one once saw in a book. Being an SA is not really a profession, but a suite of life skills and experience. In over a decade of doing this I've been plumber, electrician, technician, wizard, guru, miracle-worker, accountant, designer, programmer, instructor, father confessor, rabbi, social worker and a raft of other skills that I could never get in a book or even get certified for. I suspect that this is not uncommon among most of you. It's what makes the work exciting, right? :) So what is the point of this ramble? Certification, while a useful goal should not be the raison d'etre of SAGE. We do so many things right and well. There is a wealth of creative,knowledgeable people out there who can make things better for all of us. The point is we need to identify and funnel this knowledge into the materials/events/happenings that will improve things for SAs everywhere. Just my POV. Ron Hall Unix System Analyst +1 514 398 3718 DISCLAIMER: I said it. I must've meant it. There is nobody else to blame. DEFINITION: Clown:n: A man who acts too natural. "Redundancy is the millstone of society.Redundancy is the millstone of society." From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 17 22:38:52 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA16072 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:38:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from zamboni.cs.wisc.edu (zamboni.cs.wisc.edu [128.105.162.15]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA16032 for ; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:38:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from cs.wisc.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zamboni.cs.wisc.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id AAA07540; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 00:35:29 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199802180635.AAA07540@zamboni.cs.wisc.edu> To: Pat Wilson cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:53:10." <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 00:35:29 -0600 From: David Parter Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk *sigh* those who have followed this issue for the past several years know that there are several people who fee very strongly about it -- on both sides of the issue, and that the various boards have struggled (battled?) with it. I am not sure how I feel about the concept. It isn't that important to me. In fact, I think I'd rather not work for someone who doesn't understand what I do, and can't evaluate if I am qualified for the job. But, I'm lucky -- I have a job I like, in a situation where this really isn't an issue for me. I know a lot of people liked the idea of the "merit badges". Its like building the web of trust, but based on technical skill and judgement, not trust in key signing policies. And it all seems to easy... once the pool of qualified senior admins is seeded (through mutual recognition -- which is what happens now anyway), I publicly tell everyone who I have trained in a particular area (sendmail is the example everyone uses for some reason), and those who trust me, or trust those who trust me, know that those people are good at sendmail. But I've been convinced that this just won't work as a formalized system. There are too many potential conflicts (your boss wants you to sign off on his sendmail skill. The extent of his sendmail skill is to know that he should get you to do it -- a good thing, but not the same as being able to do it himself. what do you do?) So, whats the alternative? Some kind of more general certification, probably "skills test" based. ick. I generally laugh at CNEs and MSCEs. Being a sysadmin is a lot more than a particular skill set of the type that can be measured on a multiple-choice standardized test. When I hire, I'd much rather rely on the informal web of trust, and what I get out of the interview. Of course, others have different needs. I'm also really concerned that this will be a failure. To do it in any meaningful way will require enormous amounts of energy from SAGE, and the more I think about it, the more I see it as a huge drain on SAGE's most valuable resource -- the people. As far as I can tell, USENIX has not been able to really handle a much more modest undertaking: the PGP Key signing service. I got my key signed in 1996, shortly after it started. My key was never signed for 1997, despite the fact that I am a member twice (once in my name, because I think the University should pay the membership fee, and once as a Campus Representative). Its possible that I lost the "renew" email, but more likely that it was never sent. I know it isn't the same as certification, especially for those who want sysadmins certified like Professional Engineers, but I think a more modest thing that can be done is to present participants with certificates of participation for USENIX conference tutorials. It addresses the needs of the more "junior" sysadmins for something to hang on their wall, put on the resume etc. And it promotes Usenix. And it says (to me anyway): 1) you attended a Usenix event. that shows more awareness of one aspect of the profession than many of the applicants that I see. (of course, someone had to pay for it) 2) you took the time to attend a tutorial -- and stayed until the end (or at least attended the final session). Another bonus point. If you think such a certificate is worthless, then perhaps we need to put the effort into improving the tutorials (My opinion: some are good, some need work). > We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems > administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather > vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a > "profession" entails certification - careers without such things are > generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between > MDs and morticians, for example). I don't think a profession requires certification. I think most trades require certification. How does SAGE certification compare with a barber's license? There are other things we could be working on to "advance systems administration as a profession." As Hal mentioned, the short topics series is a good thing, which I think advances the profession. In addition to the effort already underway to produce more in the series, A campaign to get those books into libraries, career planning centers, in-house training programs (for those in settings with in-house training), and the hands of our managers (and their managers) would do more to make non-sysadmins realize that there is more to this than (as Tom Limoncelli put it in his LISA talk) "being a systems clerk". my late-night rambling thoughts, --david david parter dparter@cs.wisc.edu associate director, computer systems lab voice: 608-262-0608/262-2389 university of wisconsin fax: 608-262-6626 computer sciences department From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 17 23:09:00 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA17571 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 23:09:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from iceland.it.earthlink.net (iceland-c.it.earthlink.net [204.119.177.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA17562 for ; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 23:08:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from sherman (1Cust103.tnt15.lax3.da.uu.net [153.37.94.103]) by iceland.it.earthlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id XAA14365 for ; Tue, 17 Feb 1998 23:05:40 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19980217230446.009a2b20@mail.earthlink.net> X-Sender: bhami@mail.earthlink.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 23:04:46 -0800 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Bruce Hamilton Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I have never seen any sort of certification or licensing program which did not degenerate into (a) a joke and/or (b) an attempt by a guild to protect a monopoly and gouge the consumer. Things like teacher certification, barber and cosmetology licenses, and "unlicensed practice of law" restrictions come to mind. --Bruce (Bruce Hamilton, Redondo Beach, CA) bhami@netcom.com (preferred) bhami@hesp.es.xerox.com --day 310-333-3538 --day http://home.earthlink.net/~bhami/ From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 00:31:36 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA21025 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 00:31:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from eugate.sgi.com (eugate.sgi.com [193.73.159.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id AAA21016; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 00:31:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from eurohub.neu.sgi.com (eurohub.neu.sgi.com [144.253.128.2]) by eugate.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/970417-sgi-europehub) via ESMTP id JAA19609; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:28:01 +0100 env-from (zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com) Received: from pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com [144.253.130.13]) by eurohub.neu.sgi.com (980205.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id JAA239710; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:28:00 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost by pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/911001.SGI) id JAA10340; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:27:59 +0100 Message-Id: <199802180827.JAA10340@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> To: Pat Wilson cc: sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org, zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:53:10." <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:27:59 +0100 From: zwicky Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >During our January meeting, the SAGE Board did its annual planning and >goal-setting exercise. Often, nothing earth-shattering occurs. This time, >however, we took the Certification bull by the horns and have made a Plan. Exactly what is that plan? As in, what are its goals, its timelines, and the people who're carrying it out? What's in this e-mail is >We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems >administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather >vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a >"profession" entails certification - careers without such things are >generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between >MDs and morticians, for example). Doctors are not certified. They are *degreed* and *licensed*. A brief review of the web turns up the information that being a mortician requires a license, which in turn requires both an apprenticeship and a mortuary science degree, which in turn requires an undergraduate degree, preferably in biology -- so the difference between MDs and morticians appears to be mostly that one of them works with dead people, which is lower status than working with live people. Also that one of them requires even more time in education and apprenticeship than the other, but note that the one you call a trade requires 6 years more of education, 2 more degrees, and 1 more apprenticeship than system administration. It looks like we have a long way to go. This is one of the world's poorest arguments, on a whole bunch of fronts. Give it up. Here are some believable arguments in favor of certification: 1) It provides employers, who are not often knowledgeable about system administration, with an objective standard of evaluation. 2) It provides system administrators with a way of objectively evaluating their own skills. 3) It provides a basis for educational programs. 4) It's a whole lot cheaper than a college degree, and provides some of the same advantages to its holders. 5) A number of people are easily impressed by certificates. Why shouldn't we get to impress them, too? Elizabeth Zwicky From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 07:01:04 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA09424 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 07:01:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from relay.nswc.navy.mil (relay.nswc.navy.mil [128.38.1.41]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA09408 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 07:00:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailsrvx (mailsrvx.nswc.navy.mil) by relay.nswc.navy.mil (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA26287; Wed, 18 Feb 98 09:57:38 EST Received: by mailsrvx (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA01500; Wed, 18 Feb 98 09:57:59 EST From: "Dwight Peters" Message-Id: <9802180957.ZM1498@mailsrvx> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:57:59 -0500 X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10oct95) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: certification Cc: dpeters@nswc.navy.mil Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I briefly pondered how I could make a meaningful contribution to this debate, especially given the small amount of time that I can take away from my employer for "professional" concerns. I will just point the reader to my signature and provide the following explanation. The first man was a man of action, his story is written in blood and he united Japan. The second, might be called a social engineer, and while perhaps the most remarkable of the three, I will say no more. The third man (these men were contemporaries) waited until the first two were dead, and founded the Tokugawa shoganate, which rule Japan for 300 years. One more comment, I guess. I have nothing against being a tradesman, they get paid time and a half for overtime. -- Dwight Petersen is a system administrator. Standard disclaimers. "What if the songbird will not sing?" "Kill it," said Oda Nobunaga. "Make the bird want to sing", said Toyotomi Hideyoshi. "Wait", said Tokugawa Ieyasu. From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 07:24:13 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA10546 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 07:24:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from cgi.com (cggate.cgi.com [128.129.3.207]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA10537 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 07:24:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from cgi.com by nugent.cgi.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA26690; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:20:56 -0600 Message-Id: <34EAFC4E.A96244F6@cgi.com> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:20:46 -0600 From: Corey Herbel Organization: Carnegie Group Inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you References: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk *** NOTE: I am a new member of SAGE and haven't dwelled in any way on certification. *** I think we as sysadmins should strive for a formal education curriculum. Typically certification programs only mean something to HR, and our mother. In the past, practical experience has always been the best for developing a good sysadmin, but it took time to groom a new sysadmin. Today the need for qualified sysadmins is very high with a very small selection pool and a long learning curve in some cases or topics. Our objectives should be to go to our alma mater or our local colleges and demand they provide formal sysadmin courses. This will require little financial resources of SAGE, and give credibility to our profession. Lets face it, colleges can't get their eyes focused off the dollar. Getting them to develop a curriculum with SAGE as an advisory community, would be very cost effective. Lending our name and knowledge base would benefit us, our companies, and give new sysadmins a fighting chance. I know, everyone is going to scream about the cost of college. My reply is simple, have you seen the cost to go to LISA or even a SUN sysadmin 1 week course? Each of these week long learning opportunities could pay for a semester of classes at a public college. -- Corey D. Herbel If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you. From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 08:38:26 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA14486 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 08:38:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from wugate.wustl.edu (wugate.wustl.edu [128.252.120.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA14477; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 08:38:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from michelob.wustl.edu (michelob.wustl.edu [128.252.130.10]) by wugate.wustl.edu (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA30044; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:35:06 -0600 (CST) Received: by michelob.wustl.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA00618; Wed, 18 Feb 98 10:21:20 CST Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:21:19 -0600 (CST) From: "Jeff \"Forest Creature\" Hargiss" Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you To: Pat Wilson Cc: sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Being a new member, .... :) I joined SAGE to gain knowledge in sysadmin tasks that I do not normally have to do. There is so much to a unix system, and I generally only have to learn the parts that don't work right. What about the other 80% that I do not see? I would very much like a structured certification program. I can teach myself what I am missing, but it is hard to judge what is more important [task-wise], or in what order. I have experience in unix, but mainly from a networking stance. I am sure there is a lot more out there besides OpenView :) If you are counting votes, add me to the YES column. Thank you for your efforts! ================================================================================ www.hargiss.com www.kokomo.com dod#829 A 32-bit patch for a 16-bit GUI shell running on top of an 8-bit operating system written for a 4-bit processor by a 2-bit company who cannot stand 1 bit of competition. -Rev. Pee Kitty, on Windows 95 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 09:04:30 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA16208 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:04:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com (dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com [206.214.98.3]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA16199; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:04:26 -0800 (PST) Received: (from smap@localhost) by dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) id LAA17058; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 11:00:39 -0600 (CST) Received: from mail.fosterfarms.com(208.1.117.20) by dfw-ix3.ix.netcom.com via smap (V1.3) id rma016974; Wed Feb 18 11:00:22 1998 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980218085804.016a1120@popd.ix.netcom.com> X-Sender: dphi@popd.ix.netcom.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 08:58:04 -0800 To: sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org From: Dale Phillips Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk One more view to add to the pot. I am a SCO ACE and a MCP. And I still Can't get my FreeBSD or Linux box to talk through the MS proxy server on NT. (any clues?) The only thing certification *should* mean that you don't know it all. Our knowledge base is very fluid. If Certification leads to higher pay (like the ASE tests for auto mechanics) then I am for it. If it just to "add credibility" count me out. System Administration will always be on a lower rung just as a mortician is "lower" than a doctor. We do not have control over this. I would MUCH rather see something like the Interactive Perl course by Orwart coupled with web quizzes and chat rooms. Where the continuing education units are optional. System Administration is not rocket science, nor is it engineering. It is like acquiring a second language. You learn by speaking it to others who know it better than you. It is every bit as complex as rocket science, but it is not a linear form of learning - as is math. If a real and valid solution is to be pursued. Do what Bell & Howell did to create BSEE's. Create your own school and get the best names in our business to teach classes. (Then roll them into video/web stuff) my 2 cents worth... -dp--------------- Dale Phillips dphi@ix.netcom.com From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 09:21:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA17357 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:21:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from iwi.iwi.com (dynamic19.pm06.mv.best.com [209.24.241.83]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA17270; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:20:30 -0800 (PST) Received: by iwi.iwi.com (951211.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH1502/940406.SGI.AUTO) id JAA07766; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:08:13 -0800 Message-ID: <19980218090811.45473@iwi> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 09:08:11 -0800 From: "Tina M. Darmohray" To: Pat Wilson Cc: sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org, "Tina M. Darmohray" Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you References: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88 In-Reply-To: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu>; from Pat Wilson on Tue, Feb 17, 1998 at 08:53:10PM +2230 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, Feb 17, 1998 at 08:53:10PM +2230, Pat Wilson wrote: > > > Listen up, folks - this is important! > > During our January meeting, the SAGE Board did its annual planning and > goal-setting exercise. Often, nothing earth-shattering occurs. This time, > however, we took the Certification bull by the horns and have made a Plan. > > We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems > administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather > vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a > "profession" entails certification - careers without such things are > generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between > MDs and morticians, for example). I've never hired anyone because they had a certificate in anything. Education and experience is why you hire someone. Sometimes the education comes first, sometimes it is part of the experience, usually it is ongoing. I don't believe SAGE members, or the SA profession, would be best served by SAGE/USENIX spending their resources generating, and administering?, certifications, merit badges, or any other SAGE-unique way of naming education and experience. Rather, I think the limited resources should be focused on high-leverage areas, where we're not providing infrastructure, just building on it. To me, that means we work with existing educational organizations to get "sysadmin" courses, majors, AA programs, even certificates!, etc. in place. We don't reinvent the infrastructure and we don't rename what we want: system administrators with education, experience, or both. In any case, I'd argue that you can't certify or merit anyone who doesn't qualify because they don't have the knowledge. -- Let's put the cart back behind the horse and figure out some ways to educate. If we accomplish that, we could *always* revisit "certification". Tina From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 10:10:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA20450 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:10:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from bach.cv.nrao.edu (rmilner@bach.cv.nrao.edu [192.33.115.54]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA20433 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:10:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rmilner@localhost) by bach.cv.nrao.edu (8.8.5/8.8.0/CV-2.2) id NAA08596 for sage-members@usenix.org; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:07:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:07:30 -0500 (EST) From: "Ruth Milner [VLA]" Message-Id: <199802181807.NAA08596@bach.cv.nrao.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Good to see some active discussion on the general list about this topic! I am another one who is not particularly in favor of certification, but first I would like to focus on a couple of key points raised by other respondents, which I would not want to see buried. :-) Hal Pomeranz wrote: > Would the SAGE Board be willing to publish the complete results > of the survey? IMHO, the results *must* be made available to SAGE members, and I assume that this would have happened sooner or later anyway; there is no reason I can think of why they should not be. Is there an ETA for a WWW page with this information, like, say, the one with the LISA survey results? Elizabeth Zwicky wrote: > Exactly what is that plan? As in, what are its goals, its timelines, > and the people who're carrying it out? These are critical questions. Could the Board please respond to these issues? To add my own comments: Pat Wilson (on behalf of the SAGE Board) wrote: > a "profession" entails certification - careers without such things are > generally referred to as "trades" Assuming this is really the case (which I'm by no means convinced of), so what? Elizabeth made some excellent points about the level of training and apprenticeship required for other fields where some form of certification is required. (The original analogy of MD versus mortician seems to have turned out not to illustrate the desired point. :-) ) Certification without such education is premature to say the least. If SAGE wants to "advanc[e] system administra- tion as a profession" by creating a certification process, then the plan has to include establishing such training and apprentice- ship programs. Does it? Pat> it's possible to have certification without it being Pat> mandatory [...] However, somewhere along the line, that question Pat> will resurface. If certification is to be meaningful, it must ultimately be required in order to practice that profession. I don't believe that anything less would carry any serious weight with anyone. I also don't believe that SAGE can enforce such requirements even among its membership, much less the thousands of sysadmins who have never heard of us. Again, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Ruth. ---- Ruth Milner NRAO Socorro NM Manager of Computing Systems rmilner@aoc.nrao.edu From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 10:36:16 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA22047 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:36:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from bach.cv.nrao.edu (rmilner@bach.cv.nrao.edu [192.33.115.54]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA22037 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:36:10 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rmilner@localhost) by bach.cv.nrao.edu (8.8.5/8.8.0/CV-2.2) id NAA08624 for sage-members@usenix.org; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:32:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:32:54 -0500 (EST) From: "Ruth Milner [VLA]" Message-Id: <199802181832.NAA08624@bach.cv.nrao.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Jeff Hargiss wrote: > I would very much like a structured certification program. I can teach > myself what I am missing, but it is hard to judge what is more important > [task-wise], or in what order. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I don't think this is what a certification program does. What I *think* you are describing is the "merit badge" concept, which is quite different: small units of training/examination focused on specific tasks, perhaps with an overall suggested progres- sion of subjects. This might be something SAGE could usefully support, or at least co-ordinate the training resources for. At least to me, "certification" is a much broader, more general concept, which basically says "I am qualified to be a practicing system administrator". Period. It carries ethical connotations as well as implied levels of competence, performance, and account- ability (including legal). There is probably some discussion/definition of this accessible from the SAGE WWW pages somewhere. Which type of program was the SAGE board message referring to? I thought it was true certification, but maybe not? Ruth. ---- Ruth Milner NRAO Socorro NM Manager of Computing Systems rmilner@aoc.nrao.edu From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 10:59:30 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA23571 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:59:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from sword.bbnplanet.com (noc.bbn.com [199.94.209.25]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA23553 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 10:59:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from dilbert (dilbert.bbnplanet.com [4.2.7.18]) by sword.bbnplanet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA04087; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:55:59 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 18:55:59 +0000 (GMT) From: Mark Lamourine X-Sender: mlamouri@dilbert To: "Tina M. Darmohray" cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: <19980218090811.45473@iwi> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk emphasis on *Education*! Hear! Hear! On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Tina M. Darmohray wrote: > In any case, I'd argue that you can't certify or merit anyone who > doesn't qualify because they don't have the knowledge. -- Let's > put the cart back behind the horse and figure out some ways to > educate. If we accomplish that, we could *always* revisit > "certification". Mark Lamourine GTE Internetworking, Network Operations, Server Administration 150 Cambridge Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 Voice: +1 617 873 4306 Fax: +1 617 873 6325 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 11:04:18 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA23887 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 11:04:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from motgate.mot.com (motgate.mot.com [129.188.136.100]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA23878; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 11:04:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from mothost.mot.com (mothost.mot.com [129.188.137.101]) by motgate.mot.com (8.8.5/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id NAA22295; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:00:57 -0600 (CST) Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender brownmic@plhp049.comm.mot.com ) Received: from plhp002.comm.mot.com (plhp002.comm.mot.com [145.2.148.3]) by mothost.mot.com (8.8.5/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id NAA08695; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:00:56 -0600 (CST) Received: from plhp049.comm.mot.com by plhp002.comm.mot.com with ESMTP (8.7.1/) id OAA17888; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:00:56 -0500 (EST) Received: (from brownmic@localhost) by plhp049.comm.mot.com (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA24566; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:00:55 -0500 (EST) From: Michael Rogero Brown Message-Id: <199802181900.OAA24566@plhp049.comm.mot.com> Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you To: sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:00:54 EST In-Reply-To: <19980218090811.45473@iwi>; from "Tina M. Darmohray" at Feb 18, 98 9:08 am X-Mailer: Elm [revision: 212.4] Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > > > > We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems > > administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather > > vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a > > "profession" entails certification - careers without such things are > > generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between > > MDs and morticians, for example). > > I've never hired anyone because they had a certificate in anything. > Education and experience is why you hire someone. Sometimes the > education comes first, sometimes it is part of the experience, > usually it is ongoing. > You might, but I've heard of people being turned down as Netware admins only because they didn't have that CNE certification, despite years of experience elsewhere as NetWare admins. This is the 'dark side' of certification, that someone who is qualified being turned down because of a lack of certification. This is why some are opposed to certification. Especially when it takes big bucks to pass the classes or tests needed to get that certification. > I don't believe SAGE members, or the SA profession, would be best > served by SAGE/USENIX spending their resources generating, and > administering?, certifications, merit badges, or any other > SAGE-unique way of naming education and experience. Rather, I think > the limited resources should be focused on high-leverage areas, > where we're not providing infrastructure, just building on it. > To me, that means we work with existing educational organizations > to get "sysadmin" courses, majors, AA programs, even certificates!, > etc. in place. We don't reinvent the infrastructure and we don't > rename what we want: system administrators with education, > experience, or both. > > In any case, I'd argue that you can't certify or merit anyone who > doesn't qualify because they don't have the knowledge. -- Let's > put the cart back behind the horse and figure out some ways to > educate. If we accomplish that, we could *always* revisit > "certification". > > Tina > -- Michael Rogero Brown | Disclaimer: I speak only for myself. Unix/NT Systems Support | Any opinions expressed are my own Motorola, LMPS | and do not reflect the opinions of email: emb021@email.mot.com | Motorola. From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 12:34:52 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA29014 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:34:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivac45 ([204.193.38.230]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA29005 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:34:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from wrso38035.ivac_eng by ivac45 (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA13853; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:30:53 -0800 Received: by wrso38035.ivac_eng (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA24497; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:30:55 -0800 Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 12:30:55 -0800 From: dengland@alarismed.com (Dave England) Message-Id: <199802182030.MAA24497@wrso38035.ivac_eng> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: 4pEJL4kVODpZTIS3MNMQlA== Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I guess we should of had a debate of the issues before we voted. I went back and looked at how I voted and I voted for certification. After reading everyone's opinion and reflecting a little more on the subject myself I do not think we are ready for certification. o I've seen more than a few certified Microsoft and Sun technicians that don't know how to fix a problem that they are supposedly certified for. o I've interviewed plenty and even hired a few SAs that had lots of book knowledge but couldn't do the job. o It's my experience that often one needs to resolve problems that you have never worked on our seen before. And therefore a good junior SA has the ability to break a problem down to find the cause. And senior SAs have some intuitive ability to suspect the source of problem and then prove their theory. I cannot imagine a test that would show this. o Also in my many years, and an expanding crop of grey hair, as a UNIX SA I've only attended a few courses and conferences. It's hard to get the time and money from corporate companies and when I could family responsibilities precluded me from leaving town for a week. Most of the companies I've worked for only budget for one training session per employee a year and they prefer that you to take it locally. While I wish I would have been able to attend more, it certainly hasn't meant that I haven't been learning. Often a new project comes out of nowhere and you need to learn as you go. I've never seen a business environment where you can say wait I need to take a class before I can do that project or solve that problem. Is it fair to say the more certificates one has the more valuable they should be? Let's face it on the job experience is a very critical part of the knowledge of a good SA. How do we give these people their due? o I have used tests for years on SA candidates. What I've found is many people could tell me the command see available memory, running processes or whatever. But only a few could actually find a server that acted as a flex license server, NFS or NIS server when I actually sat them at a terminal. I need both skills in an SA, but I feel certification would only judge the former not the latter. o I'm not even sure we could agree on what areas an SA should have skills in for certification. Here's my list: NFS, NIS, sendmail, HTML, C, Makefile, flex, RIP, SH, C-Shell, public domain software products, 3rd party software products, OS commands, printer utilities, PERL, tk, tcl, expect, DNS, File System management products, Backup products, anonymous ftp setup, and Firewall products and security issues. And then repeat these on all of the OS platforms. I agree with Tina lets work on better education methods, Web page tutorials, and knowledge databases. Can't we do more than we have to "advance Systems Administration as profession" in this area first. We can come back and review certification after we have some way to learn what one can be certified for. Isn't it amazing that the non-technical part the world is only now finding out about discussion groups when we've had these tools for years. Let's use them more often and not only talk about important subjects like this in meetings or at conferences. Dave England dengland@alarismed.com From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 13:04:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA00752 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:04:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from motgate.mot.com (motgate.mot.com [129.188.136.100]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA00700 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:04:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from mothost.mot.com (mothost.mot.com [129.188.137.101]) by motgate.mot.com (8.8.5/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id PAA23438 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:01:30 -0600 (CST) Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender brownmic@plhp049.comm.mot.com ) Received: from plhp002.comm.mot.com (plhp002.comm.mot.com [145.2.148.3]) by mothost.mot.com (8.8.5/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id PAA19047 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:01:30 -0600 (CST) Received: from plhp049.comm.mot.com by plhp002.comm.mot.com with ESMTP (8.7.1/) id QAA22261; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:01:29 -0500 (EST) Received: (from brownmic@localhost) by plhp049.comm.mot.com (8.7.6/8.7.3) id QAA18178 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:01:28 -0500 (EST) From: Michael Rogero Brown Message-Id: <199802182101.QAA18178@plhp049.comm.mot.com> Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:01:28 EST X-Mailer: Elm [revision: 212.4] Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > > > I think > > with the 'Merit Badge' scheme tossed around, that the tests would not cover > > large, broad topics like 'Unix Administration', > > But is it possible to cover a broad topic like that in a single > certification? I don't believe so, which is one of my reasons for > objecting to what (I think) the Board is proposing. > > Well, maybe they'll clarify what they had in mind. :-) Certainly > from Hal's and Elizabeth's responses, I got the impression that > they were thinking along the same lines I am, but I've been wrong > before ... > Well, one way of looking at it is how others do certification. Can't speak on CNE, but am familar with MCSE (M$ Certified Support Engineer) and IBM. With MCSE, you pass 4 core test plus 2 electives. For NT, there are 3 core tests you pass: NT Workstation, NT Server, and NT Server in the Enterprise. So basically 3 tests cover the OS. Now IBM has 4 levels of AIX certified admins. As I recall off the top of my head, they are 'AIX Admin', 'AIX Support Engineer', 'Advanced AIX Admin', and 'Advanced AIX Support Engineer'. Each level is 'higher' then the other, and requires that you learn more at each level, BUT each level takes only one test. As I see it, you have about a half dozen 'major' versions of Unix out there, each with their little differences, plus a couple dozen others. While I can expect a basic certification test to cover basic Unix, because of these many versions, one would have to hope that these would be covered in the various 'elective' merit badge test. Now, I'm a scout leader, so am a bit familiar with the advancement requirements of the BSA and how they use merit badges in that. As I'd see it, you'd have to require certain basic tests be passed, and allow for some variety there. So you might have (to use MS's MCSE scheme), 4 core test to pass, maybe 'Basic Unix', 'Advanced Unix', and 'Unix in the Enterprise', and a Network Basics test. But for variety, instead of one 'Basic Unix' test, you'd be able to choose between several, like 'Basic Linux', 'Basic HP-UX', 'Basic AIX', and so forth. Then your 'merit badge' tests would be your electives, where you are expected to pass a certain number. These could be in specific technologies/apps, such as 'sendmail', 'perl', 'apache Administration', and the like. And as with the MCSE test, how an admin would prepare for these is up to themselves. What topics each test would covered would be available (along with sample questions), and a recommended list of books, articles, and classes could be given, to help point them in the right direction. You could also be a little more creative with the certification, again here I'm following the BSA advancement model. If instead of just having one basic certification, but have levels, you could add in to the certification requirements for the higher levels things beyond just passing tests, such as specific amount of time in the industry and the like. For instance, the the higher BSA advancement awards, the scout has to hold a leadership position for an amount of time and be involded in service projects. Maybe something along the lines of being an admin for a resonable amount of time and be involved in largest admin projects. But I have to admin this is a bit sticky to control something like this, so I don't expect others to accept this idea. Michael R. Brown -- Michael Rogero Brown | Disclaimer: I speak only for myself. Unix/NT Systems Support | Any opinions expressed are my own Motorola, LMPS | and do not reflect the opinions of email: emb021@email.mot.com | Motorola. From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 13:09:31 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA01028 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:09:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA01019 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:09:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id PAA18968; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:06:08 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id PAA00371; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:06:07 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id PAA16440; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:06:06 -0600 Message-Id: <199802182106.PAA16440@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Certification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:06:06 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Awarding certification as a Systems Administrator would be a difficult task. What would be the criteria? What would you test me on, to say that I am now a "certified" Sys Admin? That's the daunting task. Our field is so incredibly diverse. Right now, I manage Solaris 2.5, SUNOS 4.1.4, SVR4, IRIX, LINUX, NT, MAC, with multiple hardware platforms: Sparc20, Sparc Server2000, Digital ULTRIX, Linotype-Hell Davinci, Auspex, Intel PC's, Mac's, Blah, Blah...... My last place of employment didn't have half of this, and had even older Win3.1 and DOS to mess with too. But I was a "Systems Administrator" there, too. So, what will you test me on? Everything? Really, what will be the definition, the standard to seek. This field is changing all of the time. Fast. My current employer did not care what my education was. They only cared about what I know now. What I can do now. In this field, a BS is obsolete in several years. I have to always learn, keep on top. The technology is changing too fast. As a Sys Admin, I have to be very well rounded, adaptable, and have knowledge of many areas. I am interested in Sun's CSA, and Microsoft MCSE. Not because I "need" certification, but because those are my specialties. I wish to be recognized as a cut above the rest in those areas. But a generic, all encompassing "Certified Systems Administrator" title? I think the field is just far too broad. Scott Uncertified Systems Administrator From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 14:30:03 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA05453 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:30:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from epx.cis.umn.edu (root@epx.cis.umn.edu [128.101.83.4]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA05355 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:29:52 -0800 (PST) From: djb@epx.cis.umn.edu Received: by epx.cis.umn.edu; Wed, 18 Feb 98 15:56:30 -0600 Message-Id: <00134eb590d010309@epx.cis.umn.edu> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 98 15:56:30 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: TCSA meeting February 19 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The Twin Cities System Administrators (TCSA) group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to system and network administrators in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The meetings are free and open to the public. TCSA meetings are on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. We will meet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (southwest corner of Summit and Cretin) in building BEC (Brady Educational Center) room 112. * NOTE CHANGE OF MEETING LOCATION * Next Meeting: February 19, 1998: John Baumbach, USWest John Baumbach from USWest will talk about DSL Technology and the recently announced MegaBit Services. John's presentation may start a few minutes late (7:30) due to scheduling conflicts. Tentative Meeting Schedule - March 19, 1998: Networking Concepts, Cisco - April 16, 1998: TBD Directions to the University of St. Thomas (Summit & Cretin): - From East I-94: Going east on I-94, take the Cretin-Vandalia exit. Go right (south) about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From West I-94: Coming west on I-94, exit at Cretin-Vandalia. Go left (south) on Cretin about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From the south on I-35E: Take 35E north to the Randolph Avenue exit. Make a left on Randolph (crossing over 35E) and follow it about two miles to Cretin Avenue. Turn right onto Cretin and go about 1.5 miles to Summit Avenue. Turn left into St. Thomas just before Summit. - Parking: Drive to the large parking area straight ahead. The BEC building is near Goodrich Ave (the street to the south or left) from the large parking area. Park in the large parking area and go to BEC room 112 to get a visitor parking permit for your car. If parking is available on Goodrich Ave., it may be more convenient to park on Goodrich and you won't need a permit. - Web maps are at: Map to St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/dirst.html Map of St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/stmap.html On the Map of the St. Paul Campus, BEC is building 31. For more information on TCSA, check out our web site: http://www.tcsa.org/ To subscribe to the TCSA mailing list (from a Unix system): echo "subscribe tcsa" | mailx majordomo@tcsa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@tcsa.org or contact: Dave Bianchi 612-644-7843 -- Dave Bianchi djb@colltech.com Work: 612-957-4532 Collective Technologies djb@epx.cis.umn.edu FAX: 612-957-4195 A Pencom Company Pager: 612-818-7162 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 14:46:17 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA06347 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:46:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from ni1.ni.net (ni1.ni.net [192.215.247.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA06334 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:46:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from compata.compata.com (root@compata.compata.com [199.107.69.240]) by ni1.ni.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA00493; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:42:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from compata.compata.com by compata.compata.com (Linux 2.0.32) with ESMTP (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA30814; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:29:21 -0800 Message-Id: <199802182229.OAA30814@compata.compata.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: Pat Wilson Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 17 Feb 1998 20:53:10." <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> X-Face: $?&5f7w4GjUJOb-[FmngebA}V`5Dv)QEdHg|d%mytVRm]'o}*{J6:PP%(LfN LmOcb#>"^wDF*|ZzuS??S*vLH[.miV( Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Some of the first, almost knee-jerk, reactions to this proposal seem to attribute to certification the same ills which apply to licensing. Certification may make licensing easier for the politicians to pass, but it isn't the same thing in itself. It's a voluntary program; if you don't like it, you aren't required to participate. Even though I don't like licensing at all, I'm still happier to see a diploma from a reputable university on the wall at my doctor's office. We have lots of certification programs already. Most of them are called college degrees. I was amused when Tina Darmohray wrote, "I've never hired anyone because they had a certificate in anything. Education and experience is why you hire someone." Education is usually certified by a diploma, which is perhaps the highest form of certification around. Membership in professional organizations is frequently listed on a resume for much the same reason. I wouldn't ignore a job candidate's certifications, though I might ascribe lower or negative value to some of them. Face it, the reason some in Usenix feel a need for certification is because they feel the colleges and trade schools aren't filling the need. There are some good programs, but not nearly enough graduates of them. Continuing education is only as good as the instructor and, other than through your local JC, is frequently overpriced. There is no standard curriculum to which we can refer when evaluating a diploma. (I have a hard time knowing if a BSCS degree involved programming or hardware design.) Perhaps the best contribution Usenix could make would be to help develop such a curriculum, then leave it to the schools to issue the diplomas. -- Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "Politics is the business of getting dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 power and privilege without dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu possessing merit." - P. J. O'Rourke From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 16:08:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA11017 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:08:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from relay9.uu.net (relay9.uu.net [192.48.96.85]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA11008 for ; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 16:08:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from gen1.uu.net by relay9.uu.net with ESMTP (peer crosschecked as: gen1.uu.net [153.39.49.138]) id QQedie26422; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 19:05:24 -0500 (EST) Received: from zippy.uu.net by gen1.uu.net with ESMTP (peer crosschecked as: zippy.UU.NET [153.39.45.102]) id QQedie12400; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 19:05:09 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost by zippy.uu.net with SMTP (peer crosschecked as: pbc@localhost) id QQedie02228; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 19:05:08 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:06:06 CST." <199802182106.PAA16440@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 19:05:08 -0500 From: Pete Cottrell Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I'm not going to weigh in too much on pros and cons of certification, except to say that, like others, I'm also not impressed with credentials. Candidates impress me with what they have to say in their interview, not with an (all-too-often bloated) resume with a bunch of acronyms. The point I'm wondering about, not because I'm inclined that way, but just because of experience in a litigious business world and society, is: what are the legal ramnifications that SAGE might have to deal with if they become a certifying body? What if they grant certification to someone who passes the tests, but is an idiot and then is hired by a company by virtue of that certification, and then takes some company down through his/her boneheaded action? The specter of malpractice claims begin to appear; I can see entities coming after SAGE. They may not win, but anyone with a lawyer can be more than a nuisance. From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 18 17:29:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA15115 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 17:29:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from m15.boston.juno.com (m15.boston.juno.com [205.231.100.192]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA14726; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 17:22:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from hremer@juno.com) by m15.boston.juno.com (queuemail) id SSK17767; Wed, 18 Feb 1998 18:31:41 EST To: sage-members@usenix.org Cc: sage-board@usenix.org Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 15:21:46 -0800 Subject: SAGE, certification, and you Message-ID: <19980218.152650.12286.0.hremer@juno.com> X-Mailer: Juno 1.49 X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 4-8 From: hremer@juno.com (Hershel Remer) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk As for the idea of SAGE enacting certification for systems adminstration, personally, I am against it, because I have already invested a lot of time and money obtaining SUN certification, and I would hate to see that investment and merit diminished by having a SAGE certification become the standard. Sincerely, Hershel Remer _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 01:51:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA08128 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 01:51:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from topgun.asiapac.net ([202.188.0.106]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA08119 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 01:51:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from topgun ([202.188.0.106]) by topgun.asiapac.net (Netscape Mail Server v2.0) with SMTP id AAA2726; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 17:46:57 +0800 Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 17:46:57 +0800 (SGT) From: Swee-Chuan Khoo X-Sender: sckhoo@topgun To: Pete Cottrell cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Certification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk i think a test with the techincal knowledge with some 10% of control question to see thro the bluff is better. i will hire anyone who can answer the question over a person with that piece of certificates. On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Pete Cottrell wrote: > > I'm not going to weigh in too much on pros and cons of > certification, except to say that, like others, I'm also not impressed > with credentials. Candidates impress me with what they have to say in > their interview, not with an (all-too-often bloated) resume with a > bunch of acronyms. > The point I'm wondering about, not because I'm inclined that > way, but just because of experience in a litigious business world and > society, is: what are the legal ramnifications that SAGE might have to > deal with if they become a certifying body? What if they grant > certification to someone who passes the tests, but is an idiot and > then is hired by a company by virtue of that certification, and then > takes some company down through his/her boneheaded action? The specter > of malpractice claims begin to appear; I can see entities coming after > SAGE. They may not win, but anyone with a lawyer can be more than a > nuisance. > ------------------------------------------------------------------- Swee-Chuan Khoo, sckhoo@asiapac.net | Not only do i speak for http://www.asiapac.net/~sckhoo/ | myself; I am myself ------------------------------------------------------------------- Today you lose. Tomorrow you win. Life change. From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 08:10:45 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA25424 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 08:10:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA25415 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 08:10:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA19168 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:07:25 -0500 Message-Id: <199802191607.LAA19168@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: BTW - "SAGE Advice" FAQ-o-Matic coming RSN Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:07:25 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I'm in the process of setting up a "SAGE Advice" FAQ-o-Matic (automatic FAQ generator - a real slick perl system written by a grad student here at Dartmouth). The idea is that folks can contribute things they know, and we can build some sort of knowledge base/reference work/merit-badge starting point. It's not quite ready yet - I'm getting the hang of the program and setting up "subject areas". It'll be a few days or a week before I have enough time to have it ready for use, but watch this space for the URL. Sorry for the vague description - am hideously busy at the moment. In light of the (great!) cert discussion we're having, though, thought it was well past time to say something. More detail will follow in the announcement. Be seeing you... Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 11:28:10 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA06122 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:28:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from sgi.sgi.com (SGI.COM [192.48.153.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA06100; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:27:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from sgifll.lauderdale.sgi.com ([169.238.149.130]) by sgi.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/970507) via ESMTP id LAA13556; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:24:40 -0800 env-from (anamaria@caribe.bocaraton.sgi.com) Received: from caribe by sgifll.lauderdale.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id OAA18008; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 14:24:30 -0500 Message-ID: <34EC856B.31D2@caribe.bocaraton.sgi.com> Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 11:18:03 -0800 From: "Ana Maria De Alvare'" Organization: Global Course Education X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01SC-SGI (X11; I; IRIX 6.3 IP22) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Tina M. Darmohray" CC: Pat Wilson , sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org, "Tina M. Darmohray" Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you References: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> <19980218090811.45473@iwi> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I agreed with Tina's point. Certification is just another hurdle that people can have in their resume. However it is not an indicator of their expertise. If people are coming out from College, or training centers without the right skills, then lets go back to those education centers and demand the right ones. Ana Maria Tina M. Darmohray wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 17, 1998 at 08:53:10PM +2230, Pat Wilson wrote: > > > > > > Listen up, folks - this is important! > > > > During our January meeting, the SAGE Board did its annual planning and > > goal-setting exercise. Often, nothing earth-shattering occurs. This time, > > however, we took the Certification bull by the horns and have made a Plan. > > > > We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems > > administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather > > vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a > > "profession" entails certification - careers without such things are > > generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between > > MDs and morticians, for example). > > I've never hired anyone because they had a certificate in anything. > Education and experience is why you hire someone. Sometimes the > education comes first, sometimes it is part of the experience, > usually it is ongoing. > > I don't believe SAGE members, or the SA profession, would be best > served by SAGE/USENIX spending their resources generating, and > administering?, certifications, merit badges, or any other > SAGE-unique way of naming education and experience. Rather, I think > the limited resources should be focused on high-leverage areas, > where we're not providing infrastructure, just building on it. > To me, that means we work with existing educational organizations > to get "sysadmin" courses, majors, AA programs, even certificates!, > etc. in place. We don't reinvent the infrastructure and we don't > rename what we want: system administrators with education, > experience, or both. > > In any case, I'd argue that you can't certify or merit anyone who > doesn't qualify because they don't have the knowledge. -- Let's > put the cart back behind the horse and figure out some ways to > educate. If we accomplish that, we could *always* revisit > "certification". > > Tina -- Ana Maria De Alvare' SGI-LAO anamaria@lauderdale.sgi.com 100 W. Cypress Creek Rd, Suite 1030 Ft.Lauderdale, Fl. 33309 Be what you want to be, 888-872-5517 ext 1004 Stop dreaming, JUST DO IT! FAX 305-938-0977 or 561-362-8149 From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 13:27:16 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA11952 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 13:27:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from yorktown.paranet.com (yorktown.paranet.com [199.164.131.34]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA11943 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 13:27:10 -0800 (PST) Received: by yorktown.paranet.com; id PAA00707; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 15:23:26 -0600 (CST) Received: from farragut.srv.paranet.com( 172.16.3.35) by yorktown.paranet.com via smap (V3.1.1) id xma000694; Thu, 19 Feb 98 15:23:24 -0600 Received: from chunx.nol.mobil.com (pppsrv06.srv.paranet.com [172.16.3.8]) by farragut.srv.paranet.com (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id PAA29170 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 15:23:19 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199802192123.PAA29170@farragut.srv.paranet.com> X-Sender: bamorris@general.srv.paranet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 15:21:52 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Brad Morrison Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: <34EC856B.31D2@caribe.bocaraton.sgi.com> References: <199802180153.UAA18195@rigel.dartmouth.edu> <19980218090811.45473@iwi> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk
At 11:18 AM 2/19/98 -0800, Ana Maria De Alvare' wrote:
>If people are coming out from College, or training centers without the
>right skills, then lets go back to those education centers and demand
>the right ones.

I'm sorry, but the mental image of 1500 conference attendees arrayed in
everything from tie-dyed t-shirts to sharkskin suits (let's take the vendors,
too) descending on some unsuspecting university regents' office to
demand the right skills is just too lurid to keep to myself.

(JFK voice) I say let's *do* it.  Sit-ins with Evi Nemeth chained to the
office doors.  Protest marches led by Eric "the man" Allman.  Gene
Spafford and Bjorn Satdeva, their heads wrapped in bandannas, pounding
on bongos at "skill rallies".  Ask not what you can do for your university--
ask what your university can do for your career field!
--
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet
"Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." --Napoleon Hill
From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 15:24:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA17864 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 15:24:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from luna.bearnet.com (1005@luna.bearnet.com [207.55.144.20]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA17855 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 15:24:16 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 30391 invoked from network); 19 Feb 1998 23:21:12 -0000 Received: from mars.bearnet.com (HELO mars) (207.55.144.30) by luna.bearnet.com with SMTP; 19 Feb 1998 23:21:12 -0000 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980219172100.0356b100@207.55.144.20> X-Sender: billw@207.55.144.20 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 17:21:00 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Bill Weinman Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: <19980218.152650.12286.0.hremer@juno.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Obviously certification as a System Administrator is a mixed bag at best. My fear about this would be that we would end up putting more monetary value on the people who have passed a test than the people who can actually do what they were hired to do. As a well-respected voice in many technical disciplines, with no formal education past the 6th grade and no certifications of any sort, I can tell you with first-hand authority that a person's value and abilities have little to do with what courses or tests they have passed. Any efforts to pre-qualify human beings by testing their knowledge and abilities in a forced artificial environment will be counter productive at best, and reward inverse abilities at worst. Instead, we should encourage prospective employers to actually check references and talk to former colleagues to get a good idea of the value of a prospective employee. That's the only real test anyway. The only way to know if someone can do it is to let them try. The ability to learn new skills is probably the most important qualification for our profession. ### Interesting side-note: I took a look at the certification materials for the MSCE course in TCP/IP recently. I was appalled! I would fail that test miserably, since I don't know the names of the Microsoft TCP/IP tools. But I've been managing TCP/IP networks since most of the engineers who wrote those tools were in diapers! Let's not repeat the mistakes made by MS and Novell. --Bill +-- Bill Weinman is the author of ---+ several books and is co-founder of WebMonster(tm) Networks Support CAUCE: From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 16:51:27 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA21481 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 16:51:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from wugate.wustl.edu (wugate.wustl.edu [128.252.120.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA21464 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 16:51:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from michelob.wustl.edu (michelob.wustl.edu [128.252.130.10]) by wugate.wustl.edu (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA04128; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 18:48:02 -0600 (CST) Received: by michelob.wustl.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA05849; Thu, 19 Feb 98 18:34:07 CST Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 18:34:05 -0600 (CST) From: "Jeff \"Forest Creature\" Hargiss" Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you To: "Ruth Milner [VLA]" Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802181832.NAA08624@bach.cv.nrao.edu> Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk i am more in the 'merit badge' group. certification to me means that you have a structure to rely on, and some sort of validation to ensure that you understand what you were learning. so, i am after certification of the merit badge system :) it would be nice to have levels too. say... novice ... sysadmin basic general advanced guru [feel free to expand or delete the whole thing, these are just thoughts] on the boy scout manner [merit badges], each level of rank had basic merit badges [and skill awards] that had to be completed for qualification. did anyone else in the world care about this certification ? NO i do not agree with the position of sage not having the "weight" of an international standards body. NO ONE CARES ABOUT STANDARDS BODIES EXCEPT THEIR MEMBERS. and, on the other paw... nothing became a standard until it was created. if sage takes this on, it should be done for the interests of sage-members. ================================================================================ www.hargiss.com www.kokomo.com dod#829 A 32-bit patch for a 16-bit GUI shell running on top of an 8-bit operating system written for a 4-bit processor by a 2-bit company who cannot stand 1 bit of competition. -Rev. Pee Kitty, on Windows 95 From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 16:58:58 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA21852 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 16:58:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from gatekeep.ti.com (gatekeep.ti.com [192.94.94.61]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA21811 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 16:58:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from raptor.mtc.ti.com ([156.117.62.48]) by gatekeep.ti.com (8.8.8) with ESMTP id SAA29607 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 18:55:05 -0600 (CST) Received: from neptune.mtc.ti.com (neptune.mtc.ti.com [156.117.62.225]) by raptor.mtc.ti.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id SAA02288 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 18:55:04 -0600 (CST) Received: (from edgrimm@localhost) by neptune.mtc.ti.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id SAA21907 for sage-members@usenix.org; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 18:55:04 -0600 From: Edward Grimm Message-Id: <199802200055.SAA21907@neptune.mtc.ti.com> Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: <199802192123.PAA29170@farragut.srv.paranet.com> from Brad Morrison at "Feb 19, 98 03:21:52 pm" To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 18:55:03 -0600 (CST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL25 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Brad Morrison in gratuitously markupped text wrote: > At 11:18 AM 2/19/98 -0800, Ana Maria De Alvare' wrote: >> If people are coming out from College, or training centers >> without the right skills, then lets go back to those education >> centers and demand the right ones. > > I'm sorry, but the mental image of 1500 conference attendees arrayed > in everything from tie-dyed t-shirts to sharkskin suits (let's take the > vendors, too) descending on some unsuspecting university regents' office > to demand the right skills is just too lurid to keep to myself. Um, computer savvy folk using a physical protest? I'd say, something like the image of a webpage (http://www.sage.org/useless.schools.html) The following universities have been found to release clueless students unsuspecting into the computer industry workforce. Any university who routinely graduates students without properly training them (>60% of graduating class unsufficiently skilled) WILL be listed here. As we clean up the universities, this margin will decline. ... would be more likely. I can see action taken from this... Remember, the keyboard is mightier than the demonstration. The big worry is that of legal retribution. My answer to this is, make sure you get your facts right, and stick to it. I'd also suggest announcing you're going to be doing this about two years before you actually implement it (give a firm deadline), and send a message to everyone who'd be on those two years a warning, explaining in what areas they're lacking. However, this is NOT the proper first course of action. I remember some professors at Purdue were frequently wanting input into what they should be teaching from the real world. The real world did not seem to be answering. Give the universities a couple years of feedback before considering implementing the above. Work with them first, and if that doesn't work, then threaten. You'll find a lot more support from the accademic community. Ed Grimm SprintParanet From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 19:23:46 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA28557 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 19:23:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from jupiter.superlink.net (jupiter.superlink.net [208.200.90.129]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA28499 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 19:23:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from plts.org (tal@plts.superlink.net [208.200.84.254]) by jupiter.superlink.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA03444; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:20:03 -0500 (EST) Received: (from tal@localhost) by plts.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA12825; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:19:56 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19980219221955.44228@plts.org> Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:19:55 -0500 From: Tom Limoncelli To: Pete Cottrell Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Certification References: <199802182106.PAA16440@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.84 In-Reply-To: ; from Pete Cottrell on Wed, Feb 18, 1998 at 07:05:08PM -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk UNIX scares corporate America. That's why it is disappearing. They are scared because they don't know if they are hiring someone good or not because UNIX is too technical for them to know if they are hiring someone good or bad. NT scares corporate America. However, they can hire people because they put "MS Certified ONLY" on their "help wanted" advertisement and, well, they rest in the security of knowing that the obvious idiots are being filtered out. (Even if the idiots don't get filtered at least they can feel they did the right thing). As a result, the corporate world is moving away from UNIX. (there are other reasons, but this is a biggie) I'm not for or against certification. I am for volunteers writing up drafts of what they think it will look like and giving me a chance to see if I like what they come up with. --tal -- Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal -- tal@plts.org "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony "As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 19:56:58 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA00254 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 19:56:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from jupiter.superlink.net (jupiter.superlink.net [208.200.90.129]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA00245 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 19:56:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from plts.org (tal@plts.superlink.net [208.200.84.254]) by jupiter.superlink.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA09581; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:53:36 -0500 (EST) Received: (from tal@localhost) by plts.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA12901; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:53:28 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19980219225326.58936@plts.org> Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:53:26 -0500 From: Tom Limoncelli To: Scott Williams Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Certification References: <199802182106.PAA16440@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.84 In-Reply-To: <199802182106.PAA16440@cws201.cat.jcp.com>; from Scott Williams on Wed, Feb 18, 1998 at 03:06:06PM -0600 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I said before I haven't decided how I feel on this topic. However, here are some thoughts in response to Scott's message. On Wed, Feb 18, 1998 at 03:06:06PM -0600, Scott Williams wrote: > That's the daunting task. Our field is so incredibly diverse. Right now, I > manage Solaris 2.5, SUNOS 4.1.4, SVR4, IRIX, LINUX, NT, MAC, with multiple > hardware platforms: Sparc20, Sparc Server2000, Digital ULTRIX, Linotype-Hell > Davinci, Auspex, Intel PC's, Mac's, Blah, Blah...... There is already a vender specific certification for just about everything you mentioned above. I think that if SAGE did a certification program it would be cross-platform or non-platform specific. We couldn't do a "Sun with a smattering of Mac certificate", a "IRIX and Sun with more PCs every week certificate", "Novell with their IP stuff", "Linux blah blah", "blah blah". etc. etc. I'm not volunteering to be part of the project, however here are some but here are some sample questions that come to mind: (they would have to be turned into multiple choice questions) Category: Disaster Recovery 1. An incremental backup is... 2. Given the following requirements, which backup schedule is appropriate etc. 3. Which of these policies best fits the requirement that a minimal amount of tapes would be required (assume incrementals grow by 10% each day, 7 days a week). Category: Security 1. What are the 4 areas of computer security (authentication, privacy non-repudiation, damn... i can't remember) 2. What is the best starting place for defining a security policy (my answer would be "deciding what you are trying to protect" or "define the threat") Category: Front-line user support 1. What are the 5 stages involved in resolving a user-reported problem? 2. The chief benefit of dividing user support into a multi-tiered system is... 3. If a user's reported problem can not be reproduced, it is best to... Ethics: These questions would not judge a person or be biased towards particular policies, but instead verify that the person has thought of the issues and acknowledges they exist. > now. What I can do now. In this field, a BS is obsolete in several years. I > have to always learn, keep on top. The technology is changing too fast. As a One of the goals would be to have questions that are never going to be obsolete. The ones above are in that category (at least I made my best effort). Vendor Certifications are specifically not timeless. The Novel version x certificate isn't useful when version x+1 is released. IFF we do such a certification program, it should be non-platform specific. --tal -- Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal -- tal@plts.org "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony "As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 19 22:07:14 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA06054 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:07:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA06045 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:07:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA07041 for ; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:02:12 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id WAA05188 for sage-members@usenix.org; Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:04:50 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802200604.WAA05188@cactii.tera.com> Subject: SAGE certification discussion To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 22:04:47 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi folks, Sorry about "disappearing" on you. Timing couldn't have been much worse: my entire central set of servers crashed catastrophically. I've lost a lot of disks, a little mail, but not much. I did lose a few days... Now that mail is beginning to flow, and users are getting some services again, I'll have a chance to begin reviewing the mail, and responding to the queries posed to the Board. We're not ignoring you... The life of a working sysadmin :-) -- HM From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 20 07:12:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA00940 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 07:12:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from relay1.UU.NET (relay1.UU.NET [192.48.96.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA00887 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 07:12:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from fnma-fw1_ext.fanniemae.com by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (peer crosschecked as: [198.204.144.7]) id QQedoe20267; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:09:29 -0500 (EST) Received: from postman.fanniemae.com by fnma-fw1_ext.fanniemae.com via smtpd (for relay1.UU.NET [192.48.96.5]) with SMTP; 20 Feb 1998 14:42:38 UT Received: from dmplus01.fanniemae.com by fanniemae.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA15849; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:09:14 -0500 Received: from shakti.fanniemae.com by dmplus01.fanniemae.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA00564; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:09:14 -0500 Received: by shakti.fanniemae.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA06580; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:09:14 -0500 Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:09:14 -0500 From: s9udvd@fanniemae.com (Daniel V. Dunn) Message-Id: <199802201509.KAA06580@shakti.fanniemae.com> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Pls remove me from this mailling list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA== Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 20 09:02:30 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA06271 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 09:02:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA06262 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 09:02:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA12871; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:59:03 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA08155; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:59:04 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA19831; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:59:02 -0600 Message-Id: <199802201659.KAA19831@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Certification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:59:01 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I see Tom Limoncelli's point about general test questions, standards you would expect to see accross the board. I seem to remember finding some certification a couple of years ago, on the net. I can't remember exactly where, but it tied in with an "industry standard". I still see some references to this, with people asking for "A+" certification in some employment ads. Anyone have any thoughts or knowledge of this? I do disagree with Tom in that Unix scares corporate America. Unix is indeed holding it's own in the real powerhouse applications and number crunching of data processing. There's no way Access on NT could crunch like Oracle on Unix, no matter what the hardware. The real killer of Unix will be the cost. The OS and related aps are just WAY too expensive, compared to the alternatives. If that aspect was gone, and pricing was competitive, Unix would blow NT away. Sales and market saturation, that is. It already has NT beat as an OS. Scott Still Uncertified SA From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 20 11:14:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA12595 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 11:14:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from elvis.arl.psu.edu (elvis.arl.psu.edu [146.186.165.126]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA12585 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 11:14:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] EHLO elvis.arl.psu.edu ident: IDENT-NOT-QUERIED [port 42565]) by elvis.arl.psu.edu with ESMTP id <34134-254>; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 14:10:57 -0500 X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.1 12/23/97 X-uri: X-work-address: Manufacturing Technology - Software Development Group PO Box 30 The Applied Research Lab State College, PA 16801 X-work-phone: +1 814 863 9896 (Voice) +1 814 863 1183 (Fax) To: Scott Williams cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 20 Feb 1998 10:59:01 CST." <199802201659.KAA19831@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 14:10:51 -0500 From: John D Groenveld Message-Id: <19980220191057Z34134-254+110@elvis.arl.psu.edu> Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > no matter what the hardware. The real killer of Unix will be the cost. The OS > and related aps are just WAY too expensive, compared to the alternatives. If > that aspect was gone, and pricing was competitive, Unix would blow NT away. > Sales and market saturation, that is. It already has NT beat as an OS. These are educational prices: $695.00 Solaris 2.6 X86 Workgroup Server (Media, License and Documentation) WINDOWS NT SRV 4.0 CD W/5 CLIENT ACCESS LIC $394.44 WINDOWS NT SERVER RESOURCE KIT V4.0 $82.27 Oracle Server v7.3 $1,475.00 (NT/Solaris) Seems like the costs in your example are in the certified administrators and not the software. I dont have a Sage salary survey handy, but I suspect MSCE make less money than Sun certified admins. Lets be careful not to turn this thread into an OS Jihad. John groenveld@acm.org From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 20 12:57:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA17404 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 12:57:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from trojan.pcp.ca ([162.139.13.50]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA17395 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 12:57:45 -0800 (PST) Received: by trojan.pcp.ca; id NAA16681; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 13:49:51 -0700 Received: from unknown(162.139.81.82) by trojan.pcp.ca via smap (3.2) id xma016565; Fri, 20 Feb 98 13:49:28 -0700 Received: from pcp.ca ([162.139.79.228]) by sunserv23.pcp.ca (Netscape Messaging Server 3.5) with ESMTP id AAA2AB4 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 13:56:11 -0700 Message-ID: <34EDEB23.B3E352EA@pcp.ca> Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 13:44:20 -0700 From: Scott Truswell Organization: Aurean Systems X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (X11; U; IRIX64 6.2 IP28) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Pls remove me from this mailling list References: <199802201509.KAA06580@shakti.fanniemae.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Me too please. Daniel V. Dunn wrote: From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 20 13:02:48 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA17564 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 13:02:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from highlander.sanctuary.arbutus.md.us (morty@cc1004783-a.catv1.md.home.com [24.3.31.39]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA17555 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 13:02:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (from morty@localhost) by highlander.sanctuary.arbutus.md.us (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA31427 for sage-members@usenix.org; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 16:43:43 -0500 From: "Mordechai T. Abzug" Message-Id: <199802202143.QAA31427@highlander.sanctuary.arbutus.md.us> Subject: Re: Certification To: swill41@jcpenney.com (Scott Williams) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 16:43:13 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <199802201659.KAA19831@cws201.cat.jcp.com> from "Scott Williams" at Feb 20, 98 10:59:01 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Scott Williams spake thusly: > The real killer of Unix will be the cost. The OS and related aps are > just WAY too expensive, compared to the alternatives. If that aspect > was gone, and pricing was competitive, Unix would blow NT away. > Sales and market saturation, that is. It already has NT beat as an > OS. Low-cost (and *no*-cost) versions of unix are already available. Linux and FreeBSD work on PCs, and if you need better hardware, linux also runs on DEC Alpha, some Sparc, and even on SGI hardware. If your management people demand commerical software for accountability and support, firms such as RedHat software are more than willing to charge you. -- Mordechai T. Abzug mordechai@home.com morty@sanctuary.arbutus.md.us morty@umbc.edu "If you can read this, thank a SysAdmin." -- Anne Brink From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 20 23:02:48 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA15170 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 23:02:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom12.netcom.com (ashton@netcom12.netcom.com [192.100.81.124]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA15112 for ; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 23:02:40 -0800 (PST) Received: (from ashton@localhost) by netcom12.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id WAA09596 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Fri, 20 Feb 1998 22:59:26 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802210659.WAA09596@netcom12.netcom.com> From: ashton@netcom.com (AShub) Date: Fri, 20 Feb 1998 22:59:25 PST Organization: Thee Dark Eidolon ov Shub-InterNet X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Certification Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I've GOT a cert! it's called SAGE membership. (and a mail reflector would be awful sexy on a resume ...) Of course, if you wanted to certify some _training courses_ and give out some sort of 'acredited' merit badge after compleating them, it wouldn't mind. I do, however, object to you trying to encapulate my jobs(s) and give me a grade. IMUHO, geek code would be more valuable while hiring. swill41@jcpenney.com threw an exception on: >I seem to remember finding some certification >a couple of years ago, on the net. I've seen Internet Developer's Association and Webguild both toss around the idea of certs ... (and dollars for such). Look where they are now :> amacandrews@acm.org -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS/U C++++>**2$ N+++* h+ !tv W--(+++) h+ a-----@ d--(pu) s:-- e--(*) z-** K+++ R++(--) G-- b+++ D+ !tv 5(-) t X UH++ P++ L+ O+ E--- M-- V-- w---(++) (!)!au !j v+* u*--- n---(----) o-- s:-- Y+ r ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ From sage-members-owner Sat Feb 21 22:00:52 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA13274 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 21 Feb 1998 22:00:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA13265 for ; Sat, 21 Feb 1998 22:00:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA06133 for ; Sat, 21 Feb 1998 21:55:48 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA11039 for sage-members@usenix.org; Sat, 21 Feb 1998 21:58:29 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802220558.VAA11039@cactii.tera.com> Subject: cert discussion To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 21:58:27 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi folks, I will try to respond to the discussion on this list of late. My comments will be "from the President", thus as a representative of the Board, although I ask that you bear in mind that they're colored by my personal views. If the other members of the Board remember things a little differently, I'm sure they'll speak up. Sure nice to see the list alive! First, it is clear to me that the most important thing we in SAGE can do is to work on our education program. Frankly, speaking as an individual, I've been somewhat disappointed with our lack of progress on this, and plan to work it harder myself this year. I don't think that we are stuck working only one issue, though, and the certification announcement is merely "progress" on a simultaneous front. I don't intend for it to push education into the background. Interestingly, the survey showed the strongest support for our involvement in standards, and for my "run up the flagpole" idea about "How-To Notes". We will be working those too. Next, the most important thing the Board can do is to get (as best it can) a feel for the needs/desires of the membership, and to set direction for programs to be implemented to meet those desires/needs. Whether we on the Board have a "mandate" to implement certification or not will be covered below, but I believe that the Board's duty to act implies both the responsibility and authority to take the action we did. So, what exactly was that action? We didn't: - require certification for membership - establish a plan that would require people to pay anything to anyone - create "Yet Another CNE or MSCE" - establish a comprehensive "Certified System Administrator" We did: - agree to have a team of folks determine a set of Job Description Level One items that are both "acceptably" common to most sysadmins and in some way "measurable" sufficiently to come up with a program that can result in a certification at a rather basic level of system administration - agree to proceed toward a "single-topic" recognition program a la Pat Wilson's Merit Badges - agree to further investigate the feasibility of establishing a program of review and "certification" of educational programs that are already putting out what they believe to be "generic" sysadmin certificates based on their own courses - agree to investigate ways of having a certification program administered effectively and inexpensively So what does this mean? We are going to form a team to "implement" the direction we have supplied. Volunteers will be solicited shortly, and this is a great opportunity to both ensure your views are heard and included, and to give community service to your colleagues. I'll ask that each of you who wishes to be involved consider first, VERY CAREFULLY, your ability to dedicate time and energy to the project. It means also that we are not planning to establish a program that will become exclusive (not exclude those who don't participate, from anything either within SAGE or outside), nor one that will (at least in the foreseeable future) become completely "comprehensive" as we are unable to see any way at this point to accomplish that. I see this primarily as a reinforcement of the upcoming education programs, to "ensure" some minimal level of competence in overall ability/knowledge. Would I hire someone solely because of their holding such a certificate? No way. It would, though, give me reason to look more closely at their "real" qualifications, whereas if I am faced (I've been there) with 160+ applicants for a single junior position, I need something to help with the preselection process. As has been pointed out, there are folks out there (even if not on this list) to whom such a certificate IS important. I don't see this as "competition" to the vendor-specific plans. I think it is different, in that what we come up with is supposed to be fairly generic and applicable across the spectrum, as well as across "versions" (as one correspondent discussed). I'm afraid that without some such program in place, altogether too many employers will insist on one of the vendor- specific certifications as a condition of hiring, without understanding what those really mean/don't mean. I see our allowing that to occur without some effort to supply a better alternative as a disservice to our membership. As I have noted in just about every article I've written (and I'm certainly not alone) this is the most controversial topic SAGE has tackled. In all of our efforts to ascertain the feeling of the membership, we have determined that a majority want some form of certification. The issue has been bandied about and discussed for years. We must recognize the depth of dissent, but at the same time, honor the will of the majority. I think the number of "us SAGEers" who feel that certification is the most important issue we face, and/or that we must have some "absolute" and "completely comprehensive" plan, is very small. But, this doesn't mean the Board can afford to ignore, or to continue to avoid tackling the task. A couple of you have asked about the survey results. I have already submitted a ;login: article summarizing the survey, and this should be in the next mailing. This particular survey went only to this mailing list, and I had a 13% return over the course of 3 weeks. Given that the results matched the BoF/hallway/email contacts we Board members have been getting all along, we went ahead. My understanding is that a 5% return is considered excellent--I'm not a survey expert--but congratulate you folks for an outstanding showing. Does this constitute a "mandate"? What is a "mandate"? Is a "mandate" even necessary if a majority of those willing to respond to repeated requests for feedback (;login: articles, sage-members and sage-announce emailings, SAGE News comments as they used to be carried on the web page, discussions at BoFs at conferences, email sent directly to Board members, etc.) have indicated a desire for this? I am, by nature, a consensus-builder. I wish I could get unanimous support for everything. Not likely to ever occur in SAGE on this topic. I am proud of the other 6 members of this Board for their courage and willingness in tackling the issue. I welcome this discussion, in this forum and any other. If we on the Board can be convinced that the majority really feel differently from the way it has thus far been displayed to us, we would of course have to review our decision. -- Hal Miller President, SAGE Board of Directors halm@usenix.org From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 01:26:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA22736 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 01:26:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from minotaur.gnutec.com (minotaur.nai.net [208.133.173.216]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA22727; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 01:26:22 -0800 (PST) Received: by minotaur.gnutec.com (MYOB) id EAA26191; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 04:21:32 -0500 Message-Id: <199802230921.EAA26191@minotaur.gnutec.com> Received: by minotaur.gnutec.com via smtp (MYOB) id xma026189; Mon, 23 Feb 98 04:20:51 -0500 Received: from localhost (amonk@localhost) by bogushost.gnutec.com (MYOB) with SMTP id EAA15958; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 04:20:10 -0500 Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 04:20:09 -0500 (EST) From: Kyle Amon Reply-To: Kyle Amon To: zwicky cc: Pat Wilson , sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Give 'em hell, Elizabeth! I read your piece on this subject an issue or two back in login; and was quite impressed with your obvious cogency, a thing which no myopic "seal of authority" will ever be able to quantify or confer. Much of any "profession" (including ours) consists of a rather purile set of circumstances and corresponding activities which nearly any barely capable member of our species could likely achieve "certification" in due to classical conditioning alone. It's how well one manipulates the known in reference to the unknown that distinguishes the truely proficient from the sedulous, salivating, "certified" rabble. One can stick a USDA "seal of quality beef" on all the cow shit one wants, but it's going to remain cow shit every time. Paper is and always has been paper; it's enduring value can be ascertained only from the words placed upon it... and I'm relatively certain that our great libraries have throughout history been appropriately devoid of volumes of certifications. The desire to "certify" was, is and always will be little more than a grasp for power by the very few over the very many. For if the "certifiers" among us truely believed in their own dogma, they would realize that in the absence of their arrogant, pretentious and self-apointed "authority", they themselves have no real "credentials", save their presumed "devine right", with which to serve as the grand dispensers of competency, or perhaps more appropriately, "membership", without which there's really no way (and certainly no "justification") to keep all those goddamn nigger, christian, jew, little ender, unpedigreed heathens out of our country club, right boys! :-)/:-( What an arrogant little species we are. I look in the mirror and am disgusted with a "membership" I can not cancel. - Kyle P.S. Face it people, it's all just nomenclature (ie. still cow shit). Even prostitutes are "professionals", whether you like it or not. Try cracking a dictionary once in a while. A racket is a racket by any other name. And when your're dead, nobody's gonna save your dumb ass certifications. And if you think you can hang them on the walls of heaven because the church sold you some "certified" immortality, then I've got an unused pair of Emperor's New Clothes I'll sell you for only $500, complete with certificate of authenticity. P.P.S. Yeah, I know, "revoke his membership!" because it's pretty clear he snuck into our country club, huh. Well, although I'm generally pleased with my USENIX/SAGE memberships, I really don't give a damn because I hang all my certificates on the bathroom wall in case I run out of toilet-paper... and you can cut a slaves fingers off for learning to read and write, but you can't make him forget how it's done. Kyle Amon email: amonk@raleigh.ibm.com Unix Systems Administrator phone: (203) 486-3290 Security Specialist pager: 1-800-759-8888 PIN 1616512 IBM Global Services or 1616512@skymail.com email: amonk@gnutec.com url: http://www.gnutec.com/kyle KeyID 1024/173D96C9 Fingerprint = 90 4F 0B D4 2D 37 E7 61 1A 31 7B F2 72 04 66 1A ________ _______ ________ ________ __ __ / ______/ / ____ \ / ______/ / ______/ / \ / / / /_____ / /____/ / / /_____ / /_____ / /\ \/ / / ______/ / __ ___/ / ______/ / ______/ /_/ \__/ / / / / \ \ / /_____ / /_____ ________ /_/ /_/ \_\ /_______/ /_______/ / ____ / __ __ _______ __ __ ______ __ / /___/ / __ / / _/_/ / _____/ / / / / /_ __/ /\ / / /_______/ / \ / /_/_/ / /____ / / / / / / / \ / / __ __ | | / _ / / _____/ / / _/_/ / / / /\ \/ / / /_ / / \/ / / \ \ / /____ \ \_/_/ __/ /_ / / \ / ( (/_\/ / /_/ \_\ /______/ \__/ /_____/ /_/ \/ \_/ \_/ () A man denied legal counsel, held without bail or trial, is a political prisoner in any country, especially the United States of America! http://www.kevinmitnick.com http://www.2600.com/kevin On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, zwicky wrote: > > >During our January meeting, the SAGE Board did its annual planning and > >goal-setting exercise. Often, nothing earth-shattering occurs. This time, > >however, we took the Certification bull by the horns and have made a Plan. > > Exactly what is that plan? As in, what are its goals, its timelines, > and the people who're carrying it out? What's in this e-mail is > > >We kept coming back to the mission statement phrase "advancement of systems > >administration as a profession" and what that implies. After a rather > >vociferous debate we agreed (some more cheerfully than others) that a > >"profession" entails certification - careers without such things are > >generally referred to as "trades" (think of the difference between > >MDs and morticians, for example). > > Doctors are not certified. They are *degreed* and > *licensed*. A brief review of the web turns up the information > that being a mortician requires a license, which in turn requires > both an apprenticeship and a mortuary science degree, which in turn > requires an undergraduate degree, preferably in biology -- so the > difference between MDs and morticians appears to be mostly that one > of them works with dead people, which is lower status than working > with live people. Also that one of them requires even more time > in education and apprenticeship than the other, but note that the > one you call a trade requires 6 years more of education, 2 more degrees, > and 1 more apprenticeship than system administration. It looks like > we have a long way to go. > > This is one of the world's poorest arguments, on a whole bunch of fronts. > Give it up. > > Here are some believable arguments in favor of certification: > 1) It provides employers, who are not often knowledgeable about > system administration, with an objective standard of evaluation. > 2) It provides system administrators with a way of objectively > evaluating their own skills. > 3) It provides a basis for educational programs. > 4) It's a whole lot cheaper than a college degree, and provides > some of the same advantages to its holders. > 5) A number of people are easily impressed by certificates. Why > shouldn't we get to impress them, too? > > Elizabeth Zwicky > From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 08:28:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA10902 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 08:28:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA10893 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 08:28:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA23486; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:25:13 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA03225; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:25:14 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA23046; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:25:13 -0600 Message-Id: <199802231625.KAA23046@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Low/No Cost Unix Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:25:12 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Yes, I've seen several versions of Free BSD, Linux, etc. It really boils down to what the corporate structure is willing to trust. I know, as an SA, I would never reccommend Linux or some other free OS to be used in my shop. With 100+ users that produce a product that brings in billions of $$'s to the company, I would NEVER put that on the shoulders of a free OS. Can I call up a team of engineers at Red Hat if I have a problem? Sun is always there for me. I can depend on it. Yes, I'll pay for that. But again, Unix is in the big shop, where the application needs real power. So, our focus turns to the smaller shops. Can they, and will they, spend the money for a commercialy released and supported Unix? Do they even need it? NT will get the job done just as well. Fileserver applications, not number crunching or data processing. Unix will always reign supreme in DP. But NT is very capable of driving a PC network in the corporate world. Why would I put linux on all of those desktops? I would not. So, where would I use Linux, Free BSD, etc.? Not in my DP shop. Not on my desktops. Where? Scott Will pay for Unix. From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 10:43:49 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA17398 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:43:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from achilles.noc.ntua.gr (achilles.noc.ntua.gr [147.102.222.210]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA17389 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:43:45 -0800 (PST) Received: by achilles.noc.ntua.gr via NTUAnet with ESMTP id UAA04662 ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:40:30 +0200 (EET) Received: by softlab.ece.ntua.gr with ESMTP id UAA04948 at Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:40:29 +0200 (EET) Received: by softlab.ece.ntua.gr [client - phgasos] id UAA16124 at Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:40:28 +0200 (EET) Message-ID: <19980223204028.36334@cs.ntua.gr> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 20:40:28 +0200 From: Yiorgos Adamopoulos To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you Reply-To: adamo@cs.ntua.gr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88e X-Organization: National Technical University of Athens, GREECE X-URL: http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr/~adamo/ X-Alt-Email: adamo@InterWorks.org X-Work-Phone: +30-1-772-1-402 X-Work-FAX: +30-1-772-1-442 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, Feb 18, 1998 at 02:29:20PM -0800, Dave Close wrote: > hardware design.) Perhaps the best contribution Usenix could make would > be to help develop such a curriculum, then leave it to the schools to > issue the diplomas. I agree to that! I have been an SA for over 5 years (OK I am not an oldtimer, I am 24), been a Network Manager for a Nation Wide network and exchange point. I also have a degree in Computer Engineering. Why should I (and others more qualified than me) need *any* kind of certification? I believe we are certified by experience, not by paper. I have also received from M$ a ridiculous diploma saying that I am certified to install/administer Exchange. I attended the seminar and my fees were payed by the Greek tax payers, and it was the greatest waste if public money I've seen. I (and many other attendees) knew more than the instructor. Do such seminars make M$ (or any other company that certifies) look better? --Yiorgos Adamopoulos -- mailto: -- adamo@cs.ntua.gr #include From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 11:33:46 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA19965 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:33:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from cgohpx02.nppd.com ([192.132.206.6]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA19955 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:33:40 -0800 (PST) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by cgohpx02.nppd.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id NAA11258 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:29:56 -0600 Received: from temp-cgoexg01.nppd.com(209.36.193.16) by cgohpx02.nppd.com via smap (V1.3) id smaa11250; Mon Feb 23 13:29:32 1998 Received: by temp-cgoexg01.nppdnet with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52) id <01BD405F.136D6890@temp-cgoexg01.nppdnet>; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:29:32 -0600 Message-ID: From: "Barron, Danny C." To: "'Scott Williams'" , "'sage-members@usenix.org'" Subject: RE: Low/No Cost Unix Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:29:31 -0600 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Well, we're using it for DNS,BOOTP, NNTP, NTTP, SMTP services. All these network centric services, where NT seems FAR less stable (believe me I know, for we have 25 NT servers and most of them go belly up every couple weeks (ie crash or become dog slow)). I don't think I'd want to run my business on NT :) None of those services above are business critical, though some are considered important. The Linux community is VERY supportive and I'd feel safe putting non-application/network functions on it. Where else in the world is a problem discovered and a patch issued in less than a week ? Dollars to doughnuts, that Linux was the first OS with patches in probably every case against various net attacks that came to CERT attention in the past year. Scott said: [snip] Why would I put linux on all of those desktops? I would not. So, where would I use Linux, Free BSD, etc.? Not in my DP shop. Not on my desktops. Where? Scott Will pay for Unix. From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 11:39:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA20380 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:39:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from achilles.noc.ntua.gr (achilles.noc.ntua.gr [147.102.222.210]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA20369 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:39:31 -0800 (PST) Received: by achilles.noc.ntua.gr via NTUAnet with ESMTP id VAA10224 ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 21:36:13 +0200 (EET) Received: by softlab.ece.ntua.gr with ESMTP id VAA07854 at Mon, 23 Feb 1998 21:36:11 +0200 (EET) Received: by softlab.ece.ntua.gr [client - phgasos] id VAA18084 at Mon, 23 Feb 1998 21:36:10 +0200 (EET) Message-ID: <19980223213610.34033@cs.ntua.gr> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 21:36:10 +0200 From: Yiorgos Adamopoulos To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix Reply-To: adamo@cs.ntua.gr References: <199802231625.KAA23046@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88e In-Reply-To: <199802231625.KAA23046@cws201.cat.jcp.com>; from Scott Williams on Mon, Feb 23, 1998 at 10:25:12AM -0600 X-Organization: National Technical University of Athens, GREECE X-URL: http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr/~adamo/ X-Alt-Email: adamo@InterWorks.org X-Work-Phone: +30-1-772-1-402 X-Work-FAX: +30-1-772-1-442 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, Feb 23, 1998 at 10:25:12AM -0600, Scott Williams wrote: > the corporate world. Why would I put linux on all of those desktops? I would > not. So, where would I use Linux, Free BSD, etc.? Not in my DP shop. Not on my > desktops. Where? Reliability and uptime is what *BSD + Linux give you, if you can speak their language ;-) > Scott > Will pay for Unix. --Yiorgos. Who pays for Unix -- mailto: -- adamo@cs.ntua.gr #include From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 11:52:48 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA21105 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:52:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from relay1.UU.NET (relay1.UU.NET [192.48.96.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA21096 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:52:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom8.netcom.com by relay1.UU.NET with ESMTP (peer crosschecked as: netcom8.netcom.com [192.100.81.117]) id QQedzz29049; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:49:28 -0500 (EST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom8.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id LAA13099; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:45:59 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802231945.LAA13099@netcom8.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:45:59 PST In-Reply-To: Hal Miller "cert discussion" (Feb 21, 9:58pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: Hal Miller , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hal-- I'm confused about a couple of apparently conflicting statements in your most recent message. Maybe you can clarify a couple of things for me and the lurking membership: You say that the Board DID NOT set out to: } - require certification for membership but then you later mention a problem that you're personally facing: } if I am faced (I've been there) with } 160+ applicants for a single junior position, I need something to help with } the preselection process. It seems to me that suddenly the certification IS a requirement, if somebody isn't going to get through the qualification process without it. And even if that's not the be-all and end-all for your hiring decision, you can be HR departments and recruiters are going to seize on this system and make it a tacit requirement. Also in the "Board DID NOT" category we have: } - establish a plan that would require people to pay anything to anyone and in the "Board is planning" column: } - agree to proceed toward a "single-topic" recognition program a la Pat } Wilson's Merit Badges } - agree to investigate ways of having a certification program administered } effectively and inexpensively I remain unconvinced that even a "single topic recognition program" will not require a significant financial investment on the part of our membership and their employers. Can you describe more completely your thoughts in this area? I also once again call on the Board to post the results of the survey to the mailing list. I don't believe it serves the discussion to have to wait two months until the next ;login: in order to see the results. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 12:52:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA23957 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 12:52:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from newmgr.haledorr.com (newmgr.haledorr.com [148.139.2.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA23948 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 12:52:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from haledorr.com ([148.139.4.108]) by newmgr.haledorr.com (Netscape Messaging Server 3.01) with ESMTP id AAA9772 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 15:47:54 -0500 Message-ID: <34F1E07A.A2D59057@haledorr.com> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 15:47:54 -0500 From: Sarah Sheehan Organization: Hale and Dorr LLP X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "sage-members@usenix.org" Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix References: <199802231625.KAA23046@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Scott Williams wrote: > > Yes, I've seen several versions of Free BSD, Linux, etc. It really boils down > to what the corporate structure is willing to trust. I know, as an SA, I would > never reccommend Linux or some other free OS to be used in my shop. With 100+ > users that produce a product that brings in billions of $$'s to the company, I > would NEVER put that on the shoulders of a free OS. Can I call up a team of > engineers at Red Hat if I have a problem? Sun is always there for me. I can > depend on it. Yes, I'll pay for that. But again, Unix is in the big shop, > where the application needs real power. So, our focus turns to the smaller > shops. Can they, and will they, spend the money for a commercialy released and > supported Unix? Do they even need it? NT will get the job done just as well. > Fileserver applications, not number crunching or data processing. Unix will > always reign supreme in DP. But NT is very capable of driving a PC network in > the corporate world. Why would I put linux on all of those desktops? I would > not. So, where would I use Linux, Free BSD, etc.? Not in my DP shop. Not on my > desktops. Where? > > Scott > Will pay for Unix. I'm also at a Sun shop and happy - but Linux runs on my home machines (Bill Gates doesn't get a dime from me) and I'm a total Linux fan. My husband uses Linux at work (very large international corporation) on several servers and they love it. Red Hat DOES provide support and there are tons of support sites on the web. Linux is so much more fully documented and worked with than other flavors that you'd find that you don't have to have the support from Red Hat that you may use from Sun. There are loads of apps and scripts and things for Linux on the Web - not so with Solaris - and the online documentation is strong. Go ahead. Try taking an old PC home (a 486 works fine) and loading Linux on it. You'll be glad you did and you just might find that free is far from useless. I love Linux, can you tell? -- ______________________________________________________________________ Hale and Dorr LLP Sarah Sheehan 617-526-5211 60 State Street Unix Systems Administrator 617-526-5000 FAX Boston, MA 02109 sarah.sheehan@haledorr.com http://www.haledorr.com From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 13:30:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA24961 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:30:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from amber.ccs.neu.edu (root@amber.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.111.100]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA24946 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:30:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from everest.ccs.neu.edu (root@everest.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.112.76]) by amber.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id QAA16449 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:27:13 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost.ccs.neu.edu (jay@localhost.ccs.neu.edu [127.0.0.1]) by everest.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id QAA06175 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:27:13 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802232127.QAA06175@everest.ccs.neu.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: everest.ccs.neu.edu: jay@localhost.ccs.neu.edu [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion From: Jay Sekora Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:27:12 -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hal Miller wrote: > I don't think that we are stuck working only one issue, though, and the > certification announcement is merely "progress" on a simultaneous > front. I'd like to point out that deciding to implement certification is only `progress' if you think it does more good than harm, which a lot of people seem to disagree with. Personally, I feel a bit like an AMA member who's just discovered that the AMA has decided to promote teen smoking, or (to make a closer and less extreme analogy) a trade union member who finds out that the union leadership is working to increase hours and decrease pay and job safety. > - agree to have a team of folks determine a set of Job Description Level > One items that are both "acceptably" common to most sysadmins and in > some way "measurable" That part I think would be useful - a kind of `what should you look for in a prospective employee' document. FWIW, j. Jay Sekora From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 13:36:48 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA25261 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:36:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from amber.ccs.neu.edu (root@amber.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.111.100]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA25252 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 13:36:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from everest.ccs.neu.edu (root@everest.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.112.76]) by amber.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id QAA16848 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:33:29 -0500 (EST) Received: from localhost.ccs.neu.edu (jay@localhost.ccs.neu.edu [127.0.0.1]) by everest.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id QAA07125 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:33:28 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802232133.QAA07125@everest.ccs.neu.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: everest.ccs.neu.edu: jay@localhost.ccs.neu.edu [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix From: Jay Sekora Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:33:27 -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Just a comment: With an OS where source code is available, a sufficiently large or well-motivated organization has the option of supporting the OS in-house. If Microsoft (say) won't fix a bug, you're stuck. With Linux or FreeBSD or whatever, you can fix it yourself. (And with Solaris, you could buy a source-code license and do the same - does anybody know if Microsoft will sell source-code licenses to their OSes?) Yes, that's very expensive, but I think it's a reasonable option for a mission-critical piece of infrastructure, and the existence of a public culture of people working on the freely-distributable OSes makes it somewhat cheaper than it would otherwise be. Jay Sekora From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 14:11:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA26995 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:11:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA26986 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 14:11:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA05774; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:08:22 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA06639; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:08:22 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA24070; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:08:20 -0600 Message-Id: <199802232208.QAA24070@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Low/No Cost Unix Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:08:20 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >> Can I call up a team of >> engineers at Red Hat if I have a problem? Sun is always there for me. I can >If you've bought RedHat Linux, yes. What do you think they're selling? >Linux? Give me a break - that's copyrighted software, with a license >which specifically proscribes selling it. The media? You're kidding, >right? I'm just saying that the level of trust is not there to put my shop's OS on a version of Unix like that. I never implied that you were purchasing Linux from Red Hat, just questioning their ability to provide effective support at the levels of Sun, HP, Digital, etc... >> depend on it. Yes, I'll pay for that. But again, Unix is in the big shop, >> where the application needs real power. So, our focus turns to the smaller >> shops. Can they, and will they, spend the money for a commercialy released and >> supported Unix? Do they even need it? NT will get the job done just as well. >Oh, really? You must have a version of NT I've never seen... > >Ed Probably not. I would never question Your expertise. But really, you should have included the rest of my response, where I said that NT can get the job done as a fileserver, in a small shop environment. I've seen NT on a Compaq 1500 support 200 users in a small publishing shop, very well. They were using Interleaf, and it was very intensive for that level. NT worked great. I'm not saying that Unix would not work better, oh quite the opposite. Unix installed doing the same thing would be fantastic. But, equipment, software, installation, support costs were factors. Unix would have been almost $460k and NT cost $212k. The NT route was chosen. No regrets. I would, however, question NT's ability to control a DP environment. Scott From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 15:51:27 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA01444 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 15:51:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from mpdgw2.symbios.com (mpdgw2.symbios.com [204.131.200.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA01431 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 15:51:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (from root@localhost) by mpdgw2.symbios.com (8.6.8.1/8.6.6) id QAA05082 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:47:32 -0700 Received: from aztec.co.symbios.com(153.72.199.214) by mpdgw2.symbios.com via smap (V1.3) id sma004932; Mon Feb 23 16:47:11 1998 Received: from zek.co.symbios.com (quentinj@zek.co.symbios.com [153.72.240.235]) by Symbios.COM (8.6.8.1/8.6.6) with ESMTP id QAA21532 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:47:09 -0700 Received: (from quentinj@localhost) by zek.co.symbios.com (8.7.6/8.7.1) id QAA05455; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:46:11 -0700 (MST) Message-ID: <19980223164611.51781@co.symbios.com> Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:46:11 -0700 From: Quentin.Johnson@Symbios.COM To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix Reply-To: Quentin.Johnson@Symbios.COM References: <199802232133.QAA07125@everest.ccs.neu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88 X-Mailer: Godzilla versus KingKong 1.2 (curses; BigOS 4.5) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Here's an article about some folks that decided to sink or swim with Linux...glug glug... http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue46/2494.html Quent Johnson From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 18:55:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA08877 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 18:55:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from bluenote.ccrwest.org (smap@bluenote.ccrwest.org [192.203.205.129]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA08868 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 18:55:26 -0800 (PST) Received: by bluenote.ccrwest.org (4.1/CCRWEST-I1.19) id AA03398; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:38:58 PST Received: from ccrwest.ccrwest.org(192.203.205.65) by bluenote.ccrwest.org via smap (V1.3) id sma003396; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:38:44 -0800 Received: from poco.ccrwest.org by ccrwest.ccrwest.org (4.1/CCRWEST-2.11) id AA28238; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:37:24 PST Received: by poco.ccrwest.org (4.1/ccrwest-1.6) id AA01373; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:37:23 PST Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:37:23 PST From: Rich Schultz Message-Id: <199802240137.AA01373@poco.ccrwest.org> To: hal@tera.tera.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hal Miller writes: > We did: > - agree to have a team of folks determine a set of Job Description Level > One items that are both "acceptably" common to most sysadmins and in > some way "measurable" sufficiently to come up with a program that can > result in a certification at a rather basic level of system administration This is a key problem with certification: you can easily measure what is less important, but it is difficult to measure those traits that make a good system administrator. For example, are you a good problem solver? Are you self-directed, diligent and meticulous? Do you learn new things quickly? Do you communicate well with both experts and novices? I have yet to see a written or oral exam that can measure these well. On the other hand, if you work with someone for a while, at least six months, you can probably answer all these questions about her. We already use this form of certification and we call it "references". > I'm afraid that without some such program in > place, altogether too many employers will insist on one of the vendor- > specific certifications as a condition of hiring, without understanding > what those really mean/don't mean. I see our allowing that to occur without > some effort to supply a better alternative as a disservice to our membership. An alternative is to educate employers about what these certifications mean and don't mean. The SAGE Jobs Descriptions booklet was a fantastic piece of employer education. The forthcoming booklet on hiring and interview practices might be an appropriate place for some employer eduation on the (f)utility of certification. Rich Schultz certifiably uncertifiable rich@ccrwest.org From sage-members-owner Mon Feb 23 22:17:26 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA17984 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 22:17:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from acli.interlog.com (0@acli.interlog.com [198.53.146.23]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA17968 for ; Mon, 23 Feb 1998 22:17:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from acli@localhost by acli.interlog.com id <44799-26711>; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 01:13:32 -0500 Message-ID: <19980224011331.44343@ada.acli.interlog.com> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 01:13:31 -0500 From: Ambrose Li To: Scott Williams Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix References: <199802232208.QAA24070@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.81 In-Reply-To: <199802232208.QAA24070@cws201.cat.jcp.com>; from Scott Williams on Mon, Feb 23, 1998 at 04:08:20PM -0600 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, Feb 23, 1998 at 04:08:20PM -0600, Scott Williams wrote: > > I'm just saying that the level of trust is not there to put my shop's OS on a > version of Unix like that. I never implied that you were purchasing Linux from > Red Hat, just questioning their ability to provide effective support at the > levels of Sun, HP, Digital, etc... Probably, but they surely can provide effective support at a higher level than Microsoft. > Probably not. I would never question Your expertise. But really, you should > have included the rest of my response, where I said that NT can get the job > done as a fileserver, in a small shop environment. I've seen NT on a Compaq > 1500 support 200 users in a small publishing shop, very well. They were using I work in a publishing shop too. One of our NT boxes's clock just gained one day this morning mysteriously; three departments complained about the time problem. Our other office's NT4 servers periodically lose all their network connections. Our NT boxes's mouse periodically dies (while the Linux boxes, which share the same mouse, never had this problem). It's this kind of little (or not so little) annoyances that make you wonder if NT really is up to the job of providing effective file service. It also depends on what you have on your network. If you have PCs running Netware clients, PCs running Microsoft clients, and Macs, NT is not the most elegant file serving solution. A Linux (and I believe any Unix) box can be configured to serve all these machines in a way that doesn't degrade system stability. -- Ambrose Li > home > acli@acli.interlog.com > http://www.interlog.com/~acli/ > work > acli@mingpaoxpress.com > permanent > ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca > Microsoft is not the answer > Microsoft is the question > No is the answer From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 07:47:08 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA12893 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 07:47:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA12884 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 07:47:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA01020; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:43:50 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA22719; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:43:49 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA26231; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:42:58 -0600 Message-Id: <199802241542.JAA26231@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: More Low/No Cost Unix Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:42:45 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Okay, many responses to my comments. When I had to decide (or reccommend) Unix or NT, my reccomendation was for Unix. This was shot down because of cost and NT was implimented. (NT 3.51) At that time, 2 years ago, Linux was free, you could download it from many ftp sites, but the instructions and documentation were very lacking. You were basicaly on your own. Not an option. Now, I'm at a different shop, with Sun boxes in the computer room and Sparc20's on every desktop. Needless to say, I'm in hog heaven with Solaris 2.5.1. I've seen Linux grow fast and furious, but not to the point where I would put my job, career, and future on the line by giving it my endorsement for use here. But hey, times change really fast in this field, and I'm always open to evaluate technologies. Sarah, Jay, and the others have convinced me to get an old scrap 486DX and build a Linux box. I'll do this at home and play with it. We'll see. But my position at this time still stands that it is too risky to use in my shop. But that's only my opinion, not a standard call to shoot down Linux. I don't have a team of programmers to edit code at my disposal. There's only me, my manager, an NT guy, Help Desk (local apps) and a printer tech. If I can't figure something out, I have to call Sun. I depend on it. I'm just an SA, not a programmer. I've always had great response from them, and they've always fixed my problems. But again, I'm on Solaris with all Sun equipment. Nothing bizzare or adapted. Rather turnkey. And, I've always got great support from Microsoft. Again, Intel boxes on NT running Office. Pretty turnkey. We also have top level service contracts from both. It's expensive, but well worth it. You get what you pay for. Spend the bucks, and it really lowers your stress and problems. Go the cheap route, and you have to "rig" things, tweak things, mess with things, and generally run around in circles trying to keep your shop running. No thanks. Now, I'm not saying that it is like this everywhere. No, every shop is different. Just my experience, here at this shop. My last shop, and HA environment, was a nightmare. But the crux of all that boiled down to a 100 series Sun Storage Array running Prestoserve. Was supposed to be turnkey but was a real piece of shit. Another story, another time. Scott Paid alot for Unix From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 07:46:56 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA12851 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 07:46:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from sass165.sandia.gov (mailgate.sandia.gov [132.175.109.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA12831 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 07:46:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from dancer.csu890.sandia.gov (dancer.csu890.sandia.gov [134.253.224.23]) by sass165.sandia.gov (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id IAA26810 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 08:43:34 -0700 (MST) Received: from wombat.sensor (wombat.csu890.sandia.gov [134.253.224.72]) by dancer.csu890.sandia.gov (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA13487 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 08:43:27 -0700 (MST) Received: by wombat.sensor (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id IAA04609; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 08:43:25 -0700 Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 08:43:25 -0700 From: cmconwa@sandia.gov (Christopher M. Conway) Message-Id: <980224084324.ZM4607@wombat> In-Reply-To: Ambrose Li "Re: Low/No Cost Unix" (Feb 24, 1:13) References: <199802232208.QAA24070@cws201.cat.jcp.com> <19980224011331.44343@ada.acli.interlog.com> X-Mailer: Z-Mail (4.0.1 13Jan97) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk = On Mon, Feb 23, 1998 at 04:08:20PM -0600, Scott Williams wrote: = > = > I'm just saying that the level of trust is not there to put my shop's OS on a = > version of Unix like that. I never implied that you were purchasing Linux from = > Red Hat, just questioning their ability to provide effective support at the = > levels of Sun, HP, Digital, etc... = = Probably, but they surely can provide effective support at a higher level = than Microsoft. Working at a house that has Sun and HP support, I can say that I find tha term ("support") laughable. I've yet to get anything useful out of them. For that matter, I never got anything useful out of Digital support when I was in a shop that had a contract for that. By and large, I've found that I generally know more about the software than the support people do; the kind of problems that I can't handle easily seem to be things they can't handle at all. The answer's I've gotten from Sun, HP, and Digital support tend to be the same as you get from MicroSloth: "reboot." I've even gotten "reinstall the software" occasionally. Frankly, I don't think it's hard to provide better support than any of the big companies. And, of course, a trained monkey could provide better support than MicroSloth does. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't run *BSD* or Linux in a production environment. I've been running Linux with several-week uptimes at home (it gets brought down so that something (largely games) can be run under MS-DOG or Losedows, not because it has problems). Remember that *BSD* comes from the same people who brought you BSD Unix, particularly the 4.x varieties which are what SunOS 4 and ULTRIX 4 are. I'd trust them a *lot* quicker than I'd trust MicroSloth crapware. And it's *MUCH* cheaper (hardware costs: less (UNIX is much friendlier about using your resources-- try running NT on a 486 with 8MB memory); OS costs: infinitely less ($0 vs. $?100+ *per machine*)). And you get *free* support from the net from people much more capable than any of those that work for the big companies, because they're either the people that *wrote* the software, or are sysadmins like us. -- Christopher M. Conway U*IX and C Guru Don't Tread on Me cmconwa@sandia.gov wombat@prickly-wombat.com We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately. I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy. From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 09:02:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA16865 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:02:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from pathfinder.com (relay.pathfinder.com [204.71.242.18]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA16849 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:02:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from frodo.dev.pathfinder.com.pathfinder.com (frodo.dev.pathfinder.com [204.71.243.152]) by pathfinder.com (*private*/SMI-SVR4) with SMTP id LAA07939; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:58:18 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: relay.pathfinder.com: Host frodo.dev.pathfinder.com [204.71.243.152] claimed to be frodo.dev.pathfinder.com.pathfinder.com Received: by frodo.dev.pathfinder.com.pathfinder.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id LAA14837; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:58:17 -0500 From: larsenc@pathfinder.com (Cliff Larsen (Pathfinder)) Message-Id: <199802241658.LAA14837@frodo.dev.pathfinder.com.pathfinder.com> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:58:16 -0500 (EST) To: Quentin.Johnson@Symbios.COM Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re[2]: Low/No Cost Unix In-Reply-To: <19980223164611.51781@co.symbios.com> X-Mailer: Ishmail 1.3.2-970721-sol MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Quentin.Johnson@Symbios.COM wrote on Mon, 23 Feb 1998 16:46:11 -0700: > Here's an article about some folks that decided to sink or swim with > Linux...glug glug... > > http://www.linuxjournal.com/issue46/2494.html > > Quent Johnson For un-official OS approval survey results: http://electriclichen.com/linux/srom.html +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Cliff Larsen | Systems Administrator | | cdl@alum.mit.edu | Time Inc., New Media | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 10:10:26 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA20256 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 10:10:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from amber.ccs.neu.edu (root@amber.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.111.100]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA20247 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 10:10:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from dilithium.ccs.neu.edu (dilithium.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.114.108]) by amber.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id NAA28999; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:07:07 -0500 (EST) Received: from dilithium.ccs.neu.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dilithium.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id NAA29365; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:07:06 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802241807.NAA29365@dilithium.ccs.neu.edu> Cc: Scott Williams To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: More Low/No Cost Unix From: Jay Sekora Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:07:04 -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Sarah, Jay, and the others have convinced me to get an old scrap > 486DX and build a Linux box. Just one quick additional comment: I'm much more familiar with Linux, but I understand that the NFS and NIS code in FreeBSD is supposed to be more reliable than that in Linux. -j. From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 11:04:30 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA23092 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:04:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from newmgr.haledorr.com (newmgr.haledorr.com [148.139.2.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA23074 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:04:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from haledorr.com ([148.139.4.108]) by newmgr.haledorr.com (Netscape Messaging Server 3.01) with ESMTP id AAA3560 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 14:00:31 -0500 Message-ID: <34F318CF.42D3FE5C@haledorr.com> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 14:00:31 -0500 From: Sarah Sheehan Organization: Hale and Dorr LLP X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: More Low/No Cost Unix References: <199802241542.JAA26231@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Scott Williams wrote: > > Sarah, Jay, and the others have convinced me to get an old scrap > 486DX and build a Linux box. I'll do this at home and play with it. We'll see. > > Scott > Paid alot for Unix Ahhh. I can now almost understand how Bill Gates feels when 1 more person inhales the evil Microsoft spores and becomes infected with the NT virus. Welcome to Linux, Scott, home computing the way it should be. (though I, too, am mighty pleased typing here at work on an Ultra running 2.5.1/CDE) Back to some sort of on-topic topic - How many out there are working on Solaris 2.6 and what are you running into at your shops? -- ______________________________________________________________________ Hale and Dorr LLP Sarah Sheehan 617-526-5211 60 State Street Unix Systems Administrator 617-526-5000 FAX Boston, MA 02109 sarah.sheehan@haledorr.com http://www.haledorr.com From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 11:33:35 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA24989 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:33:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA24979 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 11:33:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id NAA19107; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:30:07 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id NAA16511; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:30:08 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id NAA26610; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:30:07 -0600 Message-Id: <199802241930.NAA26610@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: ED--->Compaq 1500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 13:30:06 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >Btw, what is a 'Compaq 1500'? They don't seem to refer to anything by this >tag (they have an 'Armada 1500' series, but considering those are notebooks, >I'd think only a looney would relegate it to being a fileserver). Some >specs for the machine could be useful for ... Oh, wait. Forgot about the >ban on Useful Information. Nevermind. >Ed A couple of years ago, when we bought this server, it was a Compaq 1500R Rackmount Pentium Server. It had hot-swap drives and was about the size of a 'fridge, case and all. We put some DLT's in it for backup, it had a keyboard and monitor tray, and the door was smoked glass so you could lock it and still see the monitor. Pretty nice for the price. Less than $20k fully built. If I remember correctly, it had dual P5 166, 128Mb RAM, Ultra SCSI III, blah, blah, all the bells and whistles of that time. Still up and running. Scott Useful Information provided upon Request From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 15:56:31 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA10515 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:56:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from jester.ti.com (jester.ti.com [192.94.94.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA10506 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 15:56:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from raptor.mtc.ti.com ([156.117.62.48]) by jester.ti.com (8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA08768; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:52:43 -0600 (CST) Received: from neptune.mtc.ti.com (neptune.mtc.ti.com [156.117.62.225]) by raptor.mtc.ti.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id RAA09568; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 17:52:38 -0600 (CST) Received: (from edgrimm@localhost) by neptune.mtc.ti.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id QAA28914; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 16:49:25 -0600 From: Edward Grimm Message-Id: <199802242249.QAA28914@neptune.mtc.ti.com> Subject: Re: ED--->Compaq 1500 In-Reply-To: <199802241930.NAA26610@cws201.cat.jcp.com> from Scott Williams at "Feb 24, 98 01:30:06 pm" To: swill41@jcpenney.com (Scott Williams) Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 16:49:25 -0600 (CST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL25 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Scott Williams wrote: > >>Btw, what is a 'Compaq 1500'? They don't seem to refer to anything by this >>tag (they have an 'Armada 1500' series, but considering those are notebooks, >>I'd think only a looney would relegate it to being a fileserver). Some >>specs for the machine could be useful for ... Oh, wait. Forgot about the >>ban on Useful Information. Nevermind. > > A couple of years ago, when we bought this server, it was a Compaq 1500R > Rackmount Pentium Server. It had hot-swap drives and was about the size of a > 'fridge, case and all. We put some DLT's in it for backup, it had a keyboard > and monitor tray, and the door was smoked glass so you could lock it and still > see the monitor. Pretty nice for the price. Less than $20k fully built. If I > remember correctly, it had dual P5 166, 128Mb RAM, Ultra SCSI III, blah, blah, > all the bells and whistles of that time. Still up and running. Right. And this says what about NT's performance? Either they REALLY over-bought, they need a lot more disk space than what seems reasonable to me, or NT's not comparable performace to free unix. Ed From sage-members-owner Tue Feb 24 18:17:11 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA26191 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 18:17:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from acli.interlog.com (0@acli.interlog.com [198.53.146.23]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA26182 for ; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 18:17:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from acli@localhost by acli.interlog.com id <44802-26711>; Tue, 24 Feb 1998 21:13:39 -0500 Message-ID: <19980224211338.08303@ada.acli.interlog.com> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 21:13:38 -0500 From: Ambrose Li To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix References: <199802232208.QAA24070@cws201.cat.jcp.com> <19980224011331.44343@ada.acli.interlog.com> <980224084324.ZM4607@wombat> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.81 In-Reply-To: <980224084324.ZM4607@wombat>; from Christopher M. Conway on Tue, Feb 24, 1998 at 08:43:25AM -0700 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, Feb 24, 1998 at 08:43:25AM -0700, Christopher M. Conway wrote: > Working at a house that has Sun and HP support, I can say that I find tha > term ("support") laughable. I've yet to get anything useful out of them. [snip] I'm definitely biased here: but from what I have seen from my other jobs, people with support contracts usually call in support to repair hardware/ install/configure stuff. I obviously don't have an idea of what other kind of support I should expect. (Bug reports? I got flamed once for submitting a bug report.) I have heard stupid things spoken by IBM (AIX) support, but I have seen too little to extrapolate. > I don't see any reason why you shouldn't run *BSD* or Linux in a production > environment. I've been running Linux with several-week uptimes at home (it > gets brought down so that something (largely games) can be run under > MS-DOG or Losedows, not because it has problems). Remember that *BSD* comes > from the same people who brought you BSD Unix, particularly the 4.x > varieties which are what SunOS 4 and ULTRIX 4 are. [snip] For some opinion from the opposite side, using Linux of course won't guarantee anyone trouble-free-ness. Our main Linux server has been having quite a lot of recurring problems; but then the problems are so consistent that the hardware is probably the culprit, so not using Linux wouldn't have helped me :) Random problems also have brought down my other Linux boxes, but then, other random problems also have brought down NT boxes (with strange consequences, like losing some important network settings). Anyway, my shop's Internet services totally depend on Linux since more than a year ago. -- Ambrose Li > home > acli@acli.interlog.com > http://www.interlog.com/~acli/ > work > acli@mingpaoxpress.com > permanent > ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca > Microsoft is not the answer > Microsoft is the question > No is the answer From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 06:58:15 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA00273 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 06:58:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from yorktown.paranet.com (yorktown.paranet.com [199.164.131.34]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA00221 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 06:57:53 -0800 (PST) Received: by yorktown.paranet.com; id IAA23026; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:54:03 -0600 (CST) Received: from farragut.srv.paranet.com(172.16.3.35) by yorktown.paranet.com via smap (V3.1.1) id xma022993; Wed, 25 Feb 98 08:53:43 -0600 Received: from chunx.nol.mobil.com (pppsrv02.srv.paranet.com [172.16.3.4]) by farragut.srv.paranet.com (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id IAA24208 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:53:39 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199802251453.IAA24208@farragut.srv.paranet.com> X-Sender: bamorris@general.srv.paranet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:44:36 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Brad Morrison Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix In-Reply-To: <199802232133.QAA07125@everest.ccs.neu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 04:33 PM 2/23/98 -0500, Jay Sekora wrote: >Just a comment: With an OS where source code is available, a >sufficiently large or well-motivated organization has the option of >supporting the OS in-house. If Microsoft (say) won't fix a bug, you're >stuck. With Linux or FreeBSD or whatever, you can fix it yourself. >(And with Solaris, you could buy a source-code license and do the same >- does anybody know if Microsoft will sell source-code licenses to >their OSes?) Yes, I know. No, they won't. Most in-house developers would like more of clue, But the truth is, they don't. Wasn't there a joint MS-Sun press conference a couple of months back where Gates said they'd fully support Java if Sun put it into the public domain, then McNealy said he'd release Java completely if MS would just release documentation on their Windoze interfaces? I think that MS releasing *any* source code--for any price--would be tantamount to the opening of the seventh seal. -- "Press to test." (click) "Release to detonate." Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet "Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." --Napoleon Hill From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 08:15:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA03983 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:15:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA03974 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:15:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id LAA09221; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:08:36 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251608.LAA09221@ocee.groupsys.com> To: Dave Close cc: Pat Wilson , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:29:20 PST." <199802182229.OAA30814@compata.compata.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:08:36 -0500 From: William LeFebvre Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Dave Close wrote: > Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 14:29:20 PST > From: Dave Close > To: Pat Wilson > Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you > We have lots of certification programs already. Most of them are called > college degrees. Took the words right out of my mouth. In my personal and humble opinion, the best "certification" that SAGE could develop would be one based on college degrees. All other professions start with some form of bachelor's degree, whether they eventually require separate certification, licensing, apprenticeships, or what have you. Why not systems administration? William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting +1 770 813 3224 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 08:27:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA04647 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:27:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA04620 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:27:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id LAA09264; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:23:53 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251623.LAA09264@ocee.groupsys.com> To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) cc: Hal Miller , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:45:59 PST." <199802231945.LAA13099@netcom8.netcom.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:23:53 -0500 From: William LeFebvre Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk You wrote: > Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 11:45:59 PST > From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) > To: Hal Miller , sage-members@usenix.ORG > Subject: Re: cert discussion > You say that the Board DID NOT set out to: > > } - require certification for membership > > but then you later mention a problem that you're personally facing: > > } if I am faced (I've been there) with > } 160+ applicants for a single junior position, I need something to help with > } the preselection process. > > It seems to me that suddenly the certification IS a requirement, if > somebody isn't going to get through the qualification process without it. I belive Hal (and the board) was referring to requiring certification for SAGE membership. As in, you would not need to be certified just to be a member of SAGE. Clearly one of the primary purposes of certification is to help employers distinguish between knowledge levels in a pool of applicants. How well any sort of certification can do that is, obviously, hotly debated. William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting +1 770 813 3224 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 08:31:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA04867 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:31:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA04858 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:31:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id LAA09273; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:27:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251627.LAA09273@ocee.groupsys.com> To: Rich Schultz cc: hal@tera.tera.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:37:23 PST." <199802240137.AA01373@poco.ccrwest.org> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:27:14 -0500 From: William LeFebvre Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Rich Schultz wrote: > yet to see a written or oral exam that can measure these well. On the > other hand, if you work with someone for a while, at least six months, you > can probably answer all these questions about her. We already use this > form of certification and we call it "references". Unfortunately, in our ever increasingly litigous society, a non-trivial number of former employers are now adopting policies with prevent any sort of meaningful references from being given. I know of one former employer who, by organizational policy, was prohibited from saying anything beyond "yes he worked for me from this date to that date." William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting +1 770 813 3224 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 09:24:35 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA07647 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:24:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from polya.mts.jhu.edu (root@polya.mts.jhu.edu [128.220.17.38]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA07630 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:24:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by polya.mts.jhu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA18475; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:19:40 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251719.MAA18475@polya.mts.jhu.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: polya.mts.jhu.edu: bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: William LeFebvre cc: Dave Close , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:08:36 EST." <199802251608.LAA09221@ocee.groupsys.com> From: Bill Bogstad Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:19:39 -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk William LeFebvre wrote: Dave Close wrote: >> We have lots of certification programs already. Most of them are called >> college degrees. > >Took the words right out of my mouth. In my personal and humble >opinion, the best "certification" that SAGE could develop would be one >based on college degrees. All other professions start with some form >of bachelor's degree, whether they eventually require separate >certification, licensing, apprenticeships, or what have you. Why >not systems administration? Yes, a college degree is helpful for many jobs and is unlikely to hurt much in any job. However, what degree? In recent reporting in the news about the lack of skilled IT staff and the dearth of CS majors, one point which I've seen reported (albeit rarely) is that only about 25% of people working in IT have a CS degree. Even if you expand to include EE, CE, and similar degrees, I'd guess that you wouldn't find much more then 50% of working professionals have degrees that are remotely connected with IT. Now, I suppose that this could mean that 50% of the people working in the field are incompetent; but my personal experience is that the type of degree someone has is not that strongly coorrelated with their competence with IT systems. There are even a fair number who have no degree at all. I suspect that in system administration the percentage of working professionals with non-IT related (or no) degrees is higher; just because of the way that many people end up in system administration. If SAGE is trying to really become a guild in order to boost the prestige (and incomes) of it's current members then this may not matter. However, I think the large group of system administrators who came to this field via non-traditional routes will have a problem with this. They may not be members of SAGE yet, but I see no reason to alienate them. Bill Bogstad bogstad@pobox.com From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 09:32:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA08037 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:32:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from peak.org (root@PEAK.ORG [198.68.22.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA08028 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:32:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (sechrest@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by peak.org (8.8.5/8.6.7) with ESMTP id JAA12673; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:27:17 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802251727.JAA12673@peak.org> To: William LeFebvre Cc: Dave Close , Pat Wilson , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:08:36 EST. <199802251608.LAA09221@ocee.groupsys.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:27:17 -0800 From: (John Sechrest) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -------- Re: College Degrees. As someone who has organized System Administration Classes for many years at OSU, and helped get them started at PSU, I have found some specific things about System Administration as it relates to Universities: 1) Faculty in Computer Science in general do not appreciate what it takes to do system administration. It is looked down on. And as such, it took years to get system administration courses approved. This may be changing, but it was a signifcant battle. And as a result, getting even a "core curriculum" component that would give you a system administration minor seems to me to be a big job. 2) To do system administration WELL, you must marry several departments together. A good system adminstrator can: 1) program 2) reason 3) communicate in person 3a) communicate in writing 4) Manage people 5) cooperate 6) Manage finances Generally, these skills are really spread over several departments. Interdepartmental cooperation is often difficult. And degrees that rely on multiple departments often become hungry step-children with no resources. So.. Under what circumstances could you see a) A minor in System administration b) A department of System administration c) A faculty chair in System administration William LeFebvre writes: % Dave Close wrote: % > We have lots of certification programs already. Most of them are called % > college degrees. % Took the words right out of my mouth. In my personal and humble % opinion, the best "certification" that SAGE could develop would be one % based on college degrees. All other professions start with some form % of bachelor's degree, whether they eventually require separate % certification, licensing, apprenticeships, or what have you. Why % not systems administration? ----- John Sechrest . Helping people use PEAK - . computers and the Internet Public Electronic . more effectively Access to Knowledge,Inc . 850 SW 15th Street . Internet: sechrest@peak.org Corvallis Oregon 97331 . (541) 754-7325 . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 09:40:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA08511 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:40:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA08475 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:40:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id MAA09495; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:33:14 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251733.MAA09495@ocee.groupsys.com> To: Bill Bogstad cc: William LeFebvre , Dave Close , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:19:39 EST." <199802251719.MAA18475@polya.mts.jhu.edu> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:33:14 -0500 From: William LeFebvre Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Bill Bogstad wrote: > Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:19:39 EST > From: Bill Bogstad > To: William LeFebvre > Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you > Yes, a college degree is helpful for many jobs and is unlikely to hurt > much in any job. However, what degree? That is precisely the problem. The number of schools which offer curricula specifically designed for systems administration can be counted on one hand. This is largely due to the fact that the field is still in its infancy, even moreso than programming, software engineering or computer science. > In recent reporting in the news abou t > the lack of skilled IT staff and the dearth of CS majors, one point which I'v e > seen reported (albeit rarely) is that only about 25% of people working in IT > have a CS degree. Is this because degrees in general are not important to IT or because the traditional CS curriculum is largely not relevant to IT (and more specifically to SA)? I tend to think the latter. There are many things which college teaches you. Some of them are even realted to your field of study. :-) But unfortunately for systems administrators and other in Information Technology, almost none of it is specific to the field. > Even if you expand to include EE, CE, and similar degrees, > I'd guess that you wouldn't find much more then 50% of working professionals > have degrees that are remotely connected with IT. And compare this with other professional fields such as the engineering disciplines (electrical, mechanical, chemical, etc.), medicine, law, the sciences, etc. > Now, I suppose that this > could mean that 50% of the people working in the field are incompetent; but m y > personal experience is that the type of degree someone has is not that > strongly coorrelated with their competence with IT systems. There are even a > fair number who have no degree at all. I suspect that in system > administration the percentage of working professionals with non-IT related (o r > no) degrees is higher; just because of the way that many people end up in > system administration. It is partly to do with the fact that most SAs backed in to it. But I also maintain that it is partly because most degreed programs are largely irrelevant to IT and especially to systems administration. > If SAGE is trying to really become a guild in order to boost the > prestige (and incomes) of it's current members then this may not matter. > However, I think the large group of system administrators who came to this > field via non-traditional routes will have a problem with this. They may not > be members of SAGE yet, but I see no reason to alienate them. No need for them to feel alienated. How can they be expected to have obtained a formal education when no mechanism existed for them to receive one? I learned more about Unix from the guy I shared an office with than from any class I attended (and I was in undergraduate and graduate studies for 9 years). All I'm saying is that at the present time promoting the idea of a bachelor's level systems administration curricula will do far more to further our field as a profession than certification will. I'm not saying that we should completely abandon the idea of certification. I am saying that given the infancy of the profession, education would be a better priority. Again, all my personal opinion. William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting +1 770 813 3224 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 09:42:03 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA08673 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:42:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA08664 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:42:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id MAA09518; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:38:43 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251738.MAA09518@ocee.groupsys.com> To: sechrest@peak.org (John Sechrest) cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:27:17 PST." <199802251727.JAA12673@peak.org> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:38:43 -0500 From: William LeFebvre Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk John Sechrest wrote: > Generally, these skills are really spread over > several departments. > > Interdepartmental cooperation is often difficult. > And degrees that rely on multiple departments > often become hungry step-children with no > resources. Roll the clock back about 20 years.... Sound familiar? It does to me. Except the topic was "computer science" and not "systems administration". > So.. Under what circumstances could you see > a) A minor in System administration > b) A department of System administration > c) A faculty chair in System administration Are you saying that these are not reasonable goals? I'm not sure that a separate department would be necessary or viable, but certainly as a corner of computer science or computer engineering it is more than appropriate. William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting +1 770 813 3224 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 09:52:35 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA09387 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:52:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from peak.org (root@PEAK.ORG [198.68.22.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA09375 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:52:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (sechrest@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by peak.org (8.8.5/8.6.7) with ESMTP id JAA16375; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:47:37 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802251747.JAA16375@peak.org> To: William LeFebvre Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:38:43 EST. <199802251738.MAA09518@ocee.groupsys.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:47:35 -0800 From: (John Sechrest) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -------- William LeFebvre writes: % Roll the clock back about 20 years.... Sound familiar? It does to % me. Except the topic was "computer science" and not "systems % administration". Yes, it does sound familiar. And on many campuses, computer science is still a step-child. So that says to me that system administration as a university certified process will not be quick in coming. And will not move at all unless there is economic muscle behind it. % > So.. Under what circumstances could you see % > a) A minor in System administration % > b) A department of System administration % > c) A faculty chair in System administration % Are you saying that these are not reasonable goals? No, I am not saying that are unreasonable. I am asking you to outline some scenarios where would would move from the current state to a state where we had any of the above. At this point, I estimate that there are exactly 0 system administration minors, exactly 0 departments of system administration and exactly 0 faculty chairs of system administration. The closest we get on most campuses is the MIS courses in business. I am wondering, under what circumstances would you see it possible to create a minor in system administration. % I'm not sure that a separate department would be necessary or viable, % but certainly as a corner of computer science or computer engineering % it is more than appropriate. Could you suggest 3-5 Universities where the idea of system administration as a minor would be open for discussion? ----- John Sechrest . Helping people use PEAK - . computers and the Internet Public Electronic . more effectively Access to Knowledge,Inc . 850 SW 15th Street . Internet: sechrest@peak.org Corvallis Oregon 97331 . (541) 754-7325 . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 10:07:01 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA10420 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:07:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from polya.mts.jhu.edu (root@polya.mts.jhu.edu [128.220.17.38]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA10402 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:06:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by polya.mts.jhu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA18630; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 13:03:39 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251803.NAA18630@polya.mts.jhu.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: polya.mts.jhu.edu: bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: Brad Morrison cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Feb 1998 08:44:36 CST." <199802251453.IAA24208@farragut.srv.paranet.com> From: Bill Bogstad Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 13:03:39 -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Brad Morrison wrote: >I think that MS releasing *any* source code--for any price--would be >tantamount to the opening of the seventh seal. I believe that both Citrix and Insignia have obtained source code to MS operating systems in order to make their multi-user NT and 3.1/95 emulation products. I suspect it isn't the money. It is whether it is in the interests of MS to do so. If they see a business case for working with a third party to develop a particular product and providing them source code is required they'll do it. However, their source code will never be on a price list at any price. Bill Bogstad bogstad@pobox.com From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 10:15:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA11127 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:15:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (sirocco.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.27.12]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA11116 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:15:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) by sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id NAA04172 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 13:12:08 -0500 X-SMTP-Posting-Origin: amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 13:13:54 -0500 (EST) From: Ron Hall cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-Reply-To: <199802251627.LAA09273@ocee.groupsys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, William LeFebvre wrote: > Rich Schultz wrote: > > yet to see a written or oral exam that can measure these well. On the > > other hand, if you work with someone for a while, at least six months, you > > can probably answer all these questions about her. We already use this > > form of certification and we call it "references". > > Unfortunately, in our ever increasingly litigous society, a > non-trivial number of former employers are now adopting policies with > prevent any sort of meaningful references from being given. I know of > one former employer who, by organizational policy, was prohibited from > saying anything beyond "yes he worked for me from this date to that > date." Even in the vast hinterland of Canada, this policy is widely adopted. Our government has put fairly restrictive clauses in place as to want one can say about hiring, firing, retiring and "referencing" former employees. One is faily limited to "yes, they worked here from y to z" and "yes they did these tasks". You cannot even say if they did things well or not well, as this may be precieved as discriminatory (!?!?!). It truly is an odd world. As to whether certification solves this, I don't know, but if SAGE increases its presence in the educational field (via conferences and publications), then the industry has some benchmark as to what knowledge is necessary to be a SA. Getting universities to underwrite SA training is a difficult one in these days of fiscal responsibility. There has to be some precieved value to a University or College to provide such a program. Realistically one could not offer much more than 30-45 credits (of a typical 90 credit) degree-granting institution to an SA minor. I've sat (for more years than I want to count) as an undergraduate representative on a Curriculum Committee and that moved like molasses in February up the side of a building, so a whole new minor/degree option could take some time. Personally if I were hiring an SA, I would as if the person knew what SAGE was, what Usenix was and had they ever attended a SAGE or Usenix conference. Yes answers would tilt the scale somewhat. Just my 2 bits. Ron Hall McGill University Computing Centre From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 10:31:10 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA12503 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:31:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from ganymede.or.intel.com (ganymede.or.intel.com [134.134.248.3]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA12483 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:30:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from ichips-jf.jf.intel.com (ichips-jf.jf.intel.com [134.134.50.200]) by ganymede.or.intel.com (8.8.6/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA03528; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:34:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from fs001 (fs001.dp.intel.com [172.24.108.1]) by ichips-jf.jf.intel.com (8.8.8/8.8.7) with SMTP id KAA26246; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:27:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from ws001.dp.intel.com by fs001 (SMI-8.6/10.0i); Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:27:46 -0800 Received: (from sbradley@localhost) by ws001.dp.intel.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA05221; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:27:44 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:27:44 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802251827.KAA05221@ws001.dp.intel.com> From: Seth Bradley MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: (John Sechrest) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: (John Sechrest)'s message of Wed 25 February 1998 09:47:35 -0800 References: <199802251738.MAA09518@ocee.groupsys.com> <199802251747.JAA16375@peak.org> X-Mailer: VM 6.22 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk (John Sechrest) writes: > I am asking you to outline some scenarios where would > would move from the current state to a state where > we had any of the above. > > At this point, I estimate that there are exactly > 0 system administration minors, exactly 0 departments > of system administration and exactly 0 faculty chairs > of system administration. > > The closest we get on most campuses is the MIS courses > in business. > > I am wondering, under what circumstances would you see it > possible to create a minor in system administration. Since Intel hires interns and co-ops from Rochester Institute of Technology, I happen to know about their Department of Information Technology. The degree program looks similar to the requirements others have mentioned. They even offer an M.S. in IT. Check out http://www.it.rit.edu/ --- # Seth J. Bradley, Manager Intel Corporation # # DuPont MD6 Eng. Computing Mail Stop DP2-400 # # (253) 371-5542 2800 Center Drive # # sbradley@iwa.dp.intel.com DuPont, WA 98327 # From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 10:48:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA13865 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:48:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA13847 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:48:25 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom7.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id KAA09301; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:44:18 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802251844.KAA09301@netcom7.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:44:18 PST In-Reply-To: William LeFebvre "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 25, 11:23am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: William LeFebvre Subject: Re: cert discussion Cc: Hal Miller , sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk HP> It seems to me that suddenly the certification IS a requirement, if HP> somebody isn't going to get through the qualification process without it. WL> I belive Hal (and the board) was referring to requiring certification WL> for SAGE membership. As in, you would not need to be certified just WL> to be a member of SAGE. Well forgive me Hal, Bill, and the Board, but I suspect more people are going to be worried about their future employment than whether or not they're going to be a member of SAGE. The bottom line is that any certification program will be used to at least pre-qualify "acceptable" applicants. As such, it will become a requirement for practicing System Administrators. That doesn't necessarily mean that SAGE shouldn't pursue certification, but the membership ought to be clear about what they're signing up for. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 10:48:49 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA13939 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:48:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from scratchy.Covad.COM ([207.240.203.11]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA13929 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:48:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from [172.16.2.21] (blackbird.corp.covad.com [172.16.2.21]) by scratchy.Covad.COM (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA03280; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:40:25 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: brent@172.16.2.11 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199802251627.LAA09273@ocee.groupsys.com> References: Your message of "Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:37:23 PST." <199802240137.AA01373@poco.ccrwest.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 10:42:29 -0800 To: William LeFebvre , Rich Schultz From: Brent Chapman Subject: Re: cert discussion Cc: hal@tera.tera.com, sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 11:27 AM -0500 2/25/98, William LeFebvre wrote: >Rich Schultz wrote: >> yet to see a written or oral exam that can measure these well. On the >> other hand, if you work with someone for a while, at least six months, you >> can probably answer all these questions about her. We already use this >> form of certification and we call it "references". > >Unfortunately, in our ever increasingly litigous society, a >non-trivial number of former employers are now adopting policies with >prevent any sort of meaningful references from being given. I know of >one former employer who, by organizational policy, was prohibited from >saying anything beyond "yes he worked for me from this date to that >date." In the 3 months I've been here, Covad has almost doubled in size, from 40 to almost 80 employees, and will probably remain on the same curve for the rest of this year (see if you might be interested in joing us). Doing all that hiring, we've done quite a few reference checks here in the Silicon Valley in the last few months. At least for the positions I've been involved in hiring for (system administrators and network engineers, mostly), we haven't had any real trouble getting references to talk candidly to us. This is especially true when we know the reference, but it's mostly true even when we don't. We've made several "don't hire" decisions based on these references, mostly because the reference checks made it clear that the candidate wouldn't fit in well with the organizational culture we're building. We've also made several "must hire" decisions based on reference checks, when the references had glowing relevant things to say. In general, though, we haven't had many (if any) cases where referencs have been non-commital. My opinion is that candidates supply references that they know will talk to us. If a company has a strong and enforced policy against candid references, then the candidates don't give us folks at that company as references. -Brent -- Brent Chapman Director, Network Architecture Brent@Covad.COM Covad Communications Company 408/490-4578 http://www.covad.com/ From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 11:11:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA15578 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:11:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com (cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com [24.3.34.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA15555 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:11:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@roadrunner.realbig.com (port 50013 [10.0.1.2]) by gate with ESMTP id <157387-27909>; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:07:03 +0000 Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@localhost (port 1118 [127.0.0.1]) by roadrunner with SMTP id <444003-10323>; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:06:48 +0000 Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:06:36 -0500 (EST) From: Andy Poling X-Sender: andy@roadrunner.realbig.com To: Bill Bogstad cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: <199802251719.MAA18475@polya.mts.jhu.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk (Hey Bill - long time no see) On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, Bill Bogstad wrote: > Yes, a college degree is helpful for many jobs and is unlikely to hurt > much in any job. However, what degree? In recent reporting in the news about > the lack of skilled IT staff and the dearth of CS majors, one point which I've > seen reported (albeit rarely) is that only about 25% of people working in IT > have a CS degree. Even if you expand to include EE, CE, and similar degrees, > I'd guess that you wouldn't find much more then 50% of working professionals > have degrees that are remotely connected with IT. One thing to consider is that there are so many mgmt type positions in IT these days that are filled with Business and MIS degreed people. I think that's a big problem with just about any "industry survey" - the respondents are not necessarily representative. Without getting into mgmt bashing, I think they're more likely to take the time to fill out a survey. > I suspect that in system > administration the percentage of working professionals with non-IT related (or > no) degrees is higher; just because of the way that many people end up in > system administration. Bingo. It may be a "career track" of sorts these days, but it wasn't always so. Many people (myself included) kind of fell into it. That doesn't say anything about their knowledge or skills. A common mistake, and one I see being made here by some, is the belief that a college degree actually tells you something about a person's knowledge or skills. More to the point, some people seem to believe that a college degree (or other proof of completing some course of study) automatically indicates that person possesses a certain level of knowledge and skills. That's simply not so. All it means is that they spent time sitting in classrooms (hopefully) listening as they were lectured at, and then satisfactorily completed whatever test regimen was present. Mind you, I'm not trying to say that education is bad (I have a degree, though it's not in CS) - simply that it's no quality guarantee. Proof of education doesn't tell you what they know or what they can do - it only tells you what they were supposedly told. The absence of such proof also doesn't mean they don't know something. How do you compare 2-4 yrs of classes with 10-20 years of on the job experience? It's tough... definitely an apples and oranges thing. -Andy From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 11:19:20 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA16059 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:19:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA16050 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:19:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id OAA09596; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:15:48 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802251915.OAA09596@ocee.groupsys.com> To: sechrest@peak.org (John Sechrest) cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:47:35 PST." <199802251747.JAA16375@peak.org> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:15:47 -0500 From: William LeFebvre Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk John Sechrest wrote: > Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 09:47:35 PST > From: (John Sechrest) > To: William LeFebvre > Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you > Yes, it does sound familiar. And on many campuses, > computer science is still a step-child. > > So that says to me that system administration as a > university certified process will not be quick in > coming. I didn't say it would be easy, just that it must be done. :-) > And will not move at all unless there is economic > muscle behind it. Ah but the economic muscle IS behind it, or getting there at any rate. All predictions for our industry (for all of IT) are that the demand will continue to outstrip supply for the forseeable future. Demand is increasing at a rate that far exceeds current supply trends. The result is a lot of moderate to high paying positions desperate for qualified individuals, those that do get hired get terribly overworked, and a large number of unqualified and underqualified people working these positions who are literally wreaking havoc on the systems they support. Companies that are continuing to treat their SAs with little respect and low wages are noticing that these people are finding better jobs elsewhere. Literally every IT organization that I talk to has openings, and they're always asking me if I know of anyone who needs a job. > No, I am not saying that are unreasonable. > > I am asking you to outline some scenarios where would > would move from the current state to a state where > we had any of the above. Well, I hardly think that I, personally, can do that for you in the span of 5 minutes. Speaking from personal experience I can say that one possible path would be first the formation of a secialization of an existing major (such as Computer Science), then a specific curriculum, then several specializations within that curriculum), and perhaps eventually a full blown department. It can't all happen at once: in most cases it would be a gradual process. And, yes, it would have to start as part of another department, be it CS, CE, SE, EE, or something else. This is how I saw a computer science department form out of nothing when I was an undergrad. When I was a freshman, the closest I could get was electrical engineering with a specialization in computer science. When I received my Bachelor's it was a BA with a major in computer science. A year later, the computer science department was formed as part of the school of Natural Sciences. MCS, MS and PhD track degrees were formed somewhere along in there. A few years later, the department was moved over to the Engineering school and it started offering BS degrees. From a specialization of another degree, it grew to a complete department (with endowed chairs) and now offers specializations of its own. > Could you suggest 3-5 Universities where the idea of > system administration as a minor would be open for > discussion? I can tell you of universities which are incorporating systems administration in to their curriculum in one way or another. I imagine that if such a minor were ever to be developed, it would likely first happen at one of these places: The Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder (home of Evi Nemeth) offers at least one course in systems administration. Central Queensland University (Australia) has a Bachelor of Information Technology degree. Florida State University has a Computer and Network System Administration Master's Track. William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting +1 770 813 3224 From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 11:35:01 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA17243 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:35:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from antares.mcs.anl.gov (mcs.anl.gov [140.221.9.6]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA17230 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 11:34:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from mcs.anl.gov (obie-3.mcs.anl.gov [140.221.3.7]) by antares.mcs.anl.gov (8.6.10/8.6.10) with ESMTP id NAA23764 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 13:31:35 -0600 Message-Id: <199802251931.NAA23764@antares.mcs.anl.gov> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 13:31:32 -0600 From: Gene Rackow Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I'm not sure what people really expect to get out of "certification". Yes, there are sites in the industry that use the fact you are a certified MS * to get in the door, but as time goes on, people are going to realize what that really means. It will be recognized as being worth the paper it's written on, and not more. Typically what certification means to me is that someone has sat through a few hours of a training session then passed a test. In many cases, the training session is set up specificly to give you the info needed to pass the test. Look at how many books there are that "aid" people in getting the perfect SAT or ACT test. There are, or at least were when I had classes, the same sorts of books available to pass the FCC tests needed to work on radio transmission equipment. Truth is I still have that piece of paper someplace and it takes very little to renew it. I haven't touched a transmitter in 15years, but I'm still "certified". Since we have such a dynamic field, how often is renewal going to be expected, or is it a membership for life? If it's lifetime, then usefulness goes down after a fwe years, as some student gets the paper to pass a class and then stays out of the SA field for 5 years. If this is going to be a test based certification we'll probably see the answer books available weeks after the first tests are given. Probably even earlier as people will need to know the type of stuff to study. ;-) Education is a much better target to go after. At least then you have the hope that someone has at least been exposed for a slightly longer period of time to the things needed to get a degree on the area. --Gene From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 12:27:01 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA20091 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:27:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from newmgr.haledorr.com (newmgr.haledorr.com [148.139.2.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA20074 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:26:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from haledorr.com ([148.139.4.108]) by newmgr.haledorr.com (Netscape Messaging Server 3.01) with ESMTP id AAA25929 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:23:00 -0500 Message-ID: <34F47DA4.E15555C0@haledorr.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:23:00 -0500 From: Sarah Sheehan Organization: Hale and Dorr LLP X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you References: <199802251719.MAA18475@polya.mts.jhu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Bill Bogstad wrote: > > Yes, a college degree is helpful for many jobs and is unlikely to hurt > much in any job. However, what degree? In recent reporting in the news about > the lack of skilled IT staff and the dearth of CS majors, one point which I've > seen reported (albeit rarely) is that only about 25% of people working in IT > have a CS degree. Even if you expand to include EE, CE, and similar degrees, > I'd guess that you wouldn't find much more then 50% of working professionals > have degrees that are remotely connected with IT. Now, I suppose that this > could mean that 50% of the people working in the field are incompetent; but my > personal experience is that the type of degree someone has is not that > strongly coorrelated with their competence with IT systems. There are even a > fair number who have no degree at all. I suspect that in system > administration the percentage of working professionals with non-IT related (or > no) degrees is higher; just because of the way that many people end up in > system administration. There's another explanation for the low percentage of field related degrees in the IT world - it's a recent field! Not everyone went to college after the advent of computing. Some of us typed our college papers on manual typewriters back before there were degrees in the field. My degree is in English Lit and yes, I am good at finding the irony in many of my tasks but my years of experience are in unix systems administration. The nature of the job (unpredictable hours, constant training, no predictable schedule firther than a few weeks ahead) keeps at least a couple us from signing up for graduate classes in our field. From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 12:31:45 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA20317 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:31:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from jackson.llnl.gov (jackson.llnl.gov [128.115.54.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA20308 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:31:40 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rea@localhost) by jackson.llnl.gov (8.8.5/LLNL-3.0.Alpha5) id MAA00479; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:28:21 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:28:21 -0800 (PST) From: Rea Simpson To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, Andy Poling wrote: > skills. More to the point, some people seem to believe that a college > degree (or other proof of completing some course of study) automatically > indicates that person possesses a certain level of knowledge and skills. > > That's simply not so. All it means is that they spent time sitting in > classrooms (hopefully) listening as they were lectured at, and then > satisfactorily completed whatever test regimen was present. Mind you, I'm > not trying to say that education is bad (I have a degree, though it's not in > CS) - simply that it's no quality guarantee. > IMHO, getting a degree tells you a bit more. It says the person was dedicated enough to complete it. It shows they were willing to take courses that might not be directly applicable to what they wanted to do in the future, but they took them because they were required. Being able to stick it out and get the degree takes some qualities that are desirable in a good employee. But again, it doesn't guarantee anything. And not having the degree doesn't mean you don't have these qualities. These are just pieces of the whole picture. Everything equal between 2 candidates, I'd take the one with the degree. Maybe it's an urban legend, but there's that story about the study that showed the only only difference they could find between college grads and non-college grads, was that the grads could hold their finger in a candle flame longer. :-) Rea From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 12:53:45 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA21645 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:53:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from yorktown.paranet.com (yorktown.paranet.com [199.164.131.34]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA21636 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:53:40 -0800 (PST) Received: by yorktown.paranet.com; id OAA16048; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:49:57 -0600 (CST) Received: from farragut.srv.paranet.com(172.16.3.35) by yorktown.paranet.com via smap (V3.1.1) id xma016028; Wed, 25 Feb 98 14:49:49 -0600 Received: from chunx.nol.mobil.com (pppbcr01.bcr.paranet.com [172.16.82.17]) by farragut.srv.paranet.com (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id OAA17038 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:49:45 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199802252049.OAA17038@farragut.srv.paranet.com> X-Sender: bamorris@general.srv.paranet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:35:53 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Brad Morrison Subject: Re: Sysadmin degree In-Reply-To: <199802251727.JAA12673@peak.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 09:27 AM 2/25/98 -0800, John Sechrest made a very eloquent case for the current state of affairs in the realm of sysadmin degrees. Then, he queried: >Under what circumstances could you see > a) A minor in System administration Given the necessity of BS-CS/SA degrees being extraordinarily inter-disciplinary, I can't see this one for anyone except the incredibly rare CS/English double-major. > b) A department of System administration Slim and none--it's imaginable that a sub-department might exist, but not a whole department alongside Computer Science, which often is a sub-dept under Mathematics. > c) A faculty chair in System administration Now I get the point. This is starting to remind of the horrendous MIS degree plans, with too many Business classes, three programming classes (BASIC,COBOL,PL/I), and a survey Statistics class ("We'll be spending the bulk of the semester on using our financial calculators to find the minimus and maximus point of various functions..."). No real math, certainly no formal logic, pretty much a weak Business degree with some weird smattering of computer classes. Oh, yeah, they also take a dBASE IV class (probably MS-Access at the really hip schools). Don't get me wrong--I'm all for this sort of thing. My company is sponsoring SA mentorship at the University of New Orleans in return for tuition credits for employees who participate, and I'd love to see this in more places. Where, though, are you going to find a really good SA who wants to become a college professor? -- "Press to test." (click) "Release to detonate." Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet "Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." --Napoleon Hill From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 14:10:49 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA26030 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:10:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from peak.org (root@PEAK.ORG [198.68.22.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA26021 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:10:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (sechrest@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by peak.org (8.8.5/8.6.7) with ESMTP id OAA27660; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:06:07 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802252206.OAA27660@peak.org> To: Brad Morrison Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Sysadmin degree In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:35:53 CST. <199802252049.OAA17038@farragut.srv.paranet.com> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:06:06 -0800 From: (John Sechrest) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -------- Brad Morrison writes: % Now I get the point. This is starting to remind of the horrendous MIS % degree plans, with too many Business classes, three programming classes % (BASIC,COBOL,PL/I), and a survey Statistics class ("We'll be spending the % bulk of the semester on using our financial calculators to find the minimus % and maximus point of various functions..."). No real math, certainly no % formal logic, pretty much a weak Business degree with some weird smattering % of computer classes. Oh, yeah, they also take a dBASE IV class (probably % MS-Access at the really hip schools). Yes, this is exactly one of the down sides to the degree process. I am all for both certification and degree programs, however, I think that it is important to talk about the process some first. What would make a degree program or a major in SysAdmin "valuable". % Don't get me wrong--I'm all for this sort of thing. My company is % sponsoring SA mentorship at the University of New Orleans in return for % tuition credits for employees who participate, and I'd love to see this in % more places. We have been doing some of this work at Oregon State University. I wonder how many companies would be willing to help fund a system admin minor program? With Higher Ed fiscal cut backs, it is not likely that state universities will be creating new programs like this without partnering and direct sponsorship from companies. % Where, though, are you going to find a really good SA who % wants to become a college professor? Actually..... I would. ----- John Sechrest . Helping people use PEAK - . computers and the Internet Public Electronic . more effectively Access to Knowledge,Inc . 850 SW 15th Street . Internet: sechrest@peak.org Corvallis Oregon 97331 . (541) 754-7325 . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 14:46:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA28581 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:46:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA28560 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:46:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA28674; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:43:11 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA27621; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:43:12 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA06636; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:43:11 -0600 Message-Id: <199802252243.QAA06636@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: cert discussion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:43:11 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk What about an apprentice program? Kind of like a journeyman's program. There could be standardized education, like at a JC or University, coupled with an apprenticeship program that is structured to mentor and teach real world experience, then awarding a certificate. That would mean so much more than just classes and a test. Pretty big undertaking to get this off the ground. Scott From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 15:10:44 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA29722 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:10:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from asp.csc.calpoly.edu (asp.csc.calpoly.edu [129.65.17.104]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA29713 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:10:38 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802252310.PAA29713@usenix.ORG> Received: by asp.csc.calpoly.edu (1.37.109.4/16.2) id AA09401; Wed, 25 Feb 98 15:07:09 -0800 From: Alan Bell Subject: Re: cert discussion To: swill41@jcpenney.com Date: Wed, 25 Feb 98 15:07:08 PST Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802252243.QAA06636@cws201.cat.jcp.com>; from "Scott Williams" at Feb 25, 98 4:43 pm Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Our department teaches an S.A. course which many of the campus administrators are hired from. Our department also uses the course as a means for hiring our five student administrators. Students get on the job training in S.A. but it also allows us to operate the many computers on a shoestring budget. However, we have no certificate to give them other than the record that they've taken the course. Alan Bell > > What about an apprentice program? Kind of like a journeyman's program. There > could be standardized education, like at a JC or University, coupled with an > apprenticeship program that is structured to mentor and teach real world > experience, then awarding a certificate. That would mean so much more than > just classes and a test. Pretty big undertaking to get this off the ground. > > Scott > > > -- _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Alan Bell, Computer Science Dept. _/_/ _/ _/_/ _/_/ _/ Cal Poly State University _/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/_/ San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ abell@calpoly.edu http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~abell From sage-members-owner Wed Feb 25 15:16:02 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA00194 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:16:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from rm-rstar.sfu.ca (root@rm-rstar.sfu.ca [142.58.120.21]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA00174 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:15:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from wizard.ucs.sfu.ca (wizard.ucs.sfu.ca [142.58.1.70]) by rm-rstar.sfu.ca (8.8.7/8.8.7/SFU-4.0H) with SMTP id PAA28294 for ; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:12:40 -0800 (PST) Received: by wizard.ucs.sfu.ca (NX5.67f2/NX3.0S) id AA07469; Wed, 25 Feb 98 15:12:37 -0800 Message-Id: <9802252312.AA07469@wizard.ucs.sfu.ca> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2) Received: by NeXT.Mailer (1.118.2) From: Richard Chycoski Date: Wed, 25 Feb 98 15:12:34 -0800 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you Reply-To: richard@sfu.ca References: Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > From: Rea Simpson > > IMHO, getting a degree tells you a bit more. It says the person was > dedicated enough to complete it. It shows they were willing to take > courses that might not be directly applicable to what they wanted to > do in the future, but they took them because they were required. > > Being able to stick it out and get the degree takes some qualities > that are desirable in a good employee. But again, it doesn't guarantee > anything. And not having the degree doesn't mean you don't have > these qualities. These are just pieces of the whole picture. > > Everything equal between 2 candidates, I'd take the one with the > degree. > > Maybe it's an urban legend, but there's that story about the study > that showed the only only difference they could find between > college grads and non-college grads, was that the grads could hold > their finger in a candle flame longer. :-) > > Rea Isn't that: Grads WOULD hold their finger in a candle flame longer? (:-) There is a difference between "education" and "training" that has been a stickler in the university community forever. I learned virtually all of my practical knowledge about systems administration "on the job" from some very talented individuals. I could not have obtained this kind of training and knowledge from any courses taught at the university where I work, which does have a Computing Science department that is considered among the best in Canada. This doesn't mean that a degree is not useful (I don't have one, by the way, I have a Diploma of Electronics Technology from a two-year institution, but then that was completed more than 20 years ago), just that I can't see any widespread, capable teaching of sysadmin *skills* being on the curriculum in the near future. Sysadmins need *skills* training as well as an education. I would rather see a computing science grad spend a year or two within a competent organisation being trained in systems administration than a "Sysadmin" degree, since most of the skills that are needed are too much of a hands-on, continuously changing nature to be taught in the classroom. It's like the difference between climate and weather: Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get. Computing science teaches how things are supposed to work, on the job (and sometimes during skills-based training) you learn how to actually make things work. In fact, people with a good non-computing education may be preferable to a some of those with computing science degrees. Some of the best sysadmins and systems programmers that I have known had majors in math, physics, and even history! (And several had no degrees at all...) One of the people that I learned most from did not work at obtaining a degree until he had been my boss for almost 8 years. Given a choice between two candidates, one who shows enthusiasm, has good communication and people skills, and a reliable track record, and another candidate with a degree, guess who I would choose? --- - Richard Chycoski Senior Systems Consultant Simon Fraser University Academic Computing Services richard@sfu.ca From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 04:48:05 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id EAA03965 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 04:48:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from eugate.sgi.com (eugate.sgi.com [193.73.159.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id EAA03956 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 04:47:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from eurohub.neu.sgi.com (gate-eurohub.neu.sgi.com [144.253.128.164]) by eugate.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/970417-sgi-europehub) via ESMTP id NAA14193 for <@eugate.neu.sgi.com:sage-members@usenix.org>; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:44:23 +0100 env-from (zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com) Received: from pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com [144.253.130.13]) by eurohub.neu.sgi.com (980205.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id NAA133353 for <@eurohub.neu.sgi.com:sage-members@usenix.org>; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:44:23 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost by pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/911001.SGI) for id NAA02722; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:44:07 +0100 Message-Id: <199802261244.NAA02722@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 25 Feb 1998 16:43:11 CST." <199802252243.QAA06636@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:44:06 +0100 From: zwicky Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I am siezed by an intense sense of deja-vu. Look, it's the certification discussion again! Exactly the same as last time! I have no standing in this discussion, but because I have a short attention span for these arguments, I'm going to weigh in anyway, in the hope of making the discussion more interesting to me, and with any luck more useful to the certification question. Certification is repeatedly, vocally, passionately desired by large subsets of its membership. This does NOT mean that certification is the best way of determining that somebody is a good system administrator, or the best way of adding prestige to the profession. It really doesn't matter in the least. Discussions of college degree programs and apprenticeship are all very well, but they're irrelevant. Neither college degrees nor apprenticeship will solve the problems that are causing people to demand certificates. Who wants certificates? -Employers who are trying to rank employees RIGHT NOW. -Existing system administrators who want an easily understandable credential. -Everybody who's jealous of Microsoft Certified Engineers. College degrees and apprenticeships solve the problem for people who want to learn how to be system administrators. But it's not going to do a thing for people who already *are* system administrators and the people who want to hire them. Everybody is welcome to discuss apprenticeships and degree programs, and work on setting them up, but they don't in any way conflict with or replace certification, any more than the existence of Microsoft's certification make BSCS degrees irrelevant. Here are some questions of interest about certification: 0) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards certification? a) It's the best idea since sliced bread. b) Sure, why not? c) It's an OK idea, but there are more important things SAGE could be doing. d) It's fundamentally meaningless and silly. e) It's actively harmful to the profession. f) It's morally wrong. If you answered E or F, please justify your answer. If you answered anything else, SAGE might as well go on working on certification. 1) How much would you be willing to pay for a SAGE certificate? (This to some extent controls possible testing options -- reliably grading essay questions is *expensive*.) 2) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards multiple-choice testing for certificates? a) Sounds like a fine idea to me. b) It's pointless, but since the whole thing is pointless, why not? c) Not only is it pointless, it's offensive and possibly immoral. 3) What process should SAGE use to develop and test the tests? Who do we know who knows how other people do this? 4) Which of the following models do you prefer? a) You must be a SAGE member to get a SAGE certification. b) You don't have to be a SAGE member, but we charge extra. c) It doesn't matter at all whether or not you're a member. 5) Can you give one example of a testing/certification program you think SAGE's should be like, and why? 6) Can you give one example of something you think is horribly wrong with an existing testing/certification program, which SAGE should avoid doing? Elizabeth Zwicky zwicky@neu.sgi.com From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 07:50:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA12368 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 07:50:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from antares.mcs.anl.gov (mcs.anl.gov [140.221.9.6]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA12351 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 07:50:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from mcs.anl.gov (obie-3.mcs.anl.gov [140.221.3.7]) by antares.mcs.anl.gov (8.6.10/8.6.10) with ESMTP id JAA23568; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 09:45:15 -0600 Message-Id: <199802261545.JAA23568@antares.mcs.anl.gov> To: zwicky cc: sage-members@usenix.org, rackow@antares.mcs.anl.gov Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:44:06 +0100." <199802261244.NAA02722@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 09:45:08 -0600 From: Gene Rackow Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Elizabeth; zwicky made the following keystrokes: >Here are some questions of interest about certification: > > 0) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards >certification? > a) It's the best idea since sliced bread. > b) Sure, why not? > c) It's an OK idea, but there are more important things SAGE > could be doing. > d) It's fundamentally meaningless and silly. > e) It's actively harmful to the profession. > f) It's morally wrong. > > If you answered E or F, please justify your answer. If you answered >anything else, SAGE might as well go on working on certification. I'd vote d, but have heavy leanings towards e. All that certification means is that you've passed a test. Some of the best systems people I know of can't deal with tests. Put them in the real world and they shine. Also passing a test does not mean you know the subject. As to it being harmful, it's just another method of judging people. If companies come to depend on "certification" as a method of judging if someone is "qualified", then they are looking in the wrong area. Instead of certifying people, maybe a better thing to do would be to put together a series of guidelines that employers can use to develop their own qualifying proceedures to see if someone is capable to do the job they need done. SA covers a very broad range of subjects, systems, and specilties. A ceritifcation test is either going to be to general to be useful, or so specialized that people would need to take several to show what they really know. > > 1) How much would you be willing to pay for a SAGE certificate? >(This to some extent controls possible testing options -- reliably >grading essay questions is *expensive*.) As little as possible. Again this is going to depend on what the test is really made up of, and how many there are. Also, how long is a certificate good for? Before really determining what the cost is going to be, it should be determined as to how many tests one is going to need to take. $500/test would not be to bad if it was only the 1 test you needed to take. $500 would be crazy if there were 10++ of them to take. basic os standards networking kernel workings and device drivers i/o systems database security .... OS specialties? solaris2, aix, irix, hpux, osf/ultrix, linux, other?? In many cases, what certification is aimed at is the entry level person. These are the people that don't have lots of money to get started in the first place, and do not have a resume/vita that speaks for them. They need a certificate that claims they at least get in the door. Having to much to cost involved with that is going to limit them too. > > 2) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards >multiple-choice testing for certificates? > a) Sounds like a fine idea to me. > b) It's pointless, but since the whole thing is pointless, > why not? > c) Not only is it pointless, it's offensive and possibly > immoral. b. But in place of why not, why? If you are going to have testing, about the only way to go is going to have to be multiple choice. Essay tests become way to subjective. While the answer may be correct, the writting style may not carry a convincing arguement. English is not the primary language of all admins. Plus, like you said above, it's expensive. > > 3) What process should SAGE use to develop and test the tests? Who >do we know who knows how other people do this? To come up with a real testing situation, for each test there are going to need to be in the area of 5k, preferably more questions that make up the test suite. The "system" would need to choose X questions from that set to make up the test. Anything less becomes an effort in memorizing the test questions, not the subject. A friend of mine just passed her nursing tests. There it was a computer based timed system with a random number of questions. Some of it was "essay" based, with a rather good AI behind it. Depending on answers you gave, it chose other questions. It could tell if you knew the subject or not. Development of such a system took a very long time, and the questions were fine tuned over years of giving the same sort of tests by hand. Also, how relevant are the questions. Things vary from OS to OS, and in some cases release to release. The formats of files vary widely, etc. While I don't have the full format of every option in the AIX version of the /etc/passwd /etc/security/passwd stanza files memorized, I know the ones that are important, and can find the others in moments. Sun has, or had, a certification program for Solaris. IBM has one for AIX, as well as having specialty fields on top of that. Then there is MS. > > 4) Which of the following models do you prefer? > a) You must be a SAGE member to get a SAGE certification. > b) You don't have to be a SAGE member, but we charge > extra. > c) It doesn't matter at all whether or not you're a member. It depends on what the group is attempting to do. Personally I'd think the certification board should be a seperate issue, if there is going to be one. Forcing membership is not the way to go. It is clear that there are people that are not happy with Usenix, so forcing membership upon them is not going to make them happy. Do we want real unbiased certification, or a multi-card carrying club? Side issue: This is something that is rather confusing. If it costs $X to give the tests, why should a member of a group get it for <$X, just because he is a member. If paying $Y gets you membership to the club, and $Y has built in overhead to give the discounts then OK. Is there enough overhead in the Sage membership costs to justify the discounts to something that currently does not exist? If there currently is that much excess, then why aren't the costs of membership currently lower? For example AARP has tons of members and a very strong lobby, yet if you went to the majority of the membership, the ONLY reason they are members is for the discount card they get for being a member. If you ask them about issues that AARP lobby is promoting, the strongly disagree with such standards, yet their name is on the roster. While I don't think Usenix is at that level, forced membership is not pleasant. I wouldn't take a position where I needed to be a union member as I've been there in the past and found too many things that being a union member added weight to their cause that I disagreed with. I don't want to be in the same boat with Usenix. > > 5) Can you give one example of a testing/certification program you >think SAGE's should be like, and why? No. > 6) Can you give one example of something you think is horribly >wrong with an existing testing/certification program, which SAGE >should avoid doing? Some of the issues are above. One thing that I mentioned already in other mail on this thread, is that according to "certification standards" I'm passed the tests for FCC Class 1 radio/telegraph systems about 20years ago. It takes very little to keep that certification valid, and the fact that I haven't touched or even looked at one of those systems in 15 years does not matter. In our field, the sytems change even more often than radio. most radio transmission stations are using the same transmitter towers, amps, etc they have for many years. Most computer systems get replaced in 3 to 5 years. > > Elizabeth Zwicky > zwicky@neu.sgi.com > Gene Rackow email: rackow@mcs.anl.gov Math & Computer Science voice: 630-252-7126 Argonne National Lab FAX: 630-252-5986 9700 S. Cass Ave. / Argonne, IL 60439 From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 07:56:35 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA12765 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 07:56:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from peak.org (root@PEAK.ORG [198.68.22.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA12756 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 07:56:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (sechrest@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by peak.org (8.8.5/8.6.7) with ESMTP id HAA08287; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 07:51:53 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802261551.HAA08287@peak.org> To: zwicky Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:44:06 +0100. <199802261244.NAA02722@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 07:51:53 -0800 From: (John Sechrest) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -------- zwicky writes: % I have no standing in this discussion, but because I have a short % attention span for these arguments, I'm going to weigh in anyway, % in the hope of making the discussion more interesting to me, and % with any luck more useful to the certification question. :-) Good one. It really made me enjoy the morning. Nothing like a little focus to liven up the morning. ... % Here are some questions of interest about certification: % % 0) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards % certification? % a) It's the best idea since sliced bread. % b) Sure, why not? % c) It's an OK idea, but there are more important things SAGE % could be doing. % d) It's fundamentally meaningless and silly. % e) It's actively harmful to the profession. % f) It's morally wrong. A-B (It is important, but it has some challenges % 1) How much would you be willing to pay for a SAGE certificate? % (This to some extent controls possible testing options -- reliably % grading essay questions is *expensive*.) $100 or so. % 2) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards % multiple-choice testing for certificates? % a) Sounds like a fine idea to me. % b) It's pointless, but since the whole thing is pointless, % why not? % c) Not only is it pointless, it's offensive and possibly % immoral. A. Fine by me. I am a list person who likes lists. % 3) What process should SAGE use to develop and test the tests? Who % do we know who knows how other people do this? There are many different groups that have done this. Some are state manadated, like the electrician license I got so that I can run networks in Oregon. (you must be a low-voltage electrician to run wires thru walls in Oregon). These were created by a state committee (I think) Some are industry related. The ACM has some certificate programs that they worked on earlier. I will have to dig some info up on this. One of the certification projects that I worked on that I think is most interesting is the Oregon Tilth Organic farm certificate. In order to call your food "organically grown", you must follow a set of practices. And those practices have to be followed up with tests and inspections. The price was set based on the volume of work/fields. The standards were created by Oregon Tilth thru several committees. The standards are upgraded each year. There is an organization of people who are trained as inspectors. They go visit and evaluate what people are "really doing" There are many things I think we can gain from this model. % 4) Which of the following models do you prefer? % a) You must be a SAGE member to get a SAGE certification. % b) You don't have to be a SAGE member, but we charge % extra. % c) It doesn't matter at all whether or not you're a member. B - You don't have to join SAGE, but if you don't you have to pay much more. % 5) Can you give one example of a testing/certification program you % think SAGE's should be like, and why? In the Oregon Tilth process, the tester is on the field with the person who is getting certified (they certify fields not people, so it is a bit different) However, in the process of being in person working with each other, a conduit is built between tilth and the client. And as such they have an ongoing relationship. And that as things change and things move along, they are able to stay informed. Certification should have: 1) Some personal interaction with the certifying organization 2) Different levels of certification 3) Ongoing review of the standards 4) breadth of context in the evaluation phase. % 6) Can you give one example of something you think is horribly % wrong with an existing testing/certification program, which SAGE % should avoid doing? In the Microsoft Certified Professionals program and in the electricians testing , the test questions are often context specific and basically come out of the book as memorization. Since System administration requires thinking on your feet, the testing methods should provide a way that people from a wide variety of systems and context can still pass the evaluation. ----- John Sechrest . Helping people use PEAK - . computers and the Internet Public Electronic . more effectively Access to Knowledge,Inc . 850 SW 15th Street . Internet: sechrest@peak.org Corvallis Oregon 97331 . (541) 754-7325 . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 10:34:08 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA18183 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:34:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivac45 ([204.193.38.230]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA18172 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:34:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from wrso38035.ivac_eng by ivac45 (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA19524; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:30:17 -0800 Received: by wrso38035.ivac_eng (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA20647; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:30:18 -0800 Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:30:18 -0800 From: dengland@alarismed.com (Dave England) Message-Id: <199802261830.KAA20647@wrso38035.ivac_eng> Subject: Re: cert discussion Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: Gy6OTFaO7co2dMURTMt60A== Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Here are some questions of interest about certification: > > 0) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards > certification? > a) It's the best idea since sliced bread. > b) Sure, why not? > c) It's an OK idea, but there are more important things SAGE > could be doing. > d) It's fundamentally meaningless and silly. > e) It's actively harmful to the profession. > f) It's morally wrong. > > If you answered E or F, please justify your answer. If you answered > anything else, SAGE might as well go on working on certification. I would answer C but I'm sorry but I can't agree with your conclusion. Here's why I do not think SAGE should go ahead and work on certification at this time. 1) It's a big undertaking, I'm not sure we have the resources in place to pull it off. 2) Why not learn how to gather and apply our resources on a simpler project first, like training and knowledge databases. Like I said previously we only get to send our SAs to one class/conference a year. This means most learning is on the job. I would love an on-line learning/training system that included a test that I could grade for my SAs or pay to have it graded for me. 3) It seems to me like we would be putting the cart before the horse. My issue is there is a lack of skilled SAs out there and a lack of good sources for learning. Rob and Evi's Usenix classes are good but we need more from other sources. I wonder how much of this whole certificate issue is driven by a feeling of a lack of respect for SAs or by SAs who desire more pay and believe a certificate is the way to get it. Wouldn't we serve ourselves and our customers/employeers/SAGE members better by initially ensuring that the learning and training methods are in place before we get caught up in a paper chase? On the other side, I wonder how much of the anti-certification issue is driven by senior SA's fearing that junior less knowledgeable SAs with a handful of certificates would suddenly become more valuable then they are. As a member of the senior group, I think "training first" would be more acceptable to those of us that have a lot of knowledge but not a lot of time or inclination for classes. This would put more SAs on an even footing. Then we could figure out how to certify everyone. Hopefully certification then would be done by passing a test that I could take remotely. I am flatly opposed to a certification process that only entails completion of courses to earn certicates. I would then say that certification is "morally wrong" as it would damage my ability to earn a living for my family Could you imagine what my employeer would say if I had to take a course in sendmail to get a certification, even though I'm already supposed to be knowledgeable in this area and have maintained email for years. dave From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 10:55:47 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA18760 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:55:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA18750 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:55:39 -0800 (PST) Received: (from paw@localhost) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) id NAA11990; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:51:51 -0500 Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:51:51 -0500 From: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-Id: <199802261851.NAA11990@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: dengland@alarismed.com Subject: Re: cert discussion Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Dave England writes: I wonder how much of this whole certificate issue is driven by a feeling of a lack of respect for SAs or by SAs who desire more pay and believe a certificate is the way to get it. Wouldn't we serve ourselves and our customers/employeers/SAGE members better by initially ensuring that the learning and training methods are in place before we get caught up in a paper chase? Actually, I think much of the current action is driven by the fact that the world is passing us by - Sun, IBM, and a host of others are starting to provide "certification" programs on their own. While one might expect someone who is "Sun certified" to know something about the way Sun thinks systems administration should happen (as implemented by Sun), I don't think you'll find too many folks who will think that any one vendor's way is the best way to adminster heterogenous systems, or that passing any one vendor's exams says anything about overall competency as a systems administrator. I'm certainly not in favor of putting the cart (cert) before the horse (education), but I _do_ believe that, were a "basic sysadmin" certification to be made and meaningful, SAGE is the only organization with the depth and breadth of knowledge to do the job. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 11:30:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA20355 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:30:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from unet.net.com (unet.net.com [134.56.1.48]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA20344 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:30:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from jurassic.net.com by unet.net.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id LAA17584; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:20:42 -0800 Received: from shakespeare.net.com by jurassic.net.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id LAA07306; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:26:48 -0800 Received: from shakespeare by shakespeare.net.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id LAA13117; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:26:47 -0800 Message-Id: <199802261926.LAA13117@shakespeare.net.com> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:26:47 -0800 (PST) From: Stan Heller Reply-To: Stan Heller Subject: Re: cert discussion: Time to stop To: sage-members@usenix.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-MD5: /W3NdNfZLTlQwH0iaTqwoA== X-Mailer: dtmail 1.2.0 CDE Version 1.2 SunOS 5.6 sun4m sparc Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Ok Folks, The conversation has been stimulating, as usual. And important, as usual. But the time has come to move this thread to another discussion group. We have these little discussions from time to time and they are very helpful. I even started one myself a few months ago. But the basic rule of thumb here is not to let the discussions drag on. If the topic is worthy, get it to a place where people can really hammer at it if they wish. If it has all been said before, then why say it again? The original purpose of this list was meeting announcements. If it strays from that from time to time, OK. But it has to be short bursts or people will just unsubscribe. When you are getting over 200 email messages a day, no matter how stimulating the discussion, folks just don't have the sustained bandwidth. Can someone suggest a reasonable place to move the certification discussion with this in mind? =stan ====================================================== Stan Heller (650)780-5351 Engineering Systems Administration Network Equipment Technologies stan@net.com "No one ever anticipates being road kill." From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 11:32:15 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA20416 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:32:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom8.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom8.netcom.com [192.100.81.117]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA20407 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:32:12 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom8.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id LAA13849; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:27:33 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802261927.LAA13849@netcom8.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:27:32 PST In-Reply-To: zwicky "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 26, 1:44pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: zwicky , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk } 0) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards } certification? } [...] } e) It's actively harmful to the profession. } f) It's morally wrong. } } If you answered E or F, please justify your answer. If you answered } anything else, SAGE might as well go on working on certification. I believe I've already discussed my objections in previous messages, so I will only summarize: -- Certification is actively harmful to the membership. I believe it will reduce salaries and require members to pay repeatedly for expensive certification exams and training. I believe it will be used enforce a rigid status quo in a dynamic industry and will be descriminatory to "non-traditional" administrators. -- It is morally wrong because SAGE is not representative of the global administration community or even the global Unix administration community. Furthermore, I believe the Board is pursuing certification without a clear mandate from the membership. Let me further state that just because employers might be clamoring for some sort of ranking system for System Administration candidates, and even if Sun, Microsoft, and every other vendor in the world panders to this sort of inane credentialism, there is no reason in the world why SAGE should pursue such a course. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 11:49:24 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA20749 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:49:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from eugate.sgi.com (eugate.sgi.com [193.73.159.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA20740 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:49:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from eurohub.neu.sgi.com (eurohub.neu.sgi.com [144.253.128.2]) by eugate.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/970417-sgi-europehub) via ESMTP id UAA21357; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:02 +0100 env-from (zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com) Received: from pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com [144.253.130.13]) by eurohub.neu.sgi.com (980205.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id UAA145949; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:01 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost by pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/911001.SGI) id UAA04069; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:45:59 +0100 Message-Id: <199802261945.UAA04069@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> To: Stan Heller cc: sage-members@usenix.org, zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com Subject: Re: cert discussion: Time to stop In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:26:47 PST." <199802261926.LAA13117@shakespeare.net.com> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:45:59 +0100 From: zwicky Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >The original purpose of this list was meeting announcements. No, I'm sorry, it wasn't. That is sage-announce. This is sage-members. The original purpose of *this* list is to hold discussions of interest to SAGE members. People who are interested in getting only announcements should unsubscribe from sage-members and subscribe to sage-announce. Elizabeth Zwicky zwicky@neu.sgi.com From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 11:50:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA20815 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:50:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from eugate.sgi.com (eugate.sgi.com [193.73.159.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA20806 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:50:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from eurohub.neu.sgi.com (eurohub.neu.sgi.com [144.253.128.2]) by eugate.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/970417-sgi-europehub) via ESMTP id UAA21382; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:49 +0100 env-from (zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com) Received: from pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com [144.253.130.13]) by eurohub.neu.sgi.com (980205.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id UAA134412; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:49 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost by pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/911001.SGI) id UAA04080; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:43 +0100 Message-Id: <199802261946.UAA04080@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> To: dengland@alarismed.com (Dave England) cc: sage-members@usenix.org, zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 26 Feb 1998 10:30:18 PST." <199802261830.KAA20647@wrso38035.ivac_eng> Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:43 +0100 From: zwicky Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Let me start by pointing out that in my experience working in volunteer organizations -- which is pretty considerable when it comes to SAGE-analogues -- you can either 1) Do whatever people are interested in doing right now. OR 2) Do nothing at all. Note that doing the Right Thing is only an option if somebody is standing at your doorstep, panting to do it. At the moment, SAGE's resources for supporting people who are actually going to get work done are nearly infinite; if somebody desperately wants to pursue certification, great! If somebody else desperately wants to pursue education, also great! > > Here are some questions of interest about certification: > > 0) Which of the following best describes your attitude towards > > certification? > > c) It's an OK idea, but there are more important things SAGE > > could be doing. > > If you answered E or F, please justify your answer. If you answered > > anything else, SAGE might as well go on working on certification. >I would answer C but I'm sorry but I can't agree with your conclusion. Here's >why I do not think SAGE should go ahead and work on certification at this tim e. >1) It's a big undertaking, I'm not sure we have the resources in place > to pull it off. We have no idea how big an undertaking it is yet -- it's too early to make that decision. When somebody appears with numbers, then we can decide whether or not it's affordable. And 'affordable' may be larger than you think. USENIX is not a poor organization; we can buy things that can be bought, and expertise in testing is something you can buy. >2) Why not learn how to gather and apply our resources on a simpler project > first, like training and knowledge databases. Like I said previously we > only get to send our SAs to one class/conference a year. This means most > learning is on the job. I would love an on-line learning/training system > that included a test that I could grade for my SAs or pay to have it > graded for me. This doesn't look like a simpler project to me. I base this on previous SAGE attempts to do this (which worked exactly as well as previous certification attempts, i.e. not at all). >3) It seems to me like we would be putting the cart before the horse. My iss ue > is there is a lack of skilled SAs out there and a lack of good sources for > learning. Rob and Evi's Usenix classes are good but we need more from > other sources. If all you've got is a cart, why worry about where the horse would go if you had one? *Your* issue is that you're short on people, and certification won't help you with that. If we had a certification proposal on hand, and an education proposal, and only enough money to fund one of them, this would be a good reason to reject the certification proposal. But if someone offers me an ice cream cone, and all the ice cream they've got is vanilla, I don't turn it down just because I like peppermint-stick better. Elizabeth Zwicky zwicky@neu.sgi.com From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 11:54:40 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA20857 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:54:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA20848 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:54:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (from paw@localhost) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA11954 for sage-members@usenix.org; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 14:51:21 -0500 Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 14:51:21 -0500 From: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-Id: <199802261951.OAA11954@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion: Time to stop Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Stan Heller writes: The conversation has been stimulating, as usual. And important, as usual. But the time has come to move this thread to another discussion group. Stan - In fact, I _do_ want to keep this on sage-members. sage-announce is for announcements, but *this* list was designed as a member forum. I'd encourage you to stay tuned and *not* to discourage this debate. It obviously does need to be out in the open, as strong feelings (and perhaps the very nature of the organization itself) are involved. Virtually every subject line in this discussion contains the string "cert"; it's probably reasonable to filter on that. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 14:35:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA25785 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 14:35:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from FNAL.FNAL.Gov (fnal.fnal.gov [131.225.110.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA25773 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 14:35:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from fsui02.fnal.gov ("port 37142"@fsui02.fnal.gov) by FNAL.FNAL.GOV (PMDF V5.0-8 #3998) id <01IU1J4YN6N8002KWM@FNAL.FNAL.GOV> for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:32:38 -0600 Received: from localhost (mengel@localhost) by fsui02.fnal.gov (8.8.3/8.7.1) with SMTP id QAA14882 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:32:38 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:32:38 -0600 From: Marc Mengel Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: "Your message of Mon, 23 Feb 1998 17:37:23 PST." <199802240137.AA01373@poco.ccrwest.org> To: sage-members@usenix.org Message-id: <199802262232.QAA14882@fsui02.fnal.gov> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I think most of the discussion here has missed what I consider the important point. If we (SAGE as a group) do not provide a useful, informative, certification program, one *will* be provided for us, and it may not be one that we want. Already employers are jumping on the "Microsoft Certified Developer" and "Netware Certified" network administrator bandwagon. This is because the majority of folks in the world who need to hire a system administrator have *no clue* about system administration, or they would do it themselves. Those folks need some sort of mechanism to sort the wheat from the chaff of job applicants, and they will grab onto, and hang onto, any such mechanism they find like a Titanic survivor hanging onto a life boat. I suspect this has at least something to do with why many companies pick Novell and Microsoft over other solutions -- they come with an external ruler that *claims* to tell you whether people are qualified to work on the system you have purchased. After all, deploying a computer system involves not just buying the computers, but hiring the people to run them. If you as a manager can't figure out how to hire the people to run it, you may as well not buy the system... Microsoft and Novell have come along and given those managers an answer -- just look for their certification. Notice that I am not claiming that these certification programs are neccesarily accurate in discerning between "good" and "bad" administrators or programmers, or that they have any other benefit to society per se; rather I am claiming that their mere existence changes purchasing and hiring decisions on an ever increasing scale. (Yes, it would be nice if a SAGE certification program was effective at such screening. But if we make it a requirement that it be perfect in that regard, we will make the problem unsolvable.) So if you want to know why Microsoft and Novell are beating out your own Favorite Programming/Networking Solution in the marketplace, certification is actually one reason. (I'm sure there are others, but none of them have been mentioned on this mailing list lately :-> ) But if folks want to have a job administering FreeBSD or Red Hat Linux or Plan 9 systems in a couple of years; we should think about starting a certification program that lets managers know that there is a pool of people proportedly qualified to install and administer them, and so that the certificate can be listed as a requirement on the Help Wanted ads. Enough said. Marc From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 16:17:13 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA27543 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:17:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom8.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom8.netcom.com [192.100.81.117]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA27530 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:17:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom8.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id QAA09706; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:13:52 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802270013.QAA09706@netcom8.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:13:51 PST In-Reply-To: Marc Mengel "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 26, 4:32pm) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: Marc Mengel , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk } I think most of the discussion here has missed what I consider the important } point. If we (SAGE as a group) do not provide a useful, informative, } certification program, one *will* be provided for us, and it may not be } one that we want. I'm sorry but I disagree. This statement has appeared on this list nearly as many times as I've seen predictions on the death of Unix, but neither has come to pass. There seems to be an implicit assumption that HR departments are ready to run riot and elevate the next certification messiah that comes along. If you really believe this, then let me provide my own "modest proposal". Rather than pursuing the "quick fix" solution of rubber-stamping individuals as acceptable merely because they can pass a test, SAGE could pursue a course of eduction. Not for practicing Systems Administrators, but rather for recruiters, HR departments, and employers. Help them understand why any standardized testing members of our profession is hard. Give them other tools to help them find the right people. This is something that would make SAGE look auspicious. IMHO, the SAGE Job Descriptions was a great step in this direction. Every HR person I've shown it to has been amazingly greatful for this resource. And there's no tests in there, just information. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 20:09:17 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA03787 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:09:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from pisces.tcg.sgi.net (pisces.tcg.sgi.net [209.166.160.37]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA03778 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:09:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.166.130.32] (dial-pm1w1-p08.mcm.sgi.net [209.166.130.32]) by pisces.tcg.sgi.net (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id XAA22801 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:05:57 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199802270013.QAA09706@netcom8.netcom.com> References: Marc Mengel "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 26, 4:32pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:06:51 -0500 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Brian Lemley Subject: Re: cert discussion Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Folks, I've really enjoyed this discussion. Initially, I was in favor of the who idea of certification. However, after the following the discussion of the past few days, I come to the opposite conclusion. I see no compelling reason for SAGE to get involved in a certification program. Let's face it. Unless the people who are doing the hiring are very involved in the sys admin culture, they probably wouldn't know what "SAGE certified" meant anyway. If they want someone who's certified, they'll probably want " certified". Anything else is probably not gonna mean anything to them. Initially, I felt, as the SGI flyer promoting their certification program says, I can finally prove the knowledge I have for system administration. More realistically, I'd prove that I could successfully study for and take a test. I've taken many tests in school that if I had to take the same test today, I'd fail miserably. The fact is if you don't use it on a daily basis, you lose it. I could take the courses and test to become a MS-certified something or other. Two years from now, I get a job running an NT system because I'm MS Certified. If I've been working on Unix boxes full time for those two years, chances are, I would have forgotton everything for which I'm supposed to be certified. I think SAGE should focus more on educating the members and educating interested employers on how to hire sys admins instead of providing a certification process. Leave the certification process to the vendors. As I said before, if a company is looking for certification, they're probably wanting certification from a specific vendor. Imagine an ad that's looking for a certified Netware engineer (or whatever they call 'em). Now, imagine someone walking in and saying well I'm not a certified Netware but I'm a certified PC admin by "Some global PC administrators guild". What do you think the reaction of the interviewer is gonna be? Exactly, "Well, we're looking for a certified Netware engineer." BTW, I think this is the perfect list to discuss these issues. I glad to see this list finally taking up some bandwidth. My $.02, Brian _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/_/_/Brian Lemley, Email: lemleybf@sgi.net _/_/_/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 20:53:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA05815 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:53:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from orbit.hooked.net (orbit.hooked.net [206.80.16.182]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA05806 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:53:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from Uzorch@localhost) by orbit.hooked.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with UUCP id UAA16128 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:48:09 -0800 (PST) X-Authentication-Warning: orbit.hooked.net: Uzorch set sender to scott@zorch.sf-bay.org using -f Received: (from scott@localhost) by zorch.sf-bay.org (8.8.7/8.8.2) id UAA01082 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:23 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 20:46:23 -0800 (PST) From: Scott Hazen Mueller Message-Id: <199802270446.UAA01082@zorch.sf-bay.org> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion X-Envelope-To: sage-members@usenix.ORG Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >If we (SAGE as a group) do not provide a useful, informative, certification >program, one *will* be provided for us, and it may not be one that we want. Howzabout we certify the certification programs? \scott From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 22:27:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA10057 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:27:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA10048 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:27:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA26992; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:22:14 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id WAA26070; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:25:17 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802270625.WAA26070@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: scott@zorch.sf-bay.org (Scott Hazen Mueller) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:25:16 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802270446.UAA01082@zorch.sf-bay.org> from "Scott Hazen Mueller" at Feb 26, 98 08:46:23 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Scott Hazen Mueller writes: > Howzabout we certify the certification programs? This is being researched, and has a champion on the Board. Stay tuned :-) -- HM From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 22:58:40 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA11738 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:58:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA11729 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:58:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id WAA27246; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:53:31 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id WAA26180; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:56:32 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802270656.WAA26180@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (zwicky) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:56:31 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802261946.UAA04080@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> from "zwicky" at Feb 26, 98 08:46:43 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk zwicky writes: > >1) It's a big undertaking, I'm not sure we have the resources in place > > to pull it off. > > We have no idea how big an undertaking it is yet -- it's too early to I agree with Dave that I'm not yet sure we have the resources to do up a major certification program, but I more strongly agree with Elizabeth that we don't yet know what the resource requirement is, and thus can't say for certain. There are many options being bandied about, some "cost" more than others. One, for example, is the idea that we "certify" other organization's programs when we have somehow decided that their approach is valid toward the goals we define. That shouldn't take too much in the way of SAGE/USENIX resources, regardless of how deep our pocket may be. My impression is that we WILL have the resources to cover what we may eventually come up with. > *Your* issue is that you're short on people, and certification won't > help you with that. If we had a certification proposal on hand, and > an education proposal, and only enough money to fund one of them, > this would be a good reason to reject the certification proposal. > But if someone offers me an ice cream cone, and all the ice cream > they've got is vanilla, I don't turn it down just because I like > peppermint-stick better. Hear hear. If I had to choose, my choice also would be the education one, almost hands-down (I'd like to look at them first, but would almost certainly pick even a relatively poor education one). However, we shouldn't be running into that problem here. I've been beating bushes looking to get a team together that could make a good case for an education proposal, and will be working on that even more actively now, but in the mean time, I have the beginnings of a certification proposal forming and don't see a need to cut it off (at least with regard to resource allocation issues.) -- HM From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 23:02:00 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA11900 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:02:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from ee.Princeton.EDU (root@ee.Princeton.EDU [128.112.48.182]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id XAA11891 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:01:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from flux (jay@flux.Princeton.EDU [128.112.48.27]) by ee.Princeton.EDU (8.6.10/8.6.10-1) with ESMTP id BAA16708 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 01:58:42 -0500 From: Jay Plett Received: by flux (8.6.10/viktor-1) id BAA05979; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 01:58:42 -0500 Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 01:58:42 -0500 Message-Id: <199802270658.BAA05979@flux> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I'm reminded of the person, back in the good-ole-days when you could conduct dialog on Usenet news, who prefaced many of his articles with "Ahem". (I think he quit after somebody made a crack about "that guy who always clears his throat before he speaks"; I thought he should have been proud of such notice.) Ahem. > you can either > > 1) Do whatever people are interested in doing right now. > OR > 2) Do nothing at all. > > ... At the moment, SAGE's > resources for supporting people who are actually going to get > work done are nearly infinite; if somebody desperately wants to > pursue certification, great! If the argument is that Usenix has money to burn for anybody who's eager to spend it, we're in trouble. > If all you've got is a cart, why worry about where the horse would go > if you had one? If you need to haul manure and somebody wants to sell you a cart but there's no horse to be found, why would you buy the cart? > But if someone offers me an ice cream cone, and all the ice cream > they've got is vanilla, I don't turn it down just because I like > peppermint-stick better. Even if vanilla makes you break out in hives? It's true that catchy metaphors sell everything from all-terrain vehicles to swampland to people who need neither. Hopefully this forum will find pertinent analysis more persuasive. ...jay From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 23:16:16 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA12587 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:16:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA12575 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:16:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA27391; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:11:00 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA26208; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:14:00 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802270714.XAA26208@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: rackow@mcs.anl.gov (Gene Rackow) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:13:59 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802261545.JAA23568@antares.mcs.anl.gov> from "Gene Rackow" at Feb 26, 98 09:45:08 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Gene Rackow writes: > In many cases, what certification is aimed at is the entry level person. > These are the people that don't have lots of money to get started in the > first place, and do not have a resume/vita that speaks for them. They > need a certificate that claims they at least get in the door. Having > to much to cost involved with that is going to limit them too. Good point. We discussed this during the Board meeting, and all agreed that whatever is done must not be exclusive based on cost. I also agree that the program we're likely to come up with will be aimed mostly at entry level people. > Also, how relevant are the questions. Things vary from OS to OS, and in > some cases release to release. The formats of files vary widely, etc. > While I don't have the full format of every option in the AIX version of > the /etc/passwd /etc/security/passwd stanza files memorized, I know the > ones that are important, and can find the others in moments. Very true. This is why we discussed a "Level 1" program rather than a "Level 4" Knowing what a filesystem is can be generalized much more easily that knowing the differences between FAT, XFS, UFS and DFS. Knowing what one is can probably be judged important to a Level 1 sysadmin, whereas knowing the differences between types would probably not. > Forcing membership is not the way to go. It is clear that there are > people that are not happy with Usenix, so forcing membership upon them > is not going to make them happy. Do we want real unbiased certification, > or a multi-card carrying club? I am a member of the Oregon State Bar. I had to take certain specialized classes and exams to get that certification (no, I don't practice any longer). I've done this (the "forcing" issue). I see no reason to do so in a sysadmin environment, now or in the future. Just doesn't seem to apply. I'm looking for the unbiased, meaningful version, and most certainly do NOT want a country club. I can't see it happening. > Some of the issues are above. One thing that I mentioned already in other > mail on this thread, is that according to "certification standards" > I'm passed the tests for FCC Class 1 radio/telegraph systems about 20years > ago. It takes very little to keep that certification valid, and the > fact that I haven't touched or even looked at one of those systems in 15 > years does not matter. In our field, the sytems change even more often > than radio. most radio transmission stations are using the same transmitter > towers, amps, etc they have for many years. Most computer systems get > replaced in 3 to 5 years. Another good point. Keeping the program current, and keeping us current are two big issues. They need to be worked out. I've heard some preliminary ideas, but nothing concrete yet. -- HM From sage-members-owner Thu Feb 26 23:22:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA12904 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:22:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA12895 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:22:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA27445; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:17:44 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA26236; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:20:40 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802270720.XAA26236@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: swill41@jcpenney.com (Scott Williams) Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 23:20:39 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802252243.QAA06636@cws201.cat.jcp.com> from "Scott Williams" at Feb 25, 98 04:43:11 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Scott Williams writes: > What about an apprentice program? I've been behind this one for a long time, and would like to see it happen. I agree with you, though, that getting it underway will be a job. I think that the new mentor's program getting started (you'll hear more about this during the next year) may be the first step. It won't be a complete apprenticeship program, but at least it's a start. Maybe we can get you to help us build from there! -- HM From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 00:42:14 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA16328 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 00:42:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from eugate.sgi.com (eugate.sgi.com [193.73.159.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id AAA16297 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 00:42:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from eurohub.neu.sgi.com (eurohub.neu.sgi.com [144.253.128.2]) by eugate.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/970417-sgi-europehub) via ESMTP id JAA15807; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:38:43 +0100 env-from (zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com) Received: from pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com [144.253.130.13]) by eurohub.neu.sgi.com (980205.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id JAA166794; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:38:43 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost by pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/911001.SGI) id JAA05263; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:38:41 +0100 Message-Id: <199802270838.JAA05263@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> To: Jay Plett cc: sage-members@usenix.org, zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 27 Feb 1998 01:58:42 EST." <199802270658.BAA05979@flux> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:38:40 +0100 From: zwicky Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >If the argument is that Usenix has money to burn for anybody >who's eager to spend it, we're in trouble. The argument is that Usenix has the money to support anybody who has a worthwhile project. Sure, people are still being turned down. You turn something down because you already have a more worthwhile proposal in hand. You turn something down because you have reason to believe you're about to have a more worthwhile proposal. You turn things down because you think they don't deserve to be done, that the requester can't do them, or that they're outside USENIX' scope. But you don't turn them down because you hope someday somebody might submit a better proposal. >> If all you've got is a cart, why worry about where the horse would go >> if you had one? >If you need to haul manure and somebody wants to sell you a cart >but there's no horse to be found, why would you buy the cart? Ummm... because I'd rather haul the cart myself than leave the manure sitting around? >> But if someone offers me an ice cream cone, and all the ice cream >> they've got is vanilla, I don't turn it down just because I like >> peppermint-stick better. >Even if vanilla makes you break out in hives? Obviously not. That why "I think it's counterproductive" and "I think it's morally wrong" are good reasons *not* to do certification. If it's counterproductive or wrong, then let's not do it. If it's just pointless, it makes people happy, so it's worth it. If it's an OK thing but not the best thing, that's just fine -- it's the proposal on the table, and pursuing it won't keep us from pursuing education as well. Elizabeth Zwicky zwicky@neu.sgi.com From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 02:12:39 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id CAA21363 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 02:12:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from eugate.sgi.com (eugate.sgi.com [193.73.159.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id CAA21354 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 02:12:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from eurohub.neu.sgi.com (eurohub.neu.sgi.com [144.253.128.2]) by eugate.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/970417-sgi-europehub) via ESMTP id LAA25447; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 11:09:06 +0100 env-from (zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com) Received: from pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com [144.253.130.13]) by eurohub.neu.sgi.com (980205.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id LAA164276; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 11:09:05 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost by pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/911001.SGI) id LAA05398; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 11:09:02 +0100 Message-Id: <199802271009.LAA05398@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 26 Feb 1998 11:27:32 PST." <199802261927.LAA13849@netcom8.netcom.com> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 11:09:02 +0100 From: zwicky Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk [It's probably worthwhile pointing out that I am, at best, lukewarm about certification. What I'm in favor of is productive discussion.] >-- Certification is actively harmful to the membership. I believe it > will reduce salaries and require members to pay repeatedly for expensive > certification exams and training. I believe it will be used enforce a > rigid status quo in a dynamic industry and will be descriminatory to > "non-traditional" administrators. OK, I understand the issue about expensive certification exams and training -- the cheapest possible exams are going to be relatively expensive. I'm not sure why you think it will reduce salaries; the Microsoft/Netware crowd seems to believe it increases salaries. Are there any relevant facts? My intuition is that it increases low-end salaries and does nothing to high-end salaries, because high-end salaries are driven by pure desperation. But my intuition vs. your intuition is not a fruitful argument. I'm also not sure how a certification program *could* either enforce a rigid status quo, *or* discrimate against non-traditional administrators. It's certainly less effective at these and cheaper than an education program. It is certainly discriminatory against people who don't test well, but that can be dealt with. (For instance, testing programs routinely provide adaptations for people with learning disabilities; it's also possible to provide an alternate non-test certification route.) I know several people who're "non-traditional" if that means "non-degreed"; one of them would be actively aided by a certificate program, since he could easily get one and it would distract employers from his lack of degree. The other probably wouldn't get a certificate -- although he could ask for and receive adaptations, it's an incredible nuisance to do so, and the test is inherently much harder for him than for most of the rest of us. And he has no great reason to care; employers are so blinded by his accomplishments that relatively few of them even notice he's missing a degree. >-- It is morally wrong because SAGE is not representative of the global > administration community or even the global Unix administration > community. I really don't see where this matters. A SAGE system administration certificate is a SAGE system administration certificate, not a decree of absolute truth. This is one area where employers have a pretty good grasp on reality; when they look at a certificate, they pay attention to the certificate-granting organization. There are really two types of certificate-granting organizations: ones that get to define their field, and ones that are merely asserting an opinion. Microsoft's certificates, or certificates issued by the state, have a special mystic significance, since they're issued by an organization that has the power to simply decree what is required to have the title that's on the certificate. But thousands of other organizations offer certificates that are based solely on their opinion; those certificates have a weight based on the reputation of the organization. If SAGE doesn't represent its community, that makes its certificates worthless pieces of paper, but I don't think it makes the enterprise immoral. > Furthermore, I believe the Board is pursuing certification > without a clear mandate from the membership. This I basically agree with; that is, I think clear mandates from the membership are rarer than perfectly sunny days in Seattle, but that this is an issue where things are much worse than unclear. I would like it clarified ASAP, because we've been going through this every 3 months for SAGE's entire history. It's time to either do it, or kill it. Just kinda not doing it is not a useful option. >Let me further state that just because employers might be clamoring for >some sort of ranking system for System Administration candidates, and even >if Sun, Microsoft, and every other vendor in the world panders to this sort >of inane credentialism, there is no reason in the world why SAGE should >pursue such a course. Amen, brother! But... I think you're partly fighting a straw man here. Yeah, some of the reason people want to do this boils down to "Everybody else is, why can't I?" and that's an argument beneath contempt. But "employers are clamoring" really is "SAGE members are clamoring", which is a good argument. And "everybody else is doing it really badly, which annoys me, and I can do it right and make the world a better place" is an argument which might be factually incorrect, but isn't ridiculous. >Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com > Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 07:52:20 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA07444 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:52:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA07435 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:52:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA00815; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:47:08 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA27229; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:50:12 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802271550.HAA27229@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:50:11 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802231945.LAA13099@netcom8.netcom.com> from "Hal Pomeranz" at Feb 23, 98 11:45:59 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hal Pomeranz writes: > I'm confused about a couple of apparently conflicting statements in > your most recent message. Maybe you can clarify a couple of things for > me and the lurking membership: > > You say that the Board DID NOT set out to: > } - require certification for membership > > but then you later mention a problem that you're personally facing: > > } if I am faced (I've been there) with > } 160+ applicants for a single junior position, I need something to help with > } the preselection process. > > It seems to me that suddenly the certification IS a requirement, if > somebody isn't going to get through the qualification process without it. > And even if that's not the be-all and end-all for your hiring decision, > you can be HR departments and recruiters are going to seize on this > system and make it a tacit requirement. I don't see it as a requirement of any sort. What it does is speed up the process of preliminary screening: a resume that includes various "buzzwords" gets put into the pile for further review right away (whether those be X years of UNIX experience, a CS degree, or a certification), and the others need a bit more review right now to see whether they should go into that same pile. In my personal situation, a resume that doesn't have whatever buzzword I'm looking for staring me in the face doesn't automatically get rejected, it just needs a bit more reading for the initial screen. How others may treat this, I don't know. > Also in the "Board DID NOT" category we have: > > } - establish a plan that would require people to pay anything to anyone > > and in the "Board is planning" column: > > } - agree to proceed toward a "single-topic" recognition program a la Pat > } Wilson's Merit Badges > } - agree to investigate ways of having a certification program administered > } effectively and inexpensively > > I remain unconvinced that even a "single topic recognition program" will > not require a significant financial investment on the part of our membership > and their employers. Can you describe more completely your thoughts in > this area? The original Merit Badge proposal for example was (and still is) a self-study guide. The method of awarding the resulting recognition isn't yet worked out, but the primary discussion was along the lines of acceptance by some individual(s) in the community who are acknowledged experts. Simplistic example: Eric Allman helps write the criteria for the sendmail recognition, at two levels. Those who pass his higher level become certifiers themselves, and SAGE needs some database of who they are. Those certifiers notify the SAGE database of individuals they've certified at the lower level. Cost overall is quite low. Bear in mind that this is definitely an overly simplistic layout and I'm not planning to "defend" specifics in how that "program" works or where it might fail, although I'd be only too happy to have anyone with productive thoughts on it contact me on the side with their views so we can work it. -- HM From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 07:59:20 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA07786 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:59:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA07759 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:59:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA00886; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:54:04 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA27355; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:57:08 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802271557.HAA27355@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: jay@ccs.neu.edu (Jay Sekora) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 07:57:07 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802232127.QAA06175@everest.ccs.neu.edu> from "Jay Sekora" at Feb 23, 98 04:27:12 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Jay Sekora writes: > > - agree to have a team of folks determine a set of Job Description Level > > One items that are both "acceptably" common to most sysadmins and in > > some way "measurable" > > That part I think would be useful - a kind of `what should you look > for in a prospective employee' document. OK, you're on. Can we count on you to help produce this? I agree that it would be valuable. This is the kind of thing I'd like to see a team of folks come back with. -- HM From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 08:05:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA08181 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:05:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA08172 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:05:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA00962; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:00:19 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA27455; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:03:24 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802271603.IAA27455@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: wnl@groupsys.com (William LeFebvre) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:03:23 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802251623.LAA09264@ocee.groupsys.com> from "William LeFebvre" at Feb 25, 98 11:23:53 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk William LeFebvre writes: > > From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) > > You say that the Board DID NOT set out to: > > } - require certification for membership > > > > It seems to me that suddenly the certification IS a requirement, if > > somebody isn't going to get through the qualification process without it. > I belive Hal (and the board) was referring to requiring certification > for SAGE membership. As in, you would not need to be certified just > to be a member of SAGE. Bill is correct about what I intended here. -- HM From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 08:33:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA09803 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:33:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA09790 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:33:26 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom7.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id IAA08395; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:28:43 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802271628.IAA08395@netcom7.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:28:42 PST In-Reply-To: zwicky "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 27, 11:09am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: zwicky Subject: Re: cert discussion Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk } I'm not sure why you think [certification] will reduce salaries; } the Microsoft/Netware crowd seems to believe it increases salaries. } Are there any relevant facts? I was commenting to somebody last night that some historical research is probably in order. I wonder which historical precedent to consult, however. } My intuition is that it increases low-end } salaries and does nothing to high-end salaries, because high-end } salaries are driven by pure desperation. But my intuition vs. your } intuition is not a fruitful argument. I tend to agree about intuition vs. intuition arguments, but for the record I believe that certification (particularly at a low level) will tacitly create in the minds of hiring managers a pool of essentially fungible resources, causing them to think about this group as a commodity and driving entry-level salaries down. } I'm also not sure how a certification program *could* either enforce } a rigid status quo, *or* discrimate against non-traditional administrators. Whatever goes onto the exam is the somebody's notion of the minimum acceptable knowledge in a given field. If I completely disagree with the exam writer, but employers are using that credential to screen applicants, I'm forced to tacitly support the exam-writers world-view at least enough to pass the exam and put that on my resume. Since I'm also generally lazy, there's not much incentive to originate new thought in the area. Also, I meant "non-traditional administrators" in the sense of growing up outside of the SAGE/USENIX sphere of thought. I think there are a lot of practicing administrators out there who don't share our prejudices. } (For instance, testing programs routinely } provide adaptations for people with learning disabilities; Testing programs also still routinely disenfranchise large segments of the population. Hey, I don't care, I'm a male WASP, so I kick serious butt on these tests and the rest of you just improve my overall ranking. } it's also } possible to provide an alternate non-test certification route.) The usual tactic here is to grandfather in people with a certain amount of work experience. But if the certification exam is the only way for people new to the profession to get a job, then they're in a bit of a catch-22. } I know several people who're "non-traditional" if that means } "non-degreed"; one of them would be actively aided by a certificate } program, since he could easily get one and it would distract employers } from his lack of degree. The other probably wouldn't get a certificate -- } although he could ask for and receive adaptations, it's an incredible } nuisance to do so, and the test is inherently much harder for him } than for most of the rest of us. And he has no great reason to care; } employers are so blinded by his accomplishments that relatively few } of them even notice he's missing a degree. You conveniently leave out the people who would be actively aided by a certificate because of the lack of some other credential (a degree, work experience, etc.), but for whom the same issues that prevented them getting the other credentials they need will also prevent them from getting an certificate that SAGE offers. } >-- It is morally wrong because SAGE is not representative of the global } > administration community or even the global Unix administration } > community. } } I really don't see where this matters. A SAGE system administration } certificate is a SAGE system administration certificate, not a decree } of absolute truth. [...] } [...] If SAGE } doesn't represent its community, that makes its certificates worthless } pieces of paper, but I don't think it makes the enterprise immoral. If the certificates are worthless pieces of paper than it would at least be wrong in a fiduciary sense for SAGE to be pursuing certification. This gets back to a response I wanted to make to a comment you made in a previous message. There's really no shortage of productive things the Board could be doing besides certification. And the Board shouldn't wait for good proposals to be dropped in front of them. We elected the Board to proactively operate in our best interests. } > Furthermore, I believe the Board is pursuing certification } > without a clear mandate from the membership. } } This I basically agree with; that is, I think clear mandates from } the membership are rarer than perfectly sunny days in Seattle, but } that this is an issue where things are much worse than unclear. } I would like it clarified ASAP, because we've been going through this } every 3 months for SAGE's entire history. It's time to either do it, } or kill it. Just kinda not doing it is not a useful option. Yes, I've been having this really strong feeling of deja vu. Hello, Board? Where are the survey results we've been asking for? I'd also love to send out the survey again now that we've had this discussion in front of the membership. Bet we'd get a lot more response this time and it would be more strongly polarized. Could we also archive this discussion somewhere so we don't have to have it all over again? Don't you think we also ought to survey hiring managers, recruiters, HR departments, etc. to see if they think a certificate from us would be worthwhile? } >Let me further state that just because employers might be clamoring for } >some sort of ranking system for System Administration candidates, and even } >if Sun, Microsoft, and every other vendor in the world panders to this sort } >of inane credentialism, there is no reason in the world why SAGE should } >pursue such a course. } } Amen, brother! But... I think you're partly fighting a straw man here. } Yeah, some of the reason people want to do this boils down to "Everybody } else is, why can't I?" and that's an argument beneath contempt. But } "employers are clamoring" really is "SAGE members are clamoring", which } is a good argument. And "everybody else is doing it really badly, which } annoys me, and I can do it right and make the world a better place" is } an argument which might be factually incorrect, but isn't ridiculous. So we're pretty much in violent agreement about the parameters of discussion. There's a significant, if not vocal, group of folks in SAGE who are, shall we say, less than excited about the prospect of certification. I also submit that there are ways to satisfy the faction who _are_ clamoring without pursuing certification. I don't think we've done a very good job understanding what people are actually clamoring for, which is shameful considering this is what we all do every day as a profession. Then also you and I and other people who have joined this discussion have been spending some time arguing about whether we can do it right and whether that will make the world a better place, though I think the jury's still out. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 08:38:52 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA10139 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:38:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA10128 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:38:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom7.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id IAA08961; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:34:51 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802271634.IAA08961@netcom7.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:34:50 PST In-Reply-To: Hal Miller "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 27, 8:03am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: Hal Miller , wnl@groupsys.com (William LeFebvre) Subject: Re: cert discussion Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk HP> It seems to me that suddenly the certification IS a requirement, if HP> somebody isn't going to get through the qualification process without it. WL> I belive Hal (and the board) was referring to requiring certification WL> for SAGE membership. As in, you would not need to be certified just WL> to be a member of SAGE. HM> Bill is correct about what I intended here. c.f. my previous answer to Bill. I suspect most people are going to be more worried about their future employment than whether or not they are members of SAGE. Hal, regardless of your plans for using certification in your hiring decisions, less astute hiring folks are going to use such a certificate as an absolute standard. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 08:39:39 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA10231 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:39:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA10221 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:39:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA01444; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:34:30 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA27774; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:37:35 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199802271637.IAA27774@cactii.tera.com> Subject: Re: cert discussion To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:37:34 -0800 (PST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199802251844.KAA09301@netcom7.netcom.com> from "Hal Pomeranz" at Feb 25, 98 10:44:18 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hal Pomeranz writes: > WL> I belive Hal (and the board) was referring to requiring certification > WL> for SAGE membership. As in, you would not need to be certified just > WL> to be a member of SAGE. > > Well forgive me Hal, Bill, and the Board, but I suspect more people are > going to be worried about their future employment than whether or not > they're going to be a member of SAGE. Concur. > The bottom line is that any > certification program will be used to at least pre-qualify "acceptable" > applicants. As I said earlier, I use buzzwords of this kind (including degree, etc.) only to decide affirmatively to look in more depth, not to reject. If I don't see the buzzwords jumping out at me, I look the CV over more closely to see whether experience and capability appear to be there. In either event when I see something I like, it goes into the pile for further review later. If I see nothing I like, it's gone. Then I go back for the second (of many) pass. > As such, it will become a requirement for practicing > System Administrators. Here I don't follow the logic. If I were to reject any CV that didn't have a specific buzzword (and I'll admit there are folks out there that do this, particularly those unfamiliar with the technical details of what a sysadmin does), then it would seem to be a requirement. I don't see a SAGE certification program making this problem any worse than it already is, and in fact may help: it may pass through HR to real hiring managers some resumes that might not have made it before, for example those that don't have degrees but have lots of experience. > That doesn't necessarily mean that SAGE shouldn't pursue certification, > but the membership ought to be clear about what they're signing up for. Again, I concur, particularly with the latter part. -- HM From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 09:36:18 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA13481 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:36:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivac45 ([204.193.38.230]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA13472 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:36:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from wrso38035.ivac_eng by ivac45 (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA19861; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:32:27 -0800 Received: by wrso38035.ivac_eng (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA22738; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:32:28 -0800 Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:32:28 -0800 From: dengland@alarismed.com (Dave England) Message-Id: <199802271732.JAA22738@wrso38035.ivac_eng> To: zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com Subject: Re: cert discussion Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: LWg2WSZiwrkNNQsZ741i6g== Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > the Microsoft/Netware crowd seems to believe it increases salaries. > Are there any relevant facts? Checkout the February 98 issue of Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine. They have a salary survey in there this month that is very relevant to this debate. www.mcpmag.com/members/98feb/fea1main.asp I think many people will find it very enlightening. It says that salaries are dropping off in some areas due to an increase in the number of certified System Engineers. dave From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 09:37:20 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA13566 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:37:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (sirocco.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.27.12]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA13541 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:37:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) by sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id MAA01892 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 12:33:58 -0500 X-SMTP-Posting-Origin: amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 12:35:44 -0500 (EST) From: Ron Hall cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-Reply-To: <199802271557.HAA27355@cactii.tera.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Hal Miller wrote: > Jay Sekora writes: > > > - agree to have a team of folks determine a set of Job Description Level > > > One items that are both "acceptably" common to most sysadmins and in > > > some way "measurable" > > > > That part I think would be useful - a kind of `what should you look > > for in a prospective employee' document. > > OK, you're on. Can we count on you to help produce this? I agree that > it would be valuable. This is the kind of thing I'd like to see a team > of folks come back with. I've worked on a prototype of this document for years now. I can never come to concensus of what's what. I'll try to scare up the last rev of this. ron From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 10:15:13 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA15874 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:15:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from bach.cv.nrao.edu (rmilner@bach.cv.nrao.edu [192.33.115.54]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA15856 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:15:06 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rmilner@localhost) by bach.cv.nrao.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/CV-2.3) id NAA13233 for sage-members@usenix.org; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:11:47 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:11:47 -0500 (EST) From: "Ruth Milner [VLA]" Message-Id: <199802271811.NAA13233@bach.cv.nrao.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Re alternative non-test certification routes, Hal Pomeranz wrote: > The usual tactic here is to grandfather in people with a certain amount > of work experience. *If* this should ever be proposed (and I realize it hasn't been yet ;-) ) I would argue vehemently against it. If there's one thing recent recruiting experience has taught me, it's that the "amount of work experience" is not directly correlated with how good someone will actually be on the job. Kind of like how many of us seem to view those other certificates that people can already get ... :-} Ruth. ---- Ruth Milner NRAO Socorro NM Manager of Computing Systems rmilner@aoc.nrao.edu From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 10:18:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA16076 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:18:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from agogo.engin.umich.edu (root@agogo.engin.umich.edu [141.212.32.118]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA16066 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:17:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (paul@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by agogo.engin.umich.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA29852; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:12:59 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802271812.NAA29852@agogo.engin.umich.edu> To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) cc: zwicky , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 27 Feb 1998 08:28:42 PST." <199802271628.IAA08395@netcom7.netcom.com> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:12:58 -0500 From: paul killey Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I wonder which historical precedent to consult, however. the area of 'professionalization' (which i think would bear on the certification discussion here) has been written about quite a bit. 'professions' (quite a range; accountants, doctors, lawyers, funeral directors, engineers), academic areas (sciences and social sciences ... associations in different disciplines), and a # of different jobs (skilled trades, telephone operators, educators, secretaries, etc.). the ideology of these studies is both "left" (rationalizes the workforce for the employers, is used to drive women out of desirable fields and make them male dominated or to push women into limited roles, copts workers, makes them a commodity, and destroys their class consciousness) and "right" (democratizes fields, opens entrance based on ability and inclination, focuses on specific skills and raises wages and creates more specialized and valuable ability & expertise in the work force, which in turn advances the credibility of the entire field, forces out charlatans and quacks, etc.). the economics (tendencies toward low-end or high-end salaries) has a lot to do with the supply & demand. for example, if barriers to certification are high (limited slots, high cost of qualifying, level of difficulty in passing exams) the supply is kept down. when the professional or qualifying organization is not the employer, or is adversarial to the employer (unions & trades), maintains exclusivity in the cert process and maintains controls on the # of people one way or another the supply is kept down. of course, laws that require the engagement of certified professionals help a lot too! :) and, vice-versa. law (and law schools) is an area where an oversupply was kicking in for a while and may still be. so, you see a good # of lawyers with low salaries, or really scraping from client to client. and a really big variance between low and high salary ranges. and a lot of ex-lawyers, for that matter. it strikes me that the fact that there is a Systems Administrator's *Guild* and not a Systems Administrator's Association or Union says something about the values and assumptions of the organization. And that's why this group is talking about certs like they are. speaking of historical precedents (and i don't mean this in a bad way) i wonder what an e-mail discussion on the weavers guild list in the 18th century or shoemakers guild list in the 19th century would have been like? --paul From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 10:34:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA16912 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:34:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from tfs.com (ss10-andrew.tfs.com [140.145.1.30]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA16902 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:34:26 -0800 (PST) Received: (from andrew@localhost) by tfs.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/ver) id KAA00813; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:32:29 -0800 (PST) From: andrew@tfs.com (Andrew Routhier) Message-Id: <980227103227.ZM811@ss10-andrew.tfs.com> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 10:32:26 -0800 In-Reply-To: Scott Hazen Mueller "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 26, 8:46pm) References: <199802270446.UAA01082@zorch.sf-bay.org> X-Mailer: Z-Mail (5.0.0 30July97) To: Scott Hazen Mueller , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Now we're getting somewhere..... On Feb 26, 8:46pm, Scott Hazen Mueller wrote: > Subject: Re: cert discussion > >If we (SAGE as a group) do not provide a useful, informative, certification > >program, one *will* be provided for us, and it may not be one that we want. > > Howzabout we certify the certification programs? > > \scott > >-- End of excerpt from Scott Hazen Mueller From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 11:26:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA19990 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 11:26:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from antares.mcs.anl.gov (mcs.anl.gov [140.221.9.6]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA19979 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 11:25:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from mcs.anl.gov (obie-5.mcs.anl.gov [140.221.5.129]) by antares.mcs.anl.gov (8.6.10/8.6.10) with ESMTP id NAA12599; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:20:44 -0600 Message-Id: <199802271920.NAA12599@antares.mcs.anl.gov> To: dengland@alarismed.com (Dave England) cc: zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com, sage-members@usenix.org, rackow@antares.mcs.anl.gov Subject: Re: cert discussion In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:32:28 PST." <199802271732.JAA22738@wrso38035.ivac_eng> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 13:20:39 -0600 From: Gene Rackow Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Dave England made the following keystrokes: > > > the Microsoft/Netware crowd seems to believe it increases salaries. > > Are there any relevant facts? > >Checkout the February 98 issue of Microsoft Certified Professional >Magazine. They have a salary survey in there this month that is very >relevant to this debate. www.mcpmag.com/members/98feb/fea1main.asp > >I think many people will find it very enlightening. It says that >salaries are dropping off in some areas due to an increase in >the number of certified System Engineers. > >dave > Dave, A question you have to ask yourself in reading taht kind of statement is: What is really causing the supply/demand change? Are there more ceritificates out there because the job market required them, and now people are catching up? Are there more people getting their badges now than before and flooding the market? Why? Is it because getting the cert is relatively easy? Are the better paying jobs still there, and the flood of low end jobs causing the drop in averages? There are many ways of looking at the data their samples have produced. If they can't get the data to say what they want it to, then they need to get a better statistics person involved. --Gene From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 14:39:49 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA00329 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:39:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from lsi.lsil.com (lsi.lsil.com [147.145.40.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA00320 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:39:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from mhbs.lsil.com ([147.145.29.36]) by lsi.lsil.com with ESMTP id OAA08868 (8.6.12/IDA-1.6 for ); Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:36:29 -0800 Received: from useng27.lsil.com by mhbs.lsil.com; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:36:27 -0800 Received: by useng27 (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id OAA15375; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:36:27 -0800 Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:36:27 -0800 From: macarnor@lsil.com (Norman Macaraeg) Message-Id: <199802272236.OAA15375@useng27> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: NpWCQFkj/J7xf/9QXhmhEw== Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk "Certified system engineers." What exactly does this mean? I've always felt that anyone deserving of an "engineer" title must have gotten a bachelor's degree in the engineering field. I have a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Technology with computer and electronics as my emphasis. But I would in NO way call myself an engineer. This is what I believe a lot of us are afraid of with certification. Being certified seems to be an easy way to getting an engineering title. I've interviewed Drake certified SUN system administrators and they didn't even know how to mount a file system. Or even describe the process to propagate NIS maps. There's a lot of pretenders out there and I've already spoken to a lot of them. I would be more inclined to hire someone with experience over some- one that's certified. And I would be more inclined to hire someone with a degree than someone that's certified. If that certified someone has experience and a degree? Then great. More power to them. They're hired. When you think about it, certification COULD lead to lower salaries especially if there's an increase in certified SA's. What do you think every kid out of high school is going to want to do? Four year degree? Or less than a year's worth of school to make what a lot of us make today? Hmmmm.... >>Dave England made the following keystrokes: >> > >> > > the Microsoft/Netware crowd seems to believe it increases salaries. >> > > Are there any relevant facts? >> > >> >Checkout the February 98 issue of Microsoft Certified Professional >> >Magazine. They have a salary survey in there this month that is very >> >relevant to this debate. www.mcpmag.com/members/98feb/fea1main.asp >> > >> >I think many people will find it very enlightening. It says that >> >salaries are dropping off in some areas due to an increase in >> >the number of certified System Engineers. >> > >> >dave >> > >>Dave, >>A question you have to ask yourself in reading taht kind of statement is: >> >>What is really causing the supply/demand change? >>Are there more ceritificates out there because the job market >>required them, and now people are catching up? >> >>Are there more people getting their badges now than before and flooding >>the market? Why? Is it because getting the cert is relatively easy? >> >>Are the better paying jobs still there, and the flood of low end jobs >>causing the drop in averages? >> >>There are many ways of looking at the data their samples have produced. >>If they can't get the data to say what they want it to, then they need >>to get a better statistics person involved. >> >>--Gene _______________________________________________________________________ Norman J. Macaraeg Tel: (408) 954-4836 _____ LSI Logic Corp. Pag: (888) 321-3987 LSI|LOGIC| UNIX System Administration Fax: (408) 433-7695 | | 1551 Mc Carthy Blvd. M/S C-410 E-mail : macarnor@lsil.com |_____| Milpitas, CA 95035 _______________________________________________________________________ From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 14:40:44 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA00393 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:40:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from kiowa.wildstar.net (falcon@kiowa.wildstar.net [198.203.196.143]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA00361 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 14:40:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (falcon@localhost) by kiowa.wildstar.net (8.8.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA13181 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 16:37:21 -0600 X-Authentication-Warning: kiowa.wildstar.net: falcon owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 16:37:21 -0600 (CST) From: "R. Wyatt" To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: certifications Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I have watched this discussion with great interest. Before, I make a judgement as whether to agree or diagree by far more information is needed. The one question that I have to answer is how will certification suit my purposes in the long run? *Nobody* made me a decent administrator. It has been a lot of hard work, listening, and a lot of long hours. Will certification teach you how to deal with Vendors ? Will it increase the knowledge base ? I have my hands into a little bit of everything here, would a general certification course be difficult enough to test my abilities. I often test myself in certain areas, not as a matter to improve my resume but just to improve my skills set. In my opinion, a knowledge base and mentoring programs are by far issues that need to be pursued with some sort of urgency. Randy Wyatt Systems Engineer Lucent Technologies From sage-members-owner Fri Feb 27 20:33:00 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA13144 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 20:33:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from honor.greatcircle.com (honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA13135 for ; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 20:32:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from [172.16.2.21] (blackbird.greatcircle.com [172.17.3.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA06053; Fri, 27 Feb 1998 20:21:26 -0800 (PST) X-Sender: brent@honor.greatcircle.com Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <980227103227.ZM811@ss10-andrew.tfs.com> References: Scott Hazen Mueller "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 26, 8:46pm) <199802270446.UAA01082@zorch.sf-bay.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 20:27:25 -0800 To: andrew@tfs.com (Andrew Routhier), Scott Hazen Mueller , sage-members@usenix.org From: Brent Chapman Subject: Re: cert discussion Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Yeah, they're all certifiable... -Brent At 10:32 AM -0800 2/27/98, Andrew Routhier wrote: >Now we're getting somewhere..... > >On Feb 26, 8:46pm, Scott Hazen Mueller wrote: >> Subject: Re: cert discussion >> >If we (SAGE as a group) do not provide a useful, informative, certification >> >program, one *will* be provided for us, and it may not be one that we want. >> >> Howzabout we certify the certification programs? >> >> \scott >> >>-- End of excerpt from Scott Hazen Mueller -- Brent Chapman Internet/intranet training and consulting, Brent@GreatCircle.COM specializing in network design and security. Great Circle Associates, Inc. Visit us at http://www.greatcircle.com/ From sage-members-owner Sat Feb 28 00:55:22 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA25575 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 00:55:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from topgun.asiapac.net ([202.188.0.106]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA25566 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 00:55:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from topgun ([202.188.0.106]) by topgun.asiapac.net (Netscape Mail Server v2.0) with SMTP id AAA12371 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 16:50:54 +0800 Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 16:50:54 +0800 (SGT) From: Swee-Chuan Khoo X-Sender: sckhoo@topgun To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: members in Malaysia Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk hi, i am planning to start a SAGE-Malaysia and am looking for interested parties to form a organising "committee" so, email me if you are in Malaysia and also if you have some advice on setting up a local charter. thanx. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Swee-Chuan Khoo, sckhoo@asiapac.net | Not only do i speak for http://www.asiapac.net/~sckhoo/ | myself; I am myself ------------------------------------------------------------------- Today you lose. Tomorrow you win. Life change. From sage-members-owner Sat Feb 28 05:32:44 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA09618 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 05:32:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from yorktown.paranet.com (yorktown.paranet.com [199.164.131.34]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA09609 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 05:32:36 -0800 (PST) Received: by yorktown.paranet.com; id HAA27995; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 07:28:52 -0600 (CST) Received: from farragut.srv.paranet.com(172.16.3.35) by yorktown.paranet.com via smap (V3.1.1) id xma027982; Sat, 28 Feb 98 07:28:31 -0600 Received: from chunx.nol.mobil.com (pppsrv09.srv.paranet.com [172.16.3.11]) by farragut.srv.paranet.com (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id HAA11975; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 07:28:27 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199802281328.HAA11975@farragut.srv.paranet.com> X-Sender: bamorris@general.srv.paranet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 07:22:09 -0600 To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz), Marc Mengel , sage-members@usenix.org From: Brad Morrison Subject: Re: cert discussion In-Reply-To: <199802270013.QAA09706@netcom8.netcom.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 04:13 PM 2/26/98 -0800, Hal Pomeranz wrote: >IMHO, the SAGE Job Descriptions was a great step in this direction. >Every HR person I've shown it to has been amazingly greatful (sic) for this >resource. And there's no tests in there, just information. Hear, hear! My company is continuously hiring 3 sysadmins a day (worldwide) and HR types actually bargain over who gets the precious few copies of the booklet (obvious conclusions concerning this mentality vs. ordering more copies are left as an exercise to the reader). What about a passive certification? -- "Press to test." (click) "Release to detonate." Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet "Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." --Napoleon Hill From sage-members-owner Sat Feb 28 12:01:01 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA27260 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 12:01:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from po2.glue.umd.edu (root@po2.glue.umd.edu [129.2.128.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA27247 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 12:00:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from z.glue.umd.edu (arash@z.glue.umd.edu [128.8.10.71]) by po2.glue.umd.edu (8.8.8/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA06872 for ; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 14:57:33 -0500 (EST) From: Arash Sadati Received: (from arash@localhost) by z.glue.umd.edu (8.8.8/8.8.7) id OAA21481 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Sat, 28 Feb 1998 14:57:38 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 14:57:38 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802281957.OAA21481@z.glue.umd.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: REMOVE me from the list Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Who's responsible for this list? I want to be removed from the list. Arash From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 2 06:26:18 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA23612 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 06:26:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from relay.nswc.navy.mil ([128.38.1.41]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id GAA23603 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 06:26:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailsrvx (mailsrvx.nswc.navy.mil) by relay.nswc.navy.mil (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02457; Mon, 2 Mar 98 09:22:54 EST Received: by mailsrvx (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA10090; Mon, 2 Mar 98 09:23:15 EST From: "Dwight Peters" Message-Id: <9803020923.ZM10088@mailsrvx> Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:23:14 -0500 In-Reply-To: Jay Plett "Re: cert discussion" (Feb 27, 1:58am) References: <199802270658.BAA05979@flux> X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10oct95) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: cert discussion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I don't especially want to get a reputation for being a voice of reason. It is after all a bit restraining....but I'm sure someone will tell me I need have no fear. To the advocates of certification. I would still prefer that there be no rush to implement. But you are activist personalities, you are going to "do" something about something. What I've seen come out of SAGE so far is modestly encouraging. So God bless... go and do good, please. Please do remember that not only is everyone who is not with you, not necessarily against you, likewise, neither is everyone who is not against you for you. To the opponents of certification. Without meaning any offense to the proponents: there is always someone eager to do something. If we didn't have this group of do gooders, we'd have another. The others could easily be worse than these. Especially if it is a bad idea, certification will likely die of its own accord. Even if it is a good idea, it is likely to die. Remember, someone is always going to be in office trying to do something, if you're too busy doing other things, like I am, you have to allow those who are interested to do their thing. -- Dwight Petersen is a system administrator. Standard disclaimers. "What if the songbird will not sing?" "Kill it," said Oda Nobunaga. "Make the bird want to sing", said Toyotomi Hideyoshi. "Wait", said Tokugawa Ieyasu. From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 2 07:28:29 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA26506 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:28:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA26497 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:28:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA02709 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:23:30 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA05905 for sage-members@usenix.org; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:26:41 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199803021526.HAA05905@cactii.tera.com> Subject: survey results To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:26:40 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk A couple of people have (during this discussion) called for "release" of the raw survey data. I'll send that out in a minute. First, I want to ensure that nobody thinks that the Board action was some sudden response to the survey. The certification issue has been "festering" for many years in SAGE. There has been fractured, emotional debate on the issue. Repeatedly. Without settling anything. This debate occurs at just about every "meeting" of SAGE members, be it LISA, SANS, local groups, or whatever. It comes up in BoFs, in Open Board Meetings (or whatever we decided to call those). It comes up in direct email to Board members fairly regularly. It shows up in comp.org.usenix. The Board members have been under the impression for some time that some majority of SAGE members want some form of certification available, and that some significant minority of members want no form available. This has been the response we've had in each of the member-contact forums we've been involved with. The survey was, in part (it looked for other things too), an attempt to quantify that by some relatively "sane" method. The other option we considered was a full-membership ballot. The problem with that is that our rate of return on elections is so low that we might run into the problem USENIX has where it can't change it's charter because it doesn't get a quorum in returns. The purpose of the survey (with regard to certification as relevant here) was to provide us something to add to our discussion. It was not a "vote". We asked about an email service too, and that received strong support, but we decided that the cost and difficulty of putting such a thing in place now may be too much to deal with. It may show up again someday, but we've backed off it for now. So, we used the survey results only as confirmation for what we already had before us. Had the results been significantly different, we would have had to look more deeply, but it showed pretty much exactly what we had been seeing all along. That's what surveys are for--give a general flavor of opinion--and this one gave us what we expected to see. To try reading any more than that into the numbers is a mistake. I recognize that numbers mean statistics, and we all know cliche's about statistics. I expect to see some comment on this list shortly saying that there are other ways to read those numbers. Before you post such comment, please review your posting to make sure it isn't just getting lost in statistical analysis, because that would be saying that our decision was based solely on the survey as a vote, which isn't the situation. Feel free, of course, to post your opinions, or any comments which may add value to the discussion. This discussion has been very valuable--probably the best one I've seen thus far on the topic. The Board members are reading it, and listening. One other point about response, and this includes the survey response. When faced with a comment/question/other on a controversial topic, one can always expect response from those strongly opposed or vehemently in favor. Those who are satisfied tend to say nothing. Those slightly opposed tend to say nothing. This issue is one where we can't afford to have people leaving it to others to discuss. I would like to hear from everyone. Don't be afraid to say "I'm mildly in favor/opposed" or even "I'm neutral". With regard to the survey itself, it was our intent to poll about 100 members, via telephone calls or direct email. The cost of doing that appeared to be fairly high, so I decided to dedicate the time to collecting and collating responses myself. I emailed the survey to sage-members under the impression that this list reaches all members of SAGE (which is, I hope, a reasonable assumption). Turns out not to be the case--it is a self-subscribed list, consisting of about 690 people, including a handful of non-members. We'll deal with that issue separately. In any event, instead of reaching 100, I reached about 690. I received 73 replies, for a little over a 10.5% return. I'm told this is an outstanding return rate, but not being a Professional Survey-Taker, I defer comment. We had at the time 3626 members, so the list covers about 19%. -- HM From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 2 07:37:09 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA27101 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:37:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from gershwin.tera.com (gershwin.tera.com [207.224.230.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA27092 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:37:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from cactii.tera.com (cactii.tera.com [207.224.230.128]) by gershwin.tera.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA02777 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:32:10 -0800 (PST) From: Hal Miller Received: (from hal@localhost) by cactii.tera.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id HAA05930 for sage-members@usenix.org; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:35:19 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199803021535.HAA05930@cactii.tera.com> Subject: survey results, part 2 To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 07:35:18 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Many people did not answer every question. I put the number of responses under each option, so you can see exactly what was being selected. Answers to the two "suggestion" questions are at the bottom. None of the Board members answers are included in the numbers. As you know, I've already apologized for my lack of abilities in cut-and-paste and remembering to renumber. The numbering below reflects how the survey went out.... Many people did not answer every question. 1 a. I would like to see certification of system administrators in some form. 38 b. I would not like to see certification of system administrators in any form. 14 c. Undecided. 20 2 a. I prefer comprehensive certification. 5 b. I prefer single-topic certification. 12 c. I prefer some combination of comprehensive and single-topic options. 28 d. I prefer a certified education program over certification of sysadmins. 12 e. Opposed. 6 f. Undecided. 10 3 Certification is to me and my employers/clients: a. Not a consideration. 21 b. A minor consideration. 33 c. A significant consideration. 12 d. Essential for employment or advancement. 3 c. No opinion. 3 4 a. I would like to see an email forwarding service provided via USENIX. 33 b. I would not like to see an email forwarding service via USENIX. 16 c. Undecided. 24 5 a. I would subscribe myself to an email forwarding service via USENIX. 35 b. I would not subscribe myself to an email forwarding service via USENIX. 22 c. Undecided. 15 6 To me SAGE's continued involvement in standards development (POSIX, IPv6, etc.) is: a. Not important. 3 b. Of minor importance. 15 c. Very important. 53 c. No opinion. 2 7 SAGE publishes articles on varying topics in ;login:. I: a. always read or review the SAGE articles in ;login:. 54 b. occasionall read or review the SAGE articles in ;login:. 15 c. never read or review the SAGE articles in ;login:. 3 8 I find the SAGE articles in ;login: to be: a. extremely valuable or informative. 31 b. sometimes helpful or worth reading. 40 c. not usually valuable or informative. 0 9 The "Short Topics in System Administration" series is a collection of booklets designed as reference information, not necessarily technical nor "how-to". They do not cover topics that are likely to require constant update as technology changes. a. I would like booklets that cover "how-to" on technical subjects. 20 b. I prefer to cover technical subjects by other means or publications. 32 c. No opinion. 18 10 Please suggest topics you would like covered by Short Topics booklets. (see below) 11 A series of "How-To Notes" is being contemplated, where small teams of SAGE members would write up basic directions on what to do to get, install and configure basic software packages, operating systems, etc. a. This is of value. 51 b. This is not of value. 8 c. Undecided. 12 10 Please suggest topics/packages you would like covered by How-To Notes. (see below) 11 The SAGE Code of Ethics is currently a document with explanatory text, available from the SAGE web page. It carries no "requirement" status, nor enforceability. a. The Code of Ethics should be given increased visibility and emphasis. 35 b. The Code of Ethics should be kept to the position it currently holds. 23 c. The Code of Ethics should be given decreased visibility and emphasis. 1 d. No opinion. 14 The suggestions for Short Topics included the following. Many were repeated often, others were one-person-only. management of dial-in services developing troubleshooting skills creating a sysadmin course at your university how to become certified conversational skills/how to communicate with users/managers/other SAs organizational dynamics career growth ("Old Sysadmins Never Die") security (suggestion in many forms) coping with day-to-day tasks and stress DSL comparisons of HW/SW available for various tasks administration of, and migration to NIS+ administration and maintenance of netgroups rdist managing change managing and IT department/team service level agreements webserver administration disaster recovery data management (backups, migration, ...) DNS costs of ownership of various platforms, OS's methods and benefits of hw/sw standardization Suggestions for How-To Notes included the following. How To: configure and manage printing services configure and manage INN configure and manage sendmail configure ftp servers, especially anonymous write packet filter ACLs configure and manage security tools (SOCKS, Tripwire, ...) configure and manage NAT devices understand and implement BGP use basic code/script debugging tools set up tunnelling of non-IP protocols install POP/IMAP configure TACACS+ select, configure and manage a backup product understand (technical overview) non-IP network protocols install, configure and manage kerberos ... more sample policy docs build firewalls keep up with security problems, innovations implement PGP integrate NT into a UNIX environment manage a site under attack manage a virus detected situation find code on the Net share filesystems securely across corporate boundaries compare (chart) UNIX version features set up automated configuration management ... AI and the sysadmin design a basic/more advanced network automate processes ... security checklist setup an http server connect to the Internet manage a network (tools, etc) ... GNU 101--The Basics set up Linux tune Oracle install PERL install, configure and maintain SAMBA (*to which I'd add CAP*) install, configure and maintain DHCP -- HM From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 2 08:55:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA01369 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:55:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA01360 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:55:50 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom7.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id IAA10268; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:51:44 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199803021651.IAA10268@netcom7.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 08:51:44 PST In-Reply-To: Hal Miller "survey results, part 2" (Mar 2, 7:35am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: Hal Miller , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Interesting. Admittedly we're dealing with a fairly skewed sample of about 2% of the total membership, but my guess is that it's the noisy 2%. I'd have to say I agree there does seem to be some large body of desire for certification within the membership. That being said, what's more interesting to me is that these same respondants overwhelmingly stated that certification was at best of minor importance to their employers. I suppose one could rationalize this by saying "well, we haven't had certification so it can't have been important". I, at least, think this is fallacious since this desire could easily exist in the absence of any actual certification, and there are certainly (admittedly less comprehensive in some sense) other certification programs out there. Hal mentioned in his previous note that the Board had considered taking a membership vote on the issue. I agree that this is probably too expensive. I will point out, however, that when election time rolls around next year the membership has the opportunity to express their desire or lack thereof for certification by voting in those Board members who support their position. I'd also like to see each of the current Board members state where they come down on this issue (don't worry, there are no bylaws about impeachment of Board members). That's it from me. As Dwight points out, the "doers" will always want to do something-- I just think they took the wrong bit in their mouths this time. I still think that SAGE pursuing certification is bad for our membership, but short of a terror-bombing campaign I can't think of any way to stop the attempt. I hate to be the one hoping for things to fail. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 2 12:13:24 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA12003 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 12:13:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from chokey.mo.md.us (chokey.mo.md.us [208.218.124.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA11994 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 12:13:14 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mark@localhost) by chokey.mo.md.us (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA18839 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:17:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:17:55 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Sienkiewicz Message-Id: <199803022017.PAA18839@chokey.mo.md.us> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I haven't been reading this mailing list for that long, but I do notice one thing about the certification debate: It seems to center around whether the abstract idea of certification is a good idea. It doesn't matter! You can't have "certification of system administrators in some form" as asked by the survey. You can only have certification in a SPECIFIC form. Why is that significant? Suppose: The certification regime takes 1 week, during which the candidate is required to administer a large set of heterogenous systems. During that week, both routine and emergency situations are simulated on a 7x24 schedule. [ That means you handle the simulated breakin Tuesday morning at 3:00 am. ] The fee is $6,000 which covers the cost of equipment at the test site as well as salary for the examiners. It does not include travel or hotel accomodations at the test site. SAGE publicly recommends that companies only hire certified administrators and frequently runs FUD-style ads in newspapers like USA Today, warning pointy-haired manager types about the risks of hiring uncertified administrators. Now this hypothetical situation is "some form" of certification. The certificate might even tell you something about the victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hcandidate who was successfully certified. How many of us really want that, though? When your employer sees that ad, do you want to pay an extra $6000 just so you can KEEP the job you already have? I didn't think so. :) Suppose: Certification is done by testing modeled on the method the FCC uses to certify amateur radio operators: The FCC approves "volunteer coordinators" to administer the tests and accepts those results when determining whether to issue a certificate. The set of all possible test questions is published, but only about 25% of the published test questions are on any given test. The test costs $5. The volunteer coordinators are permitted to charge a small additional amount to cover administrative costs like photocopies and pencils. This is also "some form" of certification. IMHO, this form is a nuisance more than anything else. You have to learn what %_#@ means in a perl script because it is on the test, but you don't have to know how to do anything useful. Do you want to study for a test that doesn't mean anything, just so you can get certified? I didn't think so. :) Certainly, these are extreme examples. I think supporters of certification would prefer the rigor of the first example but the cost of the second, but since I do not support certification, I don't really know. :) If you favor certification, write a few paragraphs about what the certification process looks like. Once you have written a few paragraphs about what it should be, write another few paragraphs about why YOUR PARTICULAR certification program benefits SAGE members. Also write about the drawbacks of YOUR PARTICULAR certification program and why you consider those to be acceptable costs. Oh, and when you finish all that, if you still think you have a good idea for a certification program, send it to the list. Mark S. p.s. Remember: How does your idea benefit me? SAGE should be doing things for the benefit of SAGE members. From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 2 15:20:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA22577 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:20:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from bbnplanet.com (cambridge6-mail-router1.netops.gte.com [4.0.63.75]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA22568 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:20:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from ankh (ankh.bbnplanet.com [199.94.209.177]) by bbnplanet.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id SAA03663 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 18:17:13 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980302181452.00a954a0@sa.bbnplanet.com> X-Sender: jco@sa.bbnplanet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 18:14:52 -0500 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: John Orthoefer Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 In-Reply-To: <199803022017.PAA18839@chokey.mo.md.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk (For some reason I've desided to open my mouth about this. As I type this I'm not sure why...) I do support this. Why? Well I've interviewed a LOT of SAs, SAs that can't tell me how DNS works. I'm not talking specifics of the line protocols or how some odd version of unix does it, I'm talking in general. I've interviewed people that claim to be mid to senior people who don't know: o machine asks a server + server checks cache + if not in cache, ask root servers + root server tells it who knows + ask site who knows - may be sub-delagated, and would have to loop till finds real info + server returns answer Thats all I'm looking for how does desktop.corp-a.com find www.corp-b.com From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 2 15:29:47 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA23118 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:29:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from bbnplanet.com (cambridge6-mail-router1.netops.gte.com [4.0.63.75]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA23108 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 15:29:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from ankh (ankh-209.bbnplanet.com [199.94.209.177]) by bbnplanet.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id SAA04465 for ; Mon, 2 Mar 1998 18:26:18 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980302182357.00a993c0@sa.bbnplanet.com> X-Sender: jco@sa.bbnplanet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 1998 18:23:57 -0500 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: John Orthoefer Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 In-Reply-To: <199803022017.PAA18839@chokey.mo.md.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Sorry Eudora isn't emacs friendly, c-e is send mail in Eudora. At anyrate, where was I? Oh yea, people can't tell me basic concepts like that. With something, I should atleast know if that is too much for me expect a mid level admin to know or not. It's something that gives you some base line. No it doesn't tell you the whole story, just a piece of it. But it does tell you 2 things which I feel are VERY imporant. o what you should expect from someone who has passed. o the person is serious enough about SA that they took the test. I've also come across people who got hired on as SA because they wantted to be come coders. And people are so desperate for SAs that they will take them on and the first time they can move they turn into coders. So I suport it. For people who say we have the job book. Yes we do but the exposure isn't very wide, I can't think of one person who knows about Sage (only about 1 in 5 does) who could tell me what level they though they where based on the job book. So that is my stand on the subject. And sorry about the 2 messages. I typoed and it just went out. johno From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 05:20:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA28311 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 05:20:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (dsr-gw.dsrnet.com [208.203.147.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA28302 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 05:20:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip-smtp-gw (ip-smtp-gw [192.168.168.1]) by dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id IAA28585; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:13:18 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: 3 Mar 1998 08:18:38 -0400 From: "Gibson, Eric" Subject: RE: survey results, part 2 To: "John Orthoefer" , sage-members@usenix.org X-Mailer: Mail*Link SMTP-MS 3.0.1 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > I do support this. Why? Well I've interviewed a LOT of SAs, SAs that > can't tell me how DNS works. > > I'm not talking specifics of the line protocols or how some odd version of > unix does it, I'm talking in general. I've interviewed people that claim > to be mid to senior people who don't know: > o machine asks a server > + server checks cache > + if not in cache, ask root servers > + root server tells it who knows > + ask site who knows > - may be sub-delagated, and would have to loop till finds real info > + server returns answer > > Thats all I'm looking for how does desktop.corp-a.com find www.corp-b.com ...and my question to you is: Is is *really* necessary for a general systems administrator (senior level or otherwise) to know this? I've been in systems administration for 14 years and I've never been exposed to DNS. I've been in the defense industry for all that time and I've always work with closed networks -- networks that don't go outside the building, and usually don't go outside the lab. I've never implimented DNS, never used it, never even seen it. But I'm still a darned good systems administrator in spite of that. One needn't *necessarily* know the inner workings of the machine to be able to administer it well. As with any other profession, each company has its own implementations and I will safely wager that very few companies touch on every single aspect of systems administration, any more than a person with a degree in electrical engineering uses everything he learned in college on any given job. ________________________________________________________________________________ Eric Gibson Sr. System Administrator 703.263.2851 [voice] Digital System Resources, Inc. 703.263.2802 [fax] (A Defense Contractor) egibson@dsrnet.com 12450 Fair Lakes Circle Suite 500 Fairfax, VA 22033 From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 05:53:40 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA29869 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 05:53:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from unix1.it-datacntr.louisville.edu (unix1.it-datacntr.louisville.edu [136.165.4.27]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA29852 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 05:53:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from homer.louisville.edu (rjwate01@homer.it-datacntr.louisville.edu [136.165.1.20]) by unix1.it-datacntr.louisville.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id IAA26438 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:50:20 -0500 Received: (from rjwate01@localhost) by homer.louisville.edu (8.8.8/8.8.7) id IAA00723; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:50:20 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19980303085019.47001@homer.louisville.edu> Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:50:19 -0500 From: Bob Waters To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: SA Certification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.68 X-Operating-System: HP-UX B.10.10 E X-Disclaimer: Life is what happens while you are making plans. Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk My opinions on the whole debate about certification for system administration is mixed. I currently am trying to build up a personal knowledge base and hands on experience to be able to enter into the field of system administrations. On one hand I like the idea for the certification because once I have a strong knowledge base and some personal experience I could take the tests and get certification that would make it possible for my resume to be even considered for above novice level positions (which is the only level of sysadmin that seems to not be available in my area). But on the other hand I am concerned of tests that are unaffordable for someone like me who is trying to enter into a professional field. Also I am worried about certification that will mean nothing to those knowledgable in the field because it doesnt test aspects that are important to the field. So I sit about in the middle on this debate. I agree the tests should be hands on based but affordable to individuals (opposed to having to try and get it paid for by a job which is the way most of the people I know are getting their CNEs). -- Bob Waters IT-SCC Lab Supervisor Program Director for WLCV Radio Station Webmaster for WLCV Radio Station -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS/IT d-(+) s+:+>+: a-->? c+++(++++)>$ ULH++(+++)>$ P++>$ L+++>$ E----@ W++>$ N+(++) o? K? w(+) O? M- V PS+() PE+() Y+ PGP+ t+(*) 5+ X+ R+() tv-(--) b+>+++ DI++ !D G++ e(*) h-() r--(---) y+** ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ PGP Fingerprint : 66 B8 F8 36 F0 7C 68 86 7E FE 88 15 E2 08 15 D5 PGP Public Key : finger me for it. E-Mail : rjwate01@homer.louisville.edu Homepage : http://www.louisville.edu/~rjwate01/ WLCV Homepage : http://www.louisville.edu/rso/wlcv/ Crimson Souls : ns2.ka.net 6969 (Admin and Coder) Shattered Relams: To be announced (Coder) From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 06:54:29 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA03169 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 06:54:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com (cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com [24.3.34.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA03129 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 06:54:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@roadrunner.realbig.com (port 5217 [10.0.1.2]) by gate with ESMTP id <155763-1936>; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:51:02 +0000 Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@localhost (port 2657 [127.0.0.1]) by roadrunner with SMTP id <444074-6574>; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:50:51 +0000 Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:50:45 -0500 (EST) From: Andy Poling X-Sender: andy@roadrunner.realbig.com Reply-To: Andy Poling To: "Gibson, Eric" cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: RE: survey results, part 2 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Gibson, Eric admitted/claimed: > I've never implimented > DNS, never used it, never even seen it. But I'm still a darned good systems > administrator in spite of that. Many self-proclaimed SA's are such in their own minds only. I'm sorry if that sounds mean, but you did ask for it. :-) If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. And if you don't understand TCP/IP then you don't really understand networking. And if you don't understand networking, then I hate to be the one to tell you, but you're not a very good SA. Just because you're not (currently) using something as fundamental as DNS is no excuse for not keeping your knowledge current and broad. It is incumbent upon you, as a professional, to do so. > One needn't *necessarily* know the inner workings of the machine to > be able to administer it well. This is one of my major buttons... If you don't understand the inner workings of the OS (which is even more important than understanding the inner workings of the machine - both invaluable in a _real_ system administrator) then perhaps a better title for you would be System Monitor, Manual Reader and Phone Dialer... Would you hand over your brand new car for repair (or even maintenance) to a mechanic who didn't know how a transmission works, and yet claimed to be a "darned good" mechanic? Would you select a doctor who didn't know how your circulatory system works, yet claimed to be a "darned good" doctor? Would you hire an account to do your taxes if they didn't know what an IRA was, but claimed to be a "darned good" accountant? > I will safely wager that very few companies touch on every single aspect > of systems administration Oh, I see. Because *some* employers don't need a full skill set, you should be able to call yourself a SA with a fundamentally incomplete skill set? Ever heard of a NOT gate? :-) Just because they don't (currently) need some fundamental skill from you doesn't mean they shouldn't expect/require it. -Andy From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 07:26:19 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA04594 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:26:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from yorktown.paranet.com (yorktown.paranet.com [199.164.131.34]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA04585 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:26:12 -0800 (PST) Received: by yorktown.paranet.com; id JAA28537; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:22:30 -0600 (CST) Received: from farragut.srv.paranet.com(172.16.3.35) by yorktown.paranet.com via smap (V3.1.1) id xma028488; Tue, 3 Mar 98 09:22:02 -0600 Received: from chunx.nol.mobil.com (pppsrv03.srv.paranet.com [172.16.3.5]) by farragut.srv.paranet.com (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id JAA02078 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:22:00 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803031522.JAA02078@farragut.srv.paranet.com> X-Sender: bamorris@general.srv.paranet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 09:16:30 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Brad Morrison Subject: certification: ability vs. knowledge (was: RE: survey results, part 2) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 08:18 AM 3/3/98 -0400, Gibson, Eric wrote: >"John Orthoefer" wrote: >>Well I've interviewed a LOT of SAs, SAs that can't tell me how DNS works. >...and my question to you is: Is is *really* necessary for a general >systems administrator (senior level or otherwise) to know this? No. A colleague once said, "The really good SAs are not the ones who know everything--they're the ones who never run out of stuff to try!" It's convenient to encounter a problem that's similar to one you've solved in the past month or so, but it's more common to run across problems that have an entry in your whatis database. There's way too much to memorize, but you can maintain an index. The hardest thing about this whole certification issue is that it's not knowledge that makes a successful systems administrator--it's a combination of deductive reasoning and perseverance. These qualities are difficult to measure, and even harder to quantify. -- "Press to test." (click) "Release to detonate." Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet "Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." --Napoleon Hill From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 07:58:46 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA06288 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:58:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from bbnplanet.com (cambridge6-mail-router1.netops.gte.com [4.0.63.75]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA06279 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 07:58:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from ankh (ankh.bbnplanet.com [199.94.209.177]) by bbnplanet.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id KAA04284 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:55:29 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980303105306.00be9680@sa.bbnplanet.com> X-Sender: jco@sa.bbnplanet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 10:53:06 -0500 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: John Orthoefer Subject: RE: survey results, part 2 In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 08:18 AM 3/3/98 -0400, you wrote: >...and my question to you is: Is is *really* necessary for a general >systems administrator (senior level or otherwise) to know this? I think anybody who claims knowlege of DNS should know this. Lots, if not all, resumes I've seen claim knowlege of DNS. If you don't claim you know DNS, I wouldn't expect you to know the answer. >I've >been in systems administration for 14 years and I've never been exposed >to DNS. I've been in the defense industry for all that time and I've >always work with closed networks -- networks that don't go outside the >building, and usually don't go outside the lab. I've never implimented >DNS, never used it, never even seen it. But I'm still a darned good systems >administrator in spite of that. And I work for an ISP. If your claiming that you would be a darned good SA in an ISP enviorment, without knowing DNS, I would have to disagree. Having worked in the same enviorment you work in, I know I didn't use DNS much either, although we where on the SIPRNet. > One needn't *necessarily* know the inner workings of the machine to >be able to administer it well. I would have to say to be senior you would have to understand some of the innerworkings. I would also expect someone who claims to be senior to have a passing knowlege of most parts. Just like getting a degree sure maybe you don't remeber it now, but once you knew about something relearning it should be quick and easy. Johno From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 08:41:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA08552 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:41:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from sass165.sandia.gov (mailgate.sandia.gov [132.175.109.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA08543 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:41:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from dancer.csu890.sandia.gov (dancer.csu890.sandia.gov [134.253.224.23]) by sass165.sandia.gov (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA14614 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:38:07 -0700 (MST) Received: from wombat.sensor (wombat.csu890.sandia.gov [134.253.224.72]) by dancer.csu890.sandia.gov (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id JAA24819 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:38:01 -0700 (MST) Received: by wombat.sensor (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id JAA10201; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:38:07 -0700 From: "Christopher M. Conway" Message-Id: <980303093806.ZM10199@wombat> Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:38:05 -0700 In-Reply-To: Andy Poling "RE: survey results, part 2" (Mar 3, 9:50) References: X-Mailer: Z-Mail (5.0.0 30July97) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Mar 3, 9:50, Andy Poling wrote: = = If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. And = if you don't understand TCP/IP then you don't really understand networking. = And if you don't understand networking, then I hate to be the one to tell = you, but you're not a very good SA. Before I get started-- I *do* know DNS. And use it. And am trying to convince my employer that they're being braindead in going to a flat domain for 10,000+ computers on a couple of class B networks and a handful of class cs. But I digress.... 8^{)> Sorry, but you've got this entirely backwards. Many networks don't use TCP/IP. Many TCP/IP networks don't use DNS. In order to really understand DNS, you need to understand TCP/IP. In order to really understand TCP/IP, you need to understand basic networking. DECNet networks don't care about TCP/IP ( however you may feel about DECNet... 8^{)> ). SMB networks don't require TCP/IP. UUCP networks don't require TCP/IP. And so on. A small local network that is isolated from the world (as the original poster's would be) doesn't require DNS. Sure, any of these require analogues-- but you're claiming that one must know DNS to know networking, and that's just wrong. What an SA needs to know is the *CONCEPTS*. If I really need to know the gory details of DNS to debug a problem, I'll haul out my grasshopper. There's no need to make sure I remember the details beyond the basics (though, granted, your example is pretty basic if I need to support DNS). = = Just because you're not (currently) using something as fundamental as DNS is = no excuse for not keeping your knowledge current and broad. It is incumbent = upon you, as a professional, to do so. Tell me-- do you know the fundamentals of MS-DOG? VMS? MVS? SINTRAN? CP/M? How do you know what is going to be running everything in 20 years? All the above thought they would be... The primary ability I've seen in a good SA is the ability to learn and an understanding of the *concepts*. Knowing details about the protocol or OS or app du jour is really irrelevant. Of course, that's a lot of why I don't think certification is useful-- and is actively harmful, because it lays claim to something it can't deliver. A certificate implies "this person is a good SA". If the certificate requires them to know DNS but not to know what a protocol is or how it works-- then it doesn't mean squat. And the end result is you get MSCE wannabes running around saying "See! I are a Eunuchs Guru" because they could memorize some trivia for long enough to take the test. The end result is that the certificate means *nothing* except that I can spend money and time. And is actively harmful to those who won't waste either money or time on it. = = > One needn't *necessarily* know the inner workings of the machine to = > be able to administer it well. = = This is one of my major buttons... = = If you don't understand the inner workings of the OS (which is even more = important than understanding the inner workings of the machine - both = invaluable in a _real_ system administrator) then perhaps a better title for = you would be System Monitor, Manual Reader and Phone Dialer... Less the flaming, I do agree here-- one *should* have basic concepts of how the OS works. But that doesn't mean that I should know how to go in and patch it ( necessarily, though it *is* something I've done. ) = = Would you hand over your brand new car for repair (or even maintenance) to a = mechanic who didn't know how a transmission works, and yet claimed to be a = "darned good" mechanic? Wrong analogy. Would you require that your mechanic know how to fix old Volkswagons if you've got a late model Chevrolet? Yes, they're that different; and yes, the good mechanics *do* specialize this way. The mechanic I go to won't touch my bug, because he knows that he doesn't know its details. He's also the best mechanic I've ever seen for my CRX. Is he really a mechanic? You bet. DNS is a make/model, it's not a basic concept. The concept of protocols might be likened to transmissions; DNS is more like specifing a Honda Civic CRX. = = Would you select a doctor who didn't know how your circulatory system works, = yet claimed to be a "darned good" doctor? I'll virtually guarantee you that everyone on this list (including yourself) does-- to the extent that you're arguing. Sure, your GP may have basic concepts of how your vascular system works-- but if you've got a problem there other than the very basic (Is named running? Is the network up? Can I reach the server? Is the heart beating?), he calls in a specialist. The best doctor I ever had looked things up *constantly*-- because he *didn't need to know the details on how to fix something at all times*. He needed to be skilled in diagnosis; the details of the fixing could be looked up. = = Would you hire an account to do your taxes if they didn't know what an IRA = was, but claimed to be a "darned good" accountant? To do my taxes, no; but there are many specialties in accounting, too. I don't know them. But I certainly wouldn't care whether he knew what an IRA was if I was concerned with how depreciation in my business works. Is someone who specializes in business accounting any less an accountant? Ask any accountant if they know the *whole* tax code-- all several thousand pages of it. In the detail you're asking for. You'll get a universal *NO!*. If you need something that they don't know, the good ones will go off and do some research, or refer you to someone else. Those that pretend that they can do business accounting because they intimately understand personal income taxes end up costing everyone a lot of money and possibly jail time. = = = > I will safely wager that very few companies touch on every single aspect = > of systems administration = = Oh, I see. Because *some* employers don't need a full skill set, you should = be able to call yourself a SA with a fundamentally incomplete skill set? = Ever heard of a NOT gate? :-) So, you can give me the details of an SMB transaction? How about DECNet name resolution and quorums? How about how the SINTRAN file system works? How about how UniFLEX does multi-processor handshaking? I've dealt with all of these as an SA. And some I continue to have to to this day. = = Just because they don't (currently) need some fundamental skill from you = doesn't mean they shouldn't expect/require it. = To try to summarize-- DNS isn't a basic skill. Period. No matter *HOW IMPORTANT IT IS NOW*. Nor is UNIX. That's why certification can't work as proposed-- because NONE OF THESE MATTER. They're implementation details. What matters is understanding the concepts of protocols and process management and filesystem structure and resource sharing and security and on and on-- and the only way to "certify" these sorts of things is through the equivalent of a University degree or massive experience. Oh, by the way-- I'm opposed to certification, in case you didn't notice... 8^{)> I think it's morally wrong and will actively harm those of us in the profession. At least given the models we've been given so far. It's morally wrong because the certificate will imply something that it can't possibly deliver on-- that *THIS* person can administer *YOUR* systems in *YOUR* network. And it will harm our profession because of this. Part of the reason that MSCE people's salaries is going down is because of the *contempt* that everyone has for that certificate. How many MSCEs have royally screwed your machines? How many times have you had to clean up after them? The same thing will happen with certification for us. A bunch of bozos who *aren't* competent will eventually be certified, and give *us* as a group a bad name, and reduce our respect, prestige, and income. The only thing that I've seen that remotely resembles something that *might* be a useful certification was the (presumably) facetious "one week hands-on evaluation" somebody suggested. I'd add that it should be for an OS and network (or lack thereof) that the evaluee has never used. *THAT* might be a useful certification. Oh, and an SA needs to be able to program, too, while I'm fanning the flames.... 8^{)> But not necessarily in C.... 8^{)> -- Christopher M. Conway U*IX and C Guru Don't Tread on Me cmconwa@sandia.gov wombat@prickly-wombat.com We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately. I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy. From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 09:32:35 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA09857 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:32:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from cgi.com (cggate.cgi.com [128.129.3.207]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA09819 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:32:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from nugent.cgi.com by netra3.cgi.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id MAA22399; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:31:54 -0500 Received: from cgi.com by nugent.cgi.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id LAA04286; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:29:06 -0600 Message-Id: <34FC3DD7.17AF8CF8@cgi.com> Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 11:28:55 -0600 From: Corey Herbel Organization: Carnegie Group Inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Mr. Poling Obviously you have been able to do what no other company I have interviewed at has been able to do. I religiously ask for their definition of system administrator. I have never had the same answer. The most common theme is "we need you to fix the problem at the time, and we don't care how you do it." So we return to the question being posed, what is a system administrator and how do you define the job. Obviously the role is very dynamic, and project requirements will require you to do different tasks. My current position has me in a senior role, I did not give myself this title, the company did. Hence industry defines what a SA is and not you or me. I will agree you should constantly challenge yourself and continue to broaden your knowledge base but, I don't have blocks of hours to implement something which doesn't currently enhance my job. Put me in the category of understanding DNS but I've never implemented it. Corey Herbel Sr. Systems Engineer I (just another SA trying to feed my family) Andy Poling wrote: > > On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Gibson, Eric admitted/claimed: > > I've never implimented > > DNS, never used it, never even seen it. But I'm still a darned good systems > > administrator in spite of that. > > Many self-proclaimed SA's are such in their own minds only. > > I'm sorry if that sounds mean, but you did ask for it. :-) > > If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. And > if you don't understand TCP/IP then you don't really understand networking. > And if you don't understand networking, then I hate to be the one to tell > you, but you're not a very good SA. > > Just because you're not (currently) using something as fundamental as DNS is > no excuse for not keeping your knowledge current and broad. It is incumbent > upon you, as a professional, to do so. > > > One needn't *necessarily* know the inner workings of the machine to > > be able to administer it well. > > This is one of my major buttons... > > If you don't understand the inner workings of the OS (which is even more > important than understanding the inner workings of the machine - both > invaluable in a _real_ system administrator) then perhaps a better title for > you would be System Monitor, Manual Reader and Phone Dialer... > > Would you hand over your brand new car for repair (or even maintenance) to a > mechanic who didn't know how a transmission works, and yet claimed to be a > "darned good" mechanic? > > Would you select a doctor who didn't know how your circulatory system works, > yet claimed to be a "darned good" doctor? > > Would you hire an account to do your taxes if they didn't know what an IRA > was, but claimed to be a "darned good" accountant? > > > I will safely wager that very few companies touch on every single aspect > > of systems administration > > Oh, I see. Because *some* employers don't need a full skill set, you should > be able to call yourself a SA with a fundamentally incomplete skill set? > Ever heard of a NOT gate? :-) > > Just because they don't (currently) need some fundamental skill from you > doesn't mean they shouldn't expect/require it. > > -Andy From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 10:29:28 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA13062 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:29:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from polya.mts.jhu.edu (root@polya.mts.jhu.edu [128.220.17.38]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA13039 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:29:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by polya.mts.jhu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA28061; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:24:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199803031824.NAA28061@polya.mts.jhu.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: polya.mts.jhu.edu: bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: "Christopher M. Conway" cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 03 Mar 1998 09:38:05 MST." <980303093806.ZM10199@wombat> From: Bill Bogstad Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 13:24:54 -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Christopher M. Conway" wrote: >Tell me-- do you know the fundamentals of MS-DOG? VMS? MVS? SINTRAN? CP/M? >How do you know what is going to be running everything in 20 years? All >the above thought they would be... > >The primary ability I've seen in a good SA is the ability to learn and an >understanding of the *concepts*. > >Knowing details about the protocol or OS or app du jour is really irrelevant. This is kind of a segue into something that I've been thinking about. I haven't been in this industry quite long enough to have been part of a large (mainframe) installation environment, but the impression I have is that you had various levels/types of personnel: operators, data librarians, hardware support engineers, programmers, systems analysts/architects, etc. I don't think the systems we support today are really any less complex then those earlier systems. Some things have gotten easier, but additional features to manage have kind of evened things out. The problem is that a modern system administrator are often called upon to take on all of those roles. Just how many people are there out there who are capable of doing this? How are we going to test for it? Maybe we need to consider if the problem with finding good SAs isn't so much with a lack of standards by which to judge; as how difficult it is for someone to achieve the level of ability that we think is required. Should we instead be thinking of different ways of doing system administration that don't require both broad and specialized knowledge? The practice of medicine (GP's and specialists) might be a good model. Hmmm, I seem to be arguing that certification might actually help (to my surprise). However, it would require educating our employers in the need for specialists and the funds to hire outside consultants. Maybe, I'ld want outsiders to periodically examine my systems for overall computing issues (senior generalist) and to help deal with specific issues (skilled specialist). I don't think testing for skills/general knowledge alone would be all that beneficial to SAGE members or our employers. One immediate benefit I could see from this model for SAing is that in such an environment it would be easier to hire an outside expert to help kill idiotic projects (or alternatively learn there was a reasonable way to implement them). Perhaps someone with more experience in older systems, could comment on how duties and responsibilities were divided in the past and how well that worked. Bill Bogstad From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 10:31:54 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA13235 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:31:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from chokey.mo.md.us (chokey.mo.md.us [208.218.124.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA13226 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:31:49 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mark@localhost) by chokey.mo.md.us (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA22577 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:36:51 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:36:51 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Sienkiewicz Message-Id: <199803031836.NAA22577@chokey.mo.md.us> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: RE: survey results, part 2 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. And >if you don't understand TCP/IP then you don't really understand networking. >And if you don't understand networking, then I hate to be the one to tell >you, but you're not a very good SA. There are lots of serious flaws in the reasoning here. 1. DNS is just one more protocol that rides over IP. It is entirely feasible to understand networks without it, and in fact that is what EVERYBODY used to do. Do you remember HOSTS.TXT ? If you don't understand HOSTS.TXT you don't really understand networking. :) [see note 1 at end of message] 2. IP is not the only networking protocol in the world. It is entirely possible to have an excellent understanding of networking without any IP experience at all. Again, that is what EVERYBODY used to do. 3. Whether someone is a good SA is entirely dependent on their performance with the system they are administering. All the knowledge of IP in the world doesn't help much if your whole system still runs on SNA. Now here we have an example where someone has experience administering an isolated IP network in a configuration that has historically been shown to be very reliable. Are the systems working? Apparently yes. Are the users satisfied? Apparently yes. Are there problems that should not exist because of actions the administrator? Apparently not. How does that qualify as "not a good SA" ? >Just because you're not (currently) using something as fundamental as DNS is >no excuse for not keeping your knowledge current and broad. It is incumbent >upon you, as a professional, to do so. I disagree. As a professional, it is incumbent on you to provide services that your customer wants. The real reason for keeping your knowledge current is that you want to increase the chances that you will know something that your NEXT customer wants. Of course, you should choose that "something" you will study from a list that might help you get the job. It might make more sense to study Oracle SQL Server or Java Beans instead of DNS. When evaluating a potential administrator, I would look at what they know. I might well consider it a disadvantage because he does not know DNS. But I will balance that against what he does know and whether he can learn. If DNS is a small part of what I expect him to do, it wouldn't be a big deal. Now what WOULD be a big deal is this: When he talks to the users, can he be nice to them? Can he figure out what they *really* want and solve their problem, or does he just give them exactly what they ask for? Does he have the proper respect for production equipment or does he think nothing of rebooting important servers in the middle of peak usage periods? These things are a big deal because they are much harder to teach. Maybe you can think of a way to include them in the certification process. >Would you hand over your brand new car for repair (or even maintenance) to a >mechanic who didn't know how a transmission works, and yet claimed to be a >"darned good" mechanic? If I was going to one of those "tire and muffler" shops to get new tires and a new muffler, I would. They wouldn't go anywhere near the transmission. >Would you select a doctor who didn't know how your circulatory system works, >yet claimed to be a "darned good" doctor? This is a bad analogy, unless perhaps you know some people who have been living just fine for years without a circulatory system? :) I would go to a podiatrist who doesn't know how to measure my eyes for new glasses. >> I will safely wager that very few companies touch on every single aspect >> of systems administration > >Oh, I see. Because *some* employers don't need a full skill set, you should >be able to call yourself a SA with a fundamentally incomplete skill set? >Ever heard of a NOT gate? :-) > >Just because they don't (currently) need some fundamental skill from you >doesn't mean they shouldn't expect/require it. Again, I disagree, though we may be thinking of different definitions. For example, I think many people would argue that "full skill set" would include perl programming, yet it is possible to administer systems for years without ever needing to write a perl script. I think it is entirely appropriate to hire an administrator who does not know perl. It seems somewhat wasteful for the employer to require skills that do not relate to the job. Such spurious requirements diminish the pool of applicants without any apparent gain for the employer. For example, morse code is a fundamental skill for a radio operator, but if you are hiring a rock and roll deejay, it hardly seems relevant. The employer takes the risk of specifying requirements base on what the job is and what it is projected to become. It may well make sense to require perl programming because an upcoming project *might* be done in perl. But in that case the requirement *is* related to the job, isn't it? Mark S. Note 1: This note is here for those of you who don't remember or weren't around that long ago. Once upon a time, there was no DNS. That service was provided by a file called HOSTS.TXT. A copy of HOSTS.TXT was kept on every computer on the network. You would get a new copy from the hostmaster once in a while to keep up to date. This method does not work well for networks where computers are added and removed frequently, or where there are very large numbers of computers. It works quite nicely for small networks, and in fact does not have some of the problems that DNS has. From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 11:08:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA15279 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:08:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from inetg1.Arco.COM (inetg1.Arco.COM [130.201.119.253]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA15270 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:08:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.aai.arco.com ([136.226.206.36]) by inetg1.Arco.COM (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA03626 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:05:03 -0600 (CST) Received: by mail.aai.arco.com(Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP MTA v1.1.04 (495.1 10-24-1997)) id 8A2565BC.006E0A62 ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:01:56 -1000 X-Lotus-FromDomain: ARCO From: "John F Blasko" To: sage-members@usenix.org Message-ID: <8A2565BC.0065E3CE.00@mail.aai.arco.com> Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:05:26 -1000 Subject: remove me from the list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk is there is digestifier version? I'd like to follow the discussion but not 'on-line'. John Blasko From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 11:14:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA15390 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:14:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (dsr-gw.dsrnet.com [208.203.147.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA15381 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:14:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip-smtp-gw (ip-smtp-gw [192.168.168.1]) by dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id OAA06313; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:07:42 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: 3 Mar 1998 14:12:19 -0400 From: "Gibson, Eric" Subject: RE: certification: ability vs. knowledge (was: RE: survey results, part 2) To: "Brad Morrison" , sage-members@usenix.org X-Mailer: Mail*Link SMTP-MS 3.0.1 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > > ...and my question to you is: Is is *really* necessary for a general > > systems administrator (senior level or otherwise) to know this? > > No. A colleague once said, "The really good SAs are not the ones who > know everything--they're the ones who never run out of stuff to try!" > The hardest thing about this whole certification issue is that it's not > knowledge that makes a successful systems administrator--it's a > combination of deductive reasoning and perseverance. These qualities > are difficult to measure, and even harder to quantify. Thank you. This was the crux of my earlier argument. Give me someone who is a diplomat (being able to schmooze two mission-critical bosses at once), is persistant, sharp (able to identify potential problems and take measures to head them off), and as important as anything else is if he doesn't have the answer, that he know *where to find the answer*, is resourceful and willing to work hard when necessary. I'll take that person over someone who is simply an "experienced" system administrator. I'd rather train the person with the right attitude, than hire the person who wears his qualifications on his sleeve. But all of this is aside from the certification issue. Still, it's an important point. -- Eric egibson@dsrnet.com From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 11:18:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA15456 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:18:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from fw1.tek.com (fw1.tek.com [192.65.17.16]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA15444 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:18:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from fw1.tek.com (root@localhost) by fw1.tek.com with ESMTP id LAA27032 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:15:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from orca.wv.tek.com (orca.wv.tek.com [134.62.8.23]) by fw1.tek.com with SMTP id LAA27028 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 11:15:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from pogo.wv.tek.com by orca.wv.tek.com (4.1/8.2) id AA12719; Tue, 3 Mar 98 11:17:20 PST Received: from catenary.WV.TEK.COM by pogo.wv.tek.com (4.1/8.0) id AA27348; Tue, 3 Mar 98 11:15:13 PST Received: from catenary.wv.tek.com by catenary.WV.TEK.COM (SMI-8.6/8.2) id TAA20497; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 19:15:13 GMT Message-Id: <199803031915.TAA20497@catenary.WV.TEK.COM> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 03 Mar 1998 09:50:45 EST." Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 11:15:12 -0800 From: Sean Kamath Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk [In a message on Tue, 03 Mar 1998 09:50:45 EST, "Andy Poling" wrote:] >On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Gibson, Eric admitted/claimed: >> I've never implimented >> DNS, never used it, never even seen it. But I'm still a darned good systems >> administrator in spite of that. >... >If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. Um, did I miss something? If you understand DNS, you understand TCP/IP? If you don't understand DNS, you don't understand TCP/IP? That's like saying if you know perl, you know UNIX. Of course, you can know UNIX without knowing perl, and you can know perl without knowing UNIX (perl on NT, for example). The two are not interdependant. DNS is but one of many protocols that utilize TCP/IP, and in fact, it's (generally) UDP based, not TCP based, so how would knowing DNS help you understand the TCP in TCP/IP? Sheesh. This has gone from a discussion about whether certification is a good thing into a discussion of what it means to be an SA. Knowing how to set up a working, closed lab is very different then setting up a WAN for 9 field offices. *Generally*, if you're really good at one, you *probably* aren't at the other. Neither is good or bad, merely different. Let's not start into the "you don't know squanto" part of this discussion. The reason I find certification and interesting topic is the combination of how employers (including me) will use it, what certified SA's will think it means, and how *other* SA's will treat the certified SA's. If the certification process is like Novell's ("What makes a network" == serial ports and some other stuff) it's not really very useful for judging how well a new person will work out in their enviroment. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I'm finding that I get better SA's by behavioural interviewing, and *THEN* technical content. Who care's if the candidate knows everything on the planet about your site if no one can work with them. If you get someone you can work with, and believe they are capable of learning, then you can educate them. Of course, this only works if you can "afford" to educate. Good luck hiring people if you're not willing to continue their education, though. . . Certification means nothing behaviourally. Except that they showed up on time to take "the test(s)". Once. My $0.02 from the trenches of corporate america. Sean From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 12:00:56 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA16183 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:00:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from ee.Princeton.EDU (root@ee.Princeton.EDU [128.112.48.182]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA16174 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:00:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from flux (jay@flux.Princeton.EDU [128.112.48.27]) by ee.Princeton.EDU (8.6.10/8.6.10-1) with ESMTP id OAA19814; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:57:37 -0500 From: Jay Plett Received: by flux (8.6.10/viktor-1) id OAA19036; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:57:36 -0500 Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:57:36 -0500 Message-Id: <199803031957.OAA19036@flux> To: kamath@pogo.wv.tek.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities Reply-To: jay@EE.Princeton.EDU Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Sheesh. This has gone from a discussion about whether certification > is a good thing into a discussion of what it means to be an SA. In other words, it's getting to the heart of the matter. If you can't define the latter (and today's discussion raises some serious questions in that regard), you surely can't hope to accomplish anything useful via the former. ...jay From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 12:55:19 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA16945 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:55:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (dsr-gw.dsrnet.com [208.203.147.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA16914 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:55:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip-smtp-gw (ip-smtp-gw [192.168.168.1]) by dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id PAA08527 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 15:48:34 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: 3 Mar 1998 15:54:06 -0400 From: "Gibson, Eric" Subject: FW: survey results, part 2 To: "sage-members" X-Mailer: Mail*Link SMTP-MS 3.0.1 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi, Andy. > Many self-proclaimed SA's are such in their own minds only. > I'm sorry if that sounds mean, but you did ask for it. :-) Perhaps. Are *you* a good SA? By who's appraisal? > If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. Patently untrue. I don't need to understand a tool that uses TCP/IP to understand TCP/IP. > > One needn't *necessarily* know the inner workings of the machine to > > be able to administer it well. > > > If you don't understand the inner workings of the OS (which is even more > important than understanding the inner workings of the machine - both > invaluable in a _real_ system administrator) then perhaps a better title for > you would be System Monitor, Manual Reader and Phone Dialer... > Fine. Exactly what is a _real_ system administrator? You? > Would you hand over your brand new car for repair (or even maintenance) to a > mechanic who didn't know how a transmission works, and yet claimed to be a > "darned good" mechanic? > . > . > . Look, you went overboard with your examples, to the point of being condescending. > > I will safely wager that very few companies touch on every single aspect > > of systems administration > Oh, I see. Because *some* employers don't need a full skill set, you should > be able to call yourself a SA with a fundamentally incomplete skill set? > Ever heard of a NOT gate? :-) (My turn.) Oh, *I* see. Because *you* believe a certain skill is fundamental, all employers have to feel that this skill is fundamental. Please don't take such an attitude, and come down from your horse. Why don't you make a list of skills that you feel are fundamental for Unix systems administration, throw it at the mailing list, and see what kind of feedback you get. I (again) wager that you will get as many opinions as there are subscribers. If I may use one of your examples, no one doctor knows the entire human body, which is why there are dozens of different kinds of specialists. > Just because they don't (currently) need some fundamental skill from you > doesn't mean they shouldn't expect/require it. Sure it does. How about this: Your boss comes to you and tells you that you must learn HTML because SOMEday you MAY be a web designer. Many SA's are. Or that you must learn how to configure a router, even though you don't have any routers in house and have no plans to acquire any. What's the point of learning a skill that has little chance of being used? Your situation is different from mine. My skillset serves me and my company well. Could I learn more things and serve them better? Of course. The day I stop learning is the day I die, as should be the maxim for everyone. But I can't "waste" my time or theirs learning skills that don't apply here. I really have a problem with defining systems administration in the form of certification. In my very humble opinion, it is simply too broad. As I said, not every company uses every aspect of what everyone refers to as systems administration. If it were broken down into areas, fields, modules, whatever, then perhaps the idea has merit. I need to cut this now, because I have an engineer who is having NFS problems. I hope you take my comments in the spirit of their intentions: Constructive criticism and not destructive cynicism. To be sure, this is a very opinionated debate, one that will not be easily solved. I wish you and everyone else on the certification bandwagon luck. Make sure you have lots of spare wagon parts. It's going to be a long journey. ________________________________________________________________________________ Eric Gibson Sr. System Administrator 703.263.2851 [voice] Digital System Resources, Inc. 703.263.2802 [fax] (A Defense Contractor) egibson@dsrnet.com 12450 Fair Lakes Circle Suite 500 Fairfax, VA 22033 From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 12:55:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA16947 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:55:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from jcpenney.com (atlas.jcpenney.com [146.235.0.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA26192 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 14:48:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from mutha.cat.jcp.com by jcpenney.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA21795; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:44:45 -0600 Received: from cws201.cat.jcp.com by mutha.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA11669; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:44:45 -0600 Received: from localhost by cws201.cat.jcp.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id QAA08482; Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:44:44 -0600 Message-Id: <199802262244.QAA08482@cws201.cat.jcp.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Cert Discussion: Time to Stop Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 16:44:43 -0600 From: Scott Williams Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Sorry Stan, I disagree. This is a list for SAGE members to discuss issues in an open forum. If all you want is announcements, subscribe to sage-announce. It is not good to discourage active debate on an issue. (Unless it is off topic, like: Potting soil, hi or low nitrogen) Some very good points are being raised and discussed by the very people in this industry that might actually get a ball rolling on this issue. Personally, I want to hear more. More good ideas. More reasons some ideas are not so good. It's an important issue right now. Scott Open to Discussion From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 13:27:08 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA18467 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:27:08 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jrl@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA18457 for sage-members; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:27:05 -0800 (PST) From: Jim Lawson Message-Id: <199803032127.NAA18457@usenix.ORG> Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 (fwd) To: sage-members Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:27:04 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL26 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ----- Forwarded message from Norman Macaraeg ----- From sage-postmaster Tue Mar 3 08:14:55 1998 Return-Path: Received: from lsi.lsil.com (lsi.lsil.com [147.145.40.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA07070 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:14:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from mhbs.lsil.com ([147.145.29.36]) by lsi.lsil.com with ESMTP id IAA25202 (8.6.12/IDA-1.6 for ); Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:11:42 -0800 Received: from useng27.lsil.com by mhbs.lsil.com; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:11:41 -0800 Received: by useng27 (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id IAA03738; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:11:38 -0800 Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:11:38 -0800 From: macarnor@lsil.com (Norman Macaraeg) Message-Id: <199803031611.IAA03738@useng27> To: sage-members-owner@usenix.org Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 Content-MD5: H57xJ5iwTOgfKqE4F4hfbQ== Was it on their resume? I typically only ask questions that they put down on their resume because that's always fair game. There are lots of SA's who don't deal with DNS in larger companies. They just know that it's there and who to call when there's a problem. When I interview people, I only ask questions on what's pertinent to the job and on their resume. If they DON'T put something on there, I just don't ask about it. Just because someone doesn't know DNS or any other questions that you ask doesn't mean that they're NOT mid to senior level SA's. I want someone who can do the job. Not someone who can answer questions that might be considered trivia. -Norm >>(For some reason I've desided to open my mouth about this. As I type this >>I'm not sure why...) >> >>I do support this. Why? Well I've interviewed a LOT of SAs, SAs that >>can't tell me how DNS works. >> >>I'm not talking specifics of the line protocols or how some odd version of >>unix does it, I'm talking in general. I've interviewed people that claim >>to be mid to senior people who don't know: >> o machine asks a server >> + server checks cache >> + if not in cache, ask root servers >> + root server tells it who knows >> + ask site who knows >> - may be sub-delagated, and would have to loop till finds real info >> + server returns answer >> >>Thats all I'm looking for how does desktop.corp-a.com find www.corp-b.com _______________________________________________________________________ Norman J. Macaraeg Tel: (408) 954-4836 _____ LSI Logic Corp. Pag: (888) 321-3987 LSI|LOGIC| UNIX System Administration Fax: (408) 433-7695 | | 1551 Mc Carthy Blvd. M/S C-410 E-mail : macarnor@lsil.com |_____| Milpitas, CA 95035 _______________________________________________________________________ ----- End of forwarded message from Norman Macaraeg ----- From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 14:16:22 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA20118 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:16:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from maisystems.com ([206.101.168.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA20108 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:16:15 -0800 (PST) Received: by border.maisystems.com id <13450>; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:10:44 -0800 Message-Id: <98Mar3.141044pst.13450@border.maisystems.com> From: Mike Trimberger To: "'sage-members@usenix.org'" Subject: Re: Certification Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:11:03 -0800 X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk It looks as if this discussion is fragmenting into details. Which seems to indicate that it will be near impossible to certify a "Generic" SA. My current view of this whole topic is the same as when I sent in my response to the original survey. Call it a "merit badge" or an "Individual Topic Certificate" for the parts of the system administration puzzle that most help each person. For me in my job (which has gone from 80+% UNIX to less than 5%) topics in "Sendmail", "Setting up DNS", "AIX print queues" and the like, while personally interesting, would not meet my current job needs. I think that we could come up with literally hundreds of single-topic certificates that would be of interest for the members of SAGE. Perhaps it could be implemented as simply as a web-based on-line tutorial and then passing an on-line exam. You print your certificate when you pass on your own laser printer. Just another 2 cents... From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 14:51:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA20597 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 14:51:37 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jrl@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA19568 for sage-members; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:46:36 -0800 (PST) From: Jim Lawson Message-Id: <199803032146.NAA19568@usenix.ORG> Subject: list info To: sage-members Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 13:46:36 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL26 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk For general information on how to subscribe/unsubscribe to the sage mailing lists, send the following in the body of an email message (not the subject) to majordomo@usenix.org help A digest version of the sage-members mailing list is available. To subscribe to it, send the following in the body of an email message to majordomo@usenix.org subscribe sage-members-digest Once you've received confirmation, you'll probably want to unsubscribe from the un-digestified version. To do so, send the following to majordomo@usenix.org unsubscribe sage-members From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 15:02:11 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA21018 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 15:02:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com (cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com [24.3.34.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA21007 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 15:02:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@roadrunner.realbig.com (port 12856 [10.0.1.2]) by gate with ESMTP id <155878-1932>; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:58:21 +0000 Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@localhost (port 4152 [127.0.0.1]) by roadrunner with SMTP id <444074-6574>; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:58:05 +0000 Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:58:00 -0500 (EST) From: Andy Poling X-Sender: andy@roadrunner.realbig.com Reply-To: Andy Poling To: Sean Kamath cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities In-Reply-To: <199803031915.TAA20497@catenary.WV.TEK.COM> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I said: >If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. Then Sean Kamath said: > Um, did I miss something? If you understand DNS, you understand > TCP/IP? That's backwards. I never said the corollary was true - and it's certainly not. > If you don't understand DNS, you don't understand TCP/IP? > That's like saying if you know perl, you know UNIX. Backwards... again. Many times, when troubleshooting IP problems you need to check the DNS involved. If you don't understand DNS, then you cannot properly verify that a fundamental part of most IP activity (converting hostnames into IP addresses, and addresses into hostnames) is working correctly and eliminate it as the problem. The real issue is whether you can effectively administer systems without understanding how they work. I will always argue that you cannot consider yourself a SA (and certainly not a "senior" SA) if you do not understand the system that you're supposed to be administering. > Sheesh. This has gone from a discussion about whether certification > is a good thing into a discussion of what it means to be an SA. Which, as someone else pointed out, is kind of important. If you cannot determine the latter, how can you do the former? -Andy From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 3 17:19:18 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA28000 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:19:18 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jrl@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA27990 for sage-members; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:19:13 -0800 (PST) From: Jim Lawson Message-Id: <199803040119.RAA27990@usenix.ORG> Subject: RE: survey results, part 2 (fwd) To: sage-members Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 17:19:13 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL26 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ----- Forwarded message from Norman Macaraeg ----- From sage-postmaster Tue Mar 3 08:59:48 1998 Return-Path: Received: from lsi.lsil.com (lsi.lsil.com [147.145.40.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA08977 for ; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:59:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from mhbs.lsil.com ([147.145.29.36]) by lsi.lsil.com with ESMTP id IAA26765 (8.6.12/IDA-1.6 for ); Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:56:35 -0800 Received: from useng27.lsil.com by mhbs.lsil.com; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:56:35 -0800 Received: by useng27 (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id IAA03763; Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:56:32 -0800 Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 08:56:32 -0800 From: macarnor@lsil.com (Norman Macaraeg) Message-Id: <199803031656.IAA03763@useng27> To: sage-members-owner@usenix.org Subject: RE: survey results, part 2 Content-MD5: ursor3T8WjSMndYxCAAmHg== >>Many self-proclaimed SA's are such in their own minds only. What "in your mind" makes a good SA? >>I'm sorry if that sounds mean, but you did ask for it. :-) >> >>If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. And >>if you don't understand TCP/IP then you don't really understand networking. >>And if you don't understand networking, then I hate to be the one to tell >>you, but you're not a very good SA. >> >>Just because you're not (currently) using something as fundamental as DNS is >>no excuse for not keeping your knowledge current and broad. It is incumbent >>upon you, as a professional, to do so. There are many aspects of SA that we deal with. Some of us have hundreds of workstations to support with several dozen servers. When I go home, I forget about work. I'm not inclined to pick up a manual and read up on DNS or TCP/IP. My family/personal life comes first at home. We have a different group that takes care of our networks here. We have a different group that takes care of the DNS servers here. Sure, in the next few months, I will be setting up a cache DNS server. But until then, I know it's there. I know how to use it, and I know who to call when there's a problem. >>> One needn't *necessarily* know the inner workings of the machine to >>> be able to administer it well. >> >>This is one of my major buttons... >> >>If you don't understand the inner workings of the OS (which is even more >>important than understanding the inner workings of the machine - both >>invaluable in a _real_ system administrator) then perhaps a better title for >>you would be System Monitor, Manual Reader and Phone Dialer... >> >>Would you hand over your brand new car for repair (or even maintenance) to a >>mechanic who didn't know how a transmission works, and yet claimed to be a >>"darned good" mechanic? Yes I would. If they knew how to work on engines, why not? If they didn't know how to work in transmissions, take it to a transmission specialist. >>Would you select a doctor who didn't know how your circulatory system works, >>yet claimed to be a "darned good" doctor? Sure. If I had an eye problem, I'd go and see an opthalmologist. If I had a problem with my circulatory system, I'd go to a cardiologist or circulatory specialist. >>Would you hire an account to do your taxes if they didn't know what an IRA >>was, but claimed to be a "darned good" accountant? That's why they have H & R Block as your tax specialists. >>> I will safely wager that very few companies touch on every single aspect >>> of systems administration This I agree with. Every SA has a different set. Just because they don't know DNS doesn't mean they don't know how to manage a network of systems. >>Oh, I see. Because *some* employers don't need a full skill set, you should >>be able to call yourself a SA with a fundamentally incomplete skill set? >>Ever heard of a NOT gate? :-) What to you is a COMPLETE skill set? This seems to be your own opinion and "in your own mind" all SA's the world over should conform to your standard. >>Just because they don't (currently) need some fundamental skill from you >>doesn't mean they shouldn't expect/require it. And when they do require it and you don't know it, THEN you can update your skill base. I haven't yet met a system administrator who knew EVERYTHING about SA. And what is everything? Only YOU seem to know. >>-Andy -Norm _______________________________________________________________________ Norman J. Macaraeg Tel: (408) 954-4836 _____ LSI Logic Corp. Pag: (888) 321-3987 LSI|LOGIC| UNIX System Administration Fax: (408) 433-7695 | | 1551 Mc Carthy Blvd. M/S C-410 E-mail : macarnor@lsil.com |_____| Milpitas, CA 95035 _______________________________________________________________________ ----- End of forwarded message from Norman Macaraeg ----- From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 4 05:26:54 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA03527 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 05:26:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA03510 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 05:26:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA11196 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:23:36 -0500 Message-Id: <199803041323.IAA11196@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 08:23:35 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Andy Poling is the latest to say: > Sheesh. This has gone from a discussion about whether certification > is a good thing into a discussion of what it means to be an SA. Which, as someone else pointed out, is kind of important. If you cannot determine the latter, how can you do the former? This is why the certification proposal that the Board is comptemplating is a *baseline*. There are many folks now teaching college undergrad courses in systems administration - many (most?) use Evi's book as a guide. It _might_ be possible to construct an evaluation that indicates whether someone has been exposed to concepts like filesystems (and fsck), user issues, common security issues (why don't we keep passwords in /etc/password anymore?), and basic networking stuff - this wouldn't mean that the person was anything more than reasonably educated. Certainly it won't measure real-world skills (ok, you might be able to think about essay questions, or hands-on practicals), but could indicate that someone who "passed" had at some point been introduced to the basics. Obviously, folks who teach these courses for credit have _some_ way to tell whether the students are learning anything... Mind you, I'm not saying that we can actually achieve this. OTOH, _having_ such a test would help folks just starting out as they try to figure out what's important and anticipated that they know. I've set up a "FAQ-o-Matic" at http://cobweb.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/paw/fom with a subcategory of "what every sysadmin needs to know". Anyone can play (but don't be destructive, and don't be profane) - follow the model question that's there. If you've not used FAQ-o-Matic before, you'll probably want to check out the user guide at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jonh/ff-cache/2.html The rest of the SAGE Advice FoM is also ready for input - it's still really disorganized as I try to figure out how it makes most sense. Feel free to contribute, re-organize, or whatever. If we _are_ going to certify by testing knowledge, we need to have written that knowledge down; in any case, having accumulated "wisdom" someplace will help us all. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 4 07:16:40 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA09255 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 07:16:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from unix2.it-datacntr.louisville.edu (unix2.it-datacntr.louisville.edu [136.165.4.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA09246 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 07:16:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from homer.louisville.edu (rjwate01@homer.it-datacntr.louisville.edu [136.165.1.20]) by unix2.it-datacntr.louisville.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA23136 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:13:24 -0500 Received: (from rjwate01@localhost) by homer.louisville.edu (8.8.8/8.8.7) id KAA27216; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:13:24 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19980304101323.15896@homer.louisville.edu> Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:13:23 -0500 From: Bob Waters To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: cert discussion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.68 X-Operating-System: HP-UX B.10.10 E X-Disclaimer: Life is what happens while you are making plans. Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk It is becoming apparent that before any proposal for a certification process can really be discussed much further that maybe it would be better for each person to define what they think are important traits of being a system administrator before deciding how to test the traits that not everyone agrees to yet. Each person on the list seems to have a unique definition of a 'system administrator' that they are using as the basis of their opinions of weither to have or not to have certification and how the certification process should be handled. Just my opinion on how this discussion can be made a little more productive towards the certification discussion. Bob Waters From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 4 08:21:11 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA12979 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:21:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA12970 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 08:21:06 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA20907; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:17:47 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803041617.LAA20907@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities To: andy@globalauctions.com Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 11:17:47 -0500 (EST) Cc: kamath@pogo.wv.tek.com, sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: from "Andy Poling" at Mar 3, 98 05:58:00 pm Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi. Sorry to splash into the middle of a discussion; but I must have missed the announcement of these newsgroups. ;-) The first couple of comments are slightly nitpickety [although I contend if your reasoning is faulty or improperly worded, your discussion may be misunderstood]; but real content follows. > Andy said: > >If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. > > Then Sean Kamath said: > > Um, did I miss something? If you understand DNS, you understand > > TCP/IP? > > That's backwards. I never said the corollary was true - and it's certainly > not. Grumble, grumble. A corollary is trivially true from its axiom or theorem. The above is the "converse" - which, as you said, does not necessarily follow. > > If you don't understand DNS, you don't understand TCP/IP? > > That's like saying if you know perl, you know UNIX. > > Backwards... again. The first line quotes you. The second line draws a [poor] analogy. Neither is backwards. Having griped about your logic [yes, I have a degree in nitpicking, oops, logic], I don't agree with your premise, either. Many people can't read maps, yet drive. I would suspect that some people who understand intimately how to construct roads also can't read maps. By analogy, there may be some people who understand the TCP protocol and its underlying IP protocol, at either the driver level or the builder level, without fully understanding DNS. ALL DNS DOES IS TURN NAMES INTO NUMBERS. Well, and other secondary functions such as keying names to look up other types of records. How it does this is somewhat more complicated in detail, but essentially trivial in concept. It asks a trusted neighbour. If that one doesn't know, it asks a more reliable trusted neighbour, up to the ultimate trusted neighbour - who may not know, but definitely knows whom to ask. DNS is said to be a distributed, reliable database. Soon, we may be able to add authenticated to that list of adjectives. Understanding IP is more a matter of how the numbers and the wires work. This has nothing to do with DNS, at that level. > Many times, when troubleshooting IP problems you need to check the DNS > involved. If you don't understand DNS, then you cannot properly verify that > a fundamental part of most IP activity (converting hostnames into IP > addresses, and addresses into hostnames) is working correctly and eliminate > it as the problem. True. Now you're a traffic engineer - who does need to understand both the driver's view of the road and the map. [Note, by the way, that DNS is still not a fundamental part of IP activity. By the time you get down to the IP layer, it's been long done and gone.] > The real issue is whether you can effectively administer systems without > understanding how they work. I will always argue that you cannot consider > yourself a SA (and certainly not a "senior" SA) if you do not understand the > system that you're supposed to be administering. Many do. Use the DNS model - just go along doing your rote things until you come across something you don't understand; then call a more trusted neighbour. [;-)] > > Sheesh. This has gone from a discussion about whether certification > > is a good thing into a discussion of what it means to be an SA. > > Which, as someone else pointed out, is kind of important. If you cannot > determine the latter, how can you do the former? Most definitely true. Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 4 17:18:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA11704 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:18:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from acli.interlog.com (0@acli.interlog.com [198.53.146.23]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA11682 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:18:05 -0800 (PST) From: acli@acli.interlog.com Received: from acli@localhost by acli.interlog.com id <44925-298>; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 20:13:54 -0500 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 Newsgroups: fa.sage-members In-Reply-To: References: Organization: somewhere in Scarborough, Canada running C News CR.E and some assorted hacks for NNTP (including a hacked nntpxmit derived from NNTP 1.5.12) Message-Id: <19980305011357Z44925-298+21@acli.interlog.com> Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 20:13:54 -0500 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:50:45 -0500 (EST), in article , Andy Poling wrote: >Many self-proclaimed SA's are such in their own minds only. > >I'm sorry if that sounds mean, but you did ask for it. :-) Am I a self-proclaimed SA? Sure I am. I didn't even *think* myself as an SA, before about a year ago. And I have never held a job title of "system administrator". Then I came across SAGE's job descriptions and found that what I do is actually SA work. So I say I am an SA now though my job title is not, so I am by definition a self-proclaimed SA. But am I one only in my own mind? I probably won't even assertively say I can do a good SA job if I were to change jobs tomorrow. But as it is, I can reasonably sure that I am doing SA work. And I'd say I'm pretty sure I am not an isolated case. I would be tempted to say that in a typical, small PC shop, people are doing SA tasks without realizing such. >If you don't understand DNS then you don't properly understand TCP/IP. And >if you don't understand TCP/IP then you don't really understand networking. As someone else has already pointed out, this is false. Do I understand exactly why the various attacks work? How can anyone say they "really" understand TCP/IP if they can't foresee all possible TCP/IP-based attacks? And would an understanding of TCP/IP mean a real understanding of networking in my TCP/IP + IPX + Appletalk (mostly IPX) environment at work? -- Ambrose Li > home > acli@acli.interlog.com > http://www.interlog.com/~acli/ > work > acli@mingpaoxpress.com > permanent > ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca > Microsoft is not the answer > Microsoft is the question > No is the answer From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 4 17:43:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA13149 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:43:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from luna.bearnet.com (1005@luna.bearnet.com [207.55.144.20]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA13129 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:43:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 20096 invoked from network); 5 Mar 1998 01:40:32 -0000 Received: from mars.bearnet.com (HELO mars) (207.55.144.30) by luna.bearnet.com with SMTP; 5 Mar 1998 01:40:32 -0000 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980304194018.00a4ea90@207.55.144.20> X-Sender: billw@207.55.144.20 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 19:40:18 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Bill Weinman Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Scott, I use Linux for my six mission-critical servers. I have used Sun, SCO, HP, and AIX in the past, and Linux is faster, more robust, and far better supported than any those. In fact, if it cost $$$$ I would buy it without hesitation. As my Aunt Rose used to say, "Don't judge a book by its pricetag!" --Bill (who measures his uptime in MONTHS) At 10:25 AM 2/23/98 -0600, Scott Williams spake: >Yes, I've seen several versions of Free BSD, Linux, etc. It really boils down >to what the corporate structure is willing to trust. I know, as an SA, I would >never reccommend Linux or some other free OS to be used in my shop. With 100+ >users that produce a product that brings in billions of $$'s to the company, I >would NEVER put that on the shoulders of a free OS. Can I call up a team of >engineers at Red Hat if I have a problem? Sun is always there for me. I can >depend on it. Yes, I'll pay for that. But again, Unix is in the big shop, >where the application needs real power. So, our focus turns to the smaller >shops. Can they, and will they, spend the money for a commercialy released and >supported Unix? Do they even need it? NT will get the job done just as well. >Fileserver applications, not number crunching or data processing. Unix will >always reign supreme in DP. But NT is very capable of driving a PC network in >the corporate world. Why would I put linux on all of those desktops? I would >not. So, where would I use Linux, Free BSD, etc.? Not in my DP shop. Not on my >desktops. Where? > >Scott >Will pay for Unix. > > > +-- Bill Weinman is the author of ---+ several books and is co-founder of WebMonster(tm) Networks Support CAUCE: From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 4 17:50:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA13522 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:50:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from luna.bearnet.com (1005@luna.bearnet.com [207.55.144.20]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id RAA13504 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 17:50:53 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 20164 invoked from network); 5 Mar 1998 01:47:54 -0000 Received: from mars.bearnet.com (HELO mars) (207.55.144.30) by luna.bearnet.com with SMTP; 5 Mar 1998 01:47:54 -0000 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980304194740.00af04d0@207.55.144.20> X-Sender: billw@207.55.144.20 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 19:47:40 -0600 To: Scott Williams , sage-members@usenix.org From: Bill Weinman Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix In-Reply-To: <199802232208.QAA24070@cws201.cat.jcp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 04:08 PM 2/23/98 -0600, Scott Williams spake: >doing the same thing would be fantastic. But, equipment, software, >installation, support costs were factors. Unix would have been almost $460k >and NT cost $212k. The NT route was chosen. No regrets. I would, however, >question NT's ability to control a DP environment. Hmmm... my experience is the oposite: Linux does the same work with FAR less hardware than NT. My office uses a Linux box to do everything our NT server used to do: filesharing (SMB with Samba), print servers, mail servers, etc. In fact, this old 90Mhz Pentium with 16MB of ram is performing roughly twice as well as it used to with 64MB of RAM running NT! Extra bonus: We used to have to reboot NT nightly, just on general principal (if we didn't, it would complain the next day). Checking the uptime on the Linux box: $ uptime 7:44pm up 87 days, 4:29, 12 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.02 'Nuff said, --Bill +-- Bill Weinman is the author of ---+ several books and is co-founder of WebMonster(tm) Networks Support CAUCE: From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 4 21:47:46 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA24741 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 21:47:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from luna.bearnet.com (1005@luna.bearnet.com [207.55.144.20]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id VAA24732 for ; Wed, 4 Mar 1998 21:47:42 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 23035 invoked from network); 5 Mar 1998 05:44:46 -0000 Received: from mars.bearnet.com (HELO mars) (207.55.144.30) by luna.bearnet.com with SMTP; 5 Mar 1998 05:44:46 -0000 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980304234429.02f4cce0@207.55.144.20> X-Sender: billw@207.55.144.20 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 23:44:29 -0600 To: Andy Poling From: Bill Weinman Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: References: <199803031915.TAA20497@catenary.WV.TEK.COM> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 05:58 PM 3/3/98 -0500, Andy Poling spake: >> If you don't understand DNS, you don't understand TCP/IP? >> That's like saying if you know perl, you know UNIX. >Many times, when troubleshooting IP problems you need to check the DNS >involved. If you don't understand DNS, then you cannot properly verify that >a fundamental part of most IP activity (converting hostnames into IP >addresses, and addresses into hostnames) is working correctly and eliminate >it as the problem. That's ridiculous. In a recent consulting SA job I administered a WAN that used /etc/hosts files INSTEAD of DNS. Their WAN used expensive satellite bandwidth, and they didn't see a need for the extra overhead of DNS for what was essentially a static network of a few hundered hosts. TCP/IP has been around in its current form MUCH longer than DNS (which, as someone else correctly pointed out, uses UDP more often than TCP). A competent SA need really understand only what he/she is actually using. There are plenty of people around who can run a bind server without really understanding all the subtleties of the DNS protocol. >The real issue is whether you can effectively administer systems without >understanding how they work. I will always argue that you cannot consider >yourself a SA (and certainly not a "senior" SA) if you do not understand the >system that you're supposed to be administering. Your comment seems far more absolute than is really practicable. Do you mean to say that you should know by heart all the details of all the protocols being run on your system? That's unrealistic, and it's arguably a test that even you couldn't meet. (e.g. the difference between TCP and UDP--many people who are otherwise competent SAs would be unable to answer that one.) --Bill +-- Bill Weinman is the author of ---+ several books and is co-founder of WebMonster(tm) Networks Support CAUCE: From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 07:24:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA21586 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 07:24:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from karoshi.ucsd.edu (brian@karoshi.ucsd.edu [132.239.1.111]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA21546 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 07:24:27 -0800 (PST) Received: (from brian@localhost) by karoshi.ucsd.edu (8.8.8/8.8.5) id HAA00391 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 07:21:15 -0800 (PST) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 07:21:15 -0800 (PST) From: Brian Kantor Message-Id: <199803051521.HAA00391@karoshi.ucsd.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk When I hire a sysadmin, I require them to have enough knowledge and experience that they won't hurt themselves, the systems they're supposed to be supporting, and the people and projects who use those systems. I also require them to learn. Anyone who comes to me and says "I know all I need to know" will not get the job; they are not suited for it. This job is CONSTANTLY changing; if the person cannot learn as they work, they are not suited for working here - no matter how well qualified they may be today, they will NOT be qualified tomorrow. The job will have passed them by. Whether someone knows the DNS or not is a fine point. They will; if they already know it, they'll have to learn something else they don't know now. Attitude, enthusiasm, intelligence, and a desire and capability to learn new things are what I look for first in an employee. Knowledge can be acquired if these first qualities are there. I don't know how you'd certify those. Magic touchstone? - Brian From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 08:08:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA23524 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:08:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailbox1.ucsd.edu (mailbox1.ucsd.edu [132.239.1.53]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA23508 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:08:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from igpp.UCSD.EDU (igpp.ucsd.edu [132.239.152.7]) by mailbox1.ucsd.edu (8.8.8/8.6.9) with SMTP id IAA03060 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:05:37 -0800 (PST) Received: by igpp.UCSD.EDU (4.1/UCSDGENERIC.4) id AA25651 to sage-members@usenix.ORG; Thu, 5 Mar 98 08:05:36 PST Date: Thu, 5 Mar 98 08:05:36 PST From: prusso@igpp.ucsd.edu (Patrick Russo) Message-Id: <9803051605.AA25651@igpp.UCSD.EDU> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I have been an SA for 15 years and have had the challenge of hiring SAs for the last 5. Disclaimer: I realize that our University environment in which we have UNIX hosts, Macs and very few PCs does not represent the "real world". I quite agree with two previous comments: 1) the value of behavioral interviewing, and 2) hiring someone who knows concepts rather than mere facts. You can ultimately stuff whatever knowledge and learning you need into a new hire as long as they have basic concepts; most sites have unique local implementations anyway which require this. But you can't teach attitude or style. I therefore carefully check *every* reference and ask specifically about those qualities. It's much more important for me to hire a person who's first concern is users (has a good attitude about helping people), who has good trouble shooting skills, and who knows what he *doesn't* know but can use resources effectively, than to hire a walking SA manual who has no people skills -- that's why we have man pages, reference manuals, and SA networking. Our mottos here are: users, users, users; fix the problem, then follow up and fix the user. Everything important I've learned about how to give an interview can be summed up in one phrase: "A person's past performance is the best predictor of their future behavior." In an interviewee, talk's cheap; what you need to find out is what they have actually done. Anyone can make up whatever fantastic answer their creative ability permits in response to uninformative hypothetical questions which start with, "What would you do if...". You only begin to really learn something about a candidate when you ask questions like: "Have you ever had a situation where your main server suddenly went down, the phone kept ringing and there was a line of people in your office screaming? *Tell me exactly and in detail what you did?*" Whatever they did, they are likely to repeat, and you will have learned something about their actual skills and style, and indirectly about their knowledge. As far as concepts, in our UNIX environment the basic concepts include: user accounts (passwd, shadow, permissions, workgroups, netgroups, startup files, etc), automounter, NIS, NFS, backups, e-mail, compiling public domain software (X, GNU), and security. We have a network administrator as a member of our team who has a separate skill set and we coordinate with him on physical layer issues on a regular basis. As can be seen from my interview checklist below, a candidate's actual SA skills come about 7th in my reckoning of what's important to look for in hiring an SA. It's unlikely that certification would deal with any of the first 5 or 6, and these skills are the essence of day in and day out SA at our site. Certification or no, without those skills a new hire would be of no use to us at all. KINDS OF THINGS WE WOULD LIKE TO LEARN FROM AN INTERVIEWEE: a. users come first - without them we have no reason to exist! b. ability to learn c. consulting ability - clear, concise, responsive d. team player e. organizational skills - prioritization ability f. diagnostic skill - quick, efficient g. sys admin experience - prefer heterogeneous platforms h. ability to follow install (and other) procedures i. supervision requirements - prefer self starter, but not someone who will go bashing off in wild directions j. net admin experience =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Patrick V. Russo, Ph.D. | E-MAIL: prusso@ucsd.edu IGPP NETWORK OPERATIONS, 0225 | PHONE : (619) 534-4473 SIO/UCSD | FAX : (619) 534-2902 University of California, San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 08:54:38 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA26045 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:54:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA26036 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:54:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom7.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id IAA11469 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:51:19 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199803051651.IAA11469@netcom7.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 08:51:18 PST In-Reply-To: Brian Kantor "Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities" (Mar 5, 7:21am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration Certification & Capabilities) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk A lot of people in this thread have mentioned a preference for candidates with good "soft skills" (customer service attitude, desire to learn, motivation, enthusiasm, et al) over a first rate technical candidate who might lack some of these skills. I must say I tend to agree. One thing that's always frustrated me, however, is an inability to initially instill these qualities in an individual. I know plenty of techniques for increasing motivation and enthusiasm, improving customer service, etc. but none of them work to create these desires in an individual who doesn't have them in the first place. And frankly I'm having a hard time finding people who have these skills and I need to manufacture some. Do people generally agree that the person has to be born with a customer service attitude and some of the other skills I mentioned? Has anybody had success in instilling these qualities in somebody, and if so when in their development did you do it (childhood, grade school, college, in the workplace)? Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 11:30:58 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA04004 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:30:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (avalon.qualcomm.com [203.30.171.11]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA03994 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:30:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by avalon.qualcomm.com (8.8.3/8.7.2/1.0) with ESMTP id GAA07923; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:25:25 +1100 (EST) Message-Id: <199803051925.GAA07923@avalon.qualcomm.com> To: prusso@igpp.ucsd.edu (Patrick Russo) cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities In-reply-to: Your message of Thu, 05 Mar 1998 08:05:36 PST. <9803051605.AA25651@igpp.UCSD.EDU> Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 06:25:25 +1100 From: Greg Rose Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Patrick Russo writes: >KINDS OF THINGS WE WOULD LIKE TO LEARN FROM AN INTERVIEWEE: > a. users come first - without them we have no reason to exist! You mean you didn't already know this? What kind of sysadmin are you? ( :-) for the auto-smiley impaired.) Greg. Greg Rose INTERNET: ggr@qualcomm.com QUALCOMM Australia VOICE: +61-2-9743 4646 FAX: +61-2-9736 3262 6 Kingston Avenue http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ Mortlake NSW 2137 B5 DF 66 95 89 68 1F C8 EF 29 FA 27 F2 2A 94 8F From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 11:50:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA04977 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:50:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com (dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com [206.214.98.9]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA04968 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 11:50:45 -0800 (PST) Received: (from smap@localhost) by dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) id NAA06108 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:47:01 -0600 (CST) Received: from liv-proxy.fosterfarms.com(208.1.117.20) by dfw-ix9.ix.netcom.com via smap (V1.3) id rma005946; Thu Mar 5 13:45:19 1998 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980305114232.00de6e60@popd.ix.netcom.com> X-Sender: dphi@popd.ix.netcom.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 11:42:32 -0800 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Dale Phillips Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration Certification & Capabilities) In-Reply-To: <199803051651.IAA11469@netcom7.netcom.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk 0.01 Fact - (due to inflation) "It is easier to teach a liberal studies major how to program ... than it is to teach a computer science major how to communicate " I think one could safely replace "how to be a SA" for "how to program" --dp------------------------------------------------ Dale Phillips If ignorance is bliss how come dphi@ix.netcom.com more people aren't happy? From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 13:47:41 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA10731 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:47:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from gadget.cscaper.com (gadget.cscaper.com [206.67.186.3]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA10722 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:47:37 -0800 (PST) Received: (from merlyn@localhost) by gadget.cscaper.com (8.8.3/8.8.3) id OAA01542; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:43:28 -0700 (MST) To: Dale Phillips Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration Certification & Capabilities) References: <3.0.3.32.19980305114232.00de6e60@popd.ix.netcom.com> From: Randal Schwartz Date: 05 Mar 1998 14:43:28 -0700 In-Reply-To: Dale Phillips's message of "Thu, 05 Mar 1998 11:42:32 -0800" Message-ID: <8cd8g024qn.fsf@gadget.cscaper.com> Lines: 29 X-Mailer: Quassia Gnus v0.32/Emacs 20.2 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >>>>> "Dale" == Dale Phillips writes: Dale> 0.01 Fact - (due to inflation) Dale> "It is easier to teach a liberal studies major how to program ... Dale> than it is to teach a computer science major how to communicate " Odd. In the techwriting groups that I've been in, we found exactly the opposite to be true. To get through your typical CS degree (and then the interview), you'd have to communicate quite a bit, and anything else could be learned "on the job". But we could *never* get the liberal arts majors to *ever* quite grasp the art of programming no matter how much OJT we gave them. In particular, once the group at Tektronix where I worked started requiring CS degrees for its writers (*after* I'd been hired, thank goodness!), and got rid of its BA-English degreed people, we made great forward strides in technical accuracy and clarity that would *not* have been possible before. We won many regional awards for techwriting, and our customers rated the manuals consistently high, and in some cases, even the deciding factor in a purchase decision. Just an interesting counterpoint... -- Name: Randal L. Schwartz / Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 Keywords: Perl training, UNIX[tm] consulting, video production, skiing, flying Email: Snail: (Call) PGP-Key: (finger merlyn@teleport.com) Web: My Home Page! Quote: "I'm telling you, if I could have five lines in my .sig, I would!" -- me From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 14:12:04 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA12097 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:12:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from jhereg.perl.com (root@perl.com [199.45.135.9]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA12078 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 14:11:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from jhereg (tchrist@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by jhereg.perl.com (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA29948; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 15:08:25 -0700 Message-Id: <199803052208.PAA29948@jhereg.perl.com> To: Randal Schwartz cc: Dale Phillips , sage-members@usenix.org, tchrist@jhereg.perl.com Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration Certification & Capabilities) In-reply-to: Your message of "05 Mar 1998 14:43:28 MST." <8cd8g024qn.fsf@gadget.cscaper.com> Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 15:08:25 -0700 From: Tom Christiansen Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >Odd. In the techwriting groups that I've been in, we found exactly >the opposite to be true. To get through your typical CS degree (and >then the interview), you'd have to communicate quite a bit, and >anything else could be learned "on the job". But we could *never* get >the liberal arts majors to *ever* quite grasp the art of programming >no matter how much OJT we gave them. Read the wonderful book "The Art of Mathematics" by Jerry King. He talks about this. Just s/Math/CompSci/. Those in Math/Science/Engr can enter the world of Arts/Letters, but the opposite doesn't seem to happen. --tom From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 16:08:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA19589 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:08:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from hustle.rahul.net (hustle.rahul.net [192.160.13.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA19580 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:08:16 -0800 (PST) Received: by hustle.rahul.net with UUCP id AA05444 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for sage-members@usenix.org); Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:05:03 -0800 Received: from antares.starshine.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by antares.starshine.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA29078 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:47:06 -0800 Message-Id: <199803060047.QAA29078@antares.starshine.org> To: sage-members@usenix.org X-Mailer: MH 6.8.3 Subject: SAGE's Mission Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 16:47:05 -0800 From: Jim Dennis Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I'd like to "reboot" this discussion about "certification" and see if we can refocus it. According to our web pages and FAQ SAGE's mission is: The System Administrators' Guild is a Special Technical Group (STG) of the USENIX Association. It is organized to advance the status of computer system administration as a profession, establish standards of professional excellence and recognize those who attain them, develop guidelines for improving the technical and managerial capabilities of members of the profession, and promote activities that advance the state of the art or the community. That lists the following purposes: * advance the status of computer system administration as a profession * establish standards of professional excellence * recognize those who attain those standards * develop guidelines for improving the technical and managerial capabilities of members of the profession * promote activities that advance the state of the art or the community. So, let's ask some questions: Does this statement accurately reflect SAGE's mission? What can we do to advance the status of system administration as a profession? What have we done to this end so far? Advance the status of SA *to whom*? What are our standards of professional excellence? Where do we derive them? How to we promote them? Who benefits from such standards? How? How do we measure or evaluate adherence to those standards? How can we recognize those who attain those standards? Who have we recognized so far? How? What form of recognition can be bestow? What is the benefit of such recognition? What guidelines improve the technical and managerial capabilities of our members and others in our profession? What improvements have we effected? How do we develope these guidelines? How does anyone evaluate performance against any such guidelines? What do we mean by "improve"? How do we advance the state of the art? (Personally I would borrow a phrase from other professional organizations like accountants and refer to "principles of 'best practice'" rather than "state of the art"). What is the "state" of our "art?" How do we promote the community? What communications channels do we provide within the "community" and between our "community" and others? (That "communications" is intrinsic is "community" is tautological since the terms derive from a common stem). I have to admit that even a cursory glance at our mission statement screams for "certification" (which is a recognition of one's qualifications and/or adherence to a given set of standards). The mandate seems pretty clear to me -- but I'd rather that we cease to argue *against* "certification" and rather see proposals *for* things that will attain these goals. One of the events that I find mildly discouraging happened about mid-last year. In the course of my research (for a book that I'm working on) I discovered that neither the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Dictionary of Occupational Titles (D.O.T.) nor the Standardized Industrial Codes (?) (SIC) contain any entries for "System Administrator." They contain entries for "Network Administrator" and "Computer Operator" and "Systems Analyst" and several others that are *close*. I spend a few hours looking through the references on these -- to get a sense of the granularity that is expected by these. I seem to recall that there were seperate codes for "Pastry Baker," "Donut Baker," and "Bread Baker" (or some similarly hair-splitting titles). So it seems reasonable that "System Administrator" deserves its own code. My opinion was reinforced by careful reading of the descriptions for each of the "similar" titles. Now this seems like it would be a matter of some importance to an organization called the "System Administrator's Guild" whose stated mission is to "advance the status of computer system administration as a profession." So I sent a recommendation (with the name and number of the appropriate federal forms) to a member of the board. The suggestion was simply that we submit the form to the appropriate agencies. When I asked about it later (at the San Antonio, USENIX Security Symposium) the suggestion was that I should just go ahead and do it myself. I'm willing to do that -- but this seems like a pretty lackluster response. Now, I suppose we could wrangle about the relative merits of BLS D.O.T. and SIC codes and argue over who uses them and what's stupid about them etc ad nauseum. That would be a wast of time. A more important question to me is: "Why wasn't any action taken?" (A response to me to the effect that it's "not part of our charter" or some such would have been *some action* -- whether I agreed with it or not). If all we're going to do is run some conferences, wrangle in some mailing lists, and take up some space in ;login -- then perhaps we should change our mission statement, and our name, to accurately reflect what we're willing to do. -- Jim Dennis (800) 938-4078 consulting@starshine.org Proprietor, Starshine Technical Services: http://www.starshine.org PGP 1024/2ABF03B1 Jim Dennis Key fingerprint = 2524E3FEF0922A84 A27BDEDB38EBB95A From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 16:18:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA20119 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:18:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA20110 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 16:18:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with ESMTP id SAA04291; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 18:14:39 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803060014.SAA04291@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> To: Tom Christiansen cc: Randal Schwartz , Dale Phillips , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration Certification & Capabilities) In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 05 Mar 1998 15:08:25 MST." <199803052208.PAA29948@jhereg.perl.com> Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 18:14:38 -0600 From: Stephen Potter Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and Tom Christiansen whispered: | Read the wonderful book "The Art of Mathematics" by Jerry King. He talks | about this. Just s/Math/CompSci/. Those in Math/Science/Engr can | enter the world of Arts/Letters, but the opposite doesn't seem to happen. Funny, seems to be exactly the opposite from what I see. At one college I attended for a couple of years, the largest dual-major or major-minor combination was CS/theatre. I personally know several linguists, philosophy majors, even horticulturalists who are now very good CS people, and never took serious CS classes in school. Of the several hundred people I've interviewed in the past two years (you get that working for a firm with recruiters ;-), I'd have to save the near majority were non-"tech degree" folks who ended up in computers because they found them fun. -spp From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 5 22:18:43 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA06823 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:18:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from mdli.com (gateway.mdli.com [208.200.221.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA06814 for ; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:18:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from puffin.mdli.com ([191.254.19.10]) by gateway.mdli.com with ESMTP id <15247>; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:08:37 -0800 Received: from hawk.mdli.com by puffin.mdli.com (8.8.5/BCH1.0) id WAA19546; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:14:49 -0800 (PST) Received: by hawk.mdli.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/930416.SGI.AUTO) for sage-members@usenix.ORG id WAA00116; Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:15:14 -0800 From: "David Mostardi" Message-Id: <9803052215.ZM114@hawk.mdli.com> Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 22:15:13 -0800 In-Reply-To: Tom Christiansen "Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration Certification & Capabilities)" (Mar 5, 15:42) References: <199803052208.PAA29948@jhereg.perl.com> X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.3 08feb96 MediaMail) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Randal Schwartz wrote: > >Odd. In the techwriting groups that I've been in, we found exactly > >the opposite to be true. To get through your typical CS degree (and > >then the interview), you'd have to communicate quite a bit, and > >anything else could be learned "on the job". But we could *never* get > >the liberal arts majors to *ever* quite grasp the art of programming > >no matter how much OJT we gave them. Tom Christiansen wrote: > Read the wonderful book "The Art of Mathematics" by Jerry King. He talks > about this. Just s/Math/CompSci/. Those in Math/Science/Engr can > enter the world of Arts/Letters, but the opposite doesn't seem to happen. Speaking as a former arts/letters person (BA Zoology, UC Berkeley) my experience is that the computer biz is awash in humanities and science ex-patriots, who deduced that the road to a good salary is paved with computers. Now are we, as a group, as good as the CS majors? I am not; I am certainly many rungs below the two gentlemen quoted above. I like to think I am a good sysadmin, but I would no doubt be a better one if I had a CS degree. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ David Mostardi Web: http://www.mdli.com Unix Systems Manager Email: davidm@mdli.com MDL Information Systems, Inc. Voice: (510) 895-1313 x1420 14600 Catalina St., San Leandro CA 94577 FAX: (510) 352-2870 -- "When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 04:57:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id EAA24613 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 04:57:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (dsr-gw.dsrnet.com [208.203.147.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id EAA24601 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 04:57:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip-smtp-gw (ip-smtp-gw [192.168.168.1]) by dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id HAA24657 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:50:48 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: 6 Mar 1998 07:55:54 -0400 From: "Gibson, Eric" Subject: RE: SAGE's mission To: sage-members@usenix.org X-Mailer: Mail*Link SMTP-MS 3.0.1 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Jim makes some good points, certainly worth consideration. I'd like to address one in particular: > I have to admit that even a cursory glance at our mission statement > screams for "certification" (which is a recognition of one's qualifications > and/or adherence to a given set of standards). The mandate seems pretty > clear to me -- but I'd rather that we cease to argue *against* > "certification" and rather see proposals *for* things that will attain > these goals. Some years ago, I was involved in a sophomoric, if well-intentioned, concept called Quality Circles. The mission statment, if you will, of Quality Circles was for a group of people within a work area would assemble weekly and work on small problems (pebble-in-the-shoe problems, the called them) and come up with a solution. There were several Circles at this company representing many different departments. Each group was counciled by a facilitator who was rigorously trained in the rules and codes of conduct of Quality Circles (and there were *many*). The single most important rule of Quality Circles was: Do not state your problem as a solution, and do not immediately assume a solution to your stated problem. For example: I was in a computer-aided design department. We had many symbols (hundreds) that we used for creating our drawings (I did mainly schematics). We didn't have any good way of finding a symbol beyond a book that was made by someone on his own time, and it wasn't done well. We stated our problem as "no good reference book for looking up schematic symbols." As it turned out, after all of our brainstorming and data collection, our solution wasn't to have a library book at all, but to keep an on-line text file that could be quickly referenced by the name of a chip, gate, transistor, resistor, etc, etc. The point of all this is that we stated our problem as its solution. The problem should have been stated: "We have no way of quickly finding a symbol." The statement of the problem should not pre-suppose a solution. It could turn out that there is no easy solution to your problem, or even no solution at all. Your data collection should be the course of action that steers you towards your best solution. With respect to certification, it may well turn out that it simply isn't practical. Or that there must be several areas of certification, and no single "System Administrator" certification. We really don't know, do we? This is why we must discuss it ad nauseum until we reach a consensus. My humble opinion. ________________________________________________________________________________ Eric Gibson Sr. System Administrator 703.263.2851 [voice] Digital System Resources, Inc. 703.263.2802 [fax] (A Defense Contractor) egibson@dsrnet.com 12450 Fair Lakes Circle Suite 500 Fairfax, VA 22033 "I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else." --Lily Tomlin From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 05:04:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA24926 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 05:04:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from eugate.sgi.com (eugate.sgi.com [193.73.159.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA24917 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 05:04:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from eurohub.neu.sgi.com (eurohub.neu.sgi.com [144.253.128.2]) by eugate.sgi.com (980305.SGI.8.8.8-aspam-6.2/980304.SGI-aspam-europe) via ESMTP id OAA20067; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:00:38 +0100 (MET) mail_from (zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com) Received: from pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com (pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com [144.253.130.13]) by eurohub.neu.sgi.com (980205.SGI.8.8.8/970903.SGI.AUTOCF) via SMTP id OAA423563; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:00:38 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost by pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/911001.SGI) id OAA29336; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:00:35 +0100 Message-Id: <199803061300.OAA29336@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> To: "David Mostardi" cc: sage-members@usenix.org, zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration) In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 05 Mar 1998 22:15:13 PST." <9803052215.ZM114@hawk.mdli.com> Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 14:00:34 +0100 From: zwicky Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk David Mostardi wrote: >Randal Schwartz wrote: >Tom Christiansen wrote: >Speaking as a former arts/letters person (BA Zoology, UC Berkeley) >my experience is that the computer biz is awash in humanities and >science ex-patriots, who deduced that the road to a good salary >is paved with computers. >Now are we, as a group, as good as the CS majors? I am not; >I am certainly many rungs below the two gentlemen quoted above. >I like to think I am a good sysadmin, but I would no doubt >be a better one if I had a CS degree. Oh for goodness' sake. I don't think Randal has a CS degree, and I know Larry Wall doesn't (his degree is in linguistics). Me: Cognitive Science. Bryan McDonald: Spanish Literature. Paul Evans: History. We were doing so well there, before we fell into an argument even more stultifyingly dull than the standard certification discussion. For any degree you care to name, there are both idiots and geniuses that have it. In fact, here is a rule of thumb of human population biology; take a human population. Divide it according to some measurement (engineering vs. liberal arts degrees, male vs. female, black vs. white). Measure each population against some criteria other than your original (skill at system administration, upper-body strength, talent for playing basketball). While it is very likely that you will find some difference between the two populations, you will also find that the variation within each group is larger than the variation between the groups. On most measures, the overlap of the ranges will also be quite large. What that means is that the statement "Engineers are better system administrators than English majors" can be at the same time perfectly true, and utterly useless at predicting the performance of any given human being. Furthermore, even if people with CS degrees are as a population better system administrators than people without CS degrees, that doesn't imply that getting a CS degree will make you a better system administrator. Correlation is not the same thing as a causation. People who're interested in computers often get CS degrees. Being interested in computers is also a predictor for success as a system administrator. So you'd expect the two to correlate, even if a CS degree were completely useless to a system administrator. Elizabeth From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 05:56:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA27250 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 05:56:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA27241 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 05:56:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA11019; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 08:52:45 -0500 Message-Id: <199803061352.IAA11019@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: Jim Dennis cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SAGE's Mission In-reply-to: (Your message of Thu, 05 Mar 1998 16:47:05 EST.) <199803060047.QAA29078@antares.starshine.org> Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 08:52:44 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk [long excerpt for context - sorry] Jim Dennis says (after making many great points about SAGE's misson): > One of the events that I find mildly discouraging happened about mid-last > year. In the course of my research (for a book that I'm working on) I > discovered that neither the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) > Dictionary of Occupational Titles (D.O.T.) nor the Standardized Industrial > Codes (?) (SIC) contain any entries for "System Administrator." They contain > entries for "Network Administrator" and "Computer Operator" and "Systems > Analyst" and several others that are *close*. > Now this seems like it would be a matter of some importance to an > organization called the "System Administrator's Guild" whose stated mission > is to "advance the status of computer system administration as a profession." > So I sent a recommendation (with the name and number of the appropriate > federal forms) to a member of the board. The suggestion was simply that > we submit the form to the appropriate agencies. > > When I asked about it later (at the San Antonio, USENIX Security Symposium) > the suggestion was that I should just go ahead and do it myself. I'm > willing to do that -- but this seems like a pretty lackluster response. > > Now, I suppose we could wrangle about the relative merits of BLS D.O.T. > and SIC codes and argue over who uses them and what's stupid about them > etc ad nauseum. That would be a wast of time. A more important question > to me is: "Why wasn't any action taken?" (A response to me to the > effect that it's "not part of our charter" or some such would have been > *some action* -- whether I agreed with it or not). I believe the response that we gave was more along the lines of "the sounds interesting; it wasn't immediately apparent how to do this; you seem to have looked into it - can you tell us *exactly* what has to be done, and how?". And yes, at San Antonio I did say that it probably made more sense for you to do the work on it, since you seemed to have the most enthusiasm for it. It's not that we don't care at all, but it didn't seem as simple as submitting one form. Look, folks. There are 3600+ SAGE members. There are 7 people on the Board. _All_ of us (members on the Board and not) are busy - we're sysadmins. If things are going to get done, *the membership* has to do them. Folks on the Board have their own areas of interest, and can't always fit in other things. We've got no magic wand to wave and make things happen. I say this all the time, and mean it - if you have a good idea and see something you want to get done, by all means ask the Board, but don't then sit around and wait for it to happen. SAGE is a Guild, and it's All Of Us. 7 people can in no way get everything accomplished by themselves. The only way the organization is going to become what *you* want it to become is if *you* contribute - time, opinions, whatever. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 06:02:10 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA27555 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:02:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from relay.nswc.navy.mil (relay.nswc.navy.mil [128.38.1.41]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id GAA27538 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:02:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailsrvx (mailsrvx.nswc.navy.mil) by relay.nswc.navy.mil (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA08456; Fri, 6 Mar 98 08:58:48 EST Received: by mailsrvx (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA01330; Fri, 6 Mar 98 08:59:12 EST From: "Dwight Peters" Message-Id: <9803060859.ZM1328@mailsrvx> Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 08:59:11 -0500 X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10oct95) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Praise for the digest. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Thanks to whoever for sage-members-digest. It makes you all a lot easier to take. -- Dwight Petersen is a system administrator. Standard disclaimers. "What if the songbird will not sing?" "Kill it," said Oda Nobunaga. "Make the bird want to sing", said Toyotomi Hideyoshi. "Wait", said Tokugawa Ieyasu. From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 06:46:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA29648 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:46:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from stokely.com (stokely.stokely.com [204.188.150.18]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id GAA29608 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:46:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from celestial.stokely.com by stokely.com (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA02380; Fri, 6 Mar 98 06:43:19 PST Received: by celestial.stokely.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id GAA12219; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:43:18 -0800 Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 06:43:18 -0800 From: celeste@celestial.stokely.com (Celeste Stokely) Message-Id: <199803061443.GAA12219@celestial.stokely.com> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I think few people are born with good "soft skills", like listening and giving good customer service. They are skills learned over many years. A person either has the skills drilled into him/her by a mentor or parents who will show the value of the skills, or the person has an experience that makes her/him seek out those skills. In my case, I was "shocked" into acquiring the skills. Long, long ago, my (pretty bad) manager told me that my technical skills were fine and I was learning more technical things quickly. But, I was not going to get a bonus because I was "a flamer and belittled most of my customers". That woke me up! I got a service-oriented mentor, read lots of "how to be nice to people" books, attended service-training classes, and reinvented my attitude about customer service. It was painful and took years, but it paid off and I learned to genuinely respect other people. The customer-oriented approach feels natural to me now. ..Celeste Stokely, Unix System Administration Consultant Stokely Consulting, 211 Thompson Square, Mountain View CA 94043 celeste@stokely.com - Voice: 650.967.6898 - FAX: 650.967.0160 http://www.stokely.com - Home of Unix Serial Port & Sysadm Resources From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 07:32:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA01662 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:32:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from jhereg.perl.com (root@perl.com [199.45.135.9]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA01617 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:32:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from jhereg (tchrist@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by jhereg.perl.com (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA11898; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 08:28:32 -0700 Message-Id: <199803061528.IAA11898@jhereg.perl.com> To: zwicky cc: "David Mostardi" , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration) In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 06 Mar 1998 14:00:34 +0100." <199803061300.OAA29336@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 08:28:32 -0700 From: Tom Christiansen Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >Oh for goodness' sake. I don't think Randal has a CS degree, and I >know Larry Wall doesn't (his degree is in linguistics). Me: Cognitive >Science. Bryan McDonald: Spanish Literature. Paul Evans: History. Me: BA Spanish, et al. Having a CS degree is certainly not going to automatically make you a better sysadmin. In fact, it may hurt it. One's ability to produce proofs regarding computational theory is nearly totally irrelevant to the sysadmin professional. The most important skill is, in fact, one's ability to solve problems. That means playing around on your own, fiddling until things work. It means digging around and debugging and benchmarking and profiling and doing high-level analysis. A CS degree certainly doesn't confer that talent. And I'm not really sure how to nurture it, or develop it in someone who doesn't have it. As for software developers, that's a bit different, although problem-solving ability is still very important there. And as far as I've seen, no university education teaches this (Evi excepted). It's all formalistic, whereas reality is nearly always ad hoc. I'd rather hire someone without a degree who shows problem-solving initiative than an applicant who has a degree but as so often can't demonstrate a thought process that shows an ability to solve problems outside the narrow bounds of whatever book-learning they have. #BEGIN SOFTWARE DEVOLUTION RANT Now that computing has been downgraded from the math and science section of the paper down to the business and get-rich-quick pages (and sometimes even to the politics pages!), everyone is pushed to produce something someone will *buy* irrespective of quality or time-frame or aesthetics. Nearly all other criteria beyond the voracious and avaricious market are ignored. Software is getting worse (bigger, slower, harder, more complex) much faster than hardware is getting better. (Is this an M$-Intel plot? :-) We don't need more computer scientists to develop graph theory algorithms or robust network caching and locking strategies. Nor are we in desperate need of computer engineers to design new boards or take an oscilloscope to odd hardware. Both these professions are essential, but these aren't the folks whose absence is hurting us. No, what we really, *really* need is software engineers, or if you would, software design architects: people with a sense of overall system design and interface engineering; people with aesthetics and patience and vision and creative inspiration. Smart people make ever-more-elaborate systems. *THIS IS A PROBLEM* Only a genius makes powerful and simple things. And there aren't enough of the latter group to go around, and even those that exist seldom have the freedom from business pressures to create works of beauty. And I still recommend reading "The Art of Mathematics". :-) --tom From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 07:58:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA02865 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:58:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from yorktown.paranet.com (yorktown.paranet.com [199.164.131.34]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA02855 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:58:40 -0800 (PST) Received: by yorktown.paranet.com; id JAA19739; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:54:58 -0600 (CST) Received: from farragut.srv.paranet.com(172.16.3.35) by yorktown.paranet.com via smap (V3.1.1) id xma019683; Fri, 6 Mar 98 09:54:46 -0600 Received: from chunx.nol.mobil.com (pppbcr02.bcr.paranet.com [172.16.82.18]) by farragut.srv.paranet.com (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id JAA27735 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:54:43 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803061554.JAA27735@farragut.srv.paranet.com> X-Sender: bamorris@general.srv.paranet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 09:54:20 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Brad Morrison Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills In-Reply-To: <199803061443.GAA12219@celestial.stokely.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 06:43 AM 3/6/98 -0800, Celeste Stokely wrote: >I think few people are born with good "soft skills", like listening >and giving good customer service. They are skills learned over >many years. Meyers-Briggs and Kiersey address this. Their tests [are designed to] identify personality tendencies, but they also acknowledge flexibility. For example, I test out as an introvert, but I act like an extrovert. I have flexed that area of my personality so that I can perform 180 degrees away from my natural tendency. I still have to recharge in solitude, and I have to psych up for interpersonal interaction, so I am, by definition, an introvert. Nevertheless, I crave public speaking, and I like to make acquaintances, so I look like a natural extrovert. Now, I do have the bonus of the introvert's analytical mind, so I rarely lose track of the actual mission in the excitement of being the center of attention. In fact, I can't stand to be the center of attention unless I'm physically on a stage. Just because you can pass a test--even complete a curriculum--does not mean that you will perform. Recall the classic story of Bartelby the Scrivener. He was trained and had performed for years, but one day he announced, "I would prefer not to." Another classic that addresses this problem is _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_. Life is continuous--a series of decisions. People change their minds, sometimes with life-changing impact. Now, even if all of this is true, it does little to further the discussion concerning whether SAGE should certify, and, if so, how it should be done. Consider the research done in the 80s which showed that a networked discussion does not reach a conclusion. It also incidentally showed that people are quite comfortable being rude to others via computer. -- "Press to test." (click) "Release to detonate." Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet "Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." --Napoleon Hill From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 07:59:43 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA02908 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:59:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from yorktown.paranet.com (yorktown.paranet.com [199.164.131.34]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA02899 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 07:59:40 -0800 (PST) Received: by yorktown.paranet.com; id JAA19932; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:55:58 -0600 (CST) Received: from farragut.srv.paranet.com(172.16.3.35) by yorktown.paranet.com via smap (V3.1.1) id xma019862; Fri, 6 Mar 98 09:55:31 -0600 Received: from chunx.nol.mobil.com (pppbcr02.bcr.paranet.com [172.16.82.18]) by farragut.srv.paranet.com (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id JAA27838 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 09:55:29 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803061555.JAA27838@farragut.srv.paranet.com> X-Sender: bamorris@general.srv.paranet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 09:55:23 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Brad Morrison Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration) In-Reply-To: <199803061300.OAA29336@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 02:00 PM 3/6/98 +0100, zwicky wrote: >...here is a rule of thumb of human population biology... Yes. See also the statistical correlation between income and allergies; there's no cause-and-effect relationship, but the numbers show a direct relationship. The more money you make, the more likely it is that you have allergies. Peripheral theories suggest that people with more disposable income tend to artificially manipulate their environments so as to trigger histamine release, but no one really knows the rule there, either. It doesn't matter what you've done; it only matters what you're doing with what you have. If I go through the rigorous CCIE certification, it only means that during those 2-3 days I performed exceptionally well with a test and a tangled mess of routers and switches. It follows that I'll probably perform well on the job, but there are really too many variables to actually bear this out. -- "Press to test." (click) "Release to detonate." Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet "Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." --Napoleon Hill From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 10:59:17 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA12213 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 10:59:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from heimdall.sdrc.com (sdrc.com [146.122.132.195]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA12204 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 10:59:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailhub-cvg.sdrc.com (ratatosk.sdrc.com [146.122.142.18]) by heimdall.sdrc.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA20920; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:55:46 -0500 (EST) Received: from cas1g.sdrc.com (cas1h.sdrc.com [146.122.142.17]) by mailhub-cvg.sdrc.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA01463; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:55:45 -0500 (EST) Received: by cas1g.sdrc.com id NAA18577; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:55:45 -0500 (EST) Received: (from crjoslin@localhost) by hppop.sdrc.com (8.7.6/8.7.3) id NAA00592; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:55:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:55:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199803061855.NAA00592@hppop.sdrc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: paul.joslin@sdrc.com (Paul R. Joslin) To: ggr@qualcomm.com To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities In-Reply-To: <199803051925.GAA07923@avalon.qualcomm.com> References: <9803051605.AA25651@igpp.UCSD.EDU> <199803051925.GAA07923@avalon.qualcomm.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.22 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid Organization: Infrastructure/Planning Group, MIS Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -- Paul R. Joslin paul.joslin@sdrc.com +1 513 576 2012 I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff, then, when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, "What was THAT?!" -- Jack Handey From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 11:09:41 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA12757 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 11:09:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from heimdall.sdrc.com (sdrc.com [146.122.132.195]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA12672 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 11:07:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailhub-cvg.sdrc.com (ratatosk.sdrc.com [146.122.142.18]) by heimdall.sdrc.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA25892; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:04:01 -0500 (EST) Received: from cas1g.sdrc.com (cas1h.sdrc.com [146.122.142.17]) by mailhub-cvg.sdrc.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA05539; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:04:00 -0500 (EST) Received: by cas1g.sdrc.com id OAA18721; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:04:00 -0500 (EST) Received: (from crjoslin@localhost) by hppop.sdrc.com (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA03750; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:03:51 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:03:51 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199803061903.OAA03750@hppop.sdrc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: paul.joslin@sdrc.com (Paul R. Joslin) To: sage-members@usenix.org, ggr@qualcomm.com Subject: Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities In-Reply-To: <199803051925.GAA07923@avalon.qualcomm.com> References: <9803051605.AA25651@igpp.UCSD.EDU> <199803051925.GAA07923@avalon.qualcomm.com> Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >>>>> "Greg" == Greg Rose writes: Greg> Patrick Russo writes: >> KINDS OF THINGS WE WOULD LIKE TO LEARN FROM AN INTERVIEWEE: >> a. users come first - without them we have no reason to exist! Greg> You mean you didn't already know this? What kind Greg> of sysadmin are you? I refer you to "Simmons' Laws of System Administration", in <1992Jan15.025211.1292@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>: The Definition: System Administration is the combination of system support and user support. The Division Between System Support and User Support: There's a difference between system support and user support. There may be overlap in the two positions; sometimes both are done by the same person. But the two tasks are distinct, and sometimes have conflicting goals. See also Paul Evans' laws of system administration. To paraphrase, if you spend all your time trying to keep users happy, your systems will be unhappy, making your users unhappy. Sorry about the previous empty message- slip of the fingers. -- Paul R. Joslin paul.joslin@sdrc.com +1 513 576 2012 The autodecrement is not magical. --Larry Wall in the perl man page From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 12:25:36 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA17002 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:25:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA16993 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:25:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA22771 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:21:09 -0500 (EST) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from lamb.sas.com (root@lamb.sas.com [192.35.83.8]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA22766 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:21:06 -0500 (EST) Received: from mozart (markham.southpeak.com [192.58.185.8]) by lamb.sas.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id NAA21575 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:22:42 -0500 (EST) Received: from ntmail04.pc.sas.com by mozart (5.65c/SAS/Domains/5-6-90) id AA27379; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:22:41 -0500 Received: by ntmail04.pc.sas.com with Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49) id ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:22:40 -0500 Message-Id: <3B625EDAF601D111BA1500A0C933CD0D012E975C@ntmail03.pc.sas.com> From: Heather Flanagan To: "'ncsa-announce@nando.net'" Cc: "'triangle.talks@usenet.unx.sas.com'" Subject: North Carolina System Administrators (NC*SA) meeting - March 9, 1 998 Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 13:22:38 -0500 X-Priority: 3 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators organization (NC*SA) will be Monday, March 9, 1998, at 6pm. Details about the meeting and directions are provided in this note. We hope to see you there! Building Scalable Web Sites System Administrators Interest Group Monday, February 9, 1998 Research Triangle Institute Research Triangle Park, NC 6PM - General Session Abstract: A web server makes unique and problematic demands of its operating system. With the explosive growth of information on the Internet a simple web server can quickly become overwhelmed with the flood of requests. The presentation will discuss techniques for designing a web site which can be scaled to meet growing needs. This will include an discussion of a web server's resource requirements, designs for accomodating growth, discussions of proactive capacity planning, and a few tuning tips. The speaker will relate his personal experiences and observations with one of the busiest web sites on the Internet: CNN Interactive. About the Speaker Author, programmer, teacher, and systems administration expert, William has been using Unix and Internet technologies since 1983. He has written many articles on Unix, networking and systems administration issues. Currently he is a columnist for Unix Review, writing the monthly column "Daemons & Dragons". William is also the editor for the Usenix/SAGE series "Short Topics in System Administration". William has taught tutorials since 1989 for such organizations as Usenix, the Sun User Group (SUG), the Sun User Group-UK (SUG-UK), and Great Circle Associates. He has contributed to several widely used Unix packages, including Wietse Venema's logdaemon package. He is also the primary programmer for the popular Unix utility top. William received his bachelor's degree in 1983 and his master of science degree in 1988, both from Rice University in Houston, Texas. William can be reached by any of the following means: William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting 11585 Jones Bridge Road Suite 420-139 Alpharetta, GA 30022 +1 770 813 3224 +1 770 622 0203 (FAX) wnl@groupsys.com http://www.groupsys.com ============================== Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic of the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact: Heather Flanagan SAS Institute Inc. SAS Campus Drive Cary, NC 27513 (919) 677-8000 x5522 heflan@unx.sas.com ============================== For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list has been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system administrators from the state of North Carolina. Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": mail majordomo@nando.net Subject: subscribe ncsa-discussion After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info file for our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving other files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation material from past technical programs are available for retrieval via Majordomo!!) ============================== Directions to Research Triangle Institute (http://www.rti.org/images/campus.gif) From I-40 west of RTP (e.g. Chapel Hill): Get onto I-40 heading east. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Stay in right lane. Shift right as soon as possible after merging with traffic coming off I-40 westbound. Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From I-40 east of RTP (e.g. Raleigh): Get onto I-40 heading west. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Shift to rightmost lane as soon as possible Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From north of RTP (e.g. Durham): Get onto NC-147 - Durham Freeway - south. Exit at the Cornwallis Road exit. At the top of the exit, turn left to cross over the bridge. After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Heather Flanagan Associate Systems Programmer heflan@unx.sas.com SAS Institute (919)677-8000 x5522 From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 14:43:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA24167 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:43:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA24119 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 14:42:59 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA19775; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 17:39:43 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803062239.RAA19775@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: Low/No Cost Unix To: wew@bearnet.com (Bill Weinman) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 17:39:43 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980304194018.00a4ea90@207.55.144.20> from "Bill Weinman" at Mar 4, 98 07:40:18 pm Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Another discussion into the middle of which I'm jumping ... > I use Linux for my six mission-critical servers. I have used Sun, SCO, > HP, and AIX in the past, and Linux is faster, more robust, and far > better supported than any those. In fact, if it cost $$$$ I would buy it > without hesitation. > > As my Aunt Rose used to say, "Don't judge a book by its pricetag!" > > --Bill (who measures his uptime in MONTHS) Echoed by hundreds of thousands who measure their uptime in years. Odd arguments Scott Williams uses ... > At 10:25 AM 2/23/98 -0600, Scott Williams spake: > >Yes, I've seen several versions of Free BSD, Linux, etc. It really boils down > >to what the corporate structure is willing to trust. ... Well, this is quite true. But the knowledgeable S.A. can inform the corporate structure. > > ... I know, as an SA, I would > >never reccommend Linux or some other free OS to be used in my shop. ... Their misfortune. Open Source OSes have many more people doing QC than any vendor can afford to have. > > ... Can I call up a team of > >engineers at Red Hat if I have a problem? ... Yes, of course. Why, have you tried and ever had problems? I've heard of none. As opposed to shops such as Sun and Microsoft, where you can spend days or weeks on the 'phone [most of it on hold], and still not been able to find anyone who knows anything about your problem. Not to mention, since these are Open Source systems, your help is not limited to a ["a"!!!] vendor. Everyone who has the system has access to the sources, and is a potential source of help. Have you seen the latest surveys on what system has the BEST support network? Linux! Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 15:27:41 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA26360 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:27:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA26343 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:27:35 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA20557; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:24:21 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803062324.SAA20557@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: survey results, part 2 To: acli@acli.interlog.com Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:24:21 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <19980305011357Z44925-298+21@acli.interlog.com> from "acli@acli.interlog.com" at Mar 4, 98 08:13:54 pm Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > On Tue, 3 Mar 1998 09:50:45 -0500 (EST), in article , Andy Poling wrote: > >Many self-proclaimed SA's are such in their own minds only. No, most S.A.s were doing something else when they had administering the system(s) added on to their list of duties. ;-) I have a finite [somewhat large, but finite] set of information that I can keep in my head. I keep a lot of information about the internals of all sorts of different kinds of Unix systems in my head, as far back as Fifth Edition and as recent as Linux. This doesn't make me any more able to solve a new problem when I get to a new type of system, than the lump on the wall is. What makes it possible is that I know where to turn for new information, how to decipher a bit stream, how to put together pieces of a puzzle to find the big picture. Which are traits that are hard to test for. Having said that, I kind of prefer the "merit badge" idea mentioned earlier, to any attempt to reproduce the bogus "CNE" type of certification. Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 15:29:26 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA26505 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:29:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA26496 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 15:29:15 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA20594; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:25:58 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803062325.SAA20594@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration Certification & Capabilities) To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 18:25:57 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199803051651.IAA11469@netcom7.netcom.com> from "Hal Pomeranz" at Mar 5, 98 08:51:18 am Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > A lot of people in this thread have mentioned a preference for > candidates with good "soft skills" (customer service attitude, desire > to learn, motivation, enthusiasm, et al) over a first rate technical > candidate who might lack some of these skills. I must say I tend to > agree. > > One thing that's always frustrated me, however, is an inability to > initially instill these qualities in an individual. I know plenty of > techniques for increasing motivation and enthusiasm, improving > customer service, etc. but none of them work to create these desires > in an individual who doesn't have them in the first place. And > frankly I'm having a hard time finding people who have these skills > and I need to manufacture some. > > Do people generally agree that the person has to be born with a > customer service attitude and some of the other skills I mentioned? > Has anybody had success in instilling these qualities in somebody, and > if so when in their development did you do it (childhood, grade > school, college, in the workplace)? > > Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com > Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training It should be instilled in childhood. But it can be instilled later in life. It has to be a fundamental acceptance, though, rather than a veneer. Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 6 16:40:47 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA00439 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:40:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (avalon.qualcomm.com [203.30.171.11]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA00429 for ; Fri, 6 Mar 1998 16:40:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by avalon.qualcomm.com (8.8.3/8.7.2/1.0) with ESMTP id LAA13049 for ; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 11:35:34 +1100 (EST) Message-Id: <199803070035.LAA13049@avalon.qualcomm.com> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 06 Mar 1998 18:24:21 CDT. <199803062324.SAA20557@gwyn.tux.org> Date: Sat, 07 Mar 1998 11:35:34 +1100 From: Greg Rose Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I personally think that the idea of Merit Badges has a lot of Merit, and it is small scale, clearly not intrusive (that is, you wouldn't deny SAGE membership because someone didn't have their DNS badge), different, and distributable (volunteers could put together self-study courses and tests for little things, instead of having to pull together to produce the mother-of-all-certifications). I'd like to see Merit Badges rather than what I see as either of the alternatives (nothing, CSSA (Certified Sage Sys Admin (tm))). I volunteer (as I have in the past) to do a PGP merit badge course, and/or an SSH merit badge course, or perhaps one covering both. regards, Greg. Greg Rose INTERNET: ggr@qualcomm.com QUALCOMM Australia VOICE: +61-2-9743 4646 FAX: +61-2-9736 3262 6 Kingston Avenue http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ Mortlake NSW 2137 B5 DF 66 95 89 68 1F C8 EF 29 FA 27 F2 2A 94 8F From sage-members-owner Sat Mar 7 06:27:30 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA06420 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 06:27:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from chokey.mo.md.us (chokey.mo.md.us [208.218.124.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA06411 for ; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 06:27:24 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mark@localhost) by chokey.mo.md.us (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA05539 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 09:23:58 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 09:23:58 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Sienkiewicz Message-Id: <199803071423.JAA05539@chokey.mo.md.us> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >I'd like to see Merit Badges rather than what I >see as either of the alternatives (nothing, CSSA >(Certified Sage Sys Admin (tm))). > >I volunteer (as I have in the past) to do a >PGP merit badge course, and/or an SSH merit badge >course, or perhaps one covering both. Please describe the benefits of this approach. How does it help me to have a PGP merit badge or an SSH merit badge? From sage-members-owner Sat Mar 7 10:04:41 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA16668 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 10:04:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from kodakr.kodak.com (kodakr.kodak.com [192.232.119.69]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA16651 for ; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 10:04:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from knotes.kodak.com (knotes2.kodak.com) by kodakr.kodak.com with SMTP id AA08366 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for ); Sat, 7 Mar 1998 13:00:29 -0500 Received: by knotes.kodak.com(Lotus SMTP MTA v1.06 (346.8 3-18-1997)) id 852565C0.0062F7E3 ; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 13:00:59 -0400 X-Lotus-Fromdomain: EKLAN01@KODAK@INTERNET From: sdiller@Kodak.COM To: ggr@qualcomm.com Cc: Sage-Members@usenix.org Message-Id: <852565C0.00629EEE.00@knotes.kodak.com> Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1998 12:59:30 -0400 Subject: Re: certification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I vote for asking O'Reilly for permission to use their animal pictures on the merit badges... From sage-members-owner Sat Mar 7 12:25:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA23401 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 12:25:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (avalon.qualcomm.com [203.30.171.11]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA23385 for ; Sat, 7 Mar 1998 12:25:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by avalon.qualcomm.com (8.8.3/8.7.2/1.0) with ESMTP id HAA15345; Sun, 8 Mar 1998 07:20:26 +1100 (EST) Message-Id: <199803072020.HAA15345@avalon.qualcomm.com> To: Mark Sienkiewicz cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 07 Mar 1998 09:23:58 CDT. <199803071423.JAA05539@chokey.mo.md.us> Date: Sun, 08 Mar 1998 07:20:26 +1100 From: Greg Rose Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Mark Sienkiewicz writes: >>I volunteer (as I have in the past) to do a >>PGP merit badge course, and/or an SSH merit badge >>course, or perhaps one covering both. > >Please describe the benefits of this approach. How does it help >me to have a PGP merit badge or an SSH merit badge? I have two examples from real life. 1. a group which accepts information via a secure Web form, but then wants to keep the information secure; the info is PGP encrypted in the CGI script and sent off to a "drop box" machine, which accepts this stuff but otherwise doesn't talk on the net. Being able to organise something like this is not trivial, and not a common skill among sysadmins. 2. QUALCOMM uses SSH extensively to allow people travelling or using cable modems from home to access the internal resources. We also have a corporate policy that certain information can only be discussed in email with PGP (even internally!). We have SAs who have brought themselves up to speed with these technologies, but if we ever need to replace them, I could imagine a job ad saying "Unix SA, with PGP/SSH, DNS, Cisco, and firewall merit badges preferred." That's what I had in mind, and I don't think it is too far from what the SAGE Executive had in mind. What would be in, for example, a PGP Merit badge? It would start with a bunch of self-study exercises. - get and install PGP - Create a key - Import a bunch of other keys (so far these are all trivial) - correspond with someone using PGP - Implement a script keeps a directory of files encrypted, and allows you to pull them out or put them back one-at-a-time, but can remember your password for a short period for when you need to get at lots of them. (Probably some other script application... this was the one that occurred to me in haste, but the point was to embed PGP use in a script in a non-trivial way) - Get connected to the Web of Trust - Create a revokation certificate for the key, without publicly revoking it or stuffing yourself up. When the candidate felt up to it, there might be a short test (say 1 hour) conducted under the honour system. They'd ask for a test by email, and get a set of somewhat randomised questions, like... 1. Decrypt this file. Answer the question inside it. Encrypt the reply to keyid 0x9BDAF223. 2. Explain in your own words the importance of the Web of Trust. 3. Here is a real script using PGP. Explain the options and configuration parameters, what they do and why you think they are used in the script. (and a few more). When the test was scored, the candidate would/would not get a Merit badge (certificate) and a record would be kept in case it needed to be verified. That's it, really. Greg. Greg Rose INTERNET: ggr@qualcomm.com QUALCOMM Australia VOICE: +61-2-9743 4646 FAX: +61-2-9736 3262 6 Kingston Avenue http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ Mortlake NSW 2137 B5 DF 66 95 89 68 1F C8 EF 29 FA 27 F2 2A 94 8F From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 04:08:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id EAA12744 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 04:08:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (dsr-gw.dsrnet.com [208.203.147.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id EAA12686 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 04:08:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip-smtp-gw (ip-smtp-gw [192.168.168.1]) by dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id HAA21611 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 07:02:04 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: 9 Mar 1998 07:06:36 -0400 From: "Gibson, Eric" Subject: RE: Teaching soft skills To: "sage-members" X-Mailer: Mail*Link SMTP-MS 3.0.1 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hal Pomeranz writes: >> >> Do people generally agree that the person has to be born with a >> customer service attitude and some of the other skills I mentioned? >> Has anybody had success in instilling these qualities in somebody, and >> if so when in their development did you do it (childhood, grade >> school, college, in the workplace)? Joe Yao responds: > It should be instilled in childhood. But it can be instilled later in > life. It has to be a fundamental acceptance, though, rather than a > veneer. > [Getting on soapbox...] This is something I've felt for years -- at least as long as I've been in systems administration (14 now). It really must be part of one's character to be a truly good service-oriented person. This is true for any customer service position, not just systems administration. The axiom, "The customer must come first and is always right" has to be a way of life for the service person, be s/he a waiter, flight attendant, McDonald's employee, or even the trash collector in your office. It is difficult to teach this to someone who is new to the service profession unless s/he has been brought up with certain "golden rule" values. I wish I could take some of the kids who work in retail and shake this concept into them. Or at least the notion that they need to make their bosses happy. Persuing that, they will find that the only way to do that is to make their customers happy. What it all comes down to is the notion that without our customers, there's no us. This must be at the root of all we do. [Climbing down from soapbox, going home] ________________________________________________________________________________ Eric Gibson Sr. System Administrator 703.263.2851 [voice] Digital System Resources, Inc. 703.263.2802 [fax] (A Defense Contractor) egibson@dsrnet.com 12450 Fair Lakes Circle Suite 500 Fairfax, VA 22033 I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three. --Elayne Boosler From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 04:16:04 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id EAA13043 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 04:16:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (dsr-gw.dsrnet.com [208.203.147.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id EAA13034 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 04:16:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip-smtp-gw (ip-smtp-gw [192.168.168.1]) by dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id HAA21665; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 07:09:08 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: 9 Mar 1998 07:14:44 -0400 From: "Gibson, Eric" Subject: RE: certification To: "Greg Rose" , "sage-members" X-Mailer: Mail*Link SMTP-MS 3.0.1 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Greg Rose writes: > I volunteer (as I have in the past) to do a > PGP merit badge course, and/or an SSH merit badge > course, or perhaps one covering both. > > Greg Rose INTERNET: ggr@qualcomm.com > QUALCOMM Australia VOICE: +61-2-9743 4646 FAX: +61-2-9736 3262 > 6 Kingston Avenue http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ > Mortlake NSW 2137 B5 DF 66 95 89 68 1F C8 EF 29 FA 27 F2 2A 94 8F This is a great idea! And you must promise only to offer the course in Australia. I've always wanted to go there, and this is probably the only way that I can. And what better way than to have the company pay for it!! Seriously, it's extremely kind of you to offer your services in this manner. I hope others are able to do the same. I'll search my office and my brain and see what I can offer. ________________________________________________________________________________ Eric Gibson Sr. System Administrator 703.263.2851 [voice] Digital System Resources, Inc. 703.263.2802 [fax] (A Defense Contractor) egibson@dsrnet.com 12450 Fair Lakes Circle Suite 500 Fairfax, VA 22033 "I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners." --Jeff Stilson From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 07:52:02 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA23466 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 07:52:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA23457 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 07:51:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with ESMTP id JAA11779; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 09:47:45 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803091547.JAA11779@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> To: Greg Rose cc: Mark Sienkiewicz , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 08 Mar 1998 07:20:26 +1100." <199803072020.HAA15345@avalon.qualcomm.com> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 09:47:44 -0600 From: Stephen Potter Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and Greg Rose whispered: | 1. a group which accepts information via a secure | Web form, but then wants to keep the information | secure; the info is PGP encrypted in the CGI | script and sent off to a "drop box" machine, which | accepts this stuff but otherwise doesn't talk on | the net. Being able to organise something like | this is not trivial, and not a common skill among | sysadmins. There's a good reason that skill isn't common among SAs. It isn't an SAs job. This should be the job of a web developer, a programmer. SA are not programmers. -spp From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 08:00:28 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA23806 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 08:00:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA23790 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 08:00:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (from paw@localhost) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA11212; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:57:09 -0500 Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:57:09 -0500 From: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-Id: <199803091557.KAA11212@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: spp@psasolar.psa.pencom.com Subject: Re: certification Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Stephen Potter opines: Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and Greg Rose whispered: | 1. a group which accepts information via a secure | Web form, but then wants to keep the information | secure; the info is PGP encrypted in the CGI | script and sent off to a "drop box" machine, which | accepts this stuff but otherwise doesn't talk on | the net. Being able to organise something like | this is not trivial, and not a common skill among | sysadmins. There's a good reason that skill isn't common among SAs. It isn't an SAs job. This should be the job of a web developer, a programmer. SA are not programmers. Maybe not, but if you think SAs don't have to do this sort of thing, you're living in a different reality from many of us. A mere programmer wouldn't necessarily understand all the security ramifications of such a system, and *someone* has to set up the box and webserver... Greg's not saying that _every_ SA needs this skill, but some do. In any case, Knowledge Is Good. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 08:20:17 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA24909 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 08:20:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA24900 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 08:20:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with ESMTP id KAA13383; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:16:41 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803091616.KAA13383@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu cc: spp@colltech.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 Mar 1998 10:57:09 EST." <199803091557.KAA11212@phibes.dartmouth.edu> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 10:16:41 -0600 From: Stephen Potter Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu whispered: | Stephen Potter opines: | Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and Greg Rose whi > spered: | | 1. a group which accepts information via a secure | | Web form, but then wants to keep the information | | secure; the info is PGP encrypted in the CGI | | script and sent off to a "drop box" machine, which | | accepts this stuff but otherwise doesn't talk on | | the net. Being able to organise something like | | this is not trivial, and not a common skill among | | sysadmins. | | There's a good reason that skill isn't common among SAs. It isn't an S > As | job. This should be the job of a web developer, a programmer. SA are > not | programmers. | | Maybe not, but if you think SAs don't have to do this sort of thing, you're | living in a different reality from many of us. A mere programmer wouldn't | necessarily understand all the security ramifications of such a system, and | *someone* has to set up the box and webserver... Setting up the box and the server have nothing, specifically, to do with this example. This specific example is far over the line between what is an SA type of job and what is a developer type of job. I may be in a different reality, but if so, so are the last seven clients I've had. All of them had developers who were supposed to do this kind of programming. If the developer doesn't know the securitiy implications, he should know how to find out, by using resources he has available. | Greg's not saying that _every_ SA needs this skill, but some do. In any | case, Knowledge Is Good. If "Knowledge is Good", and therefore is all that is needed in order to have a merit badge, I'd like to see a merit badge for "Automobile Maintainence". After all, out there somewhere, there's probably an SA who runs the computerized systems in a large mechanic shop. He most likely needs to know how to do some basic maintainence in order to test and install systems. -spp From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 08:24:43 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA25055 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 08:24:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com (dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com [206.214.98.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA25023 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 08:24:36 -0800 (PST) Received: (from smap@localhost) by dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) id KAA28546 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:20:42 -0600 (CST) Received: from liv-proxy.fosterfarms.com(208.1.117.20) by dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com via smap (V1.3) id rma028518; Mon Mar 9 10:20:10 1998 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980309081720.00e561b0@popd.ix.netcom.com> X-Sender: dphi@popd.ix.netcom.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 08:17:20 -0800 To: sage-members@usenix.org From: Dale Phillips Subject: Merit Badge thing In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980305114232.00de6e60@popd.ix.netcom.com> References: <199803051651.IAA11469@netcom7.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk May I recommend the "Perl 5 Interactive Course Certified Edition" by Orwant as a blueprint. A single topic. Online tests - optional - of course (book/cd/web) Very well thought out in its presentation (small chunks of info you can learn in 20 min sessions) Also has the idea that this mailing list has taken on ... - focused discussions of the topic in question. Optional C.E. units (continuing education) Setting up CE units for those who wish for a "degree" would allow the flexibility needed This is just YAO (yet another opinion) Remember opinions are worth what you pay for them ;-) Dale --dp------------------------------------------------ Dale Phillips If ignorance is bliss how come dphi@ix.netcom.com more people aren't happy? From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 10:52:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA03303 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:52:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA03270 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 10:52:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA32745; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:47:56 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803091847.NAA32745@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration To: dphi@ix.netcom.com (Dale Phillips) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:47:56 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980305114232.00de6e60@popd.ix.netcom.com> from "Dale Phillips" at Mar 5, 98 11:42:32 am Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > 0.01 Fact - (due to inflation) > > "It is easier to teach a liberal studies major how to program ... > than it is to teach a computer science major how to communicate " > > I think one could safely replace "how to be a SA" > for "how to program" This is trivially true. When I was first learning programming [how many decades ago?], Professor Bossert was amused that his 6-year-old daughter [who will be profoundly embarrassed if you bring this to her attention] was programming. Anyone can program. The trick to doing it RIGHT is software engineering. To paraphrase Shaw on Christianity - it's not that it has been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and not tried at all. Both of which are exaggerations only in their absoluteness. Software engineering IS more difficult than just having fun programming. And it's done much more rarely than it should be [i.e., always]. Similarly, yes, anyone can administer a system, and maybe even do a passably fair job at it. But some just repeat the tricks they were taught when they were new at it, and believe they know what they're doing; while others try to understand what they're doing; and can usually figure out what's going wrong if there's a problem that goes outside their previous experience. Managers seem to feel that there's room for both types. To be fair, there probably is. But IMNSHO, there should be some of the latter available at all sites, in case there is a severe problem. That is, if they want their systems to stay running. I suppose there may still be sites where they don't panic when (*gasp*) The System Is Down. ;-) Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 12:11:59 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA07730 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:11:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (pomeranz@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA07721 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:11:54 -0800 (PST) Received: (from pomeranz@localhost) by netcom7.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) id MAA09201; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:08:19 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199803092008.MAA09201@netcom7.netcom.com> From: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:08:18 PST In-Reply-To: Stephen Potter "Re: certification" (Mar 9, 10:16am) X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: Stephen Potter , paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Subject: Re: certification Cc: spp@colltech.com, sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I think there's an important subtext here, and it's an issue I've been interested in for a while. Stephen is talking about System Administration in a relatively narrow scope. Here we have the classic "buy stuff and plug it in" type of job. Certainly there's a lot of Sys Admin work in this area and the "stuff" that you're plugging in can get extremely complicated (redundant disks, silicon storage, fault-tolerant systems, yada yada yada). However, I've always viewed "System Administration" as encompassing not only the pure system stuff that Stephen does, but also networking (including routers, terminal servers, switches-- all the CCIE stuff), security (building firewalls, setting up proxies), systems programming (writing new tools and complete software systems), systems integration, software development, and so forth. A lot of people disagree with me. What's the truth? Speaking only for myself, I've always tried to seek out jobs that had a component of "new stuff" for me to learn. That means that in my time my job title has included "System Admin", "Network Operations", "Network Engineer", "Software Developer", "Director", etc. At all times and in all jobs, I've always identified myself with System Administration as a career, and I don't _think_ I was deluding myself. The ability to do lots of different things has made this career choice interesting to me over the long term. As an outside perspective, it should be noted that the SAGE Job Descriptions booklet also includes various skills that our outside of the strict definition for System Administration that Stephen advocates. Look at the description of "Senior"-- there's a lot of "extras" there including programming, system architecture design, and the ability to give effective presentations. I would tend to agree. Hal Pomeranz, Principal Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 12:34:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA09218 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:34:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA09177 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:34:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with ESMTP id OAA01094; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 14:31:13 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803092031.OAA01094@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) cc: Stephen Potter , paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 Mar 1998 12:08:18 PST." <199803092008.MAA09201@netcom7.netcom.com> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 14:31:13 -0600 From: Stephen Potter Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) whisp ered: | Stephen is talking about System Administration in a relatively narrow | scope. Here we have the classic "buy stuff and plug it in" type of | job. Certainly there's a lot of Sys Admin work in this area and the | "stuff" that you're plugging in can get extremely complicated | (redundant disks, silicon storage, fault-tolerant systems, yada yada | yada). I think you've narrowed the scope a little more than I meant to. I do far more than "buy stuff and plug it in." I also design, integrate, troubleshoot, do a bit of systems programming. However, the specific example was not what I think would normally be considered SA work. It is development work. | However, I've always viewed "System Administration" as encompassing | not only the pure system stuff that Stephen does, but also networking | (including routers, terminal servers, switches-- all the CCIE stuff), | security (building firewalls, setting up proxies), systems programming | (writing new tools and complete software systems), systems | integration, software development, and so forth. A lot of people | disagree with me. What's the truth? Yes, yes, yes, yes (no), yes, no, and so forth. An SA is not a developer. I don't know why we keep perpetrating this myth. Yes, an SA may write some form of system tool, but I would not expect an SA to be responsible for writing (for example) new MUAs or web browsers or anything like that. That is the job of a developer. Going back to the specific example that was given earlier, an SAs responsibility would be in setting up the web server, installing the PGP software, even fine tuning the OS for better performance. The actual program that was being talked about should be written by a developer. It is an application, not a systems programming situation. The SA may also serve as a point of information on systems security. | time my job title has included "System Admin", "Network Operations", | "Network Engineer", "Software Developer", "Director", etc. At all Been there, done that, haven't had that title, wouldn't have that title, sounds like you're out of the technical arena now, etc. | advocates. Look at the description of "Senior"-- there's a lot of | "extras" there including programming, system architecture design, and | the ability to give effective presentations. I would tend to agree. As would I. All of these extras grown out (naturally) of the appropriate responsibilities. In order to manage a large site, you must be able to design the site (for growth), you must be able to give presentations to higher level management for funding, etc. You probably will need to be able to do some form of programming to automate your tasks, to give you time to do other tasks. However, note that the programming is limited to: Ability to program in an administrative language (Tk, Perl, a shell), to port C programs from one platform to another, and to write small C programs. (quoted from the webpage, as I don't have the full book handy http://www.usenix.org/sage/jobs/jobs-descriptions.html#Senior) Nowhere does it talk about being able to be a software engineer/software developer/whatever. Those are not appropriate skills to require for an SA. Again, I agree with the people who have said, "Knowledge is Good", but you must also agree with me that just because that is, it isn't enough to make it a mandatory skill for an SA. -spp From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 12:44:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA09692 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:44:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA09677 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:44:15 -0800 (PST) Received: (from paw@localhost) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) id PAA10646; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:41:04 -0500 Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:41:04 -0500 From: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-Id: <199803092041.PAA10646@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: spp@psasolar.psa.pencom.com Subject: Re: certification Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Stephen Potter writes: Again, I agree with the people who have said, "Knowledge is Good", but you must also agree with me that just because that is, it isn't enough to make it a mandatory skill for an SA. I don't think anyone's suggesting it be mandatory. This whole tempest was apparently provoked in response to Greg Rose's offer to write a PGP Merit Badge. The Merit Badge idea has _always_ been to construct a set of "learning tools" so folks could acquire new skills or verify that their skills were extant. It's not a mandatory program; no one's suggesting that everyone need have the same set of "badges". Greg offered to write a PGP badge because he knows that subject well; I doubt he was suggesting that PGP knowledge is essential to sysadmin. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 12:53:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA10229 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:53:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from jhereg.perl.com (root@perl.com [199.45.135.9]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA10156 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:53:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from jhereg (tchrist@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by jhereg.perl.com (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA13831; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:49:16 -0700 Message-Id: <199803092049.NAA13831@jhereg.perl.com> To: Stephen Potter cc: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz), Stephen Potter , paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org, tchrist@jhereg.perl.com Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 Mar 1998 14:31:13 CST." <199803092031.OAA01094@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 13:49:16 -0700 From: Tom Christiansen Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >Nowhere does it talk about being able to be a software engineer/software >developer/whatever. Those are not appropriate skills to require for an >SA. I disagree. A system administrator has to debug problems, for which the ability to handle code is important. --tom From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 13:06:20 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA10987 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:06:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA10978 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:06:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with ESMTP id PAA03277; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:02:58 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803092102.PAA03277@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu cc: spp@colltech.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 Mar 1998 15:41:04 EST." <199803092041.PAA10646@phibes.dartmouth.edu> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 15:02:57 -0600 From: Stephen Potter Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu whispered: | I don't think anyone's suggesting it be mandatory. This whole tempest was | apparently provoked in response to Greg Rose's offer to write a PGP Merit | Badge. The Merit Badge idea has _always_ been to construct a set of | "learning tools" so folks could acquire new skills or verify that their | skills were extant. It's not a mandatory program; no one's suggesting that | everyone need have the same set of "badges". I guess the main point that I (and a few others) are trying to make is to keep the number of available badges down to a reasonable level. Keep it down to skills that are particularly needed for SAs (almost mandatory). My particular "tirade" was because of the example job posting which got quite specific as to the badges wanted, including badges for PGP and SSH. All the most SAs are ever going to need to know about either of those is how to install it (read the INSTALL, it is pretty simple) and how to use it (again, read the README). There is no reason for a merit badge of this kind, and I'd hate to see someone not be able to get a job because of not having a merit badge for such skills. -spp From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 13:13:31 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA11292 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:13:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA11283 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 13:13:25 -0800 (PST) Received: (from paw@localhost) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) id QAA10486; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 16:10:14 -0500 Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 16:10:14 -0500 From: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-Id: <199803092110.QAA10486@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: spp@psasolar.psa.pencom.com Subject: Re: certification Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Stephen Potter says: I guess the main point that I (and a few others) are trying to make is to keep the number of available badges down to a reasonable level. Keep it down to skills that are particularly needed for SAs (almost mandatory). Even if I agreed, at the moment I'll take any Merit Badge that someone presented. If we dither until we create the perfect set, we're right back where we started. My particular "tirade" was because of the example job posting which got quite specific as to the badges wanted, including badges for PGP and SSH. All the most SAs are ever going to need to know about either of those is how to install it (read the INSTALL, it is pretty simple) and how to use it (again, read the README). There is no reason for a merit badge of this kind, and I'd hate to see someone not be able to get a job because of not having a merit badge for such skills. But if that's what that job was about, and the employer *needed* those skills, then what's the problem? You're saying we _shouldn't_ make it straightforward to learn something because then people might want us to know it? There are plenty of jobs out there - if you're not into PGP or SSH (and I don't think it's quite as simple as you make it out to be, or at least not for everyone), then don't apply for jobs that require those skills. OTOH, the advantage to all is that by saying "PGP merit badge required (or desireable)" _everyone_ knows what to expect. I've had PGP on my machines for years, but never have integrated it into my life. Something that would make me do that, and walk me through it would be quite valuable. And, I'd've learned something in the end. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 14:21:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA15073 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 14:21:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from antares.mcs.anl.gov (mcs.anl.gov [140.221.9.6]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA15053 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 14:21:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from mcs.anl.gov (godzilla.mcs.anl.gov [140.221.5.136]) by antares.mcs.anl.gov (8.6.10/8.6.10) with ESMTP id QAA08300; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 16:18:10 -0600 Message-Id: <199803092218.QAA08300@antares.mcs.anl.gov> To: pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz), Stephen Potter cc: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, spp@colltech.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 Mar 1998 12:08:18 PST." <199803092008.MAA09201@netcom7.netcom.com> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 16:18:08 -0600 From: Gene Rackow Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hmmm, this debate is really going crazy. Attempting to define what a SA is will be very difficult. This isn't a position like that of a electrician, carpenter, or doctor, where there are years of history behind what it takes to classify for that title. Even then there are ranges of QUALITY you get in all of those fields as well. We are in a relatively new field. Consider what it took to be called a doctor 150 years ago. If we polled the sites as to what their definition of an SA is, I'm sure the range will be amazing. I know we have machines on site that the person in charge of it is at least a part time SA, part time scientist. In part this is covered by the job description booklet, but even that does not get into what the person ACTUALLY does, just what he should be capable of doing. I can see both sides as to what a SA would actually do. I've been whatever title you'd care to call me. Something of a jack of all trades position. I tend to agree with Hal in that being a SA is more than just being able to do the plug and play. At least a good SA for me would have a fairly wide knowledge base and willing to make it even wider. If it really was just plug and play, the very knowlegable service/sales techs at best-buy would be doing our jobs, and we'd be doing something else. The sales critters can easily design a network with expansion space. ;-) Is there a line that can be drawn between Systems Administration, and Systems Operations? Personally I see the bottom line as being "who is going to have to find/fix/clean-up the mess" if it is not the SA. If hackers take over your web server, who is going to be called upon first to find out why? Someone writting a web page for your site, or the SA. So is web stuff an SA job or not? I claim that the basic understanding of it has become a necessity. You get some new web-writer into your site, and he starts making wonderful looking pages full of obvious security problems, where does he turn? Who actually allowed the problems to be possible? I have not read many web-design books, but those that I have looked at do not address security issues in any depth. A good web design person tends to be a cross of an artist and a technical writter. An SA needs to have at least some basic understanding, and the references to point these people at for what is going to cause problems. --Gene From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 14:44:04 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA16468 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 14:44:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA16458 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 14:43:55 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA04901; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:39:54 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803092239.RAA04901@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: Teaching Soft Skills (Was: System Administration) To: tchrist@jhereg.perl.com (Tom Christiansen) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:39:53 -0500 (EST) Cc: zwicky@pterodactyl.neu.sgi.com, davidm@mdli.com, sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199803061528.IAA11898@jhereg.perl.com> from "Tom Christiansen" at Mar 6, 98 08:28:32 am Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Having a CS degree is certainly not going to automatically make you a > better sysadmin. In fact, it may hurt it. One's ability to produce > proofs regarding computational theory is nearly totally irrelevant to > the sysadmin professional. Ah, a r e a l CS degree, as opposed to a "programming" degree. ;-) > The most important skill is, in fact, one's ability to solve problems. > That means playing around on your own, fiddling until things work. > It means digging around and debugging and benchmarking and profiling > and doing high-level analysis. ... > #BEGIN SOFTWARE DEVOLUTION RANT ... Say it, Brother Tom! ;-) Absolutely right. Programmers are good folk, and computer scientists are vital for advancing the level of knowledge in the world; but we need more software engineers on the job! Been saying it for decades. And in the S.A. world, we need people who have t h o s e skills - the ones you list above - as well as knowledge of the systems. Or even more importantly than knowledge of the systems. And how do you teach creative problem solving? And how do you test and certify it? [I really would like to know - I have a few people who could use it.] Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 15:09:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA18087 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:09:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (avalon.qualcomm.com [203.30.171.11]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA18051 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:09:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from avalon.qualcomm.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by avalon.qualcomm.com (8.8.3/8.7.2/1.0) with ESMTP id KAA21724; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:04:16 +1100 (EST) Message-Id: <199803092304.KAA21724@avalon.qualcomm.com> To: Stephen Potter Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 09 Mar 1998 15:02:57 MDT. <199803092102.PAA03277@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:04:15 +1100 From: Greg Rose Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Stephen Potter writes: >My particular "tirade" was because of the example job posting which got >quite specific as to the badges wanted, including badges for PGP and SSH. >All the most SAs are ever going to need to know about either of those is >how to install it (read the INSTALL, it is pretty simple) and how to use >it (again, read the README). There is no reason for a merit badge of this >kind, and I'd hate to see someone not be able to get a job because of not >having a merit badge for such skills. My particular point, which I apologise for not making properly, was that *for this particular hypothetical job*, in a company of 7000 with more sysadmins than you can poke a stick at (but still not enough), advertising for and getting an applicant with a "PGP/SSH" Merit Badge would be a good thing. Of course we would not advertise *every* position as requiring such a thing... that would defeat the whole purpose. Assume for a moment that you know nothing about cryptography except that people you respect (or who pay you) have insisted that using PGP to solve a particular administrative problem is the way to go. So, when you are interviewing candidates for the position, do you: 1. Ignore the fact that you know their first job is going to involve using PGP, and ask them questions about perl or DNS. 2. Ask them questions about PGP and get the answer "Yes, I know about PGP, pretty good isn't it?", and then what? 3. Ask for applicants who list a PGP Merit Badge (and hence might be more interested in this specific job, and at the same time perhaps reduce the number of non-starter applicants) and have some assurance which you are unable to otherwise obtain that they do, indeed, know more than (2) above. As I see it, the point of the merit badge was to give you some assurance that the interviewee actually has the skill claimed, when the interviewer has no other way to know. Let's get one thing straight... PGP is a terrible example, for exactly the reasons you are citing. But it is one example for which *I* can contribute something! Let's all (reiterating Pat for a moment) think about what *we* could contribute. Tom or Larry for perl? Why not. Eric Allman for Sendmail? Why not. We've got the skills. >My particular "tirade" was because of the example job posting which got >quite specific as to the badges wanted, including badges for PGP and SSH. It was meant to be specific, and it was *only* an isolated example. If you want a person to be the only sysadmin in an isolated (not internet-connected) NT shop, ask for the NT and Netware badges. There would presumably be fundamental knowledge badges. DNS and Cisco, out of my example posting, I would consider to be "fundamental" for that particular job, and of interest to many more people. NT, Solaris, AIX, Backups, ... I could go on and on about what might be considered fundamental. Note, though, that even then not *everyone* has all of these... I know good sysadmins who have never needed to take their own backup! A lesson from Marketing (Acck! Phht.) might be useful here. There are horizontal markets and vertical markets; horizontal markets are ones where all sorts of people need the stuff. Rocket scientists, doctors and waste collectors all eat... food is a horizontal market. Vertical markets are specialised for special needs; doctors buy blood pressure thingys (sphygmomanometers(?)) but rocket scientists buy whatever it is they buy to measure the pressure of a rocket exhaust. These are vertical markets. Waste collectors don't let the pressure build up. :-) A PGP Merit badge is a "vertical" badge. Expect to see very few jobs needing them, but the ones that do, really do. A DNS Merit badge is a "horizontal" badge. Not all jobs need it, but many do, and a well rounded sysadmin should give serious thought to having one. >All the most SAs are ever going to need to know about either of those is >how to install it (read the INSTALL, it is pretty simple) and how to use >it (again, read the README). If you think that, then you are mistaken. Installing is simple. Using them simply is simple. Designing network security for a worldwide company using them is not at all simple. We have people (multiple) who spend a lot of time on this. My hypothetical job posting was for their replacement. God help us if they leave... Greg. Greg Rose INTERNET: ggr@qualcomm.com QUALCOMM Australia VOICE: +61-2-9743 4646 FAX: +61-2-9736 3262 6 Kingston Avenue http://people.qualcomm.com/ggr/ Mortlake NSW 2137 B5 DF 66 95 89 68 1F C8 EF 29 FA 27 F2 2A 94 8F From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 15:18:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA18514 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:18:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA18487 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:18:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with ESMTP id RAA10860; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:14:46 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <199803092314.RAA10860@psasolar.psa.pencom.com> To: Greg Rose cc: Stephen Potter , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:04:15 +1100." <199803092304.KAA21724@avalon.qualcomm.com> Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 17:14:46 -0600 From: Stephen Potter Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and Greg Rose whispered: | good thing. Of course we would not advertise | *every* position as requiring such a thing... that | would defeat the whole purpose. What stops, as one of my examples showed, HR from doing exactly that? "Well, we use SSH, so we should require the SSH badge." | A PGP Merit badge is a "vertical" badge. Expect to | see very few jobs needing them, but the ones that | do, really do. | | A DNS Merit badge is a "horizontal" badge. Not all | jobs need it, but many do, and a well rounded | sysadmin should give serious thought to having | one. Let's try this: If we're going to do anything like this, we need to do the horizontal badges and let the vertical work themselves out later. Vertical tends to become horizontal when the HR and Marketing people get together. HR: "Oh... The Web is a big thing now adays. We should require the Web badge." SA: "But... we don't even *run* a web server." -spp From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 15:29:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA19258 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:29:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA19249 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:28:59 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id SAA05938; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 18:25:02 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803092325.SAA05938@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: certification To: ggr@qualcomm.com (Greg Rose) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 18:25:01 -0500 (EST) Cc: mark@chokey.mo.md.us, sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199803072020.HAA15345@avalon.qualcomm.com> from "Greg Rose" at Mar 8, 98 07:20:26 am Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Mark Sienkiewicz writes: > >>I volunteer (as I have in the past) to do a > >>PGP merit badge course, and/or an SSH merit badge > >>course, or perhaps one covering both. > > > >Please describe the benefits of this approach. How does it help > >me to have a PGP merit badge or an SSH merit badge? > > I have two examples from real life. Greg, I think Mark wasn't asking what good it would be to know PGP or SSH [I believe he already knows both fields and their benefits]. I believe that he is asking what good it would do to have a patch with a key picture, and another with ... [has O'Reilly put out an SSH book yet?] Nothing. Not at first. But if a critical mass [I wouldn't even want to guess how many] had them, and put them on their resumes, then HR managers and even SA managers might notice, and start treating them with respect. The boot-up problem is common to any credential. Part of the solution is [don't get too disgusted] marketing. Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 15:40:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA20053 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:40:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from kiowa.wildstar.net (falcon@kiowa.wildstar.net [198.203.196.143]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA20044 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 15:40:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (falcon@localhost) by kiowa.wildstar.net (8.8.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id RAA26869; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:35:41 -0600 X-Authentication-Warning: kiowa.wildstar.net: falcon owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 17:35:40 -0600 (CST) From: "R. Wyatt" To: Tom Christiansen cc: Stephen Potter , Hal Pomeranz , Stephen Potter , paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-Reply-To: <199803092049.NAA13831@jhereg.perl.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I happen to disagree with mr. potter as well. If I wasn't part developer /engineer, than I would not have any machines to administrate. Unfortunately, some vendors are not very helpful in debugging their products or send out documentation that is flat wrong. My customers don't look to the vendor if the machine doesn't run, they look to me. More important than having certain skills when going to an interview, is the ability to learn new ones. As I finish out my first real assignment, I am grateful that I got the chance to build these other skills. Mr. Potter, I can site many examples when installs should have been simple, but the vendor forgot to tells us relevant information. In regards to concerns over the number of Merit Badges, is that something I would really put on my resume? The answer is no. Knowledge always changes, and the merit badge is a measure oh how up to date I am. Not only that Merit badges may provide a gateway to areas that I never new existed. To me it forms a certain knowledge base, and being able to call upon that knowledge base probably would have saved me a lot of time and heartache. Randy Wyatt Systems Engineer Lucent Technologies On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Tom Christiansen wrote: > >Nowhere does it talk about being able to be a software engineer/software > >developer/whatever. Those are not appropriate skills to require for an > >SA. > > I disagree. A system administrator has to debug problems, for which > the ability to handle code is important. > > --tom > From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 9 19:23:05 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA01968 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 19:23:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (sirocco.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.27.12]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA01939 for ; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 19:22:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) by sirocco.CC.McGill.CA (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id WAA09721; Mon, 9 Mar 1998 22:19:40 -0500 X-SMTP-Posting-Origin: amaretto.cc.mcgill.ca (amaretto.CC.McGill.CA [132.206.35.11]) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1998 22:21:33 -0500 (EST) From: Ron Hall To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu cc: spp@psasolar.psa.pencom.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-Reply-To: <199803092110.QAA10486@phibes.dartmouth.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > > Even if I agreed, at the moment I'll take any Merit Badge that someone > presented. If we dither until we create the perfect set, we're right back > where we started. Gee, let me remember when I was a scout, hmmmmm there were certainly a number of different merit badges available, not everyone got every one of them. Even the Queen Scout (Canadian/British equiv of Eagle scout) got them all, just enough (though it certainly seemed like at lot) in each larger discipline to warrant overall competemcy in a larger context. The point is programming is not for all SAs, system architecture is not for all SAs. Some SAs will never get the chance in their professional carreers to write in TCL, some may never know the joys of sitting at a helpdesk or even giving a seminar. All are potentially useful skills to an SA. Personally I've never had the chance to play with routers, there has always been network analysts that have done it. Am I less of a SA for it? On some levels yes or others no. IMHO I would perceive a structure of merit badges with a larger structure around it i.e networking, programming, etc. WIth various merit badges in each context. The funny thing about SA is that this structure just grows and grows. Nobody expects a SA to do all of these things, but it would sure be nice if they did. SAs solve problems. Truly if I had to distill it down to its purest essence, that would be it. System problems, user problems, policy problems....just problems. SOme require hard skills and some require soft skills. SOme just require that you be there. Sounds odd, but it's true how many of you have been called with a problem that suddenly disappears when you walk into the room? Your presence exorcises what "badness" that was there? I've rambled on enough. Many merit badges a good thing, gives people room to expand, consolidate and learn. The even better thing (yuch what a construct) is that it affords the opportunity for more people to participate in the development of such a program. And that IS a good thing. Ron Hall Unix System Analyst +1 514 398 3718 DISCLAIMER: I said it. I must've meant it. There is nobody else to blame. DEFINITION: Clown:n: A man who acts too natural. "Redundancy is the millstone of society.Redundancy is the millstone of society." From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 10 06:04:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA04241 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 06:04:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA04232 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 06:04:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (jpe@localhost) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id IAA05865 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 08:01:34 -0600 (CST) X-Authentication-Warning: psasolar.private.psa.pencom.com: jpe owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 08:01:32 -0600 (CST) From: John Eisenmenger X-Sender: jpe@psasolar To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, R. Wyatt wrote: > I happen to disagree with mr. potter as well. If I wasn't part developer > /engineer, than I would not have any machines to administrate. > Unfortunately, some vendors are not very helpful in debugging their > products or send out documentation that is flat wrong. My customers don't > look to the vendor if the machine doesn't run, they look to me. Look, the point that Mr. Potter is trying to make is that there are core abilities that apply to systems administration and it is on these that we should be concentrating. As valuable as the other skills mentioned are, they do not fall under the scope of the skills listed in the SAGE job descriptions. This is not to say that other skills aren't worthy or desirable, it only says that they are not core skills of a systems administrator. Put simply, SAGE states its purpose as being "to advance the profession of systems administration." Skills outside that scope (web development, software engineering, etc.) should be certified by other groups. SAGE should concentrate on its core competencies, which are enumerated in the SAGE job descriptions. What I see in this thread is an everything but the kitchen sink approach, which reduces the viability of this concept. -John -- John P. Eisenmenger Collective Technologies Email: jpe@colltech.com A Pencom Company Pager: 1-800-SKY-8888/279-0239 http://www.colltech.com From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 10 09:35:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA14280 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:35:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from jthome.jthome.com (jthome.jthome.com [207.180.66.20]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA14269 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 09:35:48 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jeff@localhost) by jthome.jthome.com (8.8.5/8.6.6) id MAA01868; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:32:32 -0500 (EST) From: Jeff Tyler Message-Id: <199803101732.MAA01868@jthome.jthome.com> Subject: Re: certification To: jpe@colltech.com (John Eisenmenger) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:32:31 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: from John Eisenmenger at "Mar 10, 98 08:01:32 am" Organization: Rarely if ever ;-) Location: Where ever I go, then there I am. Phone: (978)-456-9121 System: FreeBSD jthome.jthome.com 2.2.2-RELEASE Reply-to: jtyler@colltech.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Humm... I think I'm on Mr Wyatt's side on this one. Quick, define the core of the sysadmin profession ! Can't do it can ya ? Neither can I and I've been one for almost 15 years now ;-) I suspect that this is one reason why so many of the attempts to treat this subject in an atomic manner have floundered over the years. JT (who does like the merit badge approach) "John Eisenmenger says:" > On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, R. Wyatt wrote: > > > I happen to disagree with mr. potter as well. If I wasn't part developer > > /engineer, than I would not have any machines to administrate. > > Unfortunately, some vendors are not very helpful in debugging their > > products or send out documentation that is flat wrong. My customers don't > > look to the vendor if the machine doesn't run, they look to me. > > Look, the point that Mr. Potter is trying to make is that there are core > abilities that apply to systems administration and it is on these that we > should be concentrating. As valuable as the other skills mentioned are, > they do not fall under the scope of the skills listed in the SAGE job > descriptions. This is not to say that other skills aren't worthy or > desirable, it only says that they are not core skills of a systems > administrator. > > Put simply, SAGE states its purpose as being "to advance the profession of > systems administration." Skills outside that scope (web development, > software engineering, etc.) should be certified by other groups. SAGE > should concentrate on its core competencies, which are enumerated in the > SAGE job descriptions. What I see in this thread is an everything but the > kitchen sink approach, which reduces the viability of this concept. > > -John > > -- -- ========================================================================= |Jeff S. Tyler Collective Technologies | |Ct, that's for me ! [Office] 617-443-1144 | |jeff@jthome.com [Home phone/fax] 978-456-9121/3025 | |jtyler@colltech.com [Pager] 1-800-759-8888 249-5568 | From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 10 10:54:00 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA18818 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:54:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivac45 ([204.193.38.230]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA18809 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:53:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from wrso38035.ivac_eng by ivac45 (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA13926; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:50:02 -0800 Received: by wrso38035.ivac_eng (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id KAA16864; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:50:02 -0800 Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 10:50:02 -0800 From: dengland@alarismed.com (Dave England) Message-Id: <199803101850.KAA16864@wrso38035.ivac_eng> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Sun 3rd party maintenance providers - Summary Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: VVrYJuGewKevap829ieSng== Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Several people asked me to summarize my findings on 3rd party maintenance providers. My original question was who are you using for Sun support other than Sun Micro. Polaris Service On-site/Depot Hardware service www.polaris1.com Sun Software Support 800-541-5831 Technical Training Kelly Forbes 510-440-3833 Attn: Bekki Anderson 510-440-3829 FAX 510-683-9535 Quest International Inc On-site/Depot Hardware service www.questinc.com team with CDC for SW support 619-625-0370 Dave Graham Honeywell On-site/Depot Hardware service www.honeywell.com 800-525-7439 Maintech On-site/Depot Hardware service www.maintech.com 800-426-8324 Gene Long glong@maintech.com Grumman On-site Hardware service 760-431-3700 Pete Million petemillion@earthlink.net Wang 703-827-3000 Wiztec Incorporated www.wiztec.com 619-549-9088 Control Data Corp Sun Software support www.cdc.com 800-345-6628 Pinnacle Data Systems (PDSi) Depot service www.pinnacle.com 800-882-8282 Access Graphics Telephone Support www.access.com Technical Training 800-730-6468 From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 10 11:02:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA19272 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:02:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA19263 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:02:00 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA22531; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 13:58:33 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803101858.NAA22531@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: certification To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 13:58:33 -0500 (EST) Cc: spp@psasolar.psa.pencom.com, sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199803092041.PAA10646@phibes.dartmouth.edu> from "paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu" at Mar 9, 98 03:41:04 pm Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > I don't think anyone's suggesting it be mandatory. ... > ... The Merit Badge idea has _always_ been to construct a set of > "learning tools" so folks could acquire new skills or verify that their > skills were extant. It's not a mandatory program; no one's suggesting that > everyone need have the same set of "badges". Of course not. That's why I like it. If everyone had to have the same MBs, what would be the difference between that and a rigid full-cert program? Of course, you might want to strongly suggest a "core curriculum" of certain MBs - basic security, IP and Internet connectivity, DNS, tracing system problems, designing backup systems ... [Steve - the word "require" is not in the above sentence. ;-)] > Greg offered to write a PGP badge because he knows that subject well; I > doubt he was suggesting that PGP knowledge is essential to sysadmin. The way things are, it probably would be good for all of us to know - what it's used for - what problems it solves - what problems it doesn't solve or exacerbates - how to install it - how to use it - how to help other people use it [different!] - how to interface it to other systems [e-mail, news, web] for ourselves or others to use - how to debug problems - how to de-install it Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 10 11:11:27 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA19837 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:11:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA19828 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 11:11:21 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA22749; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 14:07:39 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803101907.OAA22749@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: Merit Badge thing To: dphi@ix.netcom.com (Dale Phillips) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 14:07:39 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19980309081720.00e561b0@popd.ix.netcom.com> from "Dale Phillips" at Mar 9, 98 08:17:20 am Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > This is just YAO (yet another opinion) Excuse me??? ;-) Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 10 12:59:16 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA25641 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:59:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from web.lclcan.com (web.lclcan.com [205.205.137.66]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA25632 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:59:08 -0800 (PST) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by web.lclcan.com (8.7.4/8.7.3) id PAA02444 for ; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:56:04 -0500 Received: from miami.lclcan.com(205.205.137.161) by web.lclcan.com via smap (V1.3) id sma002403; Tue Mar 10 15:51:18 1998 Received: by miami.lclcan.com (940816.SGI.8.6.9/940406.SGI.AUTO) for sage-members@usenix.org id PAA03985; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:50:43 -0500 From: "Robert Perron" Message-Id: <9803101550.ZM3983@lclcan.com> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 15:50:38 -0500 In-Reply-To: Jeff Tyler "Re: certification" (Mar 10, 12:32pm) References: <199803101732.MAA01868@jthome.jthome.com> X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.0 26oct94 MediaMail) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Mar 10, 12:32pm, Jeff Tyler wrote: > Subject: Re: certification > Humm... I think I'm on Mr Wyatt's side on this one. Quick, define > the core of the sysadmin profession ! Can't do it can ya ? Neither > can I and I've been one for almost 15 years now ;-) I suspect that > this is one reason why so many of the attempts to treat this subject > in an atomic manner have floundered over the years. > > JT (who does like the merit badge approach) > I'm beginning to like the idea of merit badges. In keeping with the philosophy of Unix and modern software development, they're modular. By having merit badges we wouldn't have to define what a system administrator is or does. A person would only have to claim to be a sys-admin and then show the merit badges to establish the domain(s) of competance. -- Robert Perron From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 10 19:21:31 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA16320 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 19:21:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA16261; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 19:21:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar (psasolar-psi [204.217.199.14]) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id VAA16171; Tue, 10 Mar 1998 21:18:09 -0600 (CST) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 21:18:09 -0600 (CST) From: "Carolyn M. Hennings" X-Sender: cmh@psasolar To: chicago-sagelocal@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: March chigrp Meeting Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Visit our web site at http://www.usenix.org/sage/locals/chigrp/ Please join us at our next meeting: Programming Perl Stephen P. Potter, Collective Technologies March 12, 1998 7:00-9:00 pm Illinois Institute of Technology - Rice Campus Abstract Stephen P. Potter, contributing author for "Programming Perl, Second Edition" published by O'Reilly and Associates, will present some basic concepts and structures for getting started with Perl programming. This presentation is drawn from a class he developed and taught to several hundred people. Stephen will conduct an open forum for questions and discussion. About the Speaker Stephen P. Potter is a Senior Technical Consultant for Collective Technologies based out of Columbus, OH. He has close to 10 years experience with UNIX systems, and five years of Perl experience. Previous clients have included "AMP, Inc", "Mobil Oil", "Chrysler" and "Lucent Technologies". Publications have included "Programming Perl, Second Edition" and two years of maintaining the Perl FAQ. Socializing Following the presentation we will gather at Houlihan's, a restaurant in the Shopping Center at the intersection of Butterfield and Naperville Road. Directions 201 East Loop Road Wheaton, Illinois 60187-8489 Wheaton, Illinois 60187-8489 630.682.6000 From the North: Take Naperville Road south from Roosevelt Road to East Loop Road. Turn left at the traffic light on East Loop Road. The road curves past a large apartment complex on your right. The campus is on your left about a block before Butterfield Road. From the South: Take Naperville Road north from the Naperville-Lisle area. Cross Butterfield Road and pass the shopping center at the corner of Naperville and Butterfield roads. Turn right at the traffic light at East Loop Road and proceed past a large apartment complex on your left and a shopping center on your right. The campus is on your left, about a block before Butterfield Road. From the East and West: Take the East-West Tollway (I-88) and exit northbound at Naperville Road and follow the directions above. If coming from the North-South Tollway (I-355), exit westbound at Butterfield Road and proceed to East Loop Road. Make a right turn at East Loop Road; the campus is on your right after about about a block. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Carolyn M. Hennings cmh@colltech.com Collective Technologies http://www.colltech.com a pencom company From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 12 03:04:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA22159 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 12 Mar 1998 03:04:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (dsr-gw.dsrnet.com [208.203.147.5]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id DAA22150 for ; Thu, 12 Mar 1998 03:04:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from ip-smtp-gw (ip-smtp-gw [192.168.168.1]) by dsr-gw.dsrnet.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id FAA17536 for ; Thu, 12 Mar 1998 05:57:40 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: Date: 12 Mar 1998 06:01:38 -0400 From: "Gibson, Eric" Subject: RE: Sun 3rd party maintenance providers - Summary To: "sage-members" X-Mailer: Mail*Link SMTP-MS 3.0.1 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Dave left off at least one 3rd-party Sun maintenance provider: Computervision Corp. (I don't have a corporate address, but they have local offices in Rockville and Glen Burnie, MD) (770) 587-5666 This number is for their sales office which is in Atlanta. To be fair, I haven't had contact with CV for a couple of years, but I used them as a Sun maintenance shop for 8 years. They were competant, friendly, bla bla, and I never had any serious complaints with them. As I said, it's been a while and I haven't checked with them recently, but if one is considering alternatives to Sun, CV is very much worth looking into. -Eric Gibson egibson@dsrnet.com From sage-members-owner Thu Mar 12 12:53:24 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA19995 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 12 Mar 1998 12:53:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from chokey.mo.md.us (chokey.mo.md.us [208.218.124.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA19986 for ; Thu, 12 Mar 1998 12:53:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mark@localhost) by chokey.mo.md.us (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA20794 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Thu, 12 Mar 1998 15:50:12 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 15:50:12 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Sienkiewicz Message-Id: <199803122050.PAA20794@chokey.mo.md.us> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > I guess the main point that I (and a few others) are trying to make is to > keep the number of available badges down to a reasonable level. Keep it > down to skills that are particularly needed for SAs (almost mandatory). > >Even if I agreed, at the moment I'll take any Merit Badge that someone >presented. If we dither until we create the perfect set, we're right back >where we started. How many "optional" merit badges is too many? It IS possible to offer too many. Given that there can be only a few, you must choose them carefully to avoid using up your small number without covering everything that needs to be covered. If you don't take care to limit them, you could make so many that employers and employees both just ignore them all. > All the most SAs are ever going to need to know about either of those is > how to install it (read the INSTALL, it is pretty simple) and how to use > it (again, read the README). There is no reason for a merit badge of this > kind, and I'd hate to see someone not be able to get a job because of not > having a merit badge for such skills. > >But if that's what that job was about, and the employer *needed* those >skills, then what's the problem? What level of ability does the employer need? Sure the employer needs knowledge of SSH. My employer needs me to have knowledge of SSH. You know what? I did exactly what it says above: I read INSTALL and README and off I went. It was good enough. If he had been foolish enough to demand extensive knowledge as required for the previously described merit badge, then I would not have been a candidate, and he would never know how much he missed out on by not hiring me. >You're saying we _shouldn't_ make it >straightforward to learn something because then people might want us to >know it? Nobody said anything about "shouldn't make it straightforward to learn something". Learning is not the same as certification Learning is not the same as requiring certification from a job candidate. >I've had PGP on my machines for years, but never have integrated it into my >life. Something that would make me do that, and walk me through it would >be quite valuable. And, I'd've learned something in the end. If you want to learn about PGP, go right ahead. The knowledge is readily available from a number of sources. I know that I have not learned more about PGP because I have made an informed decision to pursue other efforts that I considered more valuable. It seems to me that you have probably done something similar: Many times, you've had some time to yourself and you chose to do something other than learning more about PGP. If the existence of a PGP merit badge somehow caused me to learn about PGP, that knowledge would come at my own DETRIMENT because it would take me away from some other thing that I would prefer to spend my time on. From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 13 06:57:16 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA15311 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 13 Mar 1998 06:57:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from bbnplanet.com (mail.bbnplanet.com [198.114.157.21]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id GAA15300 for ; Fri, 13 Mar 1998 06:57:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from tears.bbnplanet.com by mail.bbnplanet.com id aa19888; 13 Mar 98 9:53 EST Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980313094436.0493f2f0@sa.bbnplanet.com> X-Sender: achused@sa.bbnplanet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 09:44:36 -0500 To: Mark Sienkiewicz , sage-members@usenix.org From: Amy Chused Subject: Re: certification In-Reply-To: <199803122050.PAA20794@chokey.mo.md.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 03:50 PM 3/12/98 -0500, Mark Sienkiewicz wrote: >How many "optional" merit badges is too many? It IS possible to >offer too many. Given that there can be only a few, you must choose >them carefully to avoid using up your small number without covering >everything that needs to be covered. You're making an assumption that I disagree with. Why do there have to be only a small number of merit badges? IMO, there should be a small number of "recommended basic" merit badges, but a near infinite number of merit badges for specialized bits of knowledge. We use SSH for a number of specialized applications here. We sometimes hack the source code (just tweaks) and we frequently make extensive use of the configuration files. If merit badges existed, we'd look for an SSH merit badge. We wouldn't require it, since we value learning ability more than any particular bit of knowledge, but if someone had it, it would be a nice bonus. I envision merit badges for DNS, News Concepts, News-INN, News-Cyclone, Backups Concepts, Backups-Amanda, Backups-Legato, SSH, PGP, Jumpstart, Building Packages, Building Boot CD's, Security Concepts, SecurID Administration, Perl, Tcl, Expect, Building a secure anonymous FTP server, and many more. No one would be expected to have all of them. Amy From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 13 09:18:13 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA24430 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 13 Mar 1998 09:18:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from chokey.mo.md.us (chokey.mo.md.us [208.218.124.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA24421 for ; Fri, 13 Mar 1998 09:18:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mark@localhost) by chokey.mo.md.us (8.7.5/8.7.3) id MAA23134; Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:15:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:15:14 -0500 (EST) From: Mark Sienkiewicz Message-Id: <199803131715.MAA23134@chokey.mo.md.us> To: achused@bbnplanet.com, mark@chokey.mo.md.us, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certification Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >At 03:50 PM 3/12/98 -0500, Mark Sienkiewicz wrote: >>How many "optional" merit badges is too many? It IS possible to >>offer too many. Given that there can be only a few, you must choose >>them carefully to avoid using up your small number without covering >>everything that needs to be covered. > >You're making an assumption that I disagree with. > >Why do there have to be only a small number of merit badges? IMO, there >should be a small number of "recommended basic" merit badges, but a near >infinite number of merit badges for specialized bits of knowledge. Would you even READ a list of 1,000,000 possible merit badges to find out which were relevant to your job posting? This may sound extreme, but I think it proves my point that there is an upper limit. We can now get ot the question of where the upper limit is. I believe that the limit is much less than 1,000,000. I suspect is is on the order of 100. If I am right, we need to take care with creating highly specialized merit badges, lest we make the list too long. I can see how you might disagree with the value 100, but what would you say to 500, 1000, 2000, or 5000? At what point is the list too long to be worth looking at? Of course, there may be another possibility: You could argue that the upper limit is (for example) 1000, but that it would be impossible to think of that many merit badge topics. I don't think I would believe that argument, though. It sounds too much like "6 computers" or "4k words of memory". :) >I envision merit badges for DNS, News Concepts, News-INN, News-Cyclone, >Backups Concepts, Backups-Amanda, Backups-Legato, SSH, PGP, Jumpstart, >Building Packages, Building Boot CD's, Security Concepts, SecurID >Administration, Perl, Tcl, Expect, Building a secure anonymous FTP server, >and many more. Maybe a good way to get started would be to try to enumerate the merit badges that people are actually interested in. You've listed 18. b.t.w. Some are ambiguous. By "Building Packages" do you mean RPMS for Red Hat Linux, pkgadd compatible media for Solaris, or possibly something else? Boot CD's for what kind of a system? Your list might represent more like 25. Since that is only a fourth of the upper limit of 100 that I was hypothesizing, I may be estimating too low. >No one would be expected to have all of them. I believe that nobody would be expected to have all of them, but suppose your HR department found out that of the 100 available merit badges, 50 applied to subsystems used in your company. How would that affect the hiring process? From sage-members-owner Fri Mar 13 10:08:35 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA27532 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 13 Mar 1998 10:08:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from bbnplanet.com (mail.bbnplanet.com [198.114.157.21]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA27511 for ; Fri, 13 Mar 1998 10:08:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from tears.bbnplanet.com by mail.bbnplanet.com id aa08695; 13 Mar 98 13:04 EST Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980313125819.0452f840@sa.bbnplanet.com> X-Sender: achused@sa.bbnplanet.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 12:58:19 -0500 To: Mark Sienkiewicz , sage-members@usenix.org From: Amy Chused Subject: Re: certification In-Reply-To: <199803131715.MAA23134@chokey.mo.md.us> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 12:15 PM 3/13/98 -0500, Mark Sienkiewicz wrote: >>You're making an assumption that I disagree with. >>Why do there have to be only a small number of merit badges? IMO, there >>should be a small number of "recommended basic" merit badges, but a near >>infinite number of merit badges for specialized bits of knowledge. >Would you even READ a list of 1,000,000 possible merit badges to >find out which were relevant to your job posting? This may sound >extreme, but I think it proves my point that there is an upper >limit. Well, if it was a well organized list, grouped into "OS specific" and general areas, and well ordered within those areas, while I wouldn't read the entire 1,000,000 badge list, I'd certainly peruse the topic headings of the areas I was interested in. I rather suspect that we won't even find 1000 badges we want for quite a while, although depending on how fine the badges are broken down, the number might grow quite rapidly. How many possible badges can you think of? >b.t.w. Some are ambiguous. By "Building Packages" do you mean RPMS >for Red Hat Linux, pkgadd compatible media for Solaris, or possibly >something else? Boot CD's for what kind of a system? I was referring to Solaris since I work in a sun shop, but for other shops building RPMS packages for Red Hat Linux would be a good badge. Building a custom boot CD with all the vender supplied and locally built packages combined is probably a good badge for a lot of different OS's. I know it's been useful to have our boot CD's in all our off-site servers so we can do emergency rebuilds. >>No one would be expected to have all of them. >I believe that nobody would be expected to have all of them, but >suppose your HR department found out that of the 100 available >merit badges, 50 applied to subsystems used in your company. How >would that affect the hiring process? Well, a company that demanded that their employees have 50 MB's would have several choices: 1. Pay the [very high] premium for demanding such a highly trained & certified sysadmin. 2. Search for an affordable sysadmin with all those badges for a long time, and then finally give up and pay to send their current sysadmins to training. 3. Search for an affordable sysadmin with all those badges for a long time and then finally give up and come up with a more reasonable list of requirements. None of those strike me as particularly bad options for sysadmins in general, although the existing sysadmins and users of that poor company would certainly suffer while HR learned a bit about plausibility. Amy From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 16 10:05:44 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA27201 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:05:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from labyrinth.com (root@morass.labyrinth.com [192.107.48.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA27127; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:05:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from quagmire.labyrinth.com (quagmire.labyrinth.com [192.107.48.3]) by labyrinth.com (NO SOLICITING) with SMTP id LAA22933; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 11:02:13 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19980316105624.00ddb4bc@labyrinth.com> X-Sender: barb@labyrinth.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:56:24 -0700 To: sage-members@usenix.org, sage-announce@usenix.org From: Barb Dijker Subject: [official] letter of clarification re certification [long] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This letter is from the SAGE certification subcommittee: Kim Trudel, Tim Gassaway, and Barb Dijker. We hope to respond to the concerns addressed on sage-members regarding the recent certification announcement "heads-up" posted 2/17. In addition, we would like to provide general information regarding direction and framework. The SAGE certification subcommittee met on 3/7 and 3/8. Not the least of our agenda was summarizing, considering, and addressing the feedback recently received via sage-members mailing list and others send directly to the board. The information here is organized by specific concerns that members have raised as we understand them. The discussion on the list has been extremely constructive and focused on some key issues. Thank you! 1) The Plan The "Plan" as referenced in the announcement (2/17/98) was merely: appoint a subcommittee. That "Plan" included a meeting of the subcommittee and results of that meeting for consideration at a future SAGE board meeting before we continue the process. The initial outcome of the subcommittee will look more like a real plan, some preliminary concepts of which are incorporated in the comments below. 2) Motivation The certification effort is not motivated by the survey. The survey merely confirmed what SAGE was hearing from the membership. As many have noted, certification has been discussed at SAGE board meetings almost every time since SAGE's founding 6 years ago. There have been some relatively recent developments that have pushed this effort to the point where it is now, more than ever, appropriate, necessary, and feasible. SAGE board members have done considerable research in the area of certification. Whether the members are aware of it or not, there are bodies certifying system administrators in a non-vendor specific way. It is happening. We can either let others do it for us, or we can do it right... by setting skills requirements and influencing education. The primary motivation for SAGE embarking on certification at this time is the unprecedented demand in the market for system administration professionals. Certification is by far not our only means of addressing this problem. But it can serve to set goals of education and standards of skill requirements for at least entry level positions. To borrow from Elizabeth's posting dated 2/18: 1) It provides employers, who are not often knowledgeable about system administration, with an objective standard of evaluation. 2) It provides system administrators with a way of objectively evaluating their own skills. 3) It provides a basis for educational programs. 4) It's a whole lot cheaper than a college degree, and provides some of the same advantages to its holders. It is important to note here, and expanded later below, that in no way is the core certification being contemplated by SAGE intended for existing practicing system administrators with more than 3 years of experience. SAGE is addressing core/entry skill sets. Many professions, from nursing to day care to jewelers, engage in certification efforts. Certification, specified by the profession itself, serves to set a standard of excellence at the designated certification level. There is no evidence we have found to support reduced salaries or a standard of mediocrity. Generally the opposite tends to be the case. Finally, the argument that certifying system administrators is too hard simply doesn't fly anymore. System Administration is the not the first nor only profession that relies heavily on "soft skills" such as communication, problem solving, and the like. There is an entire industry of professionals who devise methods of assessing skills. It may take more than a multiple choice test, but it is neither hard nor impossible to assess such skills. Methods of skills assessment have improved considerably over the years. 3) Relative Prioritization Certification is not being pursued by SAGE at the expense of any other efforts. Most specifically, efforts in the area of education are at the top of our list, and certification goes hand-in-hand with that effort. We expect that given SAGE certification, many educational bodies will then have the detailed skill requirement goals they need to help them to develop appropriate curricula to satisfy those requirements. Part of the effort of certification will include the logistics to make that available and marketing, for lack of a better word, to ensure the information reaches educational bodies. For perspective, in 1997 SAGE spent about $85K in publications including the booklet series and ;login:. That is not going to diminish. In fact the 1998 budget for such "educational" publications is over $110K. We anticipate three booklets published this year: hiring, education, and site audits. SAGE had already planned to do a direct mailing to educational institutions, for the purposes already discussed on this list, as part of the education and certification goals. In addition, some ambitious members are prototyping a mentoring program that the board is involved with and hopes to adopt next year. Other things on our short term goals list: - sponsor another K12 event like the Maryland Virtual High School event last year - locals focus (clarify/expand policy/benefits, more groups) - establish "speaker's bureau" to facilitate technical talks for locals and other groups - expand relationships with outside groups (like we did with UGU) Given that "educational" publications accounts for about one third of SAGE's budget, it is not unreasonable to spend a few $K, if any, to round out education goals with a certification effort. If more dollars are required, they will not come at the expense of other programs, existing or future. 4) Authority, Mandate, etc. The Board sees itself as a steward of the organization, responsible for general oversight and long-term planning and strategizing. In doing so we respond to industry and community demands as well as the desires of existing members. The goal of certification is to provide skills requirements and assessment for budding system administrators for their benefit and the benefit of the rest of the community and the profession as a whole. We are pursuing certification a result of member interest and community/industry demand. SAGE would not be doing this if we thought it was opposed by a majority. The survey was in part to confirm our understanding of our implicit authority. We can poll, survey, or vote the issue to death. However, the SAGE board's duty is to interpret the needs of and act on behalf of the membership and the broader community it is formed to serve. SAGE is uniquely positioned to specify certification for our profession. Certification is most successful and beneficial for the community when specified by the profession. SAGE (US) is the largest and most globally represented group of system administration professionals. SAGE is the only such organization of which we are aware in the US. While SAGE does not represent the entire system administration population, it represents a significant population. Most professional organizations without mandatory licensure or certification do not represent 100%, or any where near, of their practicing population. One might argue that it is incumbent upon SAGE in this unique position to specify certification if it is to be done. There are certainly other SAGE and SAGE-like organizations around the world, most notably SAGE-AU. While we can't pretend to represent those organizations, it would seem a bit wasteful and redundant to reinvent the wheel N times, one for each regional SAGE. We hope to gain participation globally to prevent confusing or conflicting certification of system administrators by "the profession" itself. 5) Communication It should be obvious at this point that we haven't actually _done_ anything yet. No one has been left out of the process. Every single one of the messages posted to sage-members were read by everyone on the certification subcommittee (through at least 3/1). The certification subcommittee has developed a communication strategy for the upcoming process to ensure that the system administration community has appropriate opportunity for information and feedback. SAGE certification will not be successful unless it truly serves the broader sysadmin community and the employers they serve, not just SAGE members. The communication strategy is as follows: a) Appoint an Advisory Council - < 20 people representative of the community for tight and detailed feedback loops, care will be taken to ensure representation is both diverse and global. Details on the Advisory Council will be emailed separately. b) Develop and post (via web) a FAQ on the project. c) Provide regular informational dissemination at project milestones in ;login:, sage-announce, and comp.org.usenix. d) Schedule certification BoFs at upcoming conferences. e) Do at least one directed mailing to all members to ensure membership awareness. The topic of certification will of course be included in SAGE efforts in general to reach out to the larger system administration community beyond its membership: vendors, other groups, educators, etc. 6) Framework and Basic Logistics The initial announcement did not include any conceptual details. The following should correct some common misconceptions about what SAGE means when it says "certification." - Certification assesses primarily core skills. We'd like to structure the program in such a way that concentrations in specific areas, such as security, webmaster, postmaster, newsmaster, or performance tuner, may also be incorporated into the program. The specifics concerning skill set, and how this may relate to the existing SAGE Job Descriptions, will be defined over the coming months. Again, the certification program is entirely optional and not intended to target seasoned sysadmins. - Certification will be de-coupled from education, i.e. it is a distinctly separate event. Therefore, there is no requirement for expensive books or courses. This also allows wide implementation of satisfying educational curricula, from home study to university and commercial programs. This also means that certification is not just attending a specific set of courses but rather requires passing a skills assessment. - Certification is not required in any way, shape or form. 7) Testing Pitfalls Unfortunately poor examples of "certification" abound in our industry. We recognize that and plan to work hard to ensure that any skills assessment in this certification program will: - be of merit, i.e. have meaning, not be guessable, etc. - explore assessment methods beyond multiple choice tests - assess concepts and comprehension thereof, not trivia - not be vendor specific MSCE, Sun, and Cisco certification are an examples of certification that are specifically designed to certify product knowledge. They are specific to a topic, not a profession. Thus they primarily test knowledge, not necessarily skills. Skills are the application of knowledge and what is important in system administration. 8) Hiring Impact Unfortunately SAGE has little if any control on how certification might be used by employers. Certification of system administrators, no matter who implements it, is bound to be misunderstood or misused by some. This will happen even if (especially if?) SAGE does not produce a certification program. What we can do is encourage, through things such as the upcoming Hiring & Interviewing booklet, appropriate and complete means of assessing job candidates which may include certification, but is not certification alone. SAGE can educate and encourage sound and reasonable hiring practices, but can not enforce them. 9) Legal Liability Certainly a potential for legal liability exists. Legal counsel will advise SAGE so we can make an informed decision whether the liability risk is acceptably minimized. Many states have laws which prevent employers from requiring testing which has not been developed by certified test writers. For this reason, and because professional test developers will undoubtedly do a much better job than we can, SAGE will need to engage outside professionals to develop certification skills assessment mechanisms. Such organizations provide liability safeguards through validation using proven mechanisms. Most offer services which are touted as "legally defensible." Examples are http://www.proexam.org/, http://www.humrro.org/, and http://www.chauncey.com/. Other sites that might be of interest: http://www.iccp.org/ http://www.ibm.com/certify/ http://www.learningtree.com/us/certific/735.htm http://suned.sun.com/suned/index.html Thank you for your time and valued feedback. We appreciate the comments we have received. We expect to continue this dialog on sage-members, particurlarly as the certification framework is more fully defined and reaches specific milestones. Kim Trudel Tim Gassaway Barb Dijker From sage-members-owner Mon Mar 16 10:33:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA28934 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:33:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from epx.cis.umn.edu (root@epx.cis.umn.edu [128.101.83.4]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA28925 for ; Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:33:27 -0800 (PST) From: djb@epx.cis.umn.edu Received: by epx.cis.umn.edu; Mon, 16 Mar 98 12:30:14 -0600 Message-Id: <001350d6fb5029763@epx.cis.umn.edu> Date: Mon, 16 Mar 98 12:30:14 -0600 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: TCSA meeting March 19 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The Twin Cities System Administrators (TCSA) group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to system and network administrators in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The meetings are free and open to the public. Check out our web site at http://www.tcsa.org/ TCSA meetings are on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. Next Meeting: Topic: Networking Technologies Speaker: Paul Tranby, Cisco Date/Time: March 19, 1998 7:00 pm Location: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul campus Paul Tranby from Cisco will give an overview of current networking technologies (RIP vs OSPF vs BGP), as well as developments in VLans, IPsec and IPv6 as time permits. We will meet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (southwest corner of Summit and Cretin) in building BEC (Brady Educational Center) room 111. Tentative Meeting Schedule April 16, 1998: Backups, Curtis Preston, Collective Technologies May 21, 1998: Network Appliances Directions to the University of St. Thomas (Summit & Cretin): - From East I-94: Going east on I-94, take the Cretin-Vandalia exit. Go right (south) about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From West I-94: Coming west on I-94, exit at Cretin-Vandalia. Go left (south) on Cretin about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From the south on I-35E: Take 35E north to the Randolph Avenue exit. Make a left on Randolph (crossing over 35E) and follow it about two miles to Cretin Avenue. Turn right onto Cretin and go about 1.5 miles to Summit Avenue. Turn left into St. Thomas just before Summit. - Parking: Drive to the large parking area straight ahead. The BEC building is near Goodrich Ave (the street to the south or left) from the large parking area. Park in the large parking area and go to BEC room 111 to get a visitor parking permit for your car. - Web maps are at: Map to St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/dirst.html Map of St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/stmap.html On the Map of the St. Paul Campus, BEC is building 31. For more information on TCSA, check out our web site: http://www.tcsa.org/ To subscribe to the TCSA mailing list (from a Unix system): echo "subscribe tcsa" | mailx majordomo@tcsa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@tcsa.org or contact: Dave Bianchi 612-644-7843 -- Dave Bianchi djb@colltech.com Work: 612-957-4532 Collective Technologies djb@epx.cis.umn.edu FAX: 612-957-4195 A Pencom Company Pager: 612-818-7162 From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 17 06:24:24 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA25610 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 06:24:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA25555; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 06:24:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA17634; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:21:04 -0500 Message-Id: <199803171421.JAA17634@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-online@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: A sysadmin "rosetta stone" Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:21:04 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Folks - Help! I manage too many different Un*xen, and am forever forgetting what a particular command is called in which environment. I want a tool that will be a Rosetta Stone (or perhaps more accurately, a "universal translator") - something that, for a given question, will at least point me in the direction of the appropriate man page. I've started to put together such a thing, but my HTML skills are rusty. I'm thinking "spreadsheet" (since it's less work :->); ideally something that's easy to enter new data into, and simple to use. An example of the current state of things is at http://caligari.dartmouth.edu/~paw/Rosetta.html (it's embarrassingly minimal, and requires a table-savvy browser to see) - please help by either suggesting new rows/columns or a different presentation (with appropriate code, please - I don't have the cycles to do lots of work on this), or filling in holes. Eventually this will live on the the SAGE site, but there needs to be lots more content and some reasonable design first. Thanks, in advance, for any assistance. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 17 08:26:04 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA01162 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:26:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailbox2.ucsd.edu (mailbox2.ucsd.edu [132.239.1.54]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA01152; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:25:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from igpp.UCSD.EDU (igpp.ucsd.edu [132.239.152.7]) by mailbox2.ucsd.edu (8.8.8/8.6.9) with SMTP id IAA18932; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:22:49 -0800 (PST) Received: by igpp.UCSD.EDU (4.1/UCSDGENERIC.4) id AA22580 to sage-online@usenix.ORG; Tue, 17 Mar 98 08:22:47 PST Date: Tue, 17 Mar 98 08:22:47 PST From: prusso@igpp.ucsd.edu (Patrick Russo) Message-Id: <9803171622.AA22580@igpp.UCSD.EDU> To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org, sage-online@usenix.org Subject: Re: A sysadmin "rosetta stone" Cc: prusso@igpp.ucsd.edu Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Pat, HP used to publish a Rosetta Stone called "HP-UX/Sun Interoperability Cookbook". Version 1.0, which I have in hardcopy, has 8 pages of sys admin commands comparing Sun OS, Solaris 2 and HP-UX, which has been very helpful. About 2 years ago there was a Version 2 on the web somewhere, either at hp.com or on their user group site at www.interex.org. I briefly checked both sites this morning and couldn't find it. Maybe someone out there knows where it is or has an online version they could forward to you. No need to reinvent the wheel (or stone, as the case may be). Patrick =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Patrick V. Russo, Ph.D. | E-MAIL: prusso@ucsd.edu IGPP NETWORK OPERATIONS, 0225 | PHONE : (619) 534-4473 SIO/UCSD | FAX : (619) 534-2902 From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 17 08:52:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA02392 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:52:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu (zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu [128.146.111.36]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA02383 for ; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 08:52:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (from alden@localhost) by zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA04604; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:49:08 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <19980317114908.18882@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu> Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:49:08 -0500 From: Dave Alden To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certificates [was: A sysadmin "rosetta stone"] References: <199803171421.JAA17634@phibes.dartmouth.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1i In-Reply-To: <199803171421.JAA17634@phibes.dartmouth.edu>; from Pat Wilson on Tue, Mar 17, 1998 at 09:21:04AM +2230 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi, On Tue, Mar 17, 1998 at 09:21:04AM +2230, Pat Wilson wrote: > Folks - > > Help! I manage too many different Un*xen, and am forever forgetting what a > particular command is called in which environment. I want a tool that will > be a Rosetta Stone (or perhaps more accurately, a "universal translator") - > something that, for a given question, will at least point me in the > direction of the appropriate man page. Hmm -- then I guess this individual wouldn't have any "certificates" and so I probably shouldn't hire her? (Sorry to pick on you, this is just the perfect example of why certificates worry me and I know I'd hire you in a second if you ever wanted to take a downgrade in your job :-). I'm too darn busy to worry about making sure I get "certified" for every new special program (or area of interest). All a "certificate" proves is that at some point in your life, you had the ability to (at least) memorize a few details (or possibly a lot of details) for a short period of time (long enough to take the "certificate" test). It doesn't actually show how good you are at (quickly) learning new topics. My job does not require me to be good at any one set of skills, it requires me to be able to learn new skills on the fly. Looking around at fellow sysadmins (at my company (university)), this seems to be the case almost everywhere. I feel that MOST of those who are pushing for certification fall into one of two categories: - sysadmins who are insecure in their own knowledge (and they want bragging rights at the conferences -- a new purpose for those colored dots :-) or - managers who are looking for an easy way out - "Mr. Applicant said he was certified for those qualities, it's not my fault he can't do his job." Or "Sally isn't certified in BLAH, but Tom is - I guess Tom would be the better candidate". For all you know, Sally may not have heard of "BLAH", but she maybe she can learn it better than Tom has (again, maybe Tom just learned enough to get the certificate, but he's since forgotten it). Yes, it can be difficult to judge an applicant on how good they are at certain skills, but that is why you fire people (meaning, if the applicant isn't as smart as you thought, you fire them). I guess to sum up my thoughts, your best bet at finding a good employee is to have an interview where you ask the right questions and get the right responses (where you gauge their intelligence and learning ability). Learning how to hire someone is a skill itself. Maybe SAGE should be certifying the managers and not the sysadmins. 1/2 :-) ...dave alden From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 17 09:57:11 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA06376 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:57:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from life.ai.mit.edu (life.ai.mit.edu [128.52.32.80]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA06367; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 09:57:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu (soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu [128.52.32.48]) by life.ai.mit.edu (8.8.8/AI1.22/ai.master.life:1.23) with ESMTP id MAA22181; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:53:51 -0500 (EST) From: "Leonard H. Tower Jr." Received: (from len@localhost) by soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu (8.8.4/8.8.4AI/ai.client:1.5) id MAA17487; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:53:50 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 12:53:50 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199803171753.MAA17487@soggy-fibers.ai.mit.edu> To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, prusso@igpp.ucsd.edu, sage-members@usenix.org, sage-online@usenix.org Subject: Re: A sysadmin "rosetta stone" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Date: Tue, 17 Mar 98 08:22:47 PST From: prusso@igpp.ucsd.edu (Patrick Russo) Pat, HP used to publish a Rosetta Stone called "HP-UX/Sun Interoperability Cookbook". ... An advanced Altavista search of "Interoperability near Cookbook" turned this up There were a lot of other possible links, i didn't investigate. Perhaps someone could go though this HP guide, and give Pat more entries for her rosetaa table. best -len ---------------------------------------------------------------------- URL: http://www.interworks.org/Tech/sun_hpux_interop/ HP-UX/Sun Interoperability Cookbook Version 2 Provide feedback to: cookbook@apollo.hp.com Table of Contents * Copyright and Legal Notices * Detailed Table of Contents (Outline) * 1. System Start-up And Shutdown * 2. Swap Space Configuration * 3. Start-up Configuration Files * 4. Devices * 5. Operating System Installation * 6. Layered Software Installation * 7. TCP/IP Communications * 8. NIS * 9. NFS and the Automounter * 10. Domain Name System (DNS) * 11. Electronic Mail * 12. Printing * 13. Common Login Environments * Hyperlinked Index _________________________________________________________________ Related Information * Postscript version of this document: HP-UX/Sun Interoperability Cookbook, Version 2 (gzipped, 202K) * SunOS to HP-UX 9.05 Porting Guide * AIX/HP-UX Interoperability Guide * InterWorks List Of HP Technical Information * Hewlett-Packard Technical Computing Web Pages _________________________________________________________________ [Outline] [Index] (Updated 18 SEP 97) Copyright 1996 Hewlett-Packard Company. All rights reserved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 17 11:32:59 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA12445 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:32:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA12431; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 11:32:51 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA29288; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 14:29:28 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803171929.OAA29288@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: A sysadmin "rosetta stone" To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu (Pat Wilson) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 14:29:24 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-online@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199803171421.JAA17634@phibes.dartmouth.edu> from "Pat Wilson" at Mar 17, 98 09:21:04 am Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Pat, Good idea, and good start. I'll scoop up some and send it your way ... and see if any design ideas come to mind. But have you thought about using 'apropos' to look for some of these things? ;-] Isn't it a pain that systems administration still isn't standardised yet? Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 17 18:54:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA05822 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 18:54:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from arl-img-7.compuserve.com (arl-img-7.compuserve.com [149.174.217.137]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA05813 for ; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 18:54:52 -0800 (PST) Received: (from root@localhost) by arl-img-7.compuserve.com (8.8.6/8.8.6/2.10) id VAA02083 for sage-members@usenix.org; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 21:51:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 21:50:32 -0500 From: Dwight Petersen <2Petersens@compuserve.com> Subject: swap To: usenix Message-ID: <199803172150_MC2-3721-5FA9@compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by usenix.ORG id SAA05814 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi It would probably be more logical to post this to the sun-managers list, but everyone here is on it, and I am rather new here. I have a long established history of being right often enough to be often rather valued as an employee, but nevertheless capable of really boneheaded mistakes. So I am going to post this to sage-members, and may even take it home where I can do so where I can pretend to be one of my family, in case I really have been operating on false premises for too many years. In which, case I'll be pleased that the certification program is not in place so that I might be decertified or even officially shunned ;>) Here's the question: We have a SunOS 4.1.3 system (actually) more than one, that has no entry for swap in the /etc/fstab. My immediate thought was that it has no swap. This idea has not found ready acceptance with my co-workers and the senior sysadmins here. I am now half convinced that putting a swap entry in the /etc/fstab is just convention. One of them told me to go look in /var/adm/messages where I would find that the system finds the swap partition at boot time. I did. I see where it says: Mar 17 02:44:25 appsdev vmunix: root on sd0a fstype 4.2 Mar 17 02:44:25 appsdev vmunix: swap on sd0b fstype spec size 130560K Mar 17 02:44:25 appsdev vmunix: dump on sd0b fstype spec size 130548K Mar 17 02:44:25 appsdev vmunix: le0: Twisted Pair Ethernet Well, since I am hard to convince where else can I get info about swap? $ /usr/etc/pstat -s 7496k allocated + 1916k reserved = 9412k used, 121144k available So I think this says 9412 + 121144 = 130556K which looks a lot like that swap partition I see up above. So this means the machine does find swap at sd0b regardless of whether there is an entry in the fstab. When I was courting my wife she told me that men had one less rib that women, because God took a rib from a man and made women. So I guess I have been believing in the same sort of folk lore. The swap entry in fstab is just for superstitious believers in the unlikely? Right? Or is there a reason to put swap in the fstab? Other than that they told me to do it in class. From sage-members-owner Tue Mar 17 20:11:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA08909 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:11:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA08900 for ; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 20:11:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (jpe@localhost) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id WAA22476; Tue, 17 Mar 1998 22:08:03 -0600 (CST) X-Authentication-Warning: psasolar.private.psa.pencom.com: jpe owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1998 22:08:01 -0600 (CST) From: John Eisenmenger X-Sender: jpe@psasolar To: Dave Alden cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: certificates [was: A sysadmin "rosetta stone"] In-Reply-To: <19980317114908.18882@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, Dave Alden wrote: > On Tue, Mar 17, 1998 at 09:21:04AM +2230, Pat Wilson wrote: > > Folks - > > > > Help! I manage too many different Un*xen, and am forever forgetting what a > > particular command is called in which environment. I want a tool that will > > be a Rosetta Stone (or perhaps more accurately, a "universal translator") - > > something that, for a given question, will at least point me in the > > direction of the appropriate man page. > > Hmm -- then I guess this individual wouldn't have any "certificates" and so > I probably shouldn't hire her? (Sorry to pick on you, this is just the > perfect example of why certificates worry me and I know I'd hire you in > a second if you ever wanted to take a downgrade in your job :-). I think this is one of the problems I've seen in this thread. Having a merit badge (or any certification) system in place is no substitute for a good solid hiring process. If you want to hire good people then you need to give good interviews that glean all the information you need to make a hiring decision. If your decision boils down to "we'll take a chance with this person" then you need to ask better questions. > I'm too darn busy to worry about making sure I get "certified" for every > new special program (or area of interest). All a "certificate" proves is > that at some point in your life, you had the ability to (at least) memorize > a few details (or possibly a lot of details) for a short period of time > (long enough to take the "certificate" test). It doesn't actually show > how good you are at (quickly) learning new topics. >DING< Isn't this the truth!?!? With technology being such a moving target it's hard to imagine that a badge would be good for very long. Even technologies thought of as being pretty static can have sudden paradigm shifts. For example, look at how inexpensive layer 2 and layer 3 switching has affected networking, or how network and system loads have changed with the explosion of the web, or how spam has affected sendmail implementation. If someone had badges for network design, network and system performance tuning, or sendmail configuration dated 1991 they'd be almost useless now. > I guess to sum up my thoughts, your best bet at finding a good employee is > to have an interview where you ask the right questions and get the right > responses (where you gauge their intelligence and learning ability). > Learning how to hire someone is a skill itself. Maybe SAGE should be > certifying the managers and not the sysadmins. 1/2 :-) Right on the money! -John -- John P. Eisenmenger Collective Technologies Email: jpe@colltech.com A Pencom Company Pager: 1-800-SKY-8888/279-0239 http://www.colltech.com From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 18 11:17:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA23568 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Mar 1998 11:17:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from macsch.com (draco.macsch.com [192.73.8.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA23559 for ; Wed, 18 Mar 1998 11:17:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from [161.34.1.42] by macsch.com (5.61/MSC-960531) id AA17302; Wed, 18 Mar 98 11:13:33 -0800 Received: from canismajor.is.macsch.com by bootes.is.macsch.com (4.1/MSCbootes.950222) id AA07439; Wed, 18 Mar 98 11:15:22 PST Received: by canismajor.is.macsch.com (4.1/MSC.TW.SunOS.1.02) id AA12692; Wed, 18 Mar 98 11:13:50 PST From: "Todd Williams" Message-Id: <9803181113.ZM12690@canismajor.is.macsch.com> Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 11:13:50 -0800 In-Reply-To: Dwight Petersen <2Petersens@compuserve.com> "swap" (Mar 17, 21:50) References: <199803172150_MC2-3721-5FA9@compuserve.com> X-Face: "FF3Li6k/|j$-t~Ut~7Tcrqj{YOlB#Kqid0f^}/Hq>yDnjmBRW5bJ\@EwsJ(jeU]B@?t6u'w:Z"C{8$}6kT+!sX[m.HgO{xR7q3>G-_*XwN_twn-d4&S!^or?@79qDeoMX_CS)_/lGAq9_P{9SFa5"!uAO(!,!$:{bQ^4|OAb-q{Pb'tkE^oRm_Wuecl0m4!_USKsHC/#$b_L-*$^T-Vy+_2io@[b?|Ls!_KSFXy!3bbJNxuJqm8$tQ&)090BBF-tx; ^{)[*W,Q\>vEva?wi0FpG/]oa^*& X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 15feb95) To: Dwight Petersen <2Petersens@compuserve.com>, usenix Subject: Re: swap Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Mar 17, 21:50, Dwight Petersen wrote: > > We have a SunOS 4.1.3 system ...that has no entry for swap in /etc/fstab. > ...the machine does find swap at sd0b regardless of whether there is an > entry in fstab. > The swap entry in fstab is just for superstitious believers in the > unlikely? Right? Or is there a reason to put swap in fstab? (forgive me if this already got answered, I had a little problem this morning and I suspect I lost some email.) I suspect: 1. It may be required on some (older) systems, especially if the kernel doesn't have a default location hard-coded. 2. It IS required for any non-default swap partitions, and therefore it's a good idea for consistency's sake. 3. For anyone looking at fstab, it's a reminder of what's in sd0b. Call it "documentation". I seem to remember the original, pure BSD kernel having a "generic" kernel (which means it will try to boot and swap on any available device). If you look in /usr/sys/sun/swapgeneric.c on your SunOS box, you will the code that chooses 0b as the default swap area, and 0a as the default root. (Line 719 in the 4.1.4 system I have handy) P.S. The '-' before the arguments to tar is another example of something that is optional on most UNIX systems, but I bet they teach you to use it in class. -Todd From sage-members-owner Wed Mar 18 12:23:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA27284 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 18 Mar 1998 12:23:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA27266 for ; Wed, 18 Mar 1998 12:23:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA19830; Wed, 18 Mar 1998 15:20:17 -0500 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199803182020.PAA19830@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: swap To: 2Petersens@compuserve.com (Dwight Petersen) Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 15:20:17 -0500 (EST) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199803172150_MC2-3721-5FA9@compuserve.com> from "Dwight Petersen" at Mar 17, 98 09:50:32 pm Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > history of being right often enough to be often rather valued as an > employee, > but nevertheless capable of really boneheaded mistakes. ... How amazing. You're human. ;-) As I tell my wife, we may have to take away your perfect pin for a few minutes or so. ;-) ;-) [I recognize the feelings, of course. Don't we all?] > ... In which, case I'll be pleased that the > certification program is not in place so that I might be decertified or > even > officially shunned ;>) Oooh, there's an aspect of certification that nobody's brought up yet! Dwight, are you going to write the specs for how one gets Officially Decertified, and the precise degree of bone-headedness required to be Offishully Cianed? I mean Officially Shunned ... Oh dear, have I crossed the line already? [Here in the DC SAGE chapter, several people objected to filling the mailing list with Stupid Luser stories [now don't start!], so several people started telling Stupid Me stories on themselves. There are always enough of those to go around!] > Here's the question: ... > ... I am now half convinced that putting a swap entry in the /etc/fstab > is > just convention. ... But an important one [see below]. > When I was courting my wife she told me that men had one less rib that > women, > because God took a rib from a man and made women. ... Yes, true. ;-) > .. The swap entry in fstab is just > for > superstitious believers in the unlikely? Right? Or is there a reason to > put > swap in the fstab? Other than that they told me to do it in class. Ah, he finally put it in the form of a question! But thanks for all of the background. Even before it was possible to dynamically add swap partitions and files to a running system [on yours, cf. swapon(8)], it was a good idea to enter the compiled-in swap partition or partitions to the /etc/fstab or /etc/checklist or whatever. The reason was human, rather than technical. It was to let people checking /etc/fstab for unused file systems to use, know that this partition was in use. In other words, Dwight has his system all set up perfectly, and Joe comes along and gets the su password and wants to create a new file system to collect alt.dwight newsgroups ... how was he to know that swap was on /dev/sd0b? So we put it in /etc/fstab. As you say, by convention. You definitely do need to insert other swap partitions and/or files into /etc/fstab, so that they can be dynamically added by swapon(8) at boot time. Intelligent implementations of this ignore partitions that are already compiled in or added. Hope this helps. Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Thu Apr 2 09:37:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA03180 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 2 Apr 1998 09:37:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA03171 for ; Thu, 2 Apr 1998 09:37:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (cmh@localhost) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id LAA10675 for ; Thu, 2 Apr 1998 11:34:25 -0600 (CST) X-Authentication-Warning: psasolar.private.psa.pencom.com: cmh owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 11:34:25 -0600 (CST) From: "Carolyn M. Hennings" X-Sender: cmh@psasolar To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: chigrp April Meeting Announcement (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Carolyn M. Hennings cmh@colltech.com Collective Technologies http://www.colltech.com a pencom company ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 08:50:34 -0600 (CST) From: Dan Szkola To: chicago-sagelocal@usenix.ORG Subject: April Meeting Announcement Please join us at our next meeting: Integrating NT and Unix at Argonne National Lab Remy Evard, Argonne National Laboratory April 9, 1998 7:00 - 9:00 pm Illinois Institute of Technology - Rice Campus Abstract The Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory has a complex computing environment which, until recently, was built almost entirely of UNIX-based computers. During the last several years, the environment has grown to include a large number of Windows NT machines. In this talk, Remy Evard will discuss this growth of Windows NT at Argonne: the motivation for it, how the NT machines have been integrated in the computing environment, how they have changed it, and the difficulties that UNIX users face when trying to survive in the NT world. He will compare the systems administration aspects of UNIX and NT, and share the tools and strategies that have been useful for his group. About the Speaker Remy Evard is the Manager of Advanced Computing and Networks in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. He and his group of system administrators are responsible for a computing environment that includes everything from supercomputers to laptops. Evard is the author of numerous Usenix and LISA papers, and is a co-chair chigrp: Who We Are The System Administrator's Guild, SAGE, is a special technical group of the Usenix Association. SAGE is made up of Unix and NT professionals focusing on the management of these systems and networks. chigrp is a local organization serving the Chicagoland area. Our purpose is to bring together professionals managing Unix and NT systems in order to share knowledge and build fellowship. Our goals are to: -conduct monthly meetings with speakers presenting information on valuable systems management topics -provide an friendly, sociable environment that encourages the exchange of information Who Should Join? Anyone who administers Unix or NT systems. Directions 201 East Loop Road Wheaton, Illinois 60187-8489 630.682.6000 >From the North: Take Naperville Road south from Roosevelt Road to East Loop Road. Turn left at the traffic light on East Loop Road. The road curves past a large apartment complex on your right. The campus is on your left about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the South: Take Naperville Road north from the Naperville-Lisle area. Cross Butterfield Road and pass the shopping center at the corner of Naperville and Butterfield roads. Turn right at the traffic light at East Loop Road and proceed past a large apartment complex on your left and a shopping center on your right. The campus is on your left, about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the East and West: Take the East-West Tollway (I-88) and exit northbound at Naperville Road and follow the directions above. If coming from the North-South Tollway (I-355), exit westbound at Butterfield Road and proceed to East Loop Road. Make a right turn at East Loop Road; the campus is on your right after about about a block. --- Dan Szkola EMail: dszkola@niu.edu Systems Programmer Northern Illinois University When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, "Did you sleep good?" I said, "No, I made a few mistakes." -- Steven Wright From sage-members-owner Tue Apr 7 11:17:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA04454 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 7 Apr 1998 11:17:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail1.its.rpi.edu (root@mail1.its.rpi.edu [128.113.100.7]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA04442 for ; Tue, 7 Apr 1998 11:17:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rpi.edu (finkej@ts.its.rpi.edu [128.113.24.31]) by mail1.its.rpi.edu (8.8.8/8.8.6) with ESMTP id OAA41118; Tue, 7 Apr 1998 14:14:18 -0400 Message-Id: <199804071814.OAA41118@mail1.its.rpi.edu> X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.5 12/11/95 To: sage-members@usenix.org cc: finkej@rpi.edu Subject: Upstate New York Systems Administrator Guild x-uri: http://www.rpi.edu/~finkej Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 18:14:17 GMT From: Jon Finke Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Sorry to hit the whole list, but this is a one time (at least for this year) announcement.... We are starting an Upstate New York Systems Administrators Guild, at present centered around the New York Capital District (Albany, Schenectady and Troy), but certainly open to anyone will to drive to Troy (RPI) for meetings! See http://www.rpi.edu/~finkej/UNYSAG.html for more info. Jon Finke jfinke@rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer http://www.rpi.edu/~finkej Server Support Services 518 276 8185 (voice) | 518 276 2809 (fax) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th Street, Troy NY, 12180 From sage-members-owner Tue Apr 7 20:20:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA00983 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 7 Apr 1998 20:20:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from agnostic.ebb.org (bkuhn@agnostic.ebb.org [206.112.195.41]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA00974; Tue, 7 Apr 1998 20:20:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from bkuhn@localhost) by agnostic.ebb.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA25749; Tue, 7 Apr 1998 23:19:52 -0400 Message-ID: <19980407231952.54480@ebb.org> Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 23:19:52 -0400 From: "Bradley M. Kuhn" To: sage-announce@usenix.org Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: A local SAGE in the Cincinnati, OH, USA area Reply-To: cinti-sage@ebb.org Mail-Followup-To: sage-announce@usenix.org, sage-members@usenix.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1i Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I apologize for sending this sage-members and sage-announce, but it seems that these mailing list would have more reach than the sage-locals list has. To All Interested Parties: There is an effort underway to start a local SAGE (System Administrator's Guild) for the greater Cincinnati, OH, USA area. A small web page is up at http://www.ebb.org/cinti-sage In addition, a mailing list (cinti-sage@ebb.org) has been created. You can subscribe by sending a message with the contents "subscribe" to cinti-sage-request@ebb.org All system administrators who live in work in the greater Cincinnati, OH and/or Northern Kentucky area are encouraged to join the mailing list and begin discussions about getting the group started. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to seeing you on the list. -- - bkuhn@ebb.org - Bradley M. Kuhn - bkuhn@acm.org - http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn PGP RSA KEYIDs: 4712130D (bkuhnLessSecure) / AA746581 (bkuhnMaster) Full public keys at http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/pgp From sage-members-owner Fri Apr 10 09:42:56 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA21110 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Apr 1998 09:42:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from epx.cis.umn.edu (root@epx.cis.umn.edu [128.101.83.4]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA21100 for ; Fri, 10 Apr 1998 09:42:48 -0700 (PDT) From: djb@epx.cis.umn.edu Received: by epx.cis.umn.edu; Fri, 10 Apr 98 11:39:35 -0500 Message-Id: <001352e4b46019581@epx.cis.umn.edu> Date: Fri, 10 Apr 98 11:39:35 -0500 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: TCSA meeting April 16 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The Twin Cities System Administrators (TCSA) group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to system and network administrators in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The meetings are free and open to the public. Check out our web site at http://www.tcsa.org/ TCSA meetings are on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. Next Meeting: Topic: Virtual Private Networks Speaker: Michael Bauer, EXi Corporation Date/Time: April 16, 1998 7:00 pm Location: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul campus Synopsis: VPN: Virtual Private Networks or Vulnerable, Problematic Nuisances? A presentation by Michael Bauer, Network Engineer, EXi Corporation Like many emerging networking technologies, hype about Virtual Private Networking ("VPN") abounds. Manufacturers of VPN products promise huge savings by allowing companies to eliminate "costly WAN links" with "virtually free" Internet connections. Exactly what constitutes a Virtual Private Network, however, is still a matter of some debate. How can such a poorly-defined technology promise such substantial cost benefits? This presentation will provide an overview of VPN: what it is, what it's useful for, and why you probably shouldn't cancel your long-haul contracts just yet. Speaker: Michael Bauer is a Network Engineer (consultant) at EXi Corp., specializing in network security, firewall administration, and network design. He received a Master of Science Degree in Network Architecture & Design from St. Cloud State University in 1997, and has been a network engineer since 1995. He is a member of the Computer Security Institute, and holds certifications as a Check Point Security Administrator (CCSA) and Check Point Security Engineer (CCSE). Other professional interests include cryptography, remote access, network integration, and UNIX and Windows NT system administration. We will meet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (southwest corner of Summit and Cretin) in building BEC (Brady Educational Center) room 111. Tentative Meeting Schedule May 21, 1998: Network Appliances June 18, 1998: Backups? Directions to the University of St. Thomas (Summit & Cretin): - From East I-94: Going east on I-94, take the Cretin-Vandalia exit. Go right (south) about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From West I-94: Coming west on I-94, exit at Cretin-Vandalia. Go left (south) on Cretin about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From the south on I-35E: Take 35E north to the Randolph Avenue exit. Make a left on Randolph (crossing over 35E) and follow it about two miles to Cretin Avenue. Turn right onto Cretin and go about 1.5 miles to Summit Avenue. Turn left into St. Thomas just before Summit. - Parking: Drive to the large parking area straight ahead. The BEC building is near Goodrich Ave (the street to the south or left) from the large parking area. Park in the large parking area and go to BEC room 111 to get a visitor parking permit for your car. - Web maps are at: Map to St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/dirst.html Map of St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/stmap.html On the Map of the St. Paul Campus, BEC is building 31. For more information on TCSA, check out our web site: http://www.tcsa.org/ To subscribe to the TCSA mailing list (from a Unix system): echo "subscribe tcsa" | mailx majordomo@tcsa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@tcsa.org or contact: Dave Bianchi 612-644-7843 -- Dave Bianchi djb@colltech.com Work: 612-957-4532 Collective Technologies djb@epx.cis.umn.edu FAX: 612-957-4195 A Pencom Company Pager: 612-818-7162 From sage-members-owner Mon Apr 13 08:48:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA06026 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 08:48:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA06009 for ; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 08:48:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id JAA16455 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:18:34 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from lamb.sas.com (root@lamb.sas.com [192.35.83.8]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA16451; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:18:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mozart (mozart.unx.sas.com [192.58.184.8]) by lamb.sas.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id JAA25135; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:21:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ntmail04.pc.sas.com by mozart (5.65c/SAS/Domains/5-6-90) id AA09222; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:21:11 -0400 Received: by ntmail04.pc.sas.com with Internet Mail Service (5.0.1460.8) id ; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:21:08 -0400 Message-Id: From: Heather Flanagan To: "'ncsa-announce@nando.net'" Cc: "'ncsa-discussion@nando.net'" Subject: North Carolina System Administrators (NC*SA) meeting - April 13, 1998 **TODAY!** Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 09:21:01 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1460.8) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators organization (NC*SA) will be Monday, April 13, 1998, at 6pm. Details about the meeting and directions are provided in this note. We hope to see you there! Building Scalable Web Sites System Administrators Interest Group Monday, April 13, 1998 Research Triangle Institute Research Triangle Park, NC 6PM - General Session Abstract: One of the most prevalent standards for network and systems management is the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). In combination with data structures called Management Information Bases (MIBs), SNMP provides a powerful, yet simple way to collect important information from devices connected to a network. Discussed will be the SNMP protocol, the MIB-II standard, and how certain products available on the market take advantage of this protocol to help manage enterprise networks and systems. Bio: Tarus Balog has been involved with communications for over ten years, working for such companies as Northern Telecom and Harris. Currently, he is employed with Strategic Technologies in Cary, NC, as a Network and Systems Management Architect. ============================== Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic of the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact: Heather Flanagan SAS Institute Inc. SAS Campus Drive Cary, NC 27513 (919) 677-8000 x5522 heflan@unx.sas.com ============================== For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list has been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system administrators from the state of North Carolina. Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": mail majordomo@nando.net Subject: subscribe ncsa-discussion After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info file for our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving other files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation material from past technical programs are available for retrieval via Majordomo!!) ============================== Directions to Research Triangle Institute (http://www.rti.org/images/campus.gif) From I-40 west of RTP (e.g. Chapel Hill): Get onto I-40 heading east. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Stay in right lane. Shift right as soon as possible after merging with traffic coming off I-40 westbound. Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From I-40 east of RTP (e.g. Raleigh): Get onto I-40 heading west. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Shift to rightmost lane as soon as possible Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From north of RTP (e.g. Durham): Get onto NC-147 - Durham Freeway - south. Exit at the Cornwallis Road exit. At the top of the exit, turn left to cross over the bridge. After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Heather Flanagan Associate Systems Programmer heflan@unx.sas.com SAS Institute (919)677-8000 x5522 From sage-members-owner Mon Apr 13 11:52:17 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA16063 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:52:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rhino.ark.gnac.net (rhino.ark.gnac.net [198.151.248.82]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA16054 for ; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:52:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from baylisa@localhost) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) id LAA03379 for blw@baylisa.org; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:49:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) with ESMTP id LAA03374; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:48:58 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id LAA06330; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:48:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dhcp-225.main.gnac.com(192.168.1.225) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma006311; Mon, 13 Apr 98 11:48:00 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.main.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id LAA01238; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:47:58 -0700 Message-Id: <199804131847.LAA01238@localhost.main.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: Samba futures To: baylisa@baylisa.org, blw@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org, rem-conf@es.net Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:47:58 -0700 (PDT) Content-Type: text X-Loop: baylisa@gnac.com Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. We meet at Cisco Systems in San Jose, California. Directions can be found on our web page at http://www.baylisa.org/events/cisco.html The meetings are also broadcast via MBONE. Schedule -------- Thursday, 16 April, 1998: Samba Futures, Jeremy Alison Samba is arguably the most successful UNIX SMB server software product in use today. Currently, Samba has implemented nearly all of the public SMB specifications Microsoft has made publicly available. Samba is now going where no publicly available code has gone before, in attempting to implement the non-published parts of Microsoft's Windows NT Domain controller protocols. In this talk I will cover the areas of SMB that Samba currently implements, and the difficulties encountered in implementing such a foreign protocol on UNIX, and then will attempt to give an idea of where Samba will be going in the next year or so of coding efforts. The ultimate aim is to be able to fully support Microsoft Windows NT servers and clients without needing to implement a Domain Controller purchased from Microsoft, and to use as much as possible of an existing UNIX authentication infrastructure. The talk will also cover Microsoft's attempts to move the protocol forward with their NT5 code, and how the Samba developers are trying to cope with a rapidly changing target. [Schedule subject to change] For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Mon Apr 13 11:52:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA16045 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:52:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (firewall-user@yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA16005 for ; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:52:04 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id LAA06330; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:48:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dhcp-225.main.gnac.com(192.168.1.225) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma006311; Mon, 13 Apr 98 11:48:00 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.main.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id LAA01238; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:47:58 -0700 Message-Id: <199804131847.LAA01238@localhost.main.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: Samba futures To: baylisa@baylisa.org, blw@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org, rem-conf@es.net Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:47:58 -0700 (PDT) Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. We meet at Cisco Systems in San Jose, California. Directions can be found on our web page at http://www.baylisa.org/events/cisco.html The meetings are also broadcast via MBONE. Schedule -------- Thursday, 16 April, 1998: Samba Futures, Jeremy Alison Samba is arguably the most successful UNIX SMB server software product in use today. Currently, Samba has implemented nearly all of the public SMB specifications Microsoft has made publicly available. Samba is now going where no publicly available code has gone before, in attempting to implement the non-published parts of Microsoft's Windows NT Domain controller protocols. In this talk I will cover the areas of SMB that Samba currently implements, and the difficulties encountered in implementing such a foreign protocol on UNIX, and then will attempt to give an idea of where Samba will be going in the next year or so of coding efforts. The ultimate aim is to be able to fully support Microsoft Windows NT servers and clients without needing to implement a Domain Controller purchased from Microsoft, and to use as much as possible of an existing UNIX authentication infrastructure. The talk will also cover Microsoft's attempts to move the protocol forward with their NT5 code, and how the Samba developers are trying to cope with a rapidly changing target. [Schedule subject to change] For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Mon Apr 13 15:00:45 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA26986 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 15:00:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from luna.bearnet.com (1005@luna.bearnet.com [207.55.144.20]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id PAA26967 for ; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 15:00:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 11779 invoked from network); 13 Apr 1998 21:57:31 -0000 Received: from mars.bearnet.com (HELO mars) (207.55.144.30) by luna.bearnet.com with SMTP; 13 Apr 1998 21:57:31 -0000 Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19980413165720.039f7600@207.55.144.20> X-Sender: billw@207.55.144.20 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32) Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 16:57:20 -0500 To: Dwight Petersen <2Petersens@compuserve.com>, usenix From: Bill Weinman Subject: Re: swap In-Reply-To: <199803172150_MC2-3721-5FA9@compuserve.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 09:50 PM 3/17/98 -0500, Dwight Petersen spake: >It would probably be more logical to post this to the sun-managers list, >but >everyone here is on it, As my Aunt Rose used to say, "What am I? Chopped Liver?" --Bill (A Linux user who doesn't even *want* a Sun) +-- Bill Weinman is the author of ---+ several books and is co-founder of WebMonster(tm) Networks Support CAUCE: From sage-members-owner Thu Apr 16 11:44:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA20107 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:44:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hank.questra.com (hank.questra.com [208.133.210.22]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA20087 for ; Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:44:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mrfreeze.roc.questra.com.questra.com (mrfreeze.questra.com [208.133.210.73]) by hank.questra.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA01217 for ; Thu, 16 Apr 1998 14:38:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: by mrfreeze.roc.questra.com.questra.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id OAA22333; Thu, 16 Apr 1998 14:41:35 -0400 Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 14:41:35 -0400 From: stylock@questra.com (Steve Tylock) Message-Id: <199804161841.OAA22333@mrfreeze.roc.questra.com.questra.com> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Rochester Area System Administrators' Guild Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk (sorry for the bandwidth, but this appears to be the season for new locals...-) sage(2)n: one who is distinguished for wisdom [Merriam Webster] SAGE: The System Administrators' Guild _E_ (who would want to be part of "SAG"?-) http://www.usenix.org/sage/ This is a call for an initial meeting to create a Rochester area local SAGE group. Questra Consulting has offered space, food and entertainment... Date: Thursday, May 14th Time: 7:30 PM Location: Questra Consulting, 300 Linden Oaks, Suite 100, Large Conference Room. (location will change if more than 30 are expected, all those RSVP-ed will be notified if this happens) For additional details about location, agenda, and entertainment(!) consult - http://www.questra.com/public/sage/AnySAGE.htm steve tylock@questra.com Senior Systems Architect (716) 381-0260 From sage-members-owner Mon Apr 20 10:35:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA17301 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 20 Apr 1998 10:35:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA17292 for ; Mon, 20 Apr 1998 10:35:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id LAA08232 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Mon, 20 Apr 1998 11:22:20 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from ns.networks.com (ns.networks.com [207.100.16.10]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA08210 for ; Mon, 20 Apr 1998 11:22:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dns.networks.com (ncs [192.168.1.2]) by ns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id LAA09129 for ; Mon, 20 Apr 1998 11:25:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from networks.com (stan.networks.com [192.168.1.64]) by dns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id LAA25479 for ; Mon, 20 Apr 1998 11:25:03 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <353B68D8.1D7386FF@networks.com> Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 11:25:12 -0400 From: stan briggs Organization: network computing solutions, inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ncsa-announce@nando.net Subject: nc*sa social gathering at network computing solutions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ### nc*sa social gathering at network computing solutions. please reply to stan@networks.com as soon as possible if you even think that you are going to attend. this was supposed to have been announced at the monday (4/13/98 meeting). oops greetings all, NCS periodically holds social gatherings for it's employees and selected invitees. these social gatherings are held quarterly on friday afternoons (starting at approx. 4pm and continuing until the food and drinks are expended). this event is a north carolina style pig-picking. this means that the pig will be cooked on-site with lots of side fixin's (slaw, bbq beans, hush puppies, etc), sweet ice tea,soft drinks, and, of course, beer. there is also chicken on the grill for those that don't care for pig. vegetarians are sol for a main course, though the beans, slaw, and hushpuppies are terribly good. the only thing that people need to bring are themselves. if you play an instrument you are invited to bring it! (musical prowess is not a prerequisite but certainly appreciated.) frisbees, nerf balls, etc are welcome, too. afterall this is a social gathering. we are usually finished by 7 or 8. it's a social but not an all-nighter. for our event to be held on friday april 24, 1998 we would like to invite the nc*sa membership to participate. we offer this in the spirit of nc*sa in that this is an opportunity for nc*sa members to socialize outside of the once a month technical presentations. we have these gatherings rain or shine. there is plenty of space in our offices if it were to happen to rain. significant others are definitely welcome. kids generally do not enjoy themselves at these gatherings. (we have separate family gatherings.) co-workers are okay, too. there will be ncs employees in attendance , however, this is NOT an ncs sales event. it's a reward for our employees and invitees. in this case it's a contribution that we will make to the nc*sa membership. here is a map. http://www.mapblast.com/yt.hm?FAM=mapblast&CMD=GEO&SEC=blast&IC=0%3A0%3A8&IC%3A=ncs+world+headquarters&AD2=3203+woman%27s+club+drive&AD3=raleigh%2C+nc&AD4=USA here are directions. from 440 at the glenwood avenue exit: exit onto glenwood avenue east (headed towards raleigh downtown). the first road on the left is woman's club drive. turn onto woman's club drive. we are the first building on the left. we'll be in the back of the building. (tough directions, huh?) ### -- stan b. briggs; sr. systems engineer Network Computing Solutions, Inc; www.networks.com 919/510-6970x14; Fax: 919/510-6971 From sage-members-owner Thu Apr 23 15:59:04 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA25680 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 23 Apr 1998 15:59:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA25650 for ; Thu, 23 Apr 1998 15:58:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id RAA19758 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Thu, 23 Apr 1998 17:13:18 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from ns.networks.com (ns.networks.com [207.100.16.10]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA19754 for ; Thu, 23 Apr 1998 17:13:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dns.networks.com (ncs [192.168.1.2]) by ns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id RAA14282 for ; Thu, 23 Apr 1998 17:10:22 -0400 (EDT) Received: from networks.com (stan.networks.com [192.168.1.64]) by dns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id RAA09616 for ; Thu, 23 Apr 1998 17:09:48 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <353FAE2E.6BB8C0F1@networks.com> Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 17:10:07 -0400 From: stan briggs Organization: network computing solutions, inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ncsa-announce@nando.net Subject: nc*sa social at network computing solutions Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------7960016D8FEB3639CB9ABAC9" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------7960016D8FEB3639CB9ABAC9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit greetings again, just another quick note to get the attached announcement out. if anyone has not emailed me please do. if you do not email me do not let that stop you from stopping by. see all youse guys then! we're looking forward to a good time. stan -- stan b. briggs; sr. systems engineer Network Computing Solutions, Inc; www.networks.com 919/510-6970x14; Fax: 919/510-6971 --------------7960016D8FEB3639CB9ABAC9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; name="980424.txt" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline; filename="980424.txt" ### nc*sa social gathering at network computing solutions. please reply to stan@networks.com as soon as possible if you even think t= hat you are going to attend. this was supposed to have been announced at the monday (4/13/98 meeting).= oops greetings all, NCS periodically holds social gatherings for it's employees and selected = invitees. these social gatherings are held quarterly on friday afternoon= s (starting at approx. 4pm and continuing until the food and drinks are e= xpended). this event is a north carolina style pig-picking. this means th= at the pig will be cooked on-site with lots of side fixin's (slaw, bbq be= ans, hush puppies, etc), sweet ice tea,soft drinks, and, of course, beer.= there is also chicken on the grill for those that don't care for pig. v= egetarians are sol for a main course, though the beans, slaw, and hushpup= pies are terribly good. the only thing that people need to bring are them= selves. if you play an instrument you are invited to bring it! (musical = prowess is not a prerequisite but certainly appreciated.) frisbees, nerf = balls, etc are welcome, too. afterall this is a social gathering. we are= usually finished by 7 or 8. it's a social but not an all-nighter. for our event to be held on friday april 24, 1998 we would like to invite= the nc*sa membership to participate. we offer this in the spirit of nc*s= a in that this is an opportunity for nc*sa members to socialize outside o= f the once a month technical presentations. we have these gatherings rain= or shine. there is plenty of space in our offices if it were to happen t= o rain. significant others are definitely welcome. kids generally do not = enjoy themselves at these gatherings. (we have separate family gatherings= =2E) co-workers are okay, too. there will be ncs employees in attendance , however, t= his is NOT an ncs sales event. it's a reward for our employees and invite= es. in this case it's a contribution that we will make to the nc*sa membe= rship. here is a map. http://www.mapblast.com/yt.hm?FAM=3Dmapblast&CMD=3DGEO&SEC=3Dblast&IC=3D0= %3A0%3A8&IC%3A=3Dncs+world+headquarters&AD2=3D3203+woman%27s+club+drive&A= D3=3Draleigh%2C+nc&AD4=3DUSA here are directions. from 440 at the glenwood avenue exit: exit onto glenwood avenue east (hea= ded towards raleigh downtown). the first road on the left is woman's club= drive. turn onto woman's club drive. we are the first building on the l= eft. we'll be in the back of the building. (tough directions, huh?) ### --------------7960016D8FEB3639CB9ABAC9-- From sage-members-owner Fri Apr 24 13:34:59 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA00488 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:34:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA00472 for ; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:34:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA20139 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:40:40 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from ns.networks.com (ns.networks.com [207.100.16.10]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA20134 for ; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:40:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dns.networks.com (ncs [192.168.1.2]) by ns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id NAA01177 for ; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:37:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from networks.com (stan.networks.com [192.168.1.64]) by dns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id NAA12740 for ; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:36:51 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3540CDB8.38BF7895@networks.com> Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 13:36:56 -0400 From: stan briggs Organization: network computing solutions, inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ncsa-announce@nando.net Subject: NC*SA Social Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------E919CD63F10471148984D95B" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk --------------E919CD63F10471148984D95B Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just a quick reminder that the get together is starting in 2.5 hours. Please come on by and grab some food & drink and good camaraderie. -- stan b. briggs; sr. systems engineer Network Computing Solutions, Inc; www.networks.com 919/510-6970x14; Fax: 919/510-6971 ### nc*sa social gathering at network computing solutions. please reply to stan@networks.com as soon as possible if you even think that you are going to attend. this was supposed to have been announced at the monday (4/13/98 meeting). oops greetings all, NCS periodically holds social gatherings for it's employees and selected invitees. these social gatherings are held quarterly on friday afternoons (starting at approx. 4pm and continuing until the food and drinks are expended). this event is a north carolina style pig-picking. this means that the pig will be cooked on-site with lots of side fixin's (slaw, bbq beans, hush puppies, etc), sweet ice tea,soft drinks, and, of course, beer. there is also chicken on the grill for those that don't care for pig. vegetarians are sol for a main course, though the beans, slaw, and hushpuppies are terribly good. the only thing that people need to bring are themselves. if you play an instrument you are invited to bring it! (musical prowess is not a prerequisite but certainly appreciated.) frisbees, nerf balls, etc are welcome, too. afterall this is a social gathering. we are usually finished by 7 or 8. it's a social but not an all-nighter. for our event to be held on friday april 24, 1998 we would like to invite the nc*sa membership to participate. we offer this in the spirit of nc*sa in that this is an opportunity for nc*sa members to socialize outside of the once a month technical presentations. we have these gatherings rain or shine. there is plenty of space in our offices if it were to happen to rain. significant others are definitely welcome. kids generally do not enjoy themselves at these gatherings. (we have separate family gatherings.) co-workers are okay, too. there will be ncs employees in attendance , however, this is NOT an ncs sales event. it's a reward for our employees and invitees. in this case it's a contribution that we will make to the nc*sa membership. here is a map. http://www.mapblast.com/yt.hm?FAM=mapblast&CMD=GEO&SEC=blast&IC=0%3A0%3A8&IC%3A=ncs+world+headquarters&AD2=3203+woman%27s+club+drive&AD3=raleigh%2C+nc&AD4=USA here are directions. from 440 at the glenwood avenue exit: exit onto glenwood avenue east (headed towards raleigh downtown). the first road on the left is woman's club drive. turn onto woman's club drive. we are the first building on the left. we'll be in the back of the building. (tough directions, huh?) ### --------------E919CD63F10471148984D95B Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just a quick reminder that the get together is starting in 2.5 hours.  Please come on by and grab some food & drink and good camaraderie.

--
stan b. briggs; sr. systems engineer
Network Computing Solutions, Inc; www.networks.com
919/510-6970x14; Fax: 919/510-6971
 

###
nc*sa social gathering at network computing solutions.

please reply to stan@networks.com as soon as possible if you even think that you are going
to attend.

this was supposed to have been announced at the monday (4/13/98 meeting).  oops

greetings all,
NCS periodically holds social gatherings for it's employees and selected invitees.  these
social gatherings are held quarterly on friday afternoons (starting at approx. 4pm and
continuing until the food and drinks are expended). this event is a north carolina style
pig-picking. this means that the pig will be cooked on-site with lots of side fixin's
(slaw, bbq beans, hush puppies, etc), sweet ice tea,soft drinks, and, of course, beer.
there is also chicken on the grill for those that don't care for pig.  vegetarians are sol
for a main course, though the beans, slaw, and hushpuppies are terribly good. the only
thing that people need to bring are themselves.  if you play an instrument you are invited
to bring it! (musical prowess is not a prerequisite but certainly appreciated.) frisbees,
nerf balls, etc are welcome, too.  afterall this is a social gathering. we are usually
finished by 7 or 8. it's a social but not an all-nighter.

for our event to be held on friday april 24, 1998 we would like to invite the nc*sa
membership to participate. we offer this in the spirit of nc*sa in that this is an
opportunity for nc*sa members to socialize outside of the once a month technical
presentations. we have these gatherings rain or shine. there is plenty of space in our
offices if it were to happen to rain. significant others are definitely welcome. kids
generally do not enjoy themselves at these gatherings. (we have separate family
gatherings.) co-workers are okay, too.

<warning>there will be ncs employees in attendance </warning>, however, this is NOT an ncs
sales event. it's a reward for our employees and invitees. in this case it's a
contribution that we will make to the nc*sa membership.
here is a map.

http://www.mapblast.com/yt.hm?FAM=mapblast&CMD=GEO&SEC=blast&IC=0%3A0%3A8&IC%3A=ncs+world+headquarters&AD2=3203+woman%27s+club+drive&AD3=raleigh%2C+nc&AD4=USA

here are directions.
from 440 at the glenwood avenue exit: exit onto glenwood avenue east (headed towards
raleigh downtown). the first road on the left is woman's club drive.  turn onto woman's
club drive. we are the first building on the left. we'll be in the back of the building.
(tough directions, huh?)
### --------------E919CD63F10471148984D95B-- From sage-members-owner Fri Apr 24 16:30:34 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA10221 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 16:30:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from diane@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA10187 for sage-members@usenix.org; Fri, 24 Apr 1998 16:30:26 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 16:30:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Diane DeMartini Message-Id: <199804242330.QAA10187@usenix.ORG> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Short Topics Series RFP Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk SAGE - Request for Proposal for Short Topics Series SAGE is seeking proposals from authors for booklets to be published in the series "Short Topics in System Administration". From time to time SAGE will solicit proposals for specific topics. However, SAGE is always interested in proposals covering any topic of general interest to the systems administration community. A proposal needs to contain the following information: 1. Working Title 2. Statement of Purpose: one or two paragraphs describing the purpose of the booklet 3. Draft outline 4. Name and contact information for all authors 5. Curriculum vitae for all authors 6. Representative writing sample not to exceed 500 words 7. Estimate of how long it will take to deliver the manuscript In cases where SAGE is soliciting proposals for a specific topic, the first two items will be provided as part of the solicitation. The length of the final booklet is expected to be between 40 and 100 typeset pages. Booklets are refereed and are subject to a technical review by qualified individuals in the field. The authors will not be expected to copyedit, design, typeset, or print the booklet. An agreement regarding copyright and compensation will be executed with USENIX upon approval and acceptance of a proposal by the SAGE Series Editor. Send proposals to the Short Topics Series Editor, William LeFebvre, at wnl@usenix.org. Proposals should be submitted in one of the following forms: ASCII text, html, postscript, URL reference. About the Series Short Topics In System Administration is a series of booklets that SAGE publishes for the system administration community. They are intended to fill a void in the current information structure, presenting topics in thorough, refereed fashion, but staying small enough and flexible enough to grow with the community. These booklets will be "living documents" that are updated as needed. About SAGE The System Administrators` Guild is a Special Technical Group (STG) of the USENIX Association. It is organized to advance the status of computer system administration as a profession, establish standards of professional excellence and recognize those who attain them, develop guidelines for improving the technical and managerial capabilities of members of the profession, and promote activities that advance the state of the art or the community. See http://www.usenix.org and http://www.usenix.org/sage for further informaion about USENIX and SAGE. From sage-members-owner Mon May 4 16:16:15 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA27321 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 4 May 1998 16:16:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA27312 for ; Mon, 4 May 1998 16:16:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id RAA25111 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Mon, 4 May 1998 17:12:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from duke.cs.duke.edu (duke.cs.duke.edu [152.3.140.1]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA25105 for ; Mon, 4 May 1998 17:12:42 -0400 (EDT) Received: from vega.cs.duke.edu (vega.cs.duke.edu [152.3.140.193]) by duke.cs.duke.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA23127 for ; Mon, 4 May 1998 17:09:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (des@localhost) by vega.cs.duke.edu (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id RAA15518 for ; Mon, 4 May 1998 17:09:06 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: vega.cs.duke.edu: des owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 17:09:06 -0400 (EDT) From: "Daniel E. Singer" To: NC*SA Announcements Subject: NC*SA meeting pre-announcement Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This is a pre-announcement for the North Carolina System Administrators meeting to be held Monday, May 11, 1998 at RTI's Dreyfus Auditorium. The reason for this pre-announcement is that we want to encourage participation from any members attending the meeting. The topic of the presentation will be "Linux: From the SysAdmin Perspective", and will be given by Ernest Bowman-Cisneros of the Duke Physics Department. See below for a more detailed description. HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE: If you have a favorite PC UNIX or free UNIX, we invite you to say a few words in support of your OS at the meeting. This can be with or without visual aids or handouts, with or without preparation of any kind. Please tell us what you like about your PC UNIX, and why. Also, comparing various distributions of Linux would be of interest. We would also like to hear about commercial PC UNIX packages. I'm not sure if we want to hear about NT as UNIX, but, then, who am I to say? Ernest's talk: Linux: From the SysAdmin Perspective Linux, a freely available UNIX-like OS, has in recent years grown in popularity and has become prevalent in many universities and companies. The fact that Linux, like UNIX, comes in various flavors often makes deciding which one to install a diffcult choice. This dicussion will focus on those aspects of Linux that affect integration into an existing UNIX site, specifically looking at installation, systems software and services, filesystem layout, and some users programs. Bio: Ernest Bowman-Cisneros has been futzing with computers for over 15 years, having started out on the Commodore-64 and quickly dicovering UNIX while in college. He has been working as a UNIX SysAdmin for the last 8 years, doing work for the U.S. Geological Survey and Northern Arizona University. He is currently working for the Duke Physics Department, as the Senior System and Network Administrator. By the way, even if you don't have a favorite PC UNIX to talk about, please come and join us at the meeting! -Dan Daniel E. Singer, Systems Administrator Dept. of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham NC 27708 USA des@cs.duke.edu, www.cs.duke.edu/~des, (919)660-6577 From sage-members-owner Thu May 7 10:44:04 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA25355 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 7 May 1998 10:44:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA25296 for ; Thu, 7 May 1998 10:43:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id LAA27873 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Thu, 7 May 1998 11:46:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from duke.cs.duke.edu (duke.cs.duke.edu [152.3.140.1]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA27869 for ; Thu, 7 May 1998 11:46:27 -0400 (EDT) Received: from vega.cs.duke.edu (vega.cs.duke.edu [152.3.140.193]) by duke.cs.duke.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA27141 for ; Thu, 7 May 1998 11:42:50 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (des@localhost) by vega.cs.duke.edu (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id LAA20560 for ; Thu, 7 May 1998 11:42:50 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: vega.cs.duke.edu: des owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 11:42:50 -0400 (EDT) From: "Daniel E. Singer" Reply-To: "Daniel E. Singer" To: NC*SA Announcements Subject: NC*SA Meeting - Monday, May 11, 1998 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators organization (NC*SA) will be Monday, May 11th, 1998, at 6pm. Details about the meeting and directions are provided in this note. We hope to see you there! NC*SA General Meeting 6:00 p.m., Monday, May 11, 1998 Dreyfus Laboratory Research Triangle Institute Research Triangle Park, NC (directions below) Linux: From the SysAdmin Perspective -------------------------------------- Ernest Bowman-Cisneros Physics Department Duke University ebc@phy.duke.edu Abstract: Linux, a freely available UNIX-like OS, has in recent years grown in popularity and has become prevalent in many universities and companies. The fact that Linux, like UNIX, comes in various flavors often makes deciding which one to install a diffcult choice. This dicussion will focus on those aspects of Linux that affect integration into an existing UNIX site, specifically looking at installation, systems software and services, filesystem layout, and some users programs. Biography: Ernest Bowman-Cisneros has been futzing with computers for over 15 years, having started out on the Commodore-64 and quickly dicovering UNIX while in college. He has been working as a UNIX SysAdmin for the last 8 years, doing work for the U.S. Geological Survey and Northern Arizona University. He is currently working for the Duke Physics Department, as the Senior System and Network Administrator. Participation: We are also seeking additional participation from anyone attending this meeting. If you have a favorite PC UNIX or free UNIX, we invite you to say a few words in support of your OS at the meeting. This can be with or without visual aids or handouts, with or without preparation of any kind. Please tell us what you like about your PC UNIX, and why. Also, comparing various distributions of Linux would be of interest. We would also like to hear about commercial PC UNIX packages. ============================== Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic of the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact: Heather Flanagan SAS Institute Inc. SAS Campus Drive Cary, NC 27513 (919) 677-8000 x5522 heflan@unx.sas.com ============================== For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list has been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system administrators from the state of North Carolina. Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": mail majordomo@nando.net Subject: subscribe ncsa-discussion After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info file for our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving other files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation material from past technical programs are available for retrieval via Majordomo!!) To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to the same address, with the following line in the body: unsubscribe ncsa-discussion ============================== Directions to Research Triangle Institute (see also: http://www.rti.org/images/campus.gif) From I-40 west of RTP (e.g. Chapel Hill): Get onto I-40 heading east. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Stay in right lane. Shift right as soon as possible after merging with traffic coming off I-40 westbound. Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From I-40 east of RTP (e.g. Raleigh): Get onto I-40 heading west. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Shift to rightmost lane as soon as possible Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From north of RTP (e.g. Durham): Get onto NC-147 - Durham Freeway - south. Exit at the Cornwallis Road exit. At the top of the exit, turn left to cross over the bridge. After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. ============================== From sage-members-owner Fri May 8 05:00:28 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA12890 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 8 May 1998 05:00:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mhub2.tc.umn.edu (0@mhub2.tc.umn.edu [128.101.131.52]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id FAA12877 for ; Fri, 8 May 1998 05:00:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gold.tc.umn.edu by mhub2.tc.umn.edu; Fri, 8 May 98 06:57:18 -0500 Received: by gold.tc.umn.edu; Fri, 8 May 98 06:57:17 -0500 Message-Id: <3552f31d42ee002@gold.tc.umn.edu> Date: Fri, 8 May 98 06:57:17 -0500 From: David J Bianchi To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: TCSA meeting May 21 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The Twin Cities System Administrators (TCSA) group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to system and network administrators in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The meetings are free and open to the public. Check out our web site at http://www.tcsa.org/ TCSA meetings are on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. Next Meeting: Topic: The Age of the Appliance Speaker: Matt Ammentorp, Network Appliance Date/Time: May 21, 1998 7:00 pm Location: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul campus Synopsis: The Age of the Appliance A presentation by Matt Ammentorp, Network Appliance Network Appliance makes and sells high-performance data access servers known as filers. NetApp filers provide access to UNIX or PC data using NFS, CIFS or HTTP. We'll learn how Network Appliance products work and find out what's new from NetApp. We will meet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (southwest corner of Summit and Cretin) in building OSS (Science and Engineering Center) room 333. *** NOTE CHANGE OF MEETING LOCATION *** Tentative Meeting Schedule May 21, 1998: Network Appliances June 18, 1998: ATM Directions to the University of St. Thomas (Summit & Cretin): - From East I-94: Going east on I-94, take the Cretin-Vandalia exit. Go right (south) about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From West I-94: Coming west on I-94, exit at Cretin-Vandalia. Go left (south) on Cretin about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From the south on I-35E: Take 35E north to the Randolph Avenue exit. Make a left on Randolph (crossing over 35E) and follow it about two miles to Cretin Avenue. Turn right onto Cretin and go about 1.5 miles to Summit Avenue. Turn left into St. Thomas just before Summit. - Parking: Drive to the parking area straight ahead and to the right. The OSS building is the second building on your right as you enter St. Thomas. Park in any lot near the OSS building. Go to OSS room 333 to get a visitor parking permit for your car. - Web maps are at: Map to St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/dirst.html Map of St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/stmap.html On the Map of the St. Paul Campus, OSS is building 40. For more information on TCSA, check out our web site: http://www.tcsa.org/ To subscribe to the TCSA mailing list (from a Unix system): echo "subscribe tcsa" | mailx majordomo@tcsa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@tcsa.org or contact: Dave Bianchi 612-644-7843 -- Dave Bianchi djb@colltech.com Work: 612-957-4532 Collective Technologies djb@tc.umn.edu FAX: 612-957-4195 A Pencom Company Pager: 612-818-7162 From sage-members-owner Mon May 11 09:33:13 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA05113 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 11 May 1998 09:33:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA05102 for ; Mon, 11 May 1998 09:33:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id KAA23792 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Mon, 11 May 1998 10:36:58 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from ns.networks.com (ns.networks.com [207.100.16.10]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA23787 for ; Mon, 11 May 1998 10:36:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dns.networks.com (ncs [192.168.1.2]) by ns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id KAA22845; Mon, 11 May 1998 10:33:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from networks.com (stan.networks.com [192.168.1.64]) by dns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id KAA25252; Mon, 11 May 1998 10:33:09 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <35570C43.D1942E3A@networks.com> Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 10:33:40 -0400 From: stan briggs Organization: network computing solutions, inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: tntug-discussion@networks.com, stan patterson , ncsa-announce@nando.net Subject: microsoft broadcast on tentv (www.tentv.com) Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------5A2E6013600959547C7E4092" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------5A2E6013600959547C7E4092 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit greetings all, this announcement goes out to both the tntug (www.tntug.org) and nc*sa (www.ncsysadmin.org) lists. the program to be broadcast tomorrow (5/12/98) (and, in fact, all tentv broadcasts) will be received and shown at the NCS world headquarters in raleigh, nc. this presentation is given by microsoft about inter/intranet building and managing ip address space (from the microsoft perspective, of course). the presentation is from 12:00 to 1:00 pm est. here is the tentv web site which describes this presentation in more detail: http://www.tentv.com/scripts/progs/ProgramViewer.cfm?ID=397&Cont=NA&TZ=0 here is a map to our office: http://www.mapblast.com/yt.hm?FAM=mapblast&CMD=GEO&SEC=blast&IC=0%3A0%3A8&IC%3A=ncs+world+headquarters&AD2=3203+woman%27s+club+drive&AD3=raleigh%2C+nc&AD4=USA here are directionsto our office: from 440 at the glenwood avenue exit: exit onto glenwood avenue east (headed towards raleigh downtown). the first road on the left is woman's club drive. turn onto woman's club drive. we are the first building on the left. we'll be in the back of the building. (tough directions, huh?) for those of you perusing the tentv site for upcoming broadcast you should note that the microsoft-tv broadcasts are labelled as the vendor being 'ten-tv'. please email me if you plan on attending so we will know which room we need to plan on using. sorry for the short notice and we look forward to seeing you there! stan -- stan b. briggs; sr. systems engineer Network Computing Solutions, Inc; www.networks.com 919/510-6970x14; Fax: 919/510-6971 --------------5A2E6013600959547C7E4092 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii; name="ProgramViewer.cfm" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="ProgramViewer.cfm" Content-Base: "http://www.tentv.com/scripts/progs/Pro gramViewer.cfm?ID=397&Cont=NA&TZ=0" Program Viewer


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Coming Up on TEN-TV

TEN-TV

Date: May 12, 1998
Vendor: TEN-TV
Title: Building Your Inter/Intranet, Part 1
Time: 12:00 PM (ET)
Length: 60 min.
Channel: 703
Q&A: NO
Restrictions: None
Registration Requirements: None, all TEN Subscribers automatically receive this broadcast.
Program Type: Sales/Marketing
Description: Mark Minasi's series of columns in Windows NT Maagazine on IP addresses, IP routing and using an NT machine as a LAN/WAN Internet gateway have been tremendously popular. The next two Microsoft broadcasts cover that same material: IP addresses, subnet masks, IP routing with NT, and how to make your NT Server into an inter/intranet LAN/WAN router. If you are managing an NT-based TCP/IP network, you won't want to miss these broadcasts!

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    • --------------5A2E6013600959547C7E4092-- From sage-members-owner Tue May 19 14:27:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA01528 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:27:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (firewall-user@yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA01518 for ; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:27:43 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id OAA05409; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dhcp-211.main.gnac.com(192.168.1.211) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma005402; Tue, 19 May 98 14:24:12 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.main.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id OAA09543; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:31 -0700 Message-Id: <199805192124.OAA09543@localhost.main.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: IP over ATM (Berry Kercheval) To: baylisa@baylisa.org, rem-conf@es.net, sage-members@usenix.org Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:31 -0700 (PDT) Cc: blw@baylisa.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. *** *** NOTE: As of the upcoming May meeting, we have a new meeting space! *** We are now at the "Network Meeting Center at Techmart". Directions can be found on our web page at http://www.baylisa.org/locations/techmart.html The meetings are also broadcast via MBONE. Schedule -------- Thursday, 21 May, 1998: IP over ATM, Berry Kercheval Author Berry Kercheval will be talking about his experiences running IP over ATM. This talk will be an overview of ATM technology and how IP traffic can be carried over it. Following a brief introduction to ATM, I will discuss the two main approaches in current use: the IETF's "Classical IP" and the ATM Forum's "LAN Emulation". Pros and cons of both schemes will be addressed. #### For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Tue May 19 14:27:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA01540 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:27:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rhino.ark.gnac.net (rhino.ark.gnac.net [198.151.248.82]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA01531 for ; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:27:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from baylisa@localhost) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) id OAA15035 for blw@baylisa.org; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) with ESMTP id OAA15030; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:39 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id OAA05409; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dhcp-211.main.gnac.com(192.168.1.211) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma005402; Tue, 19 May 98 14:24:12 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.main.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id OAA09543; Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:31 -0700 Message-Id: <199805192124.OAA09543@localhost.main.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: IP over ATM (Berry Kercheval) To: baylisa@baylisa.org, rem-conf@es.net, sage-members@usenix.org Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:24:31 -0700 (PDT) Cc: blw@baylisa.org Content-Type: text X-Loop: baylisa@gnac.com Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. *** *** NOTE: As of the upcoming May meeting, we have a new meeting space! *** We are now at the "Network Meeting Center at Techmart". Directions can be found on our web page at http://www.baylisa.org/locations/techmart.html The meetings are also broadcast via MBONE. Schedule -------- Thursday, 21 May, 1998: IP over ATM, Berry Kercheval Author Berry Kercheval will be talking about his experiences running IP over ATM. This talk will be an overview of ATM technology and how IP traffic can be carried over it. Following a brief introduction to ATM, I will discuss the two main approaches in current use: the IETF's "Classical IP" and the ATM Forum's "LAN Emulation". Pros and cons of both schemes will be addressed. #### For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Fri May 29 10:30:42 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA07985 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 29 May 1998 10:30:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sass165.sandia.gov (mailgate.sandia.gov [132.175.109.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA07974 for ; Fri, 29 May 1998 10:30:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dancer.csu890.sandia.gov (dancer.csu890.sandia.gov [134.253.224.23]) by sass165.sandia.gov (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA29269 for ; Fri, 29 May 1998 11:27:31 -0600 (MDT) Received: from aurora.csu890.sandia.gov (aurora.csu890.sandia.gov [134.253.224.1]) by dancer.csu890.sandia.gov (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA19624 for ; Fri, 29 May 1998 11:27:21 -0600 (MDT) From: "Christopher M. Conway" Received: (from cmconwa@localhost) by aurora.csu890.sandia.gov (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA12299 for sage-members@usenix.org; Fri, 29 May 1998 11:27:28 -0600 (MDT) Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 11:27:28 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <980529112727.ZM12297@aurora.csu890.sandia.gov> X-Mailer: Z-Mail (5.0.0 30July97) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Albuquerque/Central/Northern New Mexico group? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Is there one? Is there any interest in one? Also, is there any interest among members in this region in possibly forming some kind of consulting partnership ( hope this isn't considered a verboten question on this list 8^{)> )? Sorry to bother the rest of you.... -- Christopher M. Conway U*IX and C Guru Don't Tread on Me cmconwa@sandia.gov wombat@prickly-wombat.com We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we will all hang separately. I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy. From sage-members-owner Fri May 29 13:00:41 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA17150 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 29 May 1998 13:00:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from diane@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA17140; Fri, 29 May 1998 13:00:30 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 13:00:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Diane DeMartini Message-Id: <199805292000.NAA17140@usenix.ORG> To: cmconwa@sandia.gov, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Albuquerque/Central/Northern New Mexico group? Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Albuquerque/New Mexico local groups Is there one? Is there any interest in one? Also, is there any interest among members in this region in possibly forming some kind of consulting partnership ( hope this isn't considered a verboten question on this list 8^{)> )? Sorry to bother the rest of you.... Christopher, Currently, there are no local SAGE groups in the New Mexico area. If you have interest in forming one, please take a look at our Web site regarding local groups at http://www.usenix.org/sage/locals for suggestions on how to start a local group in your area. The office can also offer you support by facilitating a mailing to SAGE members in your local area. Sincerely, Diane S. DeMartini From sage-members-owner Sat May 30 02:10:47 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id CAA25346 for sage-members-outgoing; Sat, 30 May 1998 02:10:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from celestial.stokely.com (celestial.stokely.com [204.94.139.211]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id CAA25337 for ; Sat, 30 May 1998 02:10:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from celeste@localhost) by celestial.stokely.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id CAA15363 for sage-members@usenix.ORG; Sat, 30 May 1998 02:05:54 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 02:05:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Celeste Stokely Message-Id: <199805300905.CAA15363@celestial.stokely.com> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: Albuquerque/Central/Northern New Mexico group? X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I wish someone WOULD form a New Mexico SAGE group! I keep getting calls from folks wanting Unix sysadm-types in New Mexico, and I have no group to refer them to. (So, what's with the new flurry of Unix work in New Mexico? These folks are always real secretive--won't say what the company does. Is it all gov't?) When I don't know someone specifically in an area, I point them to the local SAGE group for the area. Often, they find someone to help them out that way. So, if there's no SAGE local group around you, please form one! ..Celeste Stokely, Unix System Administration Consultant Stokely Consulting, 211 Thompson Square, Mountain View CA 94043 celeste@stokely.com - Voice: 650.967.6898 - FAX: 650.967.0160 http://www.stokely.com - Home of Unix Serial Port & Sysadm Resources From sage-members-owner Sun May 31 17:24:10 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA08712 for sage-members-outgoing; Sun, 31 May 1998 17:24:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nova.botz.org (root@cm40115.cableco-op.com [208.138.40.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA08698 for ; Sun, 31 May 1998 17:24:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nova (jbotz@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nova.botz.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA19407 for ; Sun, 31 May 1998 17:21:05 -0700 Message-Id: <199806010021.RAA19407@nova.botz.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: IS dept. staffing level Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 17:21:05 -0700 From: Jurgen Botz Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hello fellow Sages, I am currently preparing a proposal for additional staff in the IS group at the company I work at. It is a high-tech information service company with a personell of about 200, over half of which are engineers. I am proposing four PC tech/junior administrators, two senior-level system administrators, and one manager (myself). The IS group does pretty much everything having to do with internal use of technology. What do you think, do this sound about right? If you work at a medium sized high-tech company, what's the staff size of your IS group? Thanks, ~~/ /~) /.. /-< \_/ u r g e n /_ _) o t z From sage-members-owner Mon Jun 1 10:44:30 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA28780 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 1 Jun 1998 10:44:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA28770 for ; Mon, 1 Jun 1998 10:44:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA00346; Mon, 1 Jun 1998 13:40:50 -0400 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199806011740.NAA00346@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: IS dept. staffing level To: jurgen@botz.org (Jurgen Botz) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 13:40:49 -0400 (EDT) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199806010021.RAA19407@nova.botz.org> from "Jurgen Botz" at May 31, 98 05:21:05 pm Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > I am currently preparing a proposal for additional staff in the IS group > at the company I work at. It is a high-tech information service company > with a personell of about 200, over half of which are engineers. I am > proposing four PC tech/junior administrators, two senior-level system > administrators, and one manager (myself). The IS group does pretty much > everything having to do with internal use of technology. > > What do you think, do this sound about right? If you work at a medium > sized high-tech company, what's the staff size of your IS group? I'm afraid that you have to ask different questions. How many computers are to be maintained? How many different kinds / OS versions etc.? Any major applications? Any networks? Any firewalls? What kind of user support do you provide - a single 'phone number for answers? Hand-holding? Soup to nuts? Individualized software choice and installation? For sort of average MINIMAL suggestions, see the SAGE guide. Part of it is at . Note that it warns that anything that increases the work load [as in the above] increases those estimates of number of personnel needed. You can't have one set of recommendations that applies to everybody. Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Tue Jun 2 15:50:42 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA03818 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 15:50:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hermes.supplyworks.com ([207.252.203.181]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA03805; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 15:50:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: by hermes.supplyworks.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) id ; Tue, 2 Jun 1998 18:45:01 -0400 Message-ID: <19FDB2A7CCCCD1118E6200600857308B05B5E0@hermes.supplyworks.com> From: Kimberly Trudel To: "'sage-members@usenix.org'" Cc: "'sage-board@usenix.org'" Subject: Certification Input Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 18:45:00 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk An Open Invitation to All SAGE Members: SAGE is putting together a certification program for system administrators. The certification program will serve to set goals of educational programs and set standards for skill requirements. The initial focus of this work will be entry level positions. A subset of the SAGE Executive Committee is coordinating the various activities associated with the certification program. This group includes Barb Dijker, Tim Gassaway, and Kim Trudel. We'd like a group of about 20 volunteers to act as an advisory council, giving us feedback on our work as we reach specific milestones. Please consider volunteering for the advisory council if you have a few hours to spare on occasion and can provide constructive criticism. To volunteer simply send email to kim@usenix.org with a few paragraphs indicating why you are interested in being on the advisory council. We don't necessarily care what your view is on certification, but you MUST be willing to objectively evaluate proposals and provide constructive feedback. Our goal is to have the group identified by the end of June.s From sage-members-owner Wed Jun 3 11:15:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA01708 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 11:15:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com (tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com [206.243.224.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA01696 for ; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 11:15:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com (karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com [206.243.224.120]) by tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA27123; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 14:11:53 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from tanya@localhost) by karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA28488; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 14:11:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 14:11:52 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199806031811.OAA28488@karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: PCs in a Solaris environment X-Mailer: VM 6.22 under Emacs 19.34.1 From: Tanya Ruttenberg X-Attribution: TDR Cc: tanya@cie.cendant.com Organization: Cendant Internet Engineering, Cambridge MA USA Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk We are 97% unix (Solaris)/ 3% PC shop. That is to say all our developers have a Sparc on their desktops and one or two renegades, mostly business types, have PCs on their desks. In addition, we have a Wincenter server running on NT 3.51 that people occasionally use via a wincenter client from their SPARCs. We do primarily Oracle application development here and until this moment have done so without the benefit of Oracle development tools. We are now starting to evaluate tools and it appears that the best of them run on Windows NT version 4.0 or Windows 95. We would have liked to centralize all the tools on Wincenter, but it runs only on NT 3.51. Does anyone have any suggestions on how we might centralize use of such tools? We would _really_ like to avoid having to put a PC on everyone's desktop if possible. Any ideas, no matter how wacky, would be appreciated. Thanks. Tanya Ruttenberg == Systems Administrator == Cendant == Cambridge, MA USA == Internet Engineering From sage-members-owner Wed Jun 3 13:09:11 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA07885 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 13:09:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mpdgw2.symbios.com (mpdgw2.symbios.com [204.131.200.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA07876 for ; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 13:09:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from root@localhost) by mpdgw2.symbios.com (8.6.8.1/8.6.6) id OAA02399; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 14:05:30 -0600 Received: from aztec.co.symbios.com(153.72.199.214) by mpdgw2.symbios.com via smap (V1.3) id sma002196; Wed Jun 3 14:05:07 1998 Received: from zek.co.symbios.com (root@zek.co.symbios.com [153.72.240.235]) by Symbios.COM (8.6.8.1/8.6.6) with ESMTP id OAA18807; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 14:05:05 -0600 Received: from zek (quentinj@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zek.co.symbios.com with ESMTP (8.7.6/8.7.1) id OAA01055; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 14:04:39 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199806032004.OAA01055@zek.co.symbios.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: Tanya Ruttenberg cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: PCs in a Solaris environment In-Reply-To: Message from Tanya Ruttenberg of "Wed, 03 Jun 1998 14:11:52 EDT." <199806031811.OAA28488@karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 14:04:39 -0600 From: Quentin Johnson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk We use "windd" here. It works nicely but our version still has the windows 3.1 style GUI. I don't maintain it so I don't know the details but I think it's worth checking into. We run it on Sun and HP workstations. Tektronix produces it. I bet they have a web site. Quent Johnson quentin.johnson@symbios.com > We are 97% unix (Solaris)/ 3% PC shop. That is to say all our developers > have a Sparc on their desktops and one or two renegades, mostly business > types, have PCs on their desks. In addition, we have a Wincenter server > running on NT 3.51 that people occasionally use via a wincenter client from > their SPARCs. > > We do primarily Oracle application development here and until this moment > have done so without the benefit of Oracle development tools. We are now > starting to evaluate tools and it appears that the best of them run on > Windows NT version 4.0 or Windows 95. We would have liked to centralize all > the tools on Wincenter, but it runs only on NT 3.51. > > Does anyone have any suggestions on how we might centralize use of such > tools? We would _really_ like to avoid having to put a PC on everyone's > desktop if possible. > > Any ideas, no matter how wacky, would be appreciated. Thanks. > > Tanya Ruttenberg == Systems Administrator == Cendant > == Cambridge, MA USA == Internet Engineering > From sage-members-owner Wed Jun 3 15:13:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA14557 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 15:13:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA14548 for ; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 15:13:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from wnl@localhost) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) id SAA26120; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 18:10:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 18:10:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199806032210.SAA26120@ocee.groupsys.com> From: William.LeFebvre@groupsys.com, Editor To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Request for Proposals: Short Topics in System Administration Reply-To: William.LeFebvre@groupsys.com, Editor Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk SAGE is soliciting proposals for its series "Short Topics in System Administration". We are seeking talented writers who are interested in publishing a booklet (approximately 40 to 100 pages in length) on any of the topics listed below. General information concerning the submission of proposals is given at the end of this message. -- Effective Customer Support This document will serve as a guide for system administrators and managers seeking to improve Customer Support by developing procedures that enhance productivity and minimize customer down time. Emphasis should be on imparting actual knowledge and problem-solving skills in practical environments. Topics that should be addressed include: - Customer Support models - Help desk management and setup - Help desk metrics, what do they mean? - Service Level Agreements - Standard practices and policies - What is expected of Help desk personnel - Web-based Customer service tools Monitoring Techniques and Practices This document will serve as a guide for system administrators and managers regarding the need for developing effective Network and Systems monitoring techniques to improve performance and responsiveness while reducing the cost of administration. Emphasis should be on imparting actual knowledge and problem-solving skills in practical environments. Topics that should be addressed include: - Network Benchmarking - Fault-tolerant, high availability computing environment models - Monitoring the computing environment (systems and network) - Network monitoring tools - Network and system performance tuning - TCP/IP troubleshooting - Proactive monitoring and administration The Role of Postmaster This document will serve as a guide for system administrators in charge of the mail systems for medium and large sites. It should cover the practical aspects of the role of "postmaster" but should not focus on any particular mail transport agent. The book should be comprehensive, covering as many topics as possible which an individual would need to know to be an effective postmaster. Topics that should be addressed include: - Techniques for handling large volumes of mail - Prioritizing mail to ensure continued reliable delivery of important messages - Detecting and eliminating spam - Integration of divergent mail systems - Legal issues regarding mail filtering - Privacy issues regarding personal messages - Electronic Mail Policies The Role of Webmaster This document will serve as a guide for system administrators in charge of the web servers for medium and large sites. It should cover the practical aspects of the role of "webmaster" but should not focus on any individual web server software package. The book should be comprehensive, covering as many topics as possible which an individual would need to know to be an effective webmaster. Topics that should be addressed include: - Techniques for tuning high-trffic web sites - Scalability and redundancy - Content management - An overview of composition tools (what a webmaster needs to know about them) - Techniques for tracking visitors (obtaining and interpreting various types of metrics) - Providing space for user pages (and policy issues) - CGI management - Security issues (what is and is not secure) --------------------- Request for Proposals --------------------- A proposal needs to contain the following information: 1. Working Title (as given above) 2. Statement of Purpose: one or two paragraphs describing the purpose of the booklet (as given above) 3. Draft outline 4. Name and contact information for all authors 5. Curriculum vitae for all authors 6. Representative writing sample not to exceed 500 words 7. Estimate of how long it will take to deliver the manuscript In cases where SAGE is soliciting proposals for a specific topic, the first two items will be provided as part of the solicitation. The length of the final booklet is expected to be between 40 and 100 typeset pages. Booklets are refereed and are subject to a technical review by qualified individuals in the field. The authors will not be expected to copy-edit, design, typeset, or print the booklet. An agreement regarding copyright and compensation will be executed with USENIX upon approval and acceptance of a proposal by the SAGE Series Editor. Send proposals to the Short Topics Series Editor, William LeFebvre, at wnl@usenix.org. Proposals should be submitted in one of the following forms: ASCII text, html, postscript, URL reference. About the Series ---------------- Short Topics In System Administration is a series of booklets that SAGE publishes for the system administration community. They are intended to fill a void in the current information structure, presenting topics in thorough, refereed fashion, but staying small enough and flexible enough to grow with the community. These booklets will be "living documents" that are updated as needed. About SAGE ---------- The System Administrators' Guild is a Special Technical Group (STG) of the USENIX Association. It is organized to advance the status of computer system administration as a profession, establish standards of professional excellence and recognize those who attain them, develop guidelines for improving the technical and managerial capabilities of members of the profession, and promote activities that advance the state of the art or the community. Further information about SAGE and USENIX may be obtained by visiting http://www.usenix.org/sage -- William LeFebvre Editor, Short Topics in System Administration From sage-members-owner Wed Jun 3 22:40:19 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA05016 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 22:40:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vishnu.occam.com (pm1-27.edmonds.cmc.net [206.102.28.28]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA05007 for ; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 22:40:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from leonvs@localhost) by vishnu.occam.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA08160; Wed, 3 Jun 1998 22:37:33 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199806040537.WAA08160@vishnu.occam.com> Content-Type: text/plain MIME-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2) In-Reply-To: <199806032004.OAA01055@zek.co.symbios.com> X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 3.3 (Enhance 2.0b5) Received: by NeXT.Mailer (1.118.2) From: Leon von Stauber Date: Wed, 3 Jun 98 22:37:31 -0700 To: Quentin Johnson Subject: Re: PCs in a Solaris environment cc: Tanya Ruttenberg , sage-members@usenix.org Reply-To: leonvs@occam.com References: <199806032004.OAA01055@zek.co.symbios.com> Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >We use "windd" here. It works nicely but our version still has the >windows 3.1 style GUI. I don't maintain it so I don't know the details >but I think it's worth checking into. We run it on Sun and HP workstations. >Tektronix produces it. I bet they have a web site. WinDD and WinCenter are both basically licensed versions of Citrix's WinFrame, and all three only run on 3.51 due to M$ licensing restrictions. So that's no good. >> We are 97% unix (Solaris)/ 3% PC shop. That is to say all our developers >> have a Sparc on their desktops and one or two renegades, mostly business >> types, have PCs on their desks. In addition, we have a Wincenter server >> running on NT 3.51 that people occasionally use via a wincenter client >> from their SPARCs. >> >> We do primarily Oracle application development here and until this moment >> have done so without the benefit of Oracle development tools. We are now >> starting to evaluate tools and it appears that the best of them run on >> Windows NT version 4.0 or Windows 95. We would have liked to centralize >> all the tools on Wincenter, but it runs only on NT 3.51. >> >> Does anyone have any suggestions on how we might centralize use of such >> tools? We would _really_ like to avoid having to put a PC on everyone's >> desktop if possible. >> >> Any ideas, no matter how wacky, would be appreciated. Thanks. The news now is that Microsoft is *finally* releasing their own version of this software (also based on Citrix technology), formerly code-named Hydra, now called Windows Terminal Server, which runs on NT 4.0. That should be in a few weeks. Unfortunately, to support UNIX clients, you'll also have to purchase something called MetaFrame from Citrix. And you should expect the pricing for both of these... well, make sure you've got some Rolaids handy. _______________________________________________________________ Leon von Stauber http://www.occam.com/leonvs/ Occam's Razor, Game Designer Metapath Software, UNIX System Admin "We have not come to save you, but you will not die in vain!" From sage-members-owner Thu Jun 4 06:32:36 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA27130 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 06:32:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from motgate.mot.com (motgate.mot.com [129.188.136.100]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA27121 for ; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 06:32:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pobox.mot.com (pobox.mot.com [129.188.137.100]) by motgate.mot.com (8.8.5/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id IAA12171 for ; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 08:29:22 -0500 (CDT) Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender brownmic@plhp049.comm.mot.com ) Received: from plhp002.comm.mot.com (plhp002.comm.mot.com [145.2.148.3]) by pobox.mot.com (8.8.5/8.6.10/MOT-3.8) with ESMTP id IAA03257 for ; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 08:29:21 -0500 (CDT) Received: from plhp049.comm.mot.com by plhp002.comm.mot.com with ESMTP (8.7.1/) id JAA26805; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 09:29:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from brownmic@localhost) by plhp049.comm.mot.com (8.8.6 (PHNE_14041)/8.7.3) id JAA18045 for sage-members@usenix.org; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 09:29:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Michael Rogero Brown Message-Id: <199806041329.JAA18045@plhp049.comm.mot.com> Subject: Re: PCs in a Solaris environment To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 9:29:19 EDT In-Reply-To: <199806040537.WAA08160@vishnu.occam.com>; from "Leon von Stauber" at Jun 3, 98 10:37 pm X-Mailer: Elm [revision: 212.4] Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > > > >We use "windd" here. It works nicely but our version still has the > >windows 3.1 style GUI. I don't maintain it so I don't know the details > >but I think it's worth checking into. We run it on Sun and HP workstations. > >Tektronix produces it. I bet they have a web site. > > WinDD and WinCenter are both basically licensed versions of Citrix's > WinFrame, and all three only run on 3.51 due to M$ licensing restrictions. > So that's no good. > > >> We are 97% unix (Solaris)/ 3% PC shop. That is to say all our developers > >> have a Sparc on their desktops and one or two renegades, mostly business > >> types, have PCs on their desks. In addition, we have a Wincenter server > >> running on NT 3.51 that people occasionally use via a wincenter client > >> from their SPARCs. > >> > >> We do primarily Oracle application development here and until this moment > >> have done so without the benefit of Oracle development tools. We are now > >> starting to evaluate tools and it appears that the best of them run on > >> Windows NT version 4.0 or Windows 95. We would have liked to centralize > >> all the tools on Wincenter, but it runs only on NT 3.51. > >> > >> Does anyone have any suggestions on how we might centralize use of such > >> tools? We would _really_ like to avoid having to put a PC on everyone's > >> desktop if possible. > >> > >> Any ideas, no matter how wacky, would be appreciated. Thanks. > > The news now is that Microsoft is *finally* releasing their own version > of this software (also based on Citrix technology), formerly code-named > Hydra, now called Windows Terminal Server, which runs on NT 4.0. That > should be in a few weeks. > Actually, the product is to officially be called 'Windows NT 4.0 Server/Terminal Server Edition. As is, it will only support NT & Win95 clients. > Unfortunately, to support UNIX clients, you'll also have to purchase > something called MetaFrame from Citrix. And you should expect the pricing > for both of these... well, make sure you've got some Rolaids handy. > MetaFrame was formerly refered to as pICAsso. It adds quite a bit of functionality to Hydra. If you want to access Hyrda from Unix, Mac, or legacy Windows clients, you'll need it. If you want to do load balancing between multiple Hydra servers, you'll need it. As to pricing/licensing... well, its going to be bad. Most of the articles on Hydra indicate that the cost of using Hydra would be no cheaper then putting an actual workstation on people's desk. So if people are thinking that by getting Hydra, they're going to save money, doesn't look like it. (which IMO, kind of defeats the whole purpose of having Hydra). We are currently testing out the Beta2 versions of both Hydra/Picasso. We've had some problems. One of the admins installed IE 4 and it messed up the Hydra server. Makes one really confident of the product. -- Michael Rogero Brown | Disclaimer: I speak only for myself. Unix/NT Systems Support | Any opinions expressed are my own Motorola, LMPS | and do not reflect the opinions of email: emb021@email.mot.com | Motorola. From sage-members-owner Thu Jun 4 09:11:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA05610 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 09:11:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from amber.ccs.neu.edu (root@amber.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.111.100]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA05601 for ; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 09:11:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from marfak.ccs.neu.edu (root@marfak.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.117.103]) by amber.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id MAA07094; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 12:08:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from marfak.ccs.neu.edu (jay@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by marfak.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id MAA03182; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 12:08:43 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199806041608.MAA03182@marfak.ccs.neu.edu> To: Tanya Ruttenberg cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: PCs in a Solaris environment From: Jay Sekora Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 12:08:41 -0400 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk (Cc:'ed to the list because this might be of general interest.) VNC, described at , is freeware that (among other things) lets you access a Windows console on a Unix box. It basically works by taking diffs of the screen and passing them across the network. So you need a dedicated Windows (95 or NT) box for each session, but you'd only need as many Windows boxes as you'd have _concurrent_ sessions. I believe users would need to physically log into the NT box to start the server, but after that they can connect to that login session from anywhere. It has a server for Windows (which copies the screen) and for Unix (which acts as a virtual X server) and clients for X, Windows, and Java (so you don't need a client on the machine you're sitting at, just a Java-enabled Web browser). The big problem is likely to be that the Windows server - which is what you'd be interested in - is pretty slow, because it seems to have to examine the entire screen to do updates. On a mondo fast Windows machine with a mondo fast video card, it might be OK, though. (Also, I suspect it would run faster if you configured the Windows machine for a small screen size, like 800x600 or 640x480 and/or low colour depth. I've only tested it on a 1600x1200 screen, which was pretty slow.) I haven't used this extensively, but I've tried it out, and it works as advertised. They have binaries for Windows (95 or NT) and Solaris. Jay Sekora Northeastern University College of Computer Science From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 5 04:28:59 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id EAA02230 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 04:28:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wacker. (kanejm.netheaven.com [198.69.29.64]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id EAA02179 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 04:28:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wacker by wacker. (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id SAA26768; Thu, 4 Jun 1998 18:01:08 -0400 Message-ID: <35771923.6926@NetHeaven.com> Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 18:01:07 -0400 From: Joseph Kane Organization: Westinghouse Elec X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; U; SunOS 5.5 sun4m) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: testing y2k compliance Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Does anyone have any suggestions for testing "year 2000 compliance" of Solaris 2.5.1 (with the y2k patches installed of course). A couple of things that come to mind would be: set the clock to 11:30 on Dec. 31, 1999 and subsequent to rollover check that all the system daemons and processes (that were running 30 minutes earlier) are still running. Next set the clock to Feb. 28 at 11:30 and after the roll over to Feb 29 check that all the system daemons and processes are still running. Obviously there must be a more structured and rigorous method of testing for year 2000 compliance. Any and all suggestions are welcomed. thanks joe kane From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 5 05:58:16 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA06118 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 05:58:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sword.bbnplanet.com (sword.bbnplanet.com [199.94.209.25]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA06109 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 05:58:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dilbert (dilbert.bbnplanet.com [4.2.7.18]) by sword.bbnplanet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA15518; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 08:55:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 12:55:03 +0000 (GMT) From: Mark Lamourine X-Sender: mlamouri@dilbert To: Joseph Kane cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: testing y2k compliance In-Reply-To: <35771923.6926@NetHeaven.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk You've basically got it. You want to identify all of the elements that you want to test. Any applications, daemons. Define a set of input for each. If possible, the input should exercise all of the time-critical elements. Then define a set of acceptable output for each. Set the time before the date in question, start firing inputs and collecting outputs. Run through the rollover and out the other side, continuing inputs. Log all the output. Analyse the output for unacceptable results. For instance, syslog. You want to be sure that the syslog time stamps are correct. So you create a syslog generation program. It logs a message every 30 sec or so. You collect the logs though the rollover. You've written a perl script to parse the date/time stamp from syslog entries. You know what they should look like. You run your perl script on the logs and flag any time stamps that don't look as you expect. For things like POP3d, where you can't "generate output" you write an expect script that connects to port 110 and runs POP user sessions. For sendmail, you generate mail messages, and collect them at the end. Look at the headers for time/date. Write a deadman script run from cron that checks that all the daemons you expect continue to run through the rollover. To control the times on the machines, create an NTP server on a private net. Put all of your test machines on the net. Set up hosts.equiv (your on a private net and your not testing security, right?) to allow you to force ntpdate to chime from your NTP server. When your ready to test, you set the time on your NTP server and force the others to sync to it. If your only testing for 1 hour( or even one day), you don't have to worry about clock drift during the test. Of course, if your only testing the OS, why not let Sun do it? They're way more likely to find a problem thatn you. In my testing I'm going to assume that the OS that Sun claims is OK is OK and just test the apps. On Thu, 4 Jun 1998, Joseph Kane wrote: > Does anyone have any suggestions for testing "year 2000 compliance" of > Solaris 2.5.1 (with the y2k patches installed of course). A couple of > things that come to mind would be: > > set the clock to 11:30 on Dec. 31, 1999 and subsequent to rollover > check that all the system daemons and processes (that were running 30 > minutes earlier) are still running. > > Next set the clock to Feb. 28 at 11:30 and after the roll over to Feb > 29 check that all the system daemons and processes are still running. > > Obviously there must be a more structured and rigorous method of > testing for year 2000 compliance. Any and all suggestions are welcomed. > > thanks > joe kane > Mark Lamourine GTE Internetworking, Network Operations, Server Administration 150 Cambridge Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 Voice: +1 617 873 4306 Fax: +1 617 873 6325 From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 5 06:09:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA06640 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:09:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay1.bu.edu (RELAY1.BU.EDU [128.197.27.99]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA06623 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:09:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from buit6.bu.edu (BUIT6.BU.EDU [128.197.20.65]) by relay1.bu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5/(BU-RELAY-05/01/98-b2)) with SMTP id JAA26596; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 09:06:46 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 09:06:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Ball Reply-To: Charles Ball To: Joseph Kane cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: testing y2k compliance In-Reply-To: <35771923.6926@NetHeaven.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I cannot speak to "more structured and rigourous methods" other than to suggest that the testing period (30min?) should at least be correlated to events you have scheduled in cron. It may be a good idea to test for problems around Sept 9, 1999. I recall seeing 1970's era textbook programming examples that advocated using 9/9/99 as a bounds check. Charles Ball Information Technology Boston University From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 5 06:24:43 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA07367 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:24:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mercury.Sun.COM (mercury.Sun.COM [192.9.25.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id GAA07351 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:24:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Eng.Sun.COM (engmail3 [129.144.170.5]) by mercury.Sun.COM (SMI-8.6/mail.byaddr) with SMTP id GAA23237; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:20:37 -0700 Received: from shorter.eng.sun.com (shorter.Eng.Sun.COM [129.144.250.35]) by Eng.Sun.COM (SMI-8.6/SMI-5.3) with SMTP id GAA01443; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:20:35 -0700 Received: from dna-2.eng.sun.com by shorter.eng.sun.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id GAA02183; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:20:34 -0700 Received: from dna-2 by dna-2.eng.sun.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id GAA14639; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:20:31 -0700 Message-Id: <199806051320.GAA14639@dna-2.eng.sun.com> Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 06:20:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Will Nelson Reply-To: Will Nelson Subject: Re: testing y2k compliance To: sage-members@usenix.org, kanejm@NetHeaven.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-MD5: KMhEFwlNo3XKhL1VueAi5Q== X-Mailer: dtmail 1.2.1 CDE Version 1.2.1 SunOS 5.6 sun4u sparc Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > > Does anyone have any suggestions for testing "year 2000 compliance" of > Solaris 2.5.1 (with the y2k patches installed of course). Joe, Check out http://www.sun.com/y2000/testguide.html Regards, Will > A couple of > things that come to mind would be: > > set the clock to 11:30 on Dec. 31, 1999 and subsequent to rollover > check that all the system daemons and processes (that were running 30 > minutes earlier) are still running. > > Next set the clock to Feb. 28 at 11:30 and after the roll over to Feb > 29 check that all the system daemons and processes are still running. > > Obviously there must be a more structured and rigorous method of > testing for year 2000 compliance. Any and all suggestions are welcomed. > > thanks > joe kane ----------------------- Will Nelson Release Engineering Java Software Division of Sun Microsystems will.nelson@eng.sun.com From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 5 10:33:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA20432 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:33:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net (storm.nando.net [152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA20402 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:33:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id KAA10083 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:22:23 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from lamb.sas.com (root@lamb.sas.com [192.35.83.8]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA10072 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:22:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mozart (mozart.unx.sas.com [192.58.184.8]) by lamb.sas.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id KAA15215 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:18:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ntmail03.pc.sas.com by mozart (5.65c/SAS/Domains/5-6-90) id AA28219; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:18:08 -0400 Received: by ntmail03.pc.sas.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) id ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:18:16 -0400 Message-Id: From: Heather Flanagan To: "'ncsa-announce@nando.net'" Cc: "'triangle.talks@usenet.sas.com'" Subject: NC*SA Meeting - Monday, June 8, 1998 - 6pm! Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 10:18:07 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators organization (NC*SA) will be Monday, June 8, 1998, at 6pm. Details about the meeting and directions are provided in this note. We hope to see you there! NC*SA General Meeting 6:00 p.m., Monday, June 8, 1998 Dreyfus Laboratory Research Triangle Institute Research Triangle Park, NC (directions below) New Media Technologies -------------------------------------- Juan Orlandini DirectConnect Technologies Abstract: Mr. Orlandini will be discussing the new media technologies available to companies today, and plans for future changes that will help facilitate multi-media use. ============================== Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic of the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact: Heather Flanagan SAS Institute Inc. SAS Campus Drive Cary, NC 27513 (919) 677-8000 x5522 heflan@unx.sas.com ============================== For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list has been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system administrators from the state of North Carolina. Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": mail majordomo@nando.net Subject: subscribe ncsa-discussion After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info file for our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving other files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation material from past technical programs are available for retrieval via Majordomo!!) To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to the same address, with the following line in the body: unsubscribe ncsa-discussion ============================== Directions to Research Triangle Institute (see also: http://www.rti.org/images/campus.gif) From I-40 west of RTP (e.g. Chapel Hill): Get onto I-40 heading east. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Stay in right lane. Shift right as soon as possible after merging with traffic coming off I-40 westbound. Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From I-40 east of RTP (e.g. Raleigh): Get onto I-40 heading west. Follow I-40 to the NC-147 - Durham Freeway - North (towards Durham). Shift to rightmost lane as soon as possible Exit to the right at the next exit (Cornwallis Road). At top of exit, turn to the left. (If you turn right and cross over the bridge, you are going the wrong direction.) After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. From north of RTP (e.g. Durham): Get onto NC-147 - Durham Freeway - south. Exit at the Cornwallis Road exit. At the top of the exit, turn left to cross over the bridge. After turning left onto Cornwallis, shift immediately to the right lane. Take the second right onto East Institute Drive. Take the second right off of East Institute Drive. Dreyfus Laboratory will be the first building on your right. Use the parking lot in front of the Lab and enter at the main entrance. ============================== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Heather Flanagan Associate Systems Programmer heflan@unx.sas.com SAS Institute (919)677-8000 x5522 From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 5 13:05:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA29383 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 13:05:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA29371 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 13:05:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (cmh@localhost) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id PAA22654 for ; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:02:08 -0500 (CDT) X-Authentication-Warning: psasolar.private.psa.pencom.com: cmh owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 15:02:08 -0500 (CDT) From: "Carolyn M. Hennings" X-Sender: cmh@psasolar To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: chigrp June Meeting Announcement (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 14:47:47 -0500 (CDT) From: Dan Szkola To: chicago-sagelocal@usenix.ORG Subject: June Meeting Announcement Please join us at our next meeting: Open Forum Discussion on Unix and NT Integration and chigrp Organizers Meeting June 11, 1998 7:00 - 9:00 pm Illinois Institute of Technology Rice Campus Directions can be found below Abstract This month we will try something new and conduct an open forum discussion on integrating Unix and Windows NT. The topics may range the full gamet of connectivity issues, namespace sharing and authentication challenges. As the meeting will be free form and self-directed, individuals with expertise in particular areas are particularly encouraged to share their knowledge and experience. chigrp Organizers Meeting Individuals interested in assisting with the organizational aspects of chigrp are welcome to join in a discussion prior to our regular meeting. We will meet in the lobby of the IIT building at 6:00 pm. One of the topics to be discussed will be formalizing the organizational structure. chigrp: Who We Are The System Administrator's Guild, SAGE, is a special technical group of the Usenix Association. SAGE is made up of Unix and NT professionals focusing on the management of these systems and networks. chigrp is a local organization serving the Chicagoland area. Our purpose is to bring together professionals managing Unix and NT systems in order to share knowledge and build fellowship. Our goals are to: -conduct monthly meetings with speakers presenting information on valuable systems management topics -provide an friendly, sociable environment that encourages the exchange of information Who Should Join? Anyone who administers Unix or NT systems. Socializing Following the presentation we will gather at Houlihan's, a restaurant in the Shopping Center at the intersection of Butterfield and Naperville Road. Directions 201 East Loop Road Wheaton, Illinois 60187-8489 630.682.6000 >From the North: Take Naperville Road south from Roosevelt Road to East Loop Road. Turn left at the traffic light on East Loop Road. The road curves past a large apartment complex on your right. The campus is on your left about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the South: Take Naperville Road north from the Naperville-Lisle area. Cross Butterfield Road and pass the shopping center at the corner of Naperville and Butterfield roads. Turn right at the traffic light at East Loop Road and proceed past a large apartment complex on your left and a shopping center on your right. The campus is on your left, about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the East and West: Take the East-West Tollway (I-88) and exit northbound at Naperville Road and follow the directions above. If coming from the North-South Tollway (I-355), exit westbound at Butterfield Road and proceed to East Loop Road. Make a right turn at East Loop Road; the campus is on your right after about about a block. --- Dan Szkola EMail: dszkola@niu.edu Systems Programmer Northern Illinois University From sage-members-owner Mon Jun 8 08:00:18 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA01411 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 08:00:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA01398 for ; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 08:00:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id KAA11216 for ; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 10:57:14 -0400 Message-Id: <199806081457.KAA11216@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Memo to Members! Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 10:57:12 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk SAGE Members! This is the periodic (should be quarterly, but that doesn't always happen) bulletin from the SAGE Board to let you know what's going on. We're always looking for comments, questions, ideas, or just enthusiasm - contact us via sage-board@usenix.org or use the sage-members@usenix.org mailing list (you *did* remember to sign up, didn't you? Details at the end of this note). Just off the cuff: * There will be a SAGE BOF at 7PM on Tuesday, 6/16 at the USENIX General Conference in New Orleans - stop by if you're in town. * Bill LeFebvre (SAGE pubs editor) has put out a RFP for new "Short Topics in System Adminstration" booklets. Check it out at http://www.usenix.org/sage/publications/rfpx4.html * Register now for August's LISA NT conference in Seattle! The program and registration material is on the web at http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa-nt98/ if you prefer. SAGE Board members will be in attendance - a good place to collar us! * USENIX and SAGE are looking for volunteer photographers. We'd like to beef up the conference archives on the web with snaps taken at the conferences - if you're interested in helping, contact Eileen Cohen (cohen@usenix.org). We'll pay for film, developing, and mailing costs (though if you've got a digital camera, so much the better). If you've got pictures from past conferences you'd be willing to share, let us know. * Make sure to drop by the USENIX/SAGE booth at our conferences! There's always _something_ interesting going on. * We're looking for a volunteer "SAGE Historian". There's been enough history now that some stories are becoming apocryphal (though those _are_ the best kind :->); we need someone to dredge back through past notes and write up a history, and then keep it up to date. Interested? Mail Hal Miller (halm@usenix.org) Updates on current projects: * Certification: The Certification Subcommittee reports: The board has decided to continue the research into certification. The certification subcommittee is soliciting volunteers for the cert Advisory Council The Advisory Council will provide input to the process of putting together a certification plan. The board has not yet endorsed a plan, because there isn't one yet. In order to be endorsed for implemenation, a proposed cert plan will need to be adequately justified and sufficiently address any significant issues of concern. To see the Request for Particpation (in case you missed in on the sage-members mailing list), follow the link from our What's New page: http://www.usenix.org/sage/whatsnew/whatsnew.html There was a certification BOF at SANS which provided lots of good feedback. There will be a certification panel discussion at SAGE-AU (July) with Geoff Halprin, Marcus Ranum, and Barb Dijker (get your plane tickets now! :->); look for certification forum at LISA in December. More information and updated status and discussions will be published in ;login:. * Code of Ethics: Look for a call for volunteers shortly to form a review committee. We anticipate working on convergence with the Australian code, with the aim of an International Code that all can accept. Coming Soon: * "How-To Notes" series (target is to have 6 by LISA) - short pieces which walk you through installing/configuring common software, or performing relatively common tasks, written by folks who know "how to" (and tested by folks who didn't). We'll be making these available via the SAGE web. * (still) the Short Topics booklet "Hiring System Administrators". A number of things have caused some delay on this one, but it's back on track now. Also, the booklet tentatively titled "A Survey of System Administration Education" is nearing completion, and another, "A System Adminstrator's Guide to Site Audits" is well underway. * "A Day in the Life of a Sysadmin" - a participatory activity. Sign up, then track your (work-related) life on Sept 15, 1998. We'll collect all the data and publish the results. Look for more details at http://www.usenix.org/sage/day/ General Stuff: * Visit the SAGE web site () often! Let us know what you'd like to see - send mail to the SAGE Board (sage-board@usenix.org) with new ideas, or mail Peter Collinson (webster@usenix.org) if you'd like to help out. * Join the SAGE Members mailing list (sage-members@usenix.org). We post periodic updates and fish for volunteers there, and it's a forum for members to discuss SAGE-related things. It's also generally a low-traffic list (and can be digestified for easier reading). To join, send mail to majordomo@usenix.org containing the line subscribe sage-members * Give us feedback! Get involved! From sage-members-owner Mon Jun 8 10:20:58 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA08964 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 10:20:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com (tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com [206.243.224.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA08954 for ; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 10:20:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com (karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com [206.243.224.120]) by tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA13938; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 13:17:23 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from tanya@localhost) by karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA08005; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 13:17:23 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 13:17:23 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199806081717.NAA08005@karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: SUMMARY: PCs in a Solaris environment X-Mailer: VM 6.22 under Emacs 19.34.1 From: Tanya Ruttenberg X-Attribution: TDR Cc: tanya@cie.cendant.com Organization: Cendant Internet Engineering, Cambridge MA USA Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for information. Turns out people are using a variety of things: * WinDD (by Tektronix) - runs only NT 3.51 * Hydra - Citrix/MicroSoft NT terminal server to be released this month To surpport UNIX clients you'll have ot purchase something called "MetaFrame" from Citrix (aka PIcasso). Pricing will most likely be no cheaper than putting a workstation on people's desk. Someone who is Beta-testing Hydra/Picasso saw problems after installing IE 4! I have been looking at reviews of the product on the web and I have yet to find a positive one. * NTrigue - It looks like PIcasso is the next incarnation of NTrigue. NTrigue was sold to Citrix at the beginning of this year. * VNC - freeware - Sounds like it's not conducive to large applications where performance is an issue. * SunPC board - "By itself, SunPC software has the power of a complete 286 PC with VGA graphics," .... "Your system will have even more PC power with the addition of a 486 SunPC Accelerator SBus card." - Sun PR. Yee ha. * SoftWindows95 (by Insignia) - we prefer NT to Windows95. Other non-software possibilities for managing "one PC on every desktop": * Install a development lab where developers can go to work. Have the PC be the primary workstation and have the developer access the Sparc remotely. * To avoid the clutter of having 2 machines on the desktop, put the PC elsewhere and run long cables. It looks like any of these products are geared toward getting MSOffice onto people's desktops and Oracle development tools are a bit beyond that I'm afraid. Thanks everyone, for your input! Please forgive me if I've egregiously mangled your response in my attempt to summarize. Tanya Ruttenberg == Systems Administrator == Cendant == Cambridge, MA USA == Internet Engineering From sage-members-owner Mon Jun 8 10:23:59 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA09219 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 10:23:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com (tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com [206.243.224.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA09191 for ; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 10:23:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com (karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com [206.243.224.120]) by tannis.bos.cie.cuc.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA14541; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 13:20:28 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from tanya@localhost) by karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA08062; Mon, 8 Jun 1998 13:20:27 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 13:20:27 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199806081720.NAA08062@karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Tanya Ruttenberg Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: SUMMARY: PCs in a Solaris environment In-Reply-To: <199806081717.NAA08005@karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com> References: <199806081717.NAA08005@karkemish.bos.cie.cuc.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.22 under Emacs 19.34.1 From: Tanya Ruttenberg X-Attribution: TDR Organization: Cendant Internet Engineering, Cambridge MA USA Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk TDR> * SunPC board - "By itself, SunPC software has the power of a complete TDR> 286 PC with VGA graphics," .... "Your system will have even more PC TDR> power with the addition of a 486 SunPC Accelerator SBus card." - Sun TDR> PR. Yee ha. Oopsie. This is outdated. The more recent SunPC board runs a 133 MHz 5X86 co-processor. Sorry, Sun! - Tanya (tanya@cie.cendant.com) From sage-members-owner Tue Jun 9 14:05:05 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA14511 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 9 Jun 1998 14:05:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA14467 for ; Tue, 9 Jun 1998 14:04:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA19317 for ; Tue, 9 Jun 1998 17:02:01 -0400 Message-Id: <199806092102.RAA19317@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Submission deadline for LISA '98 looms.... Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 17:01:57 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Xev Gittler, Program Chair of LISA '98, points out that I forgot to mention the Upcoming Submission Deadline for LISA '98 (which is June 23rd - just 2 weeks away). Submit now! Submit early! Submit often! You're certainly not limited to one extended abstract per person... Seriously, take whatever you've been working on that's neat, write a short extended abstract about it, and send it in to lisa98papers@usenix.org You'll feel good, Xev will feel good, and LISA '98 will be better for it. If you've got an idea for an "invited" talk, or just something you'd like to see at LISA, send it on to the Invited Talk track at itlisa@usenix.org LISA is only good if we all make it good. Do your part! [You can see the official Call For Papers at http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa98/cfp/lisa98cfp.html for all the gory details.] Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu || paw@usenix.org From sage-members-owner Thu Jun 11 11:25:45 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA01168 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 11 Jun 1998 11:25:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tempest.nac.net (tempest.nac.net [209.123.20.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA01159 for ; Thu, 11 Jun 1998 11:25:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 989 invoked from network); 11 Jun 1998 14:20:12 -0400 Received: from nac-crn2-s20.nac.net (HELO trj) (207.99.52.70) by tempest.nac.net with SMTP; 11 Jun 1998 14:20:12 -0400 Message-ID: <000501bd9565$4996d860$463463cf@trj> From: "teddiejam" To: Subject: Re: System Administrators Openings Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 14:18:05 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk FROM: Ted Jamison Professional Search Consultant MANAGEMENT RECRUITERS 150 Floral Avenue New Providence, NJ 07974-1511 RE: Career Opportunities MANAGEMENT RECRUITERS is the largest executive search firm in the United States. For many years, it has brought new and exciting career opportunities to the attention of executives and professionals like you. My goal in sending this letter is to establish a professional relationship with you; to get to know the essential requirements that a new career opportunity must contain in order to be of interest to you. Then, whenever a Client with whom I am working today or next week has an opportunity that contains these critical requirements, I can then present the opportunity to you for your consideration. Your talking with me, and sharing information, could be in your best interest. I hope you are open-minded enough to want to learn about the confidential details of the opportunities we provide. I have a Client located in who has asked me to find experienced System Engineers. One for New York City; one for Chicago; and one for San Francisco. The skills desired for each opening are: 3+ years System Administration Background; Knowledge of UNIX-NT/Solaris/File Systems/Network Management/Disaster Recovery/and, Tape Drive Technology. Successful applicants will make Team sales calls on VAR's and assist with technical sales presentations to end-users. Position involves travel (up to 50%). Salary range from $60K to $90K with annual bonus and generous benefits, including company car. Call me! Ted Jamison MANAGEMENT RECRUITERS, New Providence, NJ (800) 886-0603-x105 - 9:30am-5:00pm, M-F (908) 771-0779=FAX- Operates 24 Hours Everyday Email: teddiejam@nac.net Email: mrinp@aol.com Email: mri.np@internetmci.com URL: http://www.mrinp.com From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 12 07:52:03 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA14905 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 12 Jun 1998 07:52:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from babba.advancenet.net (euanf@babba.advancenet.net [205.198.248.21]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA14868 for ; Fri, 12 Jun 1998 07:51:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (euanf@localhost) by babba.advancenet.net (8.8.8/8.7.3) with SMTP id JAA12751; Fri, 12 Jun 1998 09:45:31 -0500 Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 09:45:31 -0500 (CDT) From: Euan Fernsler To: teddiejam cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: System Administrators Openings In-Reply-To: <000501bd9565$4996d860$463463cf@trj> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi, I don't think this is an appropriate email to this list. Personally, I don't like being told what's in my best interest by a form letter. Suggesting that I'm closed-minded unless I work with you is shear folly. Santih, Euan On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, teddiejam wrote: > Your talking with me, and sharing information, could be in your best > interest. I hope you are open-minded enough to want to learn about the > confidential details of the opportunities we provide. From sage-members-owner Mon Jun 15 12:37:37 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA00685 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 15 Jun 1998 12:37:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mhub4.tc.umn.edu (mhub4.tc.umn.edu [160.94.5.4]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA00676 for ; Mon, 15 Jun 1998 12:37:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mhub1.tc.umn.edu by mhub4.tc.umn.edu; Mon, 15 Jun 1998 14:34:00 -0500 Received: from gold.tc.umn.edu by mhub1.tc.umn.edu; Mon, 15 Jun 98 14:34:00 -0500 Received: by gold.tc.umn.edu; Mon, 15 Jun 98 14:33:59 -0500 Message-Id: <358577273068002@gold.tc.umn.edu> Date: Mon, 15 Jun 98 14:33:59 -0500 From: David J Bianchi To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: TCSA meeting June 18 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The Twin Cities System Administrators (TCSA) group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to system and network administrators in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The meetings are free and open to the public. Check out our web site at http://www.tcsa.org/ TCSA meetings are on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. Next Meeting: Topic: ATM Speaker: Eric Lampland, Lookout Point Communications Date/Time: June 18, 1998 7:00 pm Location: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul campus Synopsis: Have you wondered where ATM fits, where it doesn't? Eric will provide an overview of the architecture(s) that is emerging today. Beginning with a generic understanding of ATM goals and core functions such as signaling and routing, he will lead us into newer areas including IP integration, native APIs, wireless, residential broadband and security. The overview is intended to stimulate a discussion of emerging multi-service networks and will deliberately avoid the religious fervor common to this arena. By understanding the cultural differences of existing technology providers and various integration or convergence techniques, it is hoped that ATM can be viewed as one (1) helpful technology for future networks. Biography: Eric Lampland, President of Lookout Point Communications, provides technology training, investment and product advice, and network design consultation. Mr. Lampland has been designing networks for over 30 years and has been a member of the ATM Forum since 1993. As Vice Chair of the SAA-API Working Group, ATM Forum, he participated in the development of the WinSock 2.0, XTI and DLPI specifications for Native ATM. He received his BS in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. We will meet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (southwest corner of Summit and Cretin) in building OSS (Science and Engineering Center) room 333. Tentative Meeting Schedule July 16, 1998: ? August 20, 1998: ? Directions to the University of St. Thomas (Summit & Cretin): - From East I-94: Going east on I-94, take the Cretin-Vandalia exit. Go right (south) about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From West I-94: Coming west on I-94, exit at Cretin-Vandalia. Go left (south) on Cretin about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From the south on I-35E: Take 35E north to the Randolph Avenue exit. Make a left on Randolph (crossing over 35E) and follow it about two miles to Cretin Avenue. Turn right onto Cretin and go about 1.5 miles to Summit Avenue. Turn left into St. Thomas just before Summit. - Parking: Drive to the parking area straight ahead and to the right. The OSS building is the second building on your right as you enter St. Thomas. Park in any lot near the OSS building. Go to OSS room 333 to get a visitor parking permit for your car. - Web maps are at: Map to St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/dirst.html Map of St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/stmap.html On the Map of the St. Paul Campus, OSS is building 40. For more information on TCSA, check out our web site: http://www.tcsa.org/ To subscribe to the TCSA mailing list (from a Unix system): echo "subscribe tcsa" | mailx majordomo@tcsa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@tcsa.org or contact: Dave Bianchi 612-644-7843 -- Dave Bianchi djb@colltech.com Work: 612-957-4532 Collective Technologies djb@tc.umn.edu FAX: 612-957-4195 A Pencom Company Pager: 612-818-7162 From sage-members-owner Thu Jun 18 11:15:17 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA25244 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:15:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rhino.ark.gnac.net (rhino.ark.gnac.net [198.151.248.82]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA25234 for ; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:15:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from baylisa@localhost) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) id LAA09231 for blw@baylisa.org; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:12:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) with ESMTP id LAA09226; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:12:09 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id LAA25876; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:12:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mg139-074.ricochet.net(204.179.139.74) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma025852; Thu, 18 Jun 98 11:11:23 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id LAA00914; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:11:17 -0700 Message-Id: <199806181811.LAA00914@localhost.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: Printing in a Multi-Platform, Multi-Vendor Environment To: baylisa@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:11:16 -0700 (PDT) Cc: blw@baylisa.org Content-Type: text X-Loop: baylisa@gnac.com Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. *** *** NOTE: We are no longer broadcasting our meetings over the MBONE. *** Schedule -------- Thursday, 18 June, 1998: Printing in a Multi-Platform, Multi-Vendor Environment -- OR -- Taming the Wild Print Spoolers Patrick Powell One of the most neglect areas of System Administration is managing the process of document printing. This is in part a tribute to the reliability of printers and the primitive demands that are made on them. However, networks and network based printing have created a whole set of problems of compatibility and flexibility. These include the printer communication protocols, the formats of print jobs, and the various protocols needed to monitor print job progress. This talk will be an tour of the various headaches that the system administrator will encounter, and how he can take preventive action to reduce these headaches. The main emphasis on the talk will be on the use of the RFC1179 (LPD) print protocol and the various print spoolers that use it, including the vintage BSD LPD print spooler, LPRng, and support for printing in Windows NT and other arcane systems. #### For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Thu Jun 18 11:15:09 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA25232 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:15:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (firewall-user@yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA25223 for ; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:15:04 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id LAA25876; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:12:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mg139-074.ricochet.net(204.179.139.74) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma025852; Thu, 18 Jun 98 11:11:23 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id LAA00914; Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:11:17 -0700 Message-Id: <199806181811.LAA00914@localhost.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: Printing in a Multi-Platform, Multi-Vendor Environment To: baylisa@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 11:11:16 -0700 (PDT) Cc: blw@baylisa.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. *** *** NOTE: We are no longer broadcasting our meetings over the MBONE. *** Schedule -------- Thursday, 18 June, 1998: Printing in a Multi-Platform, Multi-Vendor Environment -- OR -- Taming the Wild Print Spoolers Patrick Powell One of the most neglect areas of System Administration is managing the process of document printing. This is in part a tribute to the reliability of printers and the primitive demands that are made on them. However, networks and network based printing have created a whole set of problems of compatibility and flexibility. These include the printer communication protocols, the formats of print jobs, and the various protocols needed to monitor print job progress. This talk will be an tour of the various headaches that the system administrator will encounter, and how he can take preventive action to reduce these headaches. The main emphasis on the talk will be on the use of the RFC1179 (LPD) print protocol and the various print spoolers that use it, including the vintage BSD LPD print spooler, LPRng, and support for printing in Windows NT and other arcane systems. #### For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 19 12:56:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA07910 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 19 Jun 1998 12:56:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from peak.org (root@PEAK.ORG [198.68.22.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA07901 for ; Fri, 19 Jun 1998 12:56:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (sechrest@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by peak.org (8.8.5/8.6.7) with ESMTP id MAA14538 for ; Fri, 19 Jun 1998 12:53:48 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199806191953.MAA14538@peak.org> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Unix System Admin Class - Favor Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 12:53:48 -0700 From: John Sechrest Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hello, Over the last decade, I have been teaching a Unix System Administration Class. I have tried to make it an interactive hands on type class with real projects. Last year I started getting class alumni involved in the class. I am hoping this year to bring more professionals in the feild into the class. I have an experiment that I want to run. I have been talking with some SAGE people about setting up an Ask-A-Sage system to support SAGE members. But I find that I need to test my system more. So, I had the thought that I could incorporate it into my Class and use it as a test bed. I have created an Ask-A-Sysadm system. It is designed to let "experts" answer a few questions each week without getting overwhelmed with questions. I need several volunteers from SAGE to be available to answer questions of system administration students. The system is set up so that you can set a limit on the number of questions you get. And it hides your real email, so that they will not go around the system (unless you include your email in the message body) And so you will be able to answer just a few questions. If you or anyone you know are interested in helping me with my Ask-A-Sysadm experiment for my course, Please go to http://www.peak.org/dl/sysadm/ask-a-sysadm and sign up as an expert Since this is a test, I REALLY need to know about any problems or bugs you find, so that I can fix them and see how this system works. Any help you can provide to the system admin class would be greatly appreciated. The class runs from 6/22 to 8/14 ----- John Sechrest . Helping people use CEO PEAK - . computers and the Internet Public Electronic . more effectively Access to Knowledge,Inc . 850 SW 15th Street . Internet: sechrest@peak.org Corvallis Oregon 97333 . (541) 754-7325 . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest From sage-members-owner Fri Jun 26 10:43:27 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA21458 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:43:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA21442 for ; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:43:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from paw@localhost) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) id NAA12860 for sage-members@usenix.org; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 13:40:25 -0400 Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 13:40:25 -0400 From: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-Id: <199806261740.NAA12860@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: SATAN (SANTA) Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk O'Reilly's just published an English translation of Martin Freiss' _Protecting Networks with SATAN_ (ISBN 1-56592-425-8; US$19.95). I remember that when it came out, I thought SATAN was a really neat tool, and expected to see lots of folks writing modules and scripts for it, but I never did see pointers to a repository of such things. Is there one? More to the point, do you find SATAN valuable? Should SAGE have some sort of module/script repository? Let me know. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Sun Jun 28 09:40:56 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA18233 for sage-members-outgoing; Sun, 28 Jun 1998 09:40:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from amber.ccs.neu.edu (root@amber.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.116.51]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA18224 for ; Sun, 28 Jun 1998 09:40:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from betelgeuse.ccs.neu.edu (danielr@betelgeuse.ccs.neu.edu [129.10.116.100]) by amber.ccs.neu.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id MAA18534; Sun, 28 Jun 1998 12:37:56 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 16:37:52 +0000 (GMT) From: Daniel Rinehart Reply-To: Daniel Rinehart To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: SATAN (SANTA) In-Reply-To: <199806261740.NAA12860@phibes.dartmouth.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > More to the point, do you find SATAN valuable? Should SAGE have some sort > of module/script repository? Independent of a SATAN script repository, people may be interested in this message that was recently posted on BugTraq. - Daniel R. [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/danielr/] From: Adam H. Pendleton (pendleta@WWDSI.COM) Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 00:01:20 -0400 > Satan is out of date anyway, a new version will hit us someday in > the future. For those of you who like SATAN, it might be worth your while to check out SAINT, which is an improved version of SATAN. We will be releasing it July 1, for free of course. SAINT includes all of SATAN original checks, updated to make them even more comprehensive, plus we have added more. Some of the things we have added are: -- Firewall support (scanning through a firewall, the original SATAN could not do this) -- Added checks for all relevant CERT advisories (and CIAC bullitens) -- Added more severity levels (red, yellow, brown, green) -- Checks for more services (SMB, statd, DNS version, etc.) -- Improved HTML interface -- Updated documentation -- Minor bug fixes (like the /tmp vulnerability mentioned) Check out the SAINT page at http://www.wwdsi.com/saint Oh, SAINT stands for Security Administrator's Integrated Network Tool. Also, I want to say thanks to Dan and Wietse who have been pretty supportive through this, and without who this product never would have been made. SAINT version 1.2.1 will be available for download July 1. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Adam H. Pendleton Corporate Security Officer World Wide Digital Security, Inc. Reston, Virginia USA From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 7 08:43:23 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA07329 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 08:43:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA07320 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 08:43:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (cmh@localhost) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id KAA12971 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:40:26 -0500 (CDT) X-Authentication-Warning: psasolar.private.psa.pencom.com: cmh owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 10:40:26 -0500 (CDT) From: "Carolyn M. Hennings" X-Sender: cmh@psasolar To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: chigrp July Meeting Announcement (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 07 Jul 1998 09:48:07 -0500 (CDT) From: Dan Szkola To: chicago-sagelocal@usenix.ORG Subject: July Meeting Announcement Please join us at our next meeting: Conference Reports Thursday July 9 7:00 - 9:00 pm Illinois Institute of Technology Rice Campus Directions can be found below Abstract We have had a number of members attend conferences in recent months and would like to give them the opportunity to share the information they gathered. The following people will talk: Dan Szkola, SANS Robert Von Borstel, Usenix Technical Conference Ralph Rivas, Microsoft TechEd chigrp: Who We Are The System Administrator's Guild, SAGE, is a special technical group of the Usenix Association. SAGE is made up of Unix and NT professionals focusing on the management of these systems and networks. chigrp is a local organization serving the Chicagoland area. Our purpose is to bring together professionals managing Unix and NT systems in order to share knowledge and build fellowship. Our goals are to: -conduct monthly meetings with speakers presenting information on valuable systems management topics -provide an friendly, sociable environment that encourages the exchange of information Who Should Join? Anyone who administers Unix or NT systems. Socializing Following the presentation we will gather at Houlihan's, a restaurant in the Shopping Center at the intersection of Butterfield and Naperville Road. Directions Illinois Institute of Technology Rice Campus 201 East Loop Road Wheaton, Illinois 60187-8489 630.682.6000 >From the North: Take Naperville Road south from Roosevelt Road to East Loop Road. Turn left at the traffic light on East Loop Road. The road curves past a large apartment complex on your right. The campus is on your left about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the South: Take Naperville Road north from the Naperville-Lisle area. Cross Butterfield Road and pass the shopping center at the corner of Naperville and Butterfield roads. Turn right at the traffic light at East Loop Road and proceed past a large apartment complex on your left and a shopping center on your right. The campus is on your left, about a block before Butterfield Road. >From the East and West: Take the East-West Tollway (I-88) and exit northbound at Naperville Road and follow the directions above. If coming from the North-South Tollway (I-355), exit westbound at Butterfield Road and proceed to East Loop Road. Make a right turn at East Loop Road; the campus is on your right after about about a block. --- Dan Szkola EMail: dszkola@niu.edu Systems Programmer Northern Illinois University I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home. -- Groucho Marx From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 7 13:55:19 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA23945 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 13:55:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net ([152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA23934 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 13:55:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA29205 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 14:11:23 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from ns.networks.com (ns.networks.com [207.100.16.10]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA29200 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 14:11:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dns.networks.com (ncs [192.168.1.2]) by ns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id OAA05896 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 14:06:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from networks.com (stan.networks.com [192.168.1.64]) by dns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id OAA15130 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 14:06:50 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <35A2641E.F6D4D05@networks.com> Date: Tue, 07 Jul 1998 14:08:30 -0400 From: stan briggs Organization: network computing solutions, inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ncsa-announce@nando.net Subject: North Carolina System Administrators (NC*SA) meeting - July 13, 1998 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------25BB8C04FCE08BD9DEF9E08C" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------25BB8C04FCE08BD9DEF9E08C Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators organization (NC*SA) will be Monday, July 13, 1998, at 6pm. Details about the meeting and directions are provided in this note. We hope to see you there! our regular excellent fare of pizza with soft drinks will be served as well as cookies thanks to our evenings host. Tour of Data General CLARiiON facility Monday, July 13, 1998 Data General Apex, NC 6PM - General Session Abstract: Data General CLARiiON will host a tour of their facility in Apex NC on July 13 starting at 6:00 PM. The tour will start with a presentation on the newest in disk and storage technology. Topics will include High Availability Disk RAID and the newest Fibre connections and Storage Area Networks. The tour will be of the ISO 9000 certified facility and will show the group manufacturing of Data General servers and disk arrays. About the Speaker(s) Mike Keyes of Data General has been kind enough to make this tour happen. Mike is the director of CLARiiON manufacturing and has been with Data General for 13 years in a variety of capacities. Special thanks should also go to Jim D'Emilio of Dallas Digital (an NC*SA gold sponser) for his assistance in making the contact with Mike and arranging the tour. ============================== Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic of the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact: stan briggs network computing solutions, inc. 3203 woman's club dr.; suite 112 raleigh, nc 27612 919/510-6970x14 stan@networks.com ============================== For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list has been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system administrators from the state of North Carolina. Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": mail majordomo@nando.net Subject: subscribe ncsa-discussion After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info file for our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving other files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation material from past technical programs are available for retrieval via Majordomo!!) ============================== Directions to the plant from Raleigh: US Route 1 South to the Apex/Holly Springs exit (NC Highway 55). Exit and stay left to light, turn left at the light and continue to the Ramada Inn on the right. Go 1.5 miles past the Ramada and you will see Technology Drive on the right. Data General is on the right at #1Technology Drive. There is a meeting room reserved to start the meeting. if you like here is a map: http://www.mapblast.com/mapblast/blast.hm?CMD=MAP&GC=X%3A-78.8364%7CY%3A35.6945%7CLT%3A35.6945%7CLN%3A-78.8364%7CLS%3A50000%7Cc%3AApex%7Cs%3ANC%7Cz%3A27502%7Cd%3A560%7Cp%3AUSA&LV=4&IC=35.6945%3A35.6945&IC=10&IC%3A=dg&GAD2=Technology+Dr&GAD3=Apex%2C+NC++27502-8860&W=425&H=250&MA=1&zoom.x=34&zoom.y=152 see ya'll there! stan -- stan b. briggs; president Network Computing Solutions, Inc; www.networks.com 919/510-6970x14; Fax: 919/510-6971 --------------25BB8C04FCE08BD9DEF9E08C Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for stan briggs Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: stan briggs n: briggs;stan org: network computing solutions, inc. adr: 3203 woman's club drive;;suite 112;raleigh;nc;27612;usa email;internet: stan@networks.com title: president tel;work: 919/510-6970 x14 tel;fax: 919/510-6971 x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------25BB8C04FCE08BD9DEF9E08C-- From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 7 20:53:38 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA15440 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:53:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from doe.deer-run.com (doe.deer-run.com [207.90.187.195]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA15419 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:53:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from smap@localhost) by doe.deer-run.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id UAA23627 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:39:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from buck.deer-run.com(207.90.187.196) by doe.deer-run.com via smap (V2.0) id xma023625; Tue, 7 Jul 98 20:39:43 -0700 Received: (from hal@localhost) by buck.deer-run.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id UAA10885 for sage-members@usenix.org; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:45:04 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199807080345.UAA10885@buck.deer-run.com> From: hal@deer-run.com (Hal Pomeranz) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 20:45:04 -0700 X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Quest for data Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I'm trying to gather some data regarding distribution of message sizes and number of recipients for a project I'm working on. If you can help me out by running a small script against your mail logs, please read http://www.deer-run.com/~hal/email-proj/. Hal Pomeranz, Founder/CEO Deer Run Associates hal@deer-run.com Network Connectivity and Security, Systems Management, Training From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 06:04:17 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA27608 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 06:04:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phibes.dartmouth.edu (phibes.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.45]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA27586 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 06:04:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from paw@localhost) by phibes.dartmouth.edu (8.7.6/8.7.3) id JAA13557 for sage-members@usenix.org; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 09:01:18 -0400 Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 09:01:18 -0400 From: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-Id: <199807091301.JAA13557@phibes.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: IPV6? Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk We all know that IPv6 is "coming" (RSN). Is anyone doing anything interesting with it _today_? More importantly, are there sysadmin issues involved? Thanks. Pat Wilson LISA '98 OT co-chair paw@dartmouth.edu || paw@usenix.org From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 08:00:40 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA03789 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 08:00:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nova.botz.org (root@cm40115.cableco-op.com [208.138.40.115]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA03780 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 08:00:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nova (IDENT:jbotz@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nova.botz.org (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id HAA27323; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 07:57:20 -0700 Message-Id: <199807091457.HAA27323@nova.botz.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: IPV6? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 09 Jul 1998 09:01:18 EDT." <199807091301.JAA13557@phibes.dartmouth.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 07:57:19 -0700 From: Jurgen Botz Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu wrote: > > We all know that IPv6 is "coming" (RSN). Is anyone doing anything > interesting with it _today_? There's the 6bone, which is an experimental, virtual IPv6 network tunneled through the Internet much like the ole M-bone; http://www.6bone.net/ > More importantly, are there sysadmin issues involved? Surely. Although one of the important features of IPv6 is that it makes certain sysadmin thingies a lot easier; for exmple IPv6 has auto- configuration which basically let you just put a new box on the net and turn it on. I suspect the biggest issues will arise from the long (possibly infinitely long) transitional phase when you have both v4 and v6 systems on your net. Mostly that means that all servers need to be dual-protocol-stack machines configured for both. The big questions is; when does the transition begin? Presumably the answer is sometime after the big router vendors start shipping their software with IPv6 standard. Anyone have a feeling how far away we are from that point? -- ~~/ /~) /.. /-< \_/ u r g e n /_ _) o t z From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 08:38:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA05794 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 08:38:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from polya.mts.jhu.edu (root@polya.mts.jhu.edu [128.220.17.38]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA05736 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 08:37:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by polya.mts.jhu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA05313; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:34:38 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199807091534.LAA05313@polya.mts.jhu.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: polya.mts.jhu.edu: bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: Jurgen Botz cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: IPV6? In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 09 Jul 1998 07:57:19 PDT." <199807091457.HAA27323@nova.botz.org> From: Bill Bogstad Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 11:34:37 -0400 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >The big questions is; when does the transition begin? Presumably the >answer is sometime after the big router vendors start shipping their >software with IPv6 standard. Anyone have a feeling how far away we >are from that point? I vaguely remember reading that Cisco plans to make it a standard part of IOS soon (like next major release). Look for everyone getting new routers or on support contracts to at least be IPv6 capable in the next couple of years. Bill Bogstad From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 11:32:13 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA15871 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:32:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aeronomics.com (atl_notes.aeronomics.com [38.212.192.13]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA15862 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:32:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: by aeronomics.com(Lotus SMTP MTA v1.2 (600.1 3-26-1998)) id 8525663C.0065A863 ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:30:22 -0400 X-Lotus-FromDomain: AERONOMICS From: "Matt Birkner" To: Jurgen Botz cc: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org Message-ID: <8525663C.0060DAE7.00@aeronomics.com> Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:30:20 -0400 Subject: Re: IPV6? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk IPv6 implementation exists for a large number of host types and routers. You can find a (complete?) list at the IPNG site on playground.sun.com (http://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng/html/ipng-implementations.html). I know there are IPv6 testbeds floating around in various places but I haven't had time to keep up with exactly where. As for the "live" deployment of v6, I believe there are still a few transition issues that are being worked on but I seem to recall some discussion about being ready to deploy in '99. Hope this helps somewhat. Matt Jurgen Botz on 07/09/98 10:57:19 AM To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu cc: sage-members@usenix.org (bcc: Matt Birkner/ATL/Aeronomics) Subject: Re: IPV6? paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu wrote: > > We all know that IPv6 is "coming" (RSN). Is anyone doing anything > interesting with it _today_? There's the 6bone, which is an experimental, virtual IPv6 network tunneled through the Internet much like the ole M-bone; http://www.6bone.net/ > More importantly, are there sysadmin issues involved? Surely. Although one of the important features of IPv6 is that it makes certain sysadmin thingies a lot easier; for exmple IPv6 has auto- configuration which basically let you just put a new box on the net and turn it on. I suspect the biggest issues will arise from the long (possibly infinitely long) transitional phase when you have both v4 and v6 systems on your net. Mostly that means that all servers need to be dual-protocol-stack machines configured for both. The big questions is; when does the transition begin? Presumably the answer is sometime after the big router vendors start shipping their software with IPv6 standard. Anyone have a feeling how far away we are from that point? -- ~~/ /~) /.. /-< \_/ u r g e n /_ _) o t z From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 14:22:47 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA25337 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:22:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ulysses.noc.ntua.gr (ulysses.noc.ntua.gr [147.102.222.230]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA25328 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:22:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dblab.ece.ntua.gr (ithaca.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr [147.102.12.1]) by ulysses.noc.ntua.gr (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA26690; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:19:22 +0300 (EET DST) Received: from hawk.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr (hawk.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr [147.102.12.8]) by dblab.ece.ntua.gr (8.9.1/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA06238; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:19:21 +0300 (EEST) Received: (from george@localhost) by hawk.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA02051; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:19:19 +0300 (EET DST) Message-ID: <19980710001919.A2044@dblab.ece.ntua.gr> Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:19:19 +0300 From: Yiorgos Adamopoulos To: "Matt Birkner" , Jurgen Botz Cc: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: IPV6? Reply-To: adamo@dblab.ece.ntua.gr References: <8525663C.0060DAE7.00@aeronomics.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1i In-Reply-To: <8525663C.0060DAE7.00@aeronomics.com>; from Matt Birkner on Thu, Jul 09, 1998 at 02:30:20PM -0400 X-Organization: National Technical University of Athens, GREECE X-URL: http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr/~adamo/ X-Alt-Email: adamo@InterWorks.org X-Work-Phone: +30-1-772-1-436 X-Work-FAX: +30-1-772-1-442 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Have a look at http://www.6bone.net http://www.kame.net http://playground.sun.com -Y. From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 14:51:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA26954 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:51:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgw.rational.com (mailgw.rational.com [192.232.7.78]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA26945 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:51:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fort-ext.rational.com (fort-ext.pureatria.com [192.232.7.130]) by mailgw.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-mailgw) with SMTP id OAA17915; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:47:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhub.rational.com by fort-ext.rational.com via smtpd (for [192.232.7.78]) with SMTP; 9 Jul 1998 21:47:48 UT Received: from cupmail0.rational.com (cupmail0.pureatria.com [192.232.8.250]) by mailhub.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-mailhub) with ESMTP id OAA11243; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:47:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chip.pureatria.com (chip.rational.com [172.19.129.128]) by cupmail0.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-cupmail0) with SMTP id OAA04846; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:47:46 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:47:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Jim Donaldson Message-Id: <199807092147.OAA04846@cupmail0.rational.com> Received: by chip.pureatria.com (SMI-8.6/CLIENT-1.0) id OAA02477; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 14:47:43 -0700 To: sage-members@usenix.org, paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Subject: Re: IPV6? X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > We all know that IPv6 is "coming" (RSN). Is anyone doing anything > interesting with it _today_? More importantly, are there sysadmin > issues involved? Big time. Here's some good info from the AT&T Labs Europe 6Bone: http://server-401.att.ch/ipv6/ ------------------------------------------------------------ Jim Donaldson Rational Software Sr. System Administrator 18880 Homestead Rd. Global IT Operations Cupertino, CA 95014 (408) 863-4292 jld@rational.com ------------------------------------------------------------ From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 21:00:47 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA15330 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 21:00:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from swan.prod.itd.earthlink.net (swan.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.120.123]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA15294 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 21:00:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sherman (1Cust115.tnt15.lax3.da.uu.net [153.37.94.115]) by swan.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA27276; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:57:46 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19980709205621.009a4210@mail.earthlink.net> X-Sender: bhami@mail.earthlink.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 20:56:21 -0700 To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org From: Bruce Hamilton Subject: Re: IPV6? In-Reply-To: <199807091301.JAA13557@phibes.dartmouth.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk At 09:01 AM 7/9/98 -0400, paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu wrote: > >We all know that IPv6 is "coming" (RSN). Is anyone doing anything >interesting with it _today_? More importantly, are there sysadmin >issues involved? > I raised this question at the Los Angeles incarnation of Data Communications Magazine's "Switched LAN Shootout" a couple of months ago. In response, one of the panelist commented that there is essentially NO pressure from ISPs to move to IPv6, because they love the client lock-in that IPv4 CIDR gives them. He also indicated that there are standards issues related to stuff like routing which have not yet been nailed down. I don't know any details on this. --Bruce (Bruce Hamilton, Redondo Beach, CA) bhami@netcom.com (preferred) bhami@hesp.es.xerox.com --day 310-333-3538 --day http://home.earthlink.net/~bhami/ From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 9 22:49:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id WAA20174 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 22:49:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plts.org (vmailer@plts.superlink.net [208.200.84.254]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA20165 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 22:49:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: by plts.org (VMailer, from userid 21643) id 136C8BF94; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 01:09:31 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <19980710010930.33255@plts.org> Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 01:09:30 -0400 From: Tom Limoncelli To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: IPV6? References: <199807092147.OAA04846@cupmail0.rational.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.84 In-Reply-To: <199807092147.OAA04846@cupmail0.rational.com>; from Jim Donaldson on Thu, Jul 09, 1998 at 02:47:46PM -0700 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk My recent IPv6 project has been to try to convince at least one person that with IPv6's 128-bit addresses one can keep their FQDN's less than 16 bytes and then stuff the actual FQDN in the header of each packet. No need for reverse lookups. Sadly, my friends are too savy to fall for it. :-) --tal -- Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal -- tal@plts.org "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony "As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 10 06:03:16 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA09674 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 06:03:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from east.isi.edu (east.isi.edu [38.245.76.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA09665 for ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 06:03:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ipce-adm.east.isi.edu by east.isi.edu (8.8.5/5.61+local-24) id ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:00:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 08:59:53 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) From: Forrest Houston Reply-To: Forrest Houston To: Jim Donaldson cc: sage-members@usenix.org, paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Subject: Re: IPV6? In-Reply-To: <199807092147.OAA04846@cupmail0.rational.com> Message-ID: X-X-Sender: fhouston@east.isi.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 9 Jul 1998, Jim Donaldson wrote: > > We all know that IPv6 is "coming" (RSN). Is anyone doing anything > > interesting with it _today_? More importantly, are there sysadmin > > issues involved? > > Big time. Here's some good info from the AT&T Labs Europe 6Bone: > > http://server-401.att.ch/ipv6/ > For those that want to see what Bill is up to check out: http://www.research.microsoft.com/msripv6 Included in there is a link to a paper which is going to be presented at the 2nd USENIX Windows NT Symposium in Seattle. Forrest Houston USC/ISI - East From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 10 09:05:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA18900 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:05:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from polya.mts.jhu.edu (root@polya.mts.jhu.edu [128.220.17.38]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA18891 for ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 09:05:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by polya.mts.jhu.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA00412; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:02:46 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199807101602.MAA00412@polya.mts.jhu.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: polya.mts.jhu.edu: bogstad@localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: Tom Limoncelli cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: IPV6? In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 10 Jul 1998 01:09:30 EDT." <19980710010930.33255@plts.org> From: Bill Bogstad Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 12:02:39 -0400 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Tom Limoncelli writes: >My recent IPv6 project has been to try to convince at least one person >that with IPv6's 128-bit addresses one can keep their FQDN's less than 16 >bytes and then stuff the actual FQDN in the header of each packet. No >need for reverse lookups. > >Sadly, my friends are too savy to fall for it. There are some obvious technical problems here. For example, there is an endian problem. With IP addresses the most significant part is on the left, while with FQDNs it's on the right. You need to reverse the name before stuffing it in the IP header. Alternatively you can try to get everyone to reverse the order of FQDNs (like the UK had many years ago). Also, you won't be able to use the entire 128-bit space (otherwise you'll have unprintable FQDNs). Still, if we restrict ourselves to ASCII letters and numbers and a couple of punctuation marks (say 40 symbols per byte), my calculations are that you'll still have 10 to the 15th more printable addresses then IPv4 has binary addresses. Bill Bogstad bogstad@pobox.com P.S. Insert :-) as required above... From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 10 10:47:18 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA24279 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:47:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plts.org (vmailer@plts.superlink.net [208.200.84.254]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA24248 for ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 10:47:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: by plts.org (VMailer, from userid 21643) id 136E187BF; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:43:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <19980710134346.06141@plts.org> Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:43:46 -0400 From: Tom Limoncelli To: Bill Bogstad Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: IPV6? References: <19980710010930.33255@plts.org> <199807101602.MAA00412@polya.mts.jhu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.84 In-Reply-To: <199807101602.MAA00412@polya.mts.jhu.edu>; from Bill Bogstad on Fri, Jul 10, 1998 at 12:02:39PM -0400 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk LOOK! LOOK! I THINK I GOT ONE!!! On Fri, Jul 10, 1998 at 12:02:39PM -0400, Bill Bogstad wrote: > > Tom Limoncelli writes: > >My recent IPv6 project has been to try to convince at least one person > >that with IPv6's 128-bit addresses one can keep their FQDN's less than 16 > >bytes and then stuff the actual FQDN in the header of each packet. No > >need for reverse lookups. > > > >Sadly, my friends are too savy to fall for it. > > There are some obvious technical problems here. For example, there is > an endian problem. With IP addresses the most significant part is on the > left, while with FQDNs it's on the right. You need to reverse the name before > stuffing it in the IP header. Alternatively you can try to get everyone to > reverse the order of FQDNs (like the UK had many years ago). > > Also, you won't be able to use the entire 128-bit space (otherwise > you'll have unprintable FQDNs). Still, if we restrict ourselves to ASCII > letters and numbers and a couple of punctuation marks (say 40 symbols per > byte), my calculations are that you'll still have 10 to the 15th more > printable addresses then IPv4 has binary addresses. > > Bill Bogstad > bogstad@pobox.com > > P.S. Insert :-) as required above... Damn... a :-) --tal :-) -- Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal -- tal@plts.org "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony "As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 10 14:28:09 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA05227 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:28:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from remarque.org (remarque.org [206.80.1.43]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA05218 for ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:28:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from strata@localhost) by remarque.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA15204; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:24:38 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 98 14:24:30 PDT From: strata@virtual.net Reply-To: strata@virtual.net To: baylisa%baylisa.org@rhino.ark.gnac.net, sage-members@usenix.org, svlug-announce@svlug.org Subject: BayLISA Summer Picnic, July 19, Los Gatos CA Message-ID: Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ---------------------------------------------------------------- BAYLISA ANNUAL SUMMER PICNIC-- Sunday, July 19, 1998 noon - 5pm Oak Meadow Park, Los Gatos, Area 1 [Map URLs and directions at end of posting] BRING: You, Family, Housemates, Friends, something to Grill *** You don't have to be a BayLISA member to attend-- be a prospective member, a member of a similar organization, a family member, etc. Come meet and party with the folks who host those cool meetings every month! Oak Meadow Park adjoins the better-known Vasona Creek Park in Lost Gatos, near Vasona Lake. The parks are connected by paths, and the lake and boat rentals at Vasona are only a 10 minute walk from our site. Oak Meadow is also the home of the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad, a miniature-gauge rail line that you can ride on, and the W.E. Mason Carousel, a historic carousel. Both of these are less than 3 minutes from the site. We are also about 200 yards from the children's playground, and next to the big grassy area for frisbee, nerf sports, etc. Nerf and/or water weaponry encouraged, but keep it away from the grill, picnic tables, and unamused folks. We have picnic tables and natural shade, plus one or two shade canopies have been volunteered. Oak Meadow and Vasona have lots of paved and shaded trails, so bring your bike/skateboard/rollerblades and have some fun! Leashed dogs are allowed at the park, so if you are willing to supervise your pooch around all the people, it's okay to bring Rover. Non-motorized boats may be launched at Vasona Lake. This is a picnic, not a state dinner-- we expect folks to drop in and out and enjoy the park as well as each others' company. We will have electricity available onsite, so please continue the BayLISA tradition of bringing your electric ice cream maker and churning up some home-made yummies. For those that just can't stop themselves: Someone is bringing a mini-hub. If you want to bring your laptop and play Quake or Age of Empires with like-minded folks, well, hey, it's a free country. BayLISA will not be held responsible for any incidents of domestic disharmony that may ensue, however. On the other hand, maybe your spouse will be shepherding the kids for a while and you can finally tackle level 47... If you are gung-ho enough, bring your mini-cam and your Ricochet and we'll put live pix up on the website. The park is about a mile from Ricochet/Metricom's main offices and manufacturing site, so coverage is excellent. FOOD, DRINK, ETC: Bring something to grill, and maybe a little extra, or a side dish like potato salad or somesuch. If your Grill Thing needs buns, better be safe and bring some! We will be providing the 3 C's of sysadmin life, caffeine, chocolate, and chips. This translates into assorted drinks (many non-caffeinated), cookies, pretzels, chips, little candy things that you know are bad for you but you love anyway and never let yourself buy because you'll eat the whole package, that kind of thing. We will also have the usual assortment of "things you put on the things that get grilled", ie ketchup, mustard, relish, BBQ sauce. We aim to have the (huge) grill hot and ready by noon, and will have a separate area for veggie/vegan grilling. We will have some BBQ tools, but it might be helpful to bring your own and mark them so that we don't end up with 20 people trying to use 2 spatulas. We will also have lots of ice! Fresh water is available onsite, at fountains and also at a water tap. And we will have paper plates, napkins, etc. Beer and wine are allowed at the picnic areas, but not loose around the park. Hard liquor is not allowed in the park, even at the picnic areas. Just so the Scotch BOF folks know. Oh yes, and that all-important question-- yes, of course there are, and we are about 300 yards from them, all on level ground, in line of sight. :-) And they have baby-changing areas inside the restrooms. DIRECTIONS, URLs, ETC http://www.scruz.net/~davidbu/los_gatos/gifs/highway.gif Los Gatos in the Big Picture Use your favorite map service-- www.mapquest.com or www.mapsonus.com; the address of the main entrance to Oak Meadow Park is 233 Blossom Hill Road, Los Gatos, CA http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/los_gatos/gifs/oakmeado.html Nice map of the park layout itself, with our Area 1 clearly marked. http://claraweb.co.santa-clara.ca.us/parks_old/park_pages/vasona.html Vasona Creek Park website http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/los_gatos/parks_and_recreation/billy_jones_rr/rr_desc.html Info on the mini-railroad; there is a Schedule page linked from this one. There is a $5 per car fee for parking at Oak Meadow, though one can park at Vasona and walk in or park on city streets nearby. For the athletic among us, there are footpaths and bike trails that go all the way from the Los Gatos Creek trails around the Pruneyard in Campbell out to the site. I'd guess it's about a 7 - 9 mile hike or bikeride. Check your favorite parks & rec maps for more details. Amateur Radio syadmins-- talk-in on 146.505! We will be rigging a portable 2-meter antenna for a talk-in on 146.505; ask for BayLISA picnic when you get close by. Onsite hams who may be monitoring include board members Greg Kulosa (N1NSY) and Strata Rose Chalup (KF6NBZ), as well as David Lindes (KF6HFQ) and Mike Chalup (WA2FHF). Don't worry about RSVPing-- if we start running low on food, there's a grocery store around the corner, no worries! :-) Questions? Mail to blw@baylisa.org and we'll try to answer them. ---------------------------------------------------------------- =========================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata@virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ SAGE Level IV Unix Admin specializing in commercial-scale Internet services =========================================================================== From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 10 14:32:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA05400 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:32:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rhino.ark.gnac.net (rhino.ark.gnac.net [198.151.248.82]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA05389; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:32:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from baylisa@localhost) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) id OAA25736 for baylisa@baylisa.org; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:25:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from remarque.org (remarque.org [206.80.1.43]) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) with ESMTP id OAA25731 for ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:25:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from strata@localhost) by remarque.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA15204; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 14:24:38 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 98 14:24:30 PDT From: strata@virtual.net Reply-To: strata@virtual.net To: baylisa@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org, svlug-announce@svlug.org Subject: BayLISA Summer Picnic, July 19, Los Gatos CA Message-ID: X-Loop: baylisa@gnac.com Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk ---------------------------------------------------------------- BAYLISA ANNUAL SUMMER PICNIC-- Sunday, July 19, 1998 noon - 5pm Oak Meadow Park, Los Gatos, Area 1 [Map URLs and directions at end of posting] BRING: You, Family, Housemates, Friends, something to Grill *** You don't have to be a BayLISA member to attend-- be a prospective member, a member of a similar organization, a family member, etc. Come meet and party with the folks who host those cool meetings every month! Oak Meadow Park adjoins the better-known Vasona Creek Park in Lost Gatos, near Vasona Lake. The parks are connected by paths, and the lake and boat rentals at Vasona are only a 10 minute walk from our site. Oak Meadow is also the home of the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad, a miniature-gauge rail line that you can ride on, and the W.E. Mason Carousel, a historic carousel. Both of these are less than 3 minutes from the site. We are also about 200 yards from the children's playground, and next to the big grassy area for frisbee, nerf sports, etc. Nerf and/or water weaponry encouraged, but keep it away from the grill, picnic tables, and unamused folks. We have picnic tables and natural shade, plus one or two shade canopies have been volunteered. Oak Meadow and Vasona have lots of paved and shaded trails, so bring your bike/skateboard/rollerblades and have some fun! Leashed dogs are allowed at the park, so if you are willing to supervise your pooch around all the people, it's okay to bring Rover. Non-motorized boats may be launched at Vasona Lake. This is a picnic, not a state dinner-- we expect folks to drop in and out and enjoy the park as well as each others' company. We will have electricity available onsite, so please continue the BayLISA tradition of bringing your electric ice cream maker and churning up some home-made yummies. For those that just can't stop themselves: Someone is bringing a mini-hub. If you want to bring your laptop and play Quake or Age of Empires with like-minded folks, well, hey, it's a free country. BayLISA will not be held responsible for any incidents of domestic disharmony that may ensue, however. On the other hand, maybe your spouse will be shepherding the kids for a while and you can finally tackle level 47... If you are gung-ho enough, bring your mini-cam and your Ricochet and we'll put live pix up on the website. The park is about a mile from Ricochet/Metricom's main offices and manufacturing site, so coverage is excellent. FOOD, DRINK, ETC: Bring something to grill, and maybe a little extra, or a side dish like potato salad or somesuch. If your Grill Thing needs buns, better be safe and bring some! We will be providing the 3 C's of sysadmin life, caffeine, chocolate, and chips. This translates into assorted drinks (many non-caffeinated), cookies, pretzels, chips, little candy things that you know are bad for you but you love anyway and never let yourself buy because you'll eat the whole package, that kind of thing. We will also have the usual assortment of "things you put on the things that get grilled", ie ketchup, mustard, relish, BBQ sauce. We aim to have the (huge) grill hot and ready by noon, and will have a separate area for veggie/vegan grilling. We will have some BBQ tools, but it might be helpful to bring your own and mark them so that we don't end up with 20 people trying to use 2 spatulas. We will also have lots of ice! Fresh water is available onsite, at fountains and also at a water tap. And we will have paper plates, napkins, etc. Beer and wine are allowed at the picnic areas, but not loose around the park. Hard liquor is not allowed in the park, even at the picnic areas. Just so the Scotch BOF folks know. Oh yes, and that all-important question-- yes, of course there are, and we are about 300 yards from them, all on level ground, in line of sight. :-) And they have baby-changing areas inside the restrooms. DIRECTIONS, URLs, ETC http://www.scruz.net/~davidbu/los_gatos/gifs/highway.gif Los Gatos in the Big Picture Use your favorite map service-- www.mapquest.com or www.mapsonus.com; the address of the main entrance to Oak Meadow Park is 233 Blossom Hill Road, Los Gatos, CA http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/los_gatos/gifs/oakmeado.html Nice map of the park layout itself, with our Area 1 clearly marked. http://claraweb.co.santa-clara.ca.us/parks_old/park_pages/vasona.html Vasona Creek Park website http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/los_gatos/parks_and_recreation/billy_jones_rr/rr_desc.html Info on the mini-railroad; there is a Schedule page linked from this one. There is a $5 per car fee for parking at Oak Meadow, though one can park at Vasona and walk in or park on city streets nearby. For the athletic among us, there are footpaths and bike trails that go all the way from the Los Gatos Creek trails around the Pruneyard in Campbell out to the site. I'd guess it's about a 7 - 9 mile hike or bikeride. Check your favorite parks & rec maps for more details. Amateur Radio syadmins-- talk-in on 146.505! We will be rigging a portable 2-meter antenna for a talk-in on 146.505; ask for BayLISA picnic when you get close by. Onsite hams who may be monitoring include board members Greg Kulosa (N1NSY) and Strata Rose Chalup (KF6NBZ), as well as David Lindes (KF6HFQ) and Mike Chalup (WA2FHF). Don't worry about RSVPing-- if we start running low on food, there's a grocery store around the corner, no worries! :-) Questions? Mail to blw@baylisa.org and we'll try to answer them. ---------------------------------------------------------------- =========================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata@virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ SAGE Level IV Unix Admin specializing in commercial-scale Internet services =========================================================================== From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 10 15:38:19 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA08924 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:38:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgw.rational.com (mailgw.rational.com [192.232.7.78]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA08915 for ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:38:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fort-ext.rational.com (fort-ext.pureatria.com [192.232.7.130]) by mailgw.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-mailgw) with SMTP id PAA09319; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhub.rational.com by fort-ext.rational.com via smtpd (for [192.232.7.78]) with SMTP; 10 Jul 1998 22:34:46 UT Received: from cupmail0.rational.com (cupmail0.pureatria.com [192.232.8.250]) by mailhub.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-mailhub) with ESMTP id PAA05566; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chip.pureatria.com (chip.rational.com [172.19.129.128]) by cupmail0.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-cupmail0) with SMTP id PAA11575; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:45 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Jim Donaldson Message-Id: <199807102234.PAA11575@cupmail0.rational.com> Received: by chip.pureatria.com (SMI-8.6/CLIENT-1.0) id PAA02533; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:44 -0700 To: baylisa%baylisa.org@rhino.ark.gnac.net, sage-members@usenix.org, svlug-announce@svlug.org, strata@virtual.net Subject: Annual LISA conference? X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I missed last year's LISA conference in San Diego and was hoping some kind soul would email me any information on signing up for this year's LISA conference, advance payment information for my employer to pay for it, etc. :) Many thanks, Jim ------------------------------------------------------------ Jim Donaldson Rational Software Sr. System Administrator 18880 Homestead Rd. Global IT Operations Cupertino, CA 95014 (408) 863-4292 jld@rational.com ------------------------------------------------------------ From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 10 15:39:03 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA08952 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:39:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rhino.ark.gnac.net (rhino.ark.gnac.net [198.151.248.82]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA08942; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:38:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from baylisa@localhost) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) id PAA25824 for baylisa@baylisa.org; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:35:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgw.rational.com (mailgw.rational.com [192.232.7.78]) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) with ESMTP id PAA25819 for ; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:35:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fort-ext.rational.com (fort-ext.pureatria.com [192.232.7.130]) by mailgw.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-mailgw) with SMTP id PAA09319; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhub.rational.com by fort-ext.rational.com via smtpd (for [192.232.7.78]) with SMTP; 10 Jul 1998 22:34:46 UT Received: from cupmail0.rational.com (cupmail0.pureatria.com [192.232.8.250]) by mailhub.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-mailhub) with ESMTP id PAA05566; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chip.pureatria.com (chip.rational.com [172.19.129.128]) by cupmail0.rational.com (8.8.7/8.8.7/RATIONAL-cupmail0) with SMTP id PAA11575; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:45 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Jim Donaldson Message-Id: <199807102234.PAA11575@cupmail0.rational.com> Received: by chip.pureatria.com (SMI-8.6/CLIENT-1.0) id PAA02533; Fri, 10 Jul 1998 15:34:44 -0700 To: baylisa@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org, svlug-announce@svlug.org, strata@virtual.net Subject: Annual LISA conference? X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII X-Loop: baylisa@gnac.com Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I missed last year's LISA conference in San Diego and was hoping some kind soul would email me any information on signing up for this year's LISA conference, advance payment information for my employer to pay for it, etc. :) Many thanks, Jim ------------------------------------------------------------ Jim Donaldson Rational Software Sr. System Administrator 18880 Homestead Rd. Global IT Operations Cupertino, CA 95014 (408) 863-4292 jld@rational.com ------------------------------------------------------------ From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 13 10:33:40 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA29923 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:33:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from storm.nando.net ([152.52.2.139]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA29877 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:33:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) id JAA09580 for ncsa-announce-outgoing; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:09:50 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: storm.nando.net: majordomo set sender to owner-ncsa-announce@nando.net using -f Received: from ns.networks.com (ns.networks.com [207.100.16.10]) by storm.nando.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA09576 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:09:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dns.networks.com (ncs [192.168.1.2]) by ns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id JAA29471 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:04:38 -0400 (EDT) Received: from networks.com (stan.networks.com [192.168.1.64]) by dns.networks.com (8.8.4/8.8.4) with ESMTP id JAA07165 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:05:11 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <35AA066F.C17E8361@networks.com> Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 09:06:55 -0400 From: stan briggs Organization: network computing solutions, inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ncsa-announce@nando.net Subject: North Carolina System Administrators (NC*SA) meeting - July 13, 1998 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------C4E3E4627EE3765152901403" Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------C4E3E4627EE3765152901403 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit this is a reminder of tonight's meeting. hope to see everyone there! The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators organization (NC*SA) will be Monday, July 13, 1998, at 6pm. Details about the meeting and directions are provided in this note. We hope to see you there! our regular excellent fare of pizza with soft drinks will be served as well as cookies thanks to our evening's host. Tour of Data General CLARiiON facility Monday, July 13, 1998 Data General Apex, NC 6PM - General Session Abstract: Data General CLARiiON will host a tour of their facility in Apex NC on July 13 starting at 6:00 PM. The tour will start with a presentation on the newest in disk and storage technology. Topics will include High Availability Disk RAID and the newest Fibre connections and Storage Area Networks. The tour will be of the ISO 9000 certified facility and will show the group manufacturing of Data General servers and disk arrays. About the Speaker(s) Mike Keyes of Data General has been kind enough to make this tour happen. Mike is the director of CLARiiON manufacturing and has been with Data General for 13 years in a variety of capacities. Special thanks should also go to Jim D'Emilio of Dallas Digital (an NC*SA gold sponser) for his assistance in making the contact with Mike and arranging the tour. ============================== Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic of the evening. We will be providing food and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact: stan briggs network computing solutions, inc. 3203 woman's club dr.; suite 112 raleigh, nc 27612 919/510-6970x14 stan@networks.com ============================== For information about the NC System Administrators group, contact our Majordomo mailing list server. The "ncsa-discussion" mailing list has been created to facilitate discussions of interest to system administrators from the state of North Carolina. Simply send email to "majordomo@nando.net": mail majordomo@nando.net Subject: subscribe ncsa-discussion After subscribing, Majordomo will send you the help file and info file for our mailing list. These files contain instructions for retrieving other files available to the NCSA organization (e.g. the presentation material from past technical programs are available for retrieval via Majordomo!!) ============================== Directions to the plant from Raleigh: US Route 1 South to the Apex/Holly Springs exit (NC Highway 55). Exit and stay left to light, turn left at the light and continue to the Ramada Inn on the right. Go 1.5 miles past the Ramada and you will see Technology Drive on the right. Data General is on the right at #1Technology Drive. There is a meeting room reserved to start the meeting. if you like here is a map: http://www.mapblast.com/mapblast/blast.hm?CMD=MAP&GC=X%3A-78.8364%7CY%3A35.6945%7CLT%3A35.6945%7CLN%3A-78.8364%7CLS%3A50000%7Cc%3AApex%7Cs%3ANC%7Cz%3A27502%7Cd%3A560%7Cp%3AUSA&LV=4&IC=35.6945%3A35.6945&IC=10&IC%3A=dg&GAD2=Technology+Dr&GAD3=Apex%2C+NC++27502-8860&W=425&H=250&MA=1&zoom.x=34&zoom.y=152 see ya'll there! stan -- stan b. briggs; president Network Computing Solutions, Inc; www.networks.com 919/510-6970x14; Fax: 919/510-6971 --------------C4E3E4627EE3765152901403 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for stan briggs Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: stan briggs n: briggs;stan org: network computing solutions, inc. adr: 3203 woman's club drive;;suite 112;raleigh;nc;27612;usa email;internet: stan@networks.com title: president tel;work: 919/510-6970 x14 tel;fax: 919/510-6971 x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------C4E3E4627EE3765152901403-- From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 13 10:50:49 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA01105 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:50:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mhub2.tc.umn.edu (mhub2.tc.umn.edu [128.101.131.42]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA01096 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:50:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gold.tc.umn.edu by mhub2.tc.umn.edu; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 12:47:44 -0500 Received: by gold.tc.umn.edu; Mon, 13 Jul 98 12:47:44 -0500 Message-Id: <35aa48402cfd002@gold.tc.umn.edu> Date: Mon, 13 Jul 98 12:47:44 -0500 From: Dave Bianchi To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: TCSA meeting July 16 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The Twin Cities System Administrators (TCSA) group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to system and network administrators in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. The meetings are free and open to the public. Check out our web site at http://www.tcsa.org/ TCSA meetings are on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm. Next Meeting: Topic: SANS98 Conference Report Speaker: Clay Fandre, Honeywell Dave Bianchi, Collective Technologies Date/Time: July 16, 1998 7:00 pm Location: University of St. Thomas, St. Paul campus Synopsis: Clay and Dave will present information from the SANS 98 conference that was held in May. The SANS Institute offers a series of conferences for systems and network administrators and security professionals. We will meet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (southwest corner of Summit and Cretin) in building OSS (Science and Engineering Center) room 333. Tentative Meeting Schedule August 20, 1998 September 17, 1998 Directions to the University of St. Thomas (Summit & Cretin): - From East I-94: Going east on I-94, take the Cretin-Vandalia exit. Go right (south) about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From West I-94: Coming west on I-94, exit at Cretin-Vandalia. Go left (south) on Cretin about one mile to Summit Avenue. Stay on Cretin and turn right at the next driveway into St. Thomas. - From the south on I-35E: Take 35E north to the Randolph Avenue exit. Make a left on Randolph (crossing over 35E) and follow it about two miles to Cretin Avenue. Turn right onto Cretin and go about 1.5 miles to Summit Avenue. Turn left into St. Thomas just before Summit. - Parking: Drive to the parking area straight ahead and to the right. The OSS building is the second building on your right as you enter St. Thomas. Park in any lot near the OSS building. Go to OSS room 333 to get a visitor parking permit for your car. - Web maps are at: Map to St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/dirst.html Map of St. Paul Campus: http://www.stthomas.edu/www/stmap.html On the Map of the St. Paul Campus, OSS is building 40. For more information on TCSA, check out our web site: http://www.tcsa.org/ To subscribe to the TCSA mailing list (from a Unix system): echo "subscribe tcsa" | mailx majordomo@tcsa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@tcsa.org or contact: Dave Bianchi 651-644-7843 -- Dave Bianchi djb@colltech.com Work: 612-957-4532 Collective Technologies djb@tc.umn.edu FAX: 612-957-4195 A Pencom Company Pager: 612-818-7162 From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 13 14:31:25 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA12557 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:31:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from ellie@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA12547 for sage-members; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:31:18 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 14:31:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Ellie Young Message-Id: <199807132131.OAA12547@usenix.ORG> To: sage-members Subject: RPF for Proposals to Chair LISA '99 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Request for Proposals to Chair the 13th Systems Administration Conference (LISA '99) The USENIX Association and its Special Technical Group SAGE, the System Administrators Guild, are seeking proposals from people interested in chairing the Thirteenth LISA conference, to be held November 7-12, 1999 in Seattle, WA. We are seeking an energetic person with the following qualifications: * Knowledge of timely and appropriate topics in the field * Ability to put together a program committee which will find qualified speakers to submit papers, as well as identifying keynote and panel participants * Experience and an excellent reputation in the field of system administration * Excellent administrative and planning skills * Good public speaking skills * Attendance at previous LISA conferences (and involvement in a previous program committee is helpful). * Time to invest to insure success of the conference Proposals should be brief (1 page) and should include the following: *Statement of Purpose (e.g., why have another one, how to improve it) *Form of submissions (e.g., abstracts, extended abstracts and/or full papers?) *Format (e.g., 3 days of technical sessions, panel sessions, etc.) *List of topics to be addressed (as in the call for papers) *Any special features, such as plans for improving the quality and number of the papers, ideas for theme/focus *List of potential program committee members and/or a co-chair (Note that while most USENIX conferences have had an individual program chair, proposals requesting a co-chair are welcome. The Exec. Director also has a list of volunteers who might serve on the committee.) *Short bio/references Proposal due date: October 1, 1998 The program chair is not responsible for the conference's Invited Talks Track, Tutorials, BOFs, vendor exhibition, and conference site selection/ logistics. The chair is expected to work closely with the staff and volunteers (e.g., coordinators for the tutorial and invited talks program). Please address all inquiries and proposals to the Association's Executive Director, Ellie Young . Proposals will be evaluated and selection of a chair made by a subcommittee composed of USENIX and SAGE board members. From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 13 16:00:47 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA17552 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 16:00:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from correo.austin.apc.slb.com (correo.austin.apc.slb.com [163.185.74.6]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA17494 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 16:00:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from austin.apc.slb.com (tintin3.austin.apc.slb.com [163.185.68.109]) by correo.austin.apc.slb.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA19618; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 17:54:08 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <35A59162.4FC83252@austin.apc.slb.com> Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 22:58:27 -0500 From: Francois Leclerc Reply-To: fleclerc@slb.com Organization: Schlumberger APC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (WinNT; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jurgen Botz CC: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: IPV6? References: <199807091457.HAA27323@nova.botz.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I believe all the RFCs for IPV6 are not out yet ... There are still discussions planned for the next IETF 42 meeting in chicago ... cf http://www.ietf.org -- Francois Leclerc SCHLUMBERGER Austin Product Center Associate Research Scientist 8311 North F.M 620 Road Fax: 1 512 331-3760 Austin, Texas 78726 USA Tel: 1 512 331-3133 fleclerc@slb.com or leclerc@austin.apc.slb.com From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 13 18:31:14 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA24926 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 18:31:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhost.blight.com (benjy@lucien.blight.com [208.214.234.51]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA24917 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 18:31:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (benjy@localhost) by mailhost.blight.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA07433 for ; Mon, 13 Jul 1998 20:28:09 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: lucien.blight.com: benjy owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 20:28:09 -0500 (CDT) From: Benjy Feen X-Sender: benjy@lucien.blight.com To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: "Must-have" book list? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This is a thread that comes up from time to time in various venues, but I think it's worth revisiting... What are your personal favorite UNIX or network administration texts? Cheswick & Bellovin? Nemeth et al? Stevens? I'm interested in favorites covering the range from introductory to advanced. Unless anyone feels differently, it might be best to just e-mail your favorites to me; I'll compile a list. Benjy Feen From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 14 10:47:19 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA12325 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:47:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (firewall-user@yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA12314 for ; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:47:12 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id KAA27470; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:44:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mg128-232.ricochet.net(204.179.128.232) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma027385; Tue, 14 Jul 98 10:43:39 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id KAA03845; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:43:20 -0700 Message-Id: <199807141743.KAA03845@localhost.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: Programming tools for SysAdmins, (panel) To: baylisa@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:43:17 -0700 (PDT) Cc: blw@baylisa.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. *** *** NOTE: We are no longer broadcasting our meetings over the MBONE. *** Schedule -------- Thursday, 16 July, 1998 Programming tools for SysAdmins, (panel) The following topics will be discussed, with the names listed presenting them: RCS/CVS Hal Pomeranz Make, rdist, rsync Greg Kulosa stupid shell tricks (Sed, Awk, eval) Hal Pomeranz #### For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 14 10:47:29 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA12336 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:47:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rhino.ark.gnac.net (rhino.ark.gnac.net [198.151.248.82]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA12327 for ; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:47:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from baylisa@localhost) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) id KAA28573 for blw@baylisa.org; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:44:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yosemite.main.gnac.com (yosemite.main.gnac.com [198.151.248.221]) by rhino.ark.gnac.net (8.8.5/8.8.5/GNAC-GW-2.1) with ESMTP id KAA28568; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:44:22 -0700 (PDT) From: greg@gnac.com Received: by yosemite.main.gnac.com; id KAA27470; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:44:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mg128-232.ricochet.net(204.179.128.232) by yosemite.main.gnac.com via smap (4.1) id xma027385; Tue, 14 Jul 98 10:43:39 -0700 Received: (from greg@localhost) by localhost.gnac.com (8.8.7/8.8.8) id KAA03845; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:43:20 -0700 Message-Id: <199807141743.KAA03845@localhost.gnac.com> Subject: BayLISA meeting: Programming tools for SysAdmins, (panel) To: baylisa@baylisa.org, sage-members@usenix.org Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:43:17 -0700 (PDT) Cc: blw@baylisa.org Content-Type: text X-Loop: baylisa@gnac.com Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk The BayLISA group meets monthly to discuss topics of interest to systems and network administrators. The meetings are free and open to the public. BayLISA holds monthly meetings on the third Thursday of each month at 7:30 PM PST. *** *** NOTE: We are no longer broadcasting our meetings over the MBONE. *** Schedule -------- Thursday, 16 July, 1998 Programming tools for SysAdmins, (panel) The following topics will be discussed, with the names listed presenting them: RCS/CVS Hal Pomeranz Make, rdist, rsync Greg Kulosa stupid shell tricks (Sed, Awk, eval) Hal Pomeranz #### For further information on BayLISA, check out our web site: http://www.baylisa.org/ To get further information on the meeting location, you can also ftp it from ftp.baylisa.org:/BayLISA/location or you can query the BayLISA mail server by cutting and pasting the following line to your shell: echo "index baylisa" | mail majordomo@baylisa.org BayLISA makes video tapes of the meetings available to members. For more information on available videos, please send email to: video@baylisa.org For any other information, please send email to: info@baylisa.org If you have any questions, please contact me or the info alias listed above. -- Greg A. Kulosa | "The avalanche has already started, it is too Systems Administrator | late for the pebbles to vote." - Ambassador Kosh GNAC, Inc. |___________________________________________________ greg@gnac.com 999 Main Street - Redwood City, CA 94063 From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 14 13:30:09 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA21964 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:30:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA21955 for ; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 13:30:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jsdy@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA30091; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:27:09 -0400 From: Joseph S D Yao Message-Id: <199807142027.QAA30091@gwyn.tux.org> Subject: Re: SATAN (SANTA) To: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:27:09 -0400 (EDT) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199806261740.NAA12860@phibes.dartmouth.edu> from "paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu" at Jun 26, 98 01:40:25 pm Reply-To: jsdy@tux.org Content-Type: text Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > O'Reilly's just published an English translation of Martin Freiss' > _Protecting Networks with SATAN_ (ISBN 1-56592-425-8; US$19.95). I > remember that when it came out, I thought SATAN was a really neat tool, and > expected to see lots of folks writing modules and scripts for it, but I > never did see pointers to a repository of such things. Is there one? > > More to the point, do you find SATAN valuable? Should SAGE have some sort > of module/script repository? I saw something recently which one person alleged was an updated version of SATAN. It's called the System Administrator's Integrated Network Tool ... SAINT ... SATAN was useful, but as you say or imply, there are now more exploits than then. Joe Yao jsdy@tux.org - Joseph S. D. Yao From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 14 16:52:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA04844 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:52:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aeronomics.com (atl_notes.aeronomics.com [38.212.192.13]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA14327 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 20:38:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: by aeronomics.com(Lotus SMTP MTA v1.2 (600.1 3-26-1998)) id 8525663D.0013E068 ; Thu, 9 Jul 1998 23:37:06 -0400 X-Lotus-FromDomain: AERONOMICS From: "Matt Birkner" To: sage-members@usenix.org Message-ID: <8525663D.00133ADB.00@aeronomics.com> Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 23:37:03 -0400 Subject: Help recovering data from an AIX disk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hello all, I find myself in a bit of a predicament. I have a disk that's been acting flakey in an IBM 7013/J40 running AIX 4.1.2. I copied the only valuable volume off that disk, but neglected to shutdown the db2 database before making the copy (very stupid....*sigh*). I replaced the disk and removed the logical volume info pertaining to the bad disk from the configuration database (ie used smit to remove the physical volume from the volume group) then re-added the new physical volume to the database. That's when we discovered that the database was inconsistant and couldn't be brough back up. I have put the flakey disk back into the box and am now trying to figure out how to recover the data off that disk. Does anyone know AIX well enought to tell me how I can manage this? Or to let me know that it's futile to try? Thanks in advance, Matt From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 14 23:33:15 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA23219 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 23:33:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from goole.octacon.co.uk (goole.octacon.co.uk [193.118.80.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA23210 for ; Tue, 14 Jul 1998 23:33:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from claymoor.octacon.co.uk (claymoor.octacon.co.uk [193.118.80.32]) by goole.octacon.co.uk (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id HAA11547; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 07:29:33 +0100 (BST) Message-Id: <199807150629.HAA11547@goole.octacon.co.uk> From: "Adam Morris" To: "Joseph S D Yao" , "paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu" Cc: "sage-members@usenix.ORG" Date: Wed, 15 Jul 98 07:34:07 Reply-To: "Adam Morris" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: PMMail 1.91 Evaluation Version For OS/2 (Unregistered) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: SATAN (SANTA)- SAINT Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Tue, 14 Jul 1998 16:27:09 -0400 (EDT), Joseph S D Yao wrote: > >I saw something recently which one person alleged was an updated version >of SATAN. It's called the System Administrator's Integrated Network >Tool ... SAINT ... > SAINT is based on SATAN but with updated probes among other things... Having run it against some on four systems I would say that it is worth getting and trying. I'm not sure how often they plan to update it, but it looks like they are intending it as promotional material for a commercial product. Adam Morris - -- Adam Morris -- Onyx Internet -- Systems Engineer http://www.onyx.net e-mail: Adam.Morris@onyx.net vox: +44 (0)1642 216200 fax: +44 (0)1642 216201 * * If the message isn't signed it probably isn't me * * -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: cp850 iQCVAwUBNaxbbzxztoTO1QFNAQE0hwP9E9kkvpJ9rde8nLNPIxlbWmgphr1EU3Pt alXhlplgD4TrOJtWABRWQEaq8JoYk6HF+36KecOtwHUBRz4PbYUIAz0JOyEZVW1z 3PBhKMJ3OHVxGOcb173MzDCWvL7osXup7vZGxQz5ps1+1X0KVddTqmeGv9SnaZyk iL3iT6s6+ic= =GA8b -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 05:48:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA10162 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 05:48:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay.nswc.navy.mil (relay.nswc.navy.mil [128.38.1.41]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id FAA10139 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 05:48:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailsrvx (mailsrvx.nswc.navy.mil) by relay.nswc.navy.mil (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA14468; Wed, 15 Jul 98 08:45:11 EDT Received: by mailsrvx (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA03777; Wed, 15 Jul 98 08:45:53 EDT From: "Dwight Peters" Message-Id: <9807150845.ZM3775@mailsrvx> Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 08:45:53 -0400 X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10oct95) To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: !running tar from cron Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I am trying to do a tar extraction, calling tar from a script that is called from cron. After the script worked from the command line I put it i cron. Didn't work. Incidently, this is on a Solaris 2.4 box. Well, I did some trouble shooting and, simplified a little so that I could work on the problem without the complications of the scripts. So now I have variation on the crontab entry. Here's a couple that I've tried. #12 15 * * 2 if [ -f /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar ];then /usr/bin/tar -xf /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar; fi; 49 15 * * 2 /usr/bin/tar xvf /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar 2>/tmp/out Of course, I've tried a lot of variations. Nothing seems to work. I've not only gone thru the man pages but consulted with every one here. Everyone thinks this is very interesting. Does anyone know what it is that I don't know? -- Dwight Petersen is a system administrator. Standard disclaimers. "What if the songbird will not sing?" "Kill it," said Oda Nobunaga. "Make the bird want to sing", said Toyotomi Hideyoshi. "Wait", said Tokugawa Ieyasu. From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 05:54:39 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA10452 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 05:54:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from what.snew.com (what.snew.com [206.136.64.13]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA10443 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 05:54:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from chuck@localhost) by what.snew.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA05613; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 08:51:44 -0400 (EDT) From: chuck Message-Id: <199807151251.IAA05613@what.snew.com> Subject: Re: SATAN (SANTA) To: jsdy@tux.org Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 08:51:43 -0400 (EDT) Cc: paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu, sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <199807142027.QAA30091@gwyn.tux.org> from "Joseph S D Yao" at Jul 14, 98 04:27:09 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk It is claimed, but unverified, that Joseph S D Yao wrote: > > > O'Reilly's just published an English translation of Martin Freiss' > > _Protecting Networks with SATAN_ (ISBN 1-56592-425-8; US$19.95). I > > remember that when it came out, I thought SATAN was a really neat tool, and > > expected to see lots of folks writing modules and scripts for it, but I > > never did see pointers to a repository of such things. Is there one? > > > > More to the point, do you find SATAN valuable? Should SAGE have some sort > > of module/script repository? > > I saw something recently which one person alleged was an updated version > of SATAN. It's called the System Administrator's Integrated Network > Tool ... SAINT ... > > > > SATAN was useful, but as you say or imply, there are now more exploits > than then. I think the value of SATAN was it's modularity and had hopes that it would be a dynamic tool with SATAN as the engine, updated periodically, running a plethora of modules that would be kept upto date. Let's call them "plug-ins" (ala gimp). What never really happened (at least to my knowledge) was people writing modules that could find those new exploits. The engine is a tad out of date, but the "plug-ins" can/should be as upto date as the exploits. So, yes, I do like the idea a centralized module library available at high profile sites (eg. COAST) where we could do our "one stop shopping" for updates. chuck From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 07:39:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA15046 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 07:39:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aeronomics.com (atl_notes.aeronomics.com [38.212.192.13]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id HAA15037 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 07:39:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: by aeronomics.com(Lotus SMTP MTA v1.2 (600.1 3-26-1998)) id 85256642.005058BD ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:37:35 -0400 X-Lotus-FromDomain: AERONOMICS From: "Matt Birkner" To: sage-members@usenix.org Message-ID: <85256642.004DF996.00@aeronomics.com> Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:37:34 -0400 Subject: Re: Help recovering data from an AIX disk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Thanks to all who responded to my request for help. The end result of our debacle was that we were able to bring the database back into consistancy and therefore get it running again after a lot of hard work by the dba (lesson: never copy a file system containing a database while the db is running). I talked to IBM and we tried several things to get the volume information off the old disk so that we could access the data on it however, once you reduce a volume group the info on the disk that is removed by the reduce is gone. According to IBM it is possible to reconstruct a filesystem/logical volume on a disk if you haven't changed anything on the disk by constructing allocation map files. We didn't get that far though since our dba was able to recover through his efforts. And since going rate for IBM's Consult Line (2nd level support) is$240/hr I'm just as glad. :) Again thanks, Matt From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 10:01:12 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA23121 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:01:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from luna.oc.com (web.oc.com [192.84.55.199]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA23111 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:01:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from antwerp.oc.com (antwerp.oc.com [192.82.215.88]) by luna.oc.com (8.8.4/8.7.5) with ESMTP id LAA03165 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:57:46 -0500 (CDT) Received: from antwerp.oc.com (antwerp.oc.com [192.82.215.88]) by antwerp.oc.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id LAA13600 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:57:46 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199807151657.LAA13600@antwerp.oc.com> Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 11:57:46 -0500 (CDT) From: Christian Smyth Reply-To: Christian Smyth Subject: Re: !running tar from cron To: sage-members@usenix.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-MD5: uyYoA6k6BBYJ3VIxaAiEEw== X-Mailer: dtmail 1.2.0 CDE Version 1.2 SunOS 5.6 sun4m sparc Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > I am trying to do a tar extraction, calling tar from a script that is called > from cron. After the script worked from the command line I put it i cron. > Didn't work. Incidently, this is on a Solaris 2.4 box. Well, I did some > trouble shooting and, simplified a little so that I could work on the problem > without the complications of the scripts. So now I have variation on the > crontab entry. Here's a couple that I've tried. > #12 15 * * 2 if [ -f /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar ];then /usr/bin/tar -xf > /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar; fi; > 49 15 * * 2 /usr/bin/tar xvf /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar 2>/tmp/out > > Of course, I've tried a lot of variations. Nothing seems to work. I've not > only gone thru the man pages but consulted with every one here. Everyone > thinks this is very interesting. Does anyone know what it is that I don't > know? Dwight: Have you tried inserting 'cd some_dir_you_can_write;' before the tar command? Sorry if this was the first thing you tried; that just popped to mind. Also, what did the /tmp/out file contain? Sincerely, Christian Smyth OpenConnect Systems MIS about Christian Smyth... title: UNIX System Administrator email: clsmyth@oc.com phone: 972.888.0631 fax: 972.888.0686 about OpenConnect Systems... desc: The number-one provider of solutions that web-enable host applications. url: http://www.openconnect.com phone: 972.484.5200 From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 10:11:01 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA23732 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:11:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from what.snew.com (what.snew.com [206.136.64.13]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA23685 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:10:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from chuck@localhost) by what.snew.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA07040; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:07:55 -0400 (EDT) From: chuck Message-Id: <199807151707.NAA07040@what.snew.com> Subject: Re: !running tar from cron To: dpeters@nswc.navy.mil (Dwight Peters) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:07:54 -0400 (EDT) Cc: sage-members@usenix.org In-Reply-To: <9807150845.ZM3775@mailsrvx> from "Dwight Peters" at Jul 15, 98 08:45:53 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I dunno, from the majordomo server, "info sage-members" gives me: | >>>> info sage-members | [Last updated on: Tue Apr 28 16:06:01 1998] | The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items | of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on | this mailing list. I'm not sure if I'd consider this "discussion" and kind of worry about it becoming Yet Another Place to ask SA questions. I have those. I have comp.unix.admin and various Sun-managers lists where this *is* appropriate. Is this a purpose of this list? If so, I'll unsubscribe now (though, the volumes is low for now). If not, then let's have the watchers of the list maybe clarify what the purpose IS? The IPv6 stuff seems appropriate - higher level abstract, of general interest to users of Unix and SA's in general. In the meantime, to not be a complete shit: It is claimed, but unverified, that Dwight Peters wrote: > > I am trying to do a tar extraction, calling tar from a script that is called > from cron. After the script worked from the command line I put it i cron. > Didn't work. Incidently, this is on a Solaris 2.4 box. Well, I did some > trouble shooting and, simplified a little so that I could work on the problem > without the complications of the scripts. So now I have variation on the > crontab entry. Here's a couple that I've tried. > #12 15 * * 2 if [ -f /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar ];then /usr/bin/tar -xf > /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar; fi; > 49 15 * * 2 /usr/bin/tar xvf /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar 2>/tmp/out cron is not a shell. It runs the programs under a shell, but does not understand "if" (if is not a Unix command, its a shell internal). It DOES understand "test" (aka "["), so * * * * * [ -f /FILE ] && rm /FILE would work. How to start debugging? Well, as a start, put it into a damn script and watch it execute. Try it BY HAND from the command line while in the / dir. > Of course, I've tried a lot of variations. Nothing seems to work. I've not > only gone thru the man pages but consulted with every one here. Everyone > thinks this is very interesting. Does anyone know what it is that I don't > know? When you post this to an appropriate list or news group, perhaps mention what happens (or doesn't) or what appears in /tmp/out. I'd sort of guess that it untars the file into /. But that's just a wild guess. And upgrade from the last beta of Solaris to 2.51 or 2.6 if you are solaris inclined. These won't hurt as bad after Y2K and there are a LOT of fixes of Solaris bugs^H^H^H^H features. From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 10:49:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA25892 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:49:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from luna.oc.com (web.oc.com [192.84.55.199]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA25839 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:48:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from antwerp.oc.com (antwerp.oc.com [192.82.215.88]) by luna.oc.com (8.8.4/8.7.5) with ESMTP id MAA12483; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:45:39 -0500 (CDT) Received: from antwerp.oc.com (antwerp.oc.com [192.82.215.88]) by antwerp.oc.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id MAA13634; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:45:39 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199807151745.MAA13634@antwerp.oc.com> Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 12:45:39 -0500 (CDT) From: Christian Smyth Reply-To: Christian Smyth Subject: Re: Help recovering data from an AIX disk To: mbirkner@talus.net Cc: sage-members@usenix.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-MD5: RXbgbUfUC1l+LGJ0hG7gRg== X-Mailer: dtmail 1.2.0 CDE Version 1.2 SunOS 5.6 sun4m sparc Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Hello all, > I find myself in a bit of a predicament. I have a disk that's been acting > flakey in an IBM 7013/J40 running AIX 4.1.2. I copied the only valuable > volume off that disk, but neglected to shutdown the db2 database before > making the copy (very stupid....*sigh*). I replaced the disk and removed > the logical volume info pertaining to the bad disk from the configuration > database (ie used smit to remove the physical volume from the volume group) > then re-added the new physical volume to the database. That's when we > discovered that the database was inconsistant and couldn't be brough back > up. I have put the flakey disk back into the box and am now trying to > figure out how to recover the data off that disk. Does anyone know AIX > well enought to tell me how I can manage this? Or to let me know that it's > futile to try? Matt: Is that to say that you didn't actually _remove_ the logical volume from the physical disk before you removed the disk? If you didn't remove the logical volume, then maybe you can import the volume group. All I can really say is look into that, because I've not encountered your specific situation. I think it might work, though. The worst thing you might run into is a name conflict, maybe - and you should be able to get around that. Worst case, you could import it onto a test system (if you're lucky enough to have such a thing :) ) and then ftp/rcp/whatever it to the real system. Sorry to be so vague...hope this helps in some way. Sincerely, Christian Smyth OpenConnect Systems MIS about Christian Smyth... title: UNIX System Administrator email: clsmyth@oc.com phone: 972.888.0631 fax: 972.888.0686 about OpenConnect Systems... desc: The number-one provider of solutions that web-enable host applications. url: http://www.openconnect.com phone: 972.484.5200 From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 13:36:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA04840 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:36:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gwyn.tux.org (gwyn.tux.org [207.96.122.8]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id NAA04831 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 13:36:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (sheafer@localhost) by gwyn.tux.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id QAA27594 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:33:38 -0400 Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:33:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Jim Sheafer To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: <199807151707.NAA07040@what.snew.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, chuck wrote: Chuck >I'm not sure if I'd consider this "discussion" and kind of worry Chuck >about it becoming Yet Another Place to ask SA questions. I have Chuck >those. I have comp.unix.admin and various Sun-managers lists Chuck >where this *is* appropriate. Chuck > Chuck >Is this a purpose of this list? If so, I'll unsubscribe now How? I have not been a member of USENIX for 8 months now. I have put in 3 different unsubscribe requests including to the list owner to get off this list. You are here for good, pal. I'll bet I can setup procmail to bounce every message I get back to the list and the list owner, but that would be rude. Jim Sheafer From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 14:31:15 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA07906 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:31:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhost.wildstar.net (root@mercury.wildstar.net [209.198.8.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id OAA07889 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:31:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (3773 bytes) by mailhost.wildstar.net via sendmail with P:smtp/R:bind_hosts/T:inet_zone_bind_smtp (sender: ) id for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:16:50 -0400 (EDT) (Smail-3.2.0.98 1997-Oct-16 #19 built 1998-Jun-13) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:16:46 -0400 (EDT) From: "R. Wyatt" To: chuck cc: Dwight Peters , sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: <199807151707.NAA07040@what.snew.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk This is an extemely unique list and has mulitple purposes. I would rather not have posted that to a news group because even some people in the news groups would have viewed that as inappropriate. Sometimes we learn more by askig what appear to be simple questions. I personally don't use cron or at. If something doesn't work, upgrading isn't necessarily the answer, as we have had more problems with 2.6 than we have had with earlier versions. Regards, Randy On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, chuck wrote: > I dunno, from the majordomo server, "info sage-members" gives me: > > | >>>> info sage-members > | [Last updated on: Tue Apr 28 16:06:01 1998] > | The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items > | of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on > | this mailing list. > > I'm not sure if I'd consider this "discussion" and kind of worry > about it becoming Yet Another Place to ask SA questions. I have > those. I have comp.unix.admin and various Sun-managers lists > where this *is* appropriate. > > Is this a purpose of this list? If so, I'll unsubscribe now > (though, the volumes is low for now). If not, then let's have > the watchers of the list maybe clarify what the purpose IS? > > The IPv6 stuff seems appropriate - higher level abstract, of > general interest to users of Unix and SA's in general. > > In the meantime, to not be a complete shit: > > It is claimed, but unverified, that Dwight Peters wrote: > > > > I am trying to do a tar extraction, calling tar from a script that is called > > from cron. After the script worked from the command line I put it i cron. > > Didn't work. Incidently, this is on a Solaris 2.4 box. Well, I did some > > trouble shooting and, simplified a little so that I could work on the problem > > without the complications of the scripts. So now I have variation on the > > crontab entry. Here's a couple that I've tried. > > #12 15 * * 2 if [ -f /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar ];then /usr/bin/tar -xf > > /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar; fi; > > 49 15 * * 2 /usr/bin/tar xvf /local/prtadm/dist.sol.tar 2>/tmp/out > > cron is not a shell. It runs the programs under a shell, but > does not understand "if" (if is not a Unix command, its a shell > internal). It DOES understand "test" (aka "["), so > * * * * * [ -f /FILE ] && rm /FILE > > would work. > > How to start debugging? Well, as a start, put it into > a damn script and watch it execute. Try it BY HAND from > the command line while in the / dir. > > > Of course, I've tried a lot of variations. Nothing seems to work. I've not > > only gone thru the man pages but consulted with every one here. Everyone > > thinks this is very interesting. Does anyone know what it is that I don't > > know? > > When you post this to an appropriate list or news group, > perhaps mention what happens (or doesn't) or what appears in > /tmp/out. I'd sort of guess that it untars the file into /. > But that's just a wild guess. > > And upgrade from the last beta of Solaris to 2.51 or 2.6 if you > are solaris inclined. These won't hurt as bad after Y2K and > there are a LOT of fixes of Solaris bugs^H^H^H^H features. > From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 15:59:33 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA12979 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 15:59:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from luna.oc.com (web.oc.com [192.84.55.199]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA12970 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 15:59:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from antwerp.oc.com (antwerp.oc.com [192.82.215.88]) by luna.oc.com (8.8.4/8.7.5) with ESMTP id RAA10820; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:56:09 -0500 (CDT) Received: from antwerp.oc.com (antwerp.oc.com [192.82.215.88]) by antwerp.oc.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with SMTP id RAA14118; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:56:08 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199807152256.RAA14118@antwerp.oc.com> Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:56:08 -0500 (CDT) From: Christian Smyth Reply-To: Christian Smyth Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron To: Chuck@Yerkes.com Cc: sage-members@usenix.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-MD5: jFS9yDhNK0wP9qV8Nw2jkg== X-Mailer: dtmail 1.2.0 CDE Version 1.2 SunOS 5.6 sun4m sparc Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >> I am trying to do a tar extraction, calling tar from a script that is called >> from cron. After the script worked from the command line I put it i cron. >>... > I dunno, from the majordomo server, "info sage-members" gives me: > > | >>>> info sage-members > | [Last updated on: Tue Apr 28 16:06:01 1998] > | The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items > | of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on > | this mailing list. > >... > > Is this a purpose of this list? ... Chuck: Yeah, I kind of wondered if that kind of thing was appropriate here, too. But I thought I might as well try to help, so I replied, and cc'd sage-members. _And_, I'm going to perpetuate it a bit further anyway by commenting on your suggestions: 1. I have a cronjob that consists of one 'if' statement, right there in the crontab. cron understands it, and it works fine. And I'm not root or anything special like that. 2. Also, the '[]' form of 'test' works because of the shell. There is no '[' command in UNIX. Thus, if cron did not like 'if' because there was no '/bin/if' (i.e. because 'if' is a shell internal), then cron would likewise not like '[]', because there is no '/bin/['. 3. He already has put the command(s) in a 'damn script'. As it turns out, your 'wild guess' was correct. But, IMO, your lead-in was certainly not shit-free. Let's not come down on this kind of thing too hard. Heck, at least there was some content on the mailinglist today because of this. :) Anyway, since we're now on the subject of 'purpose of this list', allow me to say this: I don't find it at all interesting that, for instance, the next meeting of the 'B.F.E. Sage|LISA' group is on date X. Does anybody have an opinion on that? Sincerely, Christian Smyth OpenConnect Systems MIS about Christian Smyth... title: UNIX System Administrator email: clsmyth@oc.com phone: 972.888.0631 fax: 972.888.0686 about OpenConnect Systems... desc: The number-one provider of solutions that web-enable host applications. url: http://www.openconnect.com phone: 972.484.5200 From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 17:36:43 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA17873 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:36:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhost.blight.com (benjy@lucien.blight.com [208.214.234.51]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA17864 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:36:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (benjy@localhost) by mailhost.blight.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id TAA27931; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:33:41 -0500 X-Authentication-Warning: lucien.blight.com: benjy owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:33:41 -0500 (CDT) From: Benjy Feen X-Sender: benjy@lucien.blight.com To: "R. Wyatt" cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, R. Wyatt wrote: > Sometimes we learn more by askig what appear to be simple questions. I > personally don't use cron or at. Here's a simple question... what DO you use? I'm envisioning a junior sysadmins staring at his Timex, finger poised over the Enter key... From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 17:54:27 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA18639 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:54:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com (cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com [24.3.34.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA18607 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:54:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@roadrunner.realbig.com (port 50748 [10.0.1.2]) by gate with ESMTP id <155762-11700>; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:51:26 +0000 Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@localhost (port 48444 [127.0.0.1]) by roadrunner with SMTP id <444060-129>; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:50:57 +0000 Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:50:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Andy Poling X-Sender: andy@roadrunner.realbig.com To: Christian Smyth cc: Chuck@Yerkes.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: <199807152256.RAA14118@antwerp.oc.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Christian Smyth wrote: > Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:56:08 -0500 (CDT) > From: Christian Smyth > To: Chuck@Yerkes.com > Cc: sage-members@usenix.ORG > Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron > > >> I am trying to do a tar extraction, calling tar from a script that is called > >> from cron. After the script worked from the command line I put it i cron. > >>... > > > I dunno, from the majordomo server, "info sage-members" gives me: > > > > | >>>> info sage-members > > | [Last updated on: Tue Apr 28 16:06:01 1998] > > | The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items > > | of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on > > | this mailing list. > > > >... > > > > Is this a purpose of this list? ... > > Chuck: > > Yeah, I kind of wondered if that kind of thing was appropriate here, too. But I thought I might as well try to help, so I replied, > and cc'd sage-members. _And_, I'm going to perpetuate it a bit further anyway by commenting on your suggestions: > > 1. I have a cronjob that consists of one 'if' statement, right there in the crontab. cron understands it, and it works > fine. And I'm not root or anything special like that. > > 2. Also, the '[]' form of 'test' works because of the shell. There is no '[' command in UNIX. Thus, if cron did not like > 'if' because there was no '/bin/if' (i.e. because 'if' is a shell internal), then cron would likewise not like '[]', because there > is no '/bin/['. > > 3. He already has put the command(s) in a 'damn script'. > > As it turns out, your 'wild guess' was correct. But, IMO, your lead-in was certainly not shit-free. Let's not come down on this > kind of thing too hard. Heck, at least there was some content on the mailinglist today because of this. :) > > Anyway, since we're now on the subject of 'purpose of this list', allow me to say this: I don't find it at all interesting that, > for instance, the next meeting of the 'B.F.E. Sage|LISA' group is on date X. Does anybody have an opinion on that? > > Sincerely, > > Christian Smyth > OpenConnect Systems MIS > > about Christian Smyth... > title: UNIX System Administrator > email: clsmyth@oc.com > phone: 972.888.0631 > fax: 972.888.0686 > > about OpenConnect Systems... > desc: The number-one provider of solutions that web-enable host applications. > url: http://www.openconnect.com > phone: 972.484.5200 > 72 Pantera - Rocky 91 Miata - Steve 96 A4Q - Rudolf 80 928 - Phantom 97 Miata - Nadia 84 RZ350 - Sting From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 18:44:42 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA20915 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 18:44:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pobox.com (gyndine-89.mdm.mke.execpc.com [169.207.83.89]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA20899 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 18:44:35 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199807160144.SAA20899@usenix.ORG> Received: (qmail 2398 invoked from network); 15 Jul 1998 20:43:49 -0500 Received: from localhost (HELO pobox.com) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 15 Jul 1998 20:43:49 -0500 To: Christian Smyth cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:56:08 CDT." <199807152256.RAA14118@antwerp.oc.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:43:49 -0500 From: Jon Hamilton Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk In message <199807152256.RAA14118@antwerp.oc.com>, Christian Smyth wrote: } 2. Also, the '[]' form of 'test' works because of the shell. There is } no '[' command in UNIX. Thus, if cron did not like } 'if' because there was no '/bin/if' (i.e. because 'if' is a shell internal), } then cron would likewise not like '[]', because there } is no '/bin/['. Careful, you're wrong for some values of ``UNIX'' - some of them do have /bin/[ as either a hard or a symbolic link to /bin/test. -- Jon Hamilton hamilton@pobox.com From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 19:27:52 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA23129 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:27:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com (cc255118-a.owml1.md.home.com [24.3.34.84]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA23120 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 19:27:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@roadrunner.realbig.com (port 47730 [10.0.1.2]) by gate with ESMTP id <156036-11701>; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:24:40 +0000 Received: from IDENT-NOT-QUERIED@localhost (port 35186 [127.0.0.1]) by roadrunner with SMTP id <444060-129>; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:24:05 +0000 Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:23:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Andy Poling X-Sender: andy@roadrunner.realbig.com To: Christian Smyth cc: Chuck@Yerkes.com, sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Andy Poling wrote Oh nooo... BONEHEAD alert! Did I really send that?! Ugh. Sorry folks. I was trying to cancel that msg when I guess I hit the wrong key. Now I have to say what I decided not to say, to make my screw-up salvagable. Of course I've probably lost all credibility due to the afore-mentioned goof. :-) I really hate to perpetuate this off-topic discussion even further... which is why I was trying to cancel that msg. But here goes... On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Christian Smyth wrote: > 1. I have a cronjob that consists of one 'if' statement, right there in the crontab. cron understands it, and it works > fine. And I'm not root or anything special like that. That's because cron typically feeds the command to the shell. Yes, it does on most unices. > 2. Also, the '[]' form of 'test' works because of the shell. There is no '[' command in UNIX. Thus, if cron did not like > 'if' because there was no '/bin/if' (i.e. because 'if' is a shell internal), then cron would likewise not like '[]', because there > is no '/bin/['. Sorry, but most *nix systems I've encountered over the years did (and do) have a /bin/[ or /usr/bin/[ . It's usually a symlink (or hard link, in the old days) to "test". However, you're partially right in that it is usually also a shell internal... -Andy Global Auctions http://www.globalauctions.com From sage-members-owner Wed Jul 15 20:57:09 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA26972 for sage-members-outgoing; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:57:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from luna.oc.com (web.oc.com [192.84.55.199]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA26963 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 20:57:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from magrathea.oc.com (magrathea.oc.com [192.168.12.100]) by luna.oc.com (8.8.4/8.7.5) with SMTP id WAA00948 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:53:45 -0500 (CDT) Received: by magrathea.oc.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id WAA00580; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:51:07 -0500 Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 22:51:07 -0500 From: clsmyth@oc.com (Christian Smyth) Message-Id: <199807160351.WAA00580@magrathea.oc.com> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-MD5: 3pvyb0payooAsuKFY8aJdA== Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Folks: Thank you to every one who pointed out the existence of '/bin/[' on several systems. I...uhhh...didn't know about that. Oh, well; open mouth, insert foot, continue to live, continue to learn. Sincerely, Christian Smyth OpenConnect Systems MIS about Christian Smyth... title: UNIX System Administrator email: clsmyth@oc.com phone: 972.888.0631 fax: 972.888.0686 about OpenConnect Systems... desc: The number-one provider of solutions that web-enable host applications. url: http://www.openconnect.com phone: 972.484.5200 From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 00:14:24 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA05709 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:14:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from venus.wildstar.net (root@earth.wildstar.net [209.198.8.12]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA05698 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:14:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (938 bytes) by venus.wildstar.net via sendmail with P:smtp/R:bind_hosts/T:inet_zone_bind_smtp (sender: ) id for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 03:06:01 -0400 (EDT) (Smail-3.2.0.98 1997-Oct-16 #19 built 1998-Jun-13) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 03:05:56 -0400 (EDT) From: "R. Wyatt" To: Benjy Feen cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I have no need for cron usage in my systems. On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Benjy Feen wrote: > On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, R. Wyatt wrote: > > Sometimes we learn more by askig what appear to be simple questions. I > > personally don't use cron or at. > > Here's a simple question... what DO you use? I'm envisioning a junior > sysadmins staring at his Timex, finger poised over the Enter key... > > > From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 01:10:56 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA07985 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:10:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hustle.rahul.net (hustle.rahul.net [192.160.13.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id BAA07965 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:10:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: by hustle.rahul.net with UUCP id AA09435 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for sage-members@usenix.org); Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:07:47 -0700 Received: (from uucp@localhost) by antares.starshine.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with UUCP id AAA27201; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:50:23 -0700 Received: from canopus.starshine.org (jimd@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by canopus.starshine.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA30236; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:42:15 -0700 Message-Id: <199807160642.XAA30236@canopus.starshine.org> To: Christian Smyth Cc: Chuck@Yerkes.com, sage-members@usenix.org X-Mailer: MH 8.6.3 Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: <199807152256.RAA14118@antwerp.oc.com> Message Apparently From Christian Smyth Dated Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:56:08 CDT. Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:42:14 -0700 From: Jim Dennis Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk >>> I am trying to do a tar extraction, calling tar from a script that >>> is called from cron. After the script worked from the command >>> line I put it i cron. ... >> I dunno, from the majordomo server, "info sage-members" gives me: >> >>| >>>> info sage-members >>| [Last updated on: Tue Apr 28 16:06:01 1998] >>| The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items >>| of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on >>| this mailing list. >>... >> Is this a purpose of this list? ... > Chuck: > Yeah, I kind of wondered if that kind of thing was appropriate here, > too. But I thought I might as well try to help, so I replied, and > cc'd sage-members. _And_, I'm going to perpetuate it a bit further > anyway by commenting on your suggestions: > 1. I have a cronjob that consists of one 'if' statement, right > there in the crontab. cron understands it, and it works fine. And > I'm not root or anything special like that. > 2. Also, the '[]' form of 'test' works because of the shell. There > is no '[' command in UNIX. Thus, if cron did not like 'if' because > there was no '/bin/if' (i.e. because 'if' is a shell internal), then > cron would likewise not like '[]', because there is no '/bin/['. Classically /bin/[ was actually a link to /bin/test. (it still is one some of my boxes). It is also very common for this to be implemented as a shell built-in. The man page for 'test' (on my systems at least) specifies that if it is called under the '[' name it will parse for the matching ']'. *That* is how that works. (The shell built-in works similarly, of course). So far as I know "if" has never been implemented as a standard external binary. Things like "if" "while" "do" and "until" and "for" are features of the shell along with file pattern "globbing" (although I note that 'glob' used to be an external command --- so I won't say "have always been ...."). > 3. He already has put the command(s) in a 'damn script'. It looked to me like we was calling the commands directly from his crontab. I'd have put the command and tests in the shell script and called that (with no arguments in this case) from the crontab. > As it turns out, your 'wild guess' was correct. But, IMO, your > lead-in was certainly not shit-free. Let's not come down on this > kind of thing too hard. Heck, at least there was some content on > the mailinglist today because of this. :) I originally just ignored that request. It seemed off-topic but not worth wasting *more* bandwidth to discuss. I've now added two responses to this thread which is probably two too many. I'll drop it after this. > Anyway, since we're now on the subject of 'purpose of this list', > allow me to say this: I don't find it at all interesting that, for > instance, the next meeting of the 'B.F.E. Sage|LISA' group is on > date X. Does anybody have an opinion on that? Here's the real reason I'm typing this at all. I think that it is very important for sage-members to recieve announcements *about* new LISA's and LUG's. I'm not sure about the monthly announcements from each of them. If I was on the board at BayLISA I'd suggest something like a quarterly posting about "what is BayLISA, where can you find the calendar" (URL/home page or mailbot/ info address) --- and short list of upcoming events and maybe a paragraph or two highlighting what they did in the last quarter. So far as I've seen the LISA/LUG's are currently one of the three most valuable things that SAGE does (the annual LISA conference and the short-topics being the other two). I'd like to see SAGE do more --- but I'm not willing to gripe or grouse about it since I don't have the time to *do more* for SAGE. I'd like to see much more done on the training and certification arenas. However, it is obvious to me that we aren't up to the task. As a volunteer organization in a profession that is notoriously overworked we certainly can't get enough of our membership to devote real time on it, and we obviously haven't devoted financial and other resources into paying someone else to do the work. (In addition there is considerable debate about what precisely should be done. I haven't seen a consensus on the certification issue and the evidence is that we don't have a process for building that consensus. We also don't seem to have an infrastructure that will allow those decisions to be made for us. Consequently it appears that *nothing* is being done in either of these areas). (Sorry if I sound a bit harsh here. The SAGE board or their reps are welcome to explain why I'm wrong). > Sincerely, > Christian Smyth > OpenConnect Systems MIS -- Jim Dennis (800) 938-4078 consulting@starshine.org Proprietor, Starshine Technical Services: http://www.starshine.org From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 01:11:21 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id BAA08027 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:11:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hustle.rahul.net (hustle.rahul.net [192.160.13.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id BAA08018 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:11:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: by hustle.rahul.net with UUCP id AA09443 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for sage-members@usenix.org); Thu, 16 Jul 1998 01:07:49 -0700 Received: (from uucp@localhost) by antares.starshine.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with UUCP id AAA26408; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:20:07 -0700 Received: from canopus.starshine.org (jimd@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by canopus.starshine.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA30184; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:12:29 -0700 Message-Id: <199807160612.XAA30184@canopus.starshine.org> To: "R. Wyatt" Cc: chuck , Dwight Peters , sage-members@usenix.org X-Mailer: MH 8.6.3 Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: Message Apparently From "R. Wyatt" Dated Wed, 15 Jul 1998 17:16:46 EDT. Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:12:28 -0700 From: Jim Dennis Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > This is an extemely unique list and has mulitple purposes. I would > rather not have posted that to a news group because even some people > in the news groups would have viewed that as inappropriate. > Sometimes we learn more by askig what appear to be simple > questions. I personally don't use cron or at. > If something doesn't work, upgrading isn't necessarily the answer, > as we have had more problems with 2.6 than we have had with earlier > versions. > Regards, > Randy The question (cron/tar) would have been perfectly suitable for comp.unix.questions, comp.unix.admin, and/or comp.sun.admin. Some people in netnews will probably flame you no matter what. However, the vast majority of the participants on these newsgroups see questions of exactly this sort every time the go in. (I personally answer questions on c.u.a. and c.u.q. all the time). I have no authority and know nothing about the charter of this list. However, the question did strike me as misplaced (since it was essentially a technical support issue rather than a matter of broad interest to SAGE members. I certainly would *not* have posted it to this list. I suppose we could ask: What is this list's charter? Who has the authority to declare specific posts "off-topic"? When Pat asks "what are the sysadmin implications of the impending/eventual migration to IPv6?" and/or people post messages about LISA and SAGE LUG meetings that seems to be on topic. When someone asks "how do I recover from corrupting my DB2 files" or "how do I get this cron job working" --- those *seem* (to me) to be off topic. Then we get into gray areas. When I posted a message regarding the appearance of Marc Andreesen at a "Linux" user's meeting (SVLUG) --- I think I posted it just to the BayLISA mailing list, and I asked one of their board members prior to doing so. If I recall correctly I did *not* post it to this list (it was of SF Bay area interest and of Unix/Linux interest --- but not world-wide SAGE interest). So, Randy, I personally think you chose wrong. This belonged on Netnews or on sun-managers. It isn't SAGE business. On a simple technical note: just slap your commands in a shell script and invoke that from 'cron' (it makes the crontab easier to read, it encourages you to put more error checking and commentary in the shell script, and it makes it easier to test the job apart from 'cron'). -- Jim Dennis (800) 938-4078 consulting@starshine.org Proprietor, Starshine Technical Services: http://www.starshine.org From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 02:05:06 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id CAA11724 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 02:05:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from goole.octacon.co.uk (goole.octacon.co.uk [193.118.80.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id CAA11694 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 02:05:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from claymoor.octacon.co.uk (claymoor.octacon.co.uk [193.118.80.32]) by goole.octacon.co.uk (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id KAA07519; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 10:02:14 +0100 Message-Id: <199807160902.KAA07519@goole.octacon.co.uk> From: "Adam Morris" To: "R. Wyatt" Cc: "sage-members@usenix.org" Date: Thu, 16 Jul 98 10:06:03 Reply-To: "Adam Morris" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: PMMail 1.91 Evaluation Version For OS/2 (Unregistered) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: !running tar from cron Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Thu, 16 Jul 1998 03:05:56 -0400 (EDT), R. Wyatt wrote: > >I have no need for cron usage in my systems. > >On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Benjy Feen wrote: > >> On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, R. Wyatt wrote: >> > Sometimes we learn more by askig what appear to be simple questions. I >> > personally don't use cron or at. >> But what do you use to run regularly scheduled tasks? I'm assuming that you occasionally want things done say, every night. Or do you run them all by hand when you need to? For example, we run web stats from cron every night. This reduces the load on the web servers as customers don't add load by requesting their stats. Adam Morris - -- Adam Morris -- Onyx Internet -- Systems Engineer http://www.onyx.net e-mail: Adam.Morris@onyx.net vox: +44 (0)1642 216200 fax: +44 (0)1642 216201 * * If the message isn't signed it probably isn't me * * -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: cp850 iQCVAwUBNa3QijxztoTO1QFNAQGjawQAyxnLSgbUxEoNzsWVoGJ2TzKXi2azC4kT GwHCL8KmEPlNmQd8b5oWTy1n/abnILAe80ilX1TBivMMU0H0dmStYp/B4darHxWc 9rG0u9YvEVQ43jkbqH4LNsbbacnBXIcs+nk2mLhru96P8jyak3lmgQM1YOsVo5+o dnmJB8isYnc= =+MvQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 06:31:38 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA24074 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 06:31:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rigel.dartmouth.edu (rigel.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.204]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA24023 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 06:31:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rigel.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rigel.dartmouth.edu (8.8.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA85475 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:28:41 -0400 Message-Id: <199807161328.JAA85475@rigel.dartmouth.edu> To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron In-reply-to: (Your message of Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:42:14 EDT.) <199807160642.XAA30236@canopus.starshine.org> Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:28:41 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > >>| >>>> info sage-members > >>| [Last updated on: Tue Apr 28 16:06:01 1998] > >>| The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items > >>| of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on > >>| this mailing list. I suppose, in retrospect, "of interest to SAGE members" may be too vague. It was actually *intentionally* vague because we didn't want to stifle discussion about issues that might come up, but I must agree with the sentiment of the original questioner who thought that specific technical questions might be better asked elsewhere. Traffic on this list is pretty light in any event. Announcements from local groups are expressly encouraged. Who knows - you may be in the area for another reason and want to drop in on the meeting, or you might get ideas for speakers by seeing who's talking someplace else (SAGE will soon have a "Speaker's Bureau" clearinghouse to help speakers and groups get together, BTW - look for it online in the next month or two). You may even be moved to form a SAGE Local Group in _your_ area, just so you can post your own announcements... sage-members is also where SAGE turns when we need opinions and/or volunteers. Mostly, though, we'd sort of hoped that folks would use it to build a community. Oh well. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu PS It's not meant as a roach motel - I'm not sure why someone was having trouble unsubscribing (I'm assuming they sent mail to majordomo@usenix.org containing the line "unsubscribe sage-members"), but we'll look into it. --paw From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 06:49:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id GAA25025 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 06:49:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rigel.dartmouth.edu (rigel.dartmouth.edu [129.170.18.204]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id GAA25009 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 06:49:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rigel.dartmouth.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rigel.dartmouth.edu (8.8.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA87163; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:46:33 -0400 Message-Id: <199807161346.JAA87163@rigel.dartmouth.edu> To: Jim Dennis cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron In-reply-to: (Your message of Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:42:14 EDT.) <199807160642.XAA30236@canopus.starshine.org> Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:46:33 -0500 From: Pat Wilson Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Jim Dennis writes: > I'd like to see much more done on the training and > certification arenas. However, it is obvious to me that > we aren't up to the task. As a volunteer organization in > a profession that is notoriously overworked we certainly > can't get enough of our membership to devote real time > on it, and we obviously haven't devoted financial and other > resources into paying someone else to do the work. > > (In addition there is considerable debate about what > precisely should be done. I haven't seen a consensus > on the certification issue and the evidence is that we > don't have a process for building that consensus. We > also don't seem to have an infrastructure that will > allow those decisions to be made for us. Consequently > it appears that *nothing* is being done in either of > these areas). > > (Sorry if I sound a bit harsh here. The SAGE board > or their reps are welcome to explain why I'm wrong). While I can't strongly disagree with Jim that there's not much _apparent_ motion on the training/cert areas, appearances can be deceiving. SAGE is now actively pursuing a plan to _design_ a certification process (at least for a first "base-level" sysadmin certification); an advisory group of SAGE members has been formed to help in the effort, and it looks like we may also have participation from SAGE-AU. A pilot mentoring project is underway (intentionally kept small until after the pilot phase, so we haven't said much about it). A new series of "How To" booklets (to compliment the Short Topics series) is underway and should debut right around LISA. OTOH, there still is a lot of debate about the Right Way to teach and certify sysadmins. The essence of what we do can't be learned from books or measured by time-limited testing; it's an Art, and a Practice. If we were starting from ground zero or demand for our services didn't outstrip supply *quite* so much, an apprentice system might be the best model, but (unfortunately) that's not the world we're living in. We're playing catch-up, but we're trying to do it with foresight. Rome wasn't built in a day. Pat Wilson paw@dartmouth.edu From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 07:34:53 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id HAA27446 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 07:34:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gateway.cyprus.com (gateway.cyprus.com [12.10.229.10]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id HAA27437 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 07:34:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by gateway.cyprus.com; id KAA23416; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 10:34:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: by gateway.cyprus.com; id KAA23416; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 10:34:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mssmtpgw.cyprus.com(167.96.126.8) by gateway.cyprus.com via smap (4.1) id xma023293; Thu, 16 Jul 98 08:33:18 -0600 Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 8:28 -0700 From: "Gilliland, James (EN) 5980" Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: RE: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron Message-ID: <02C0E47635B0BD118C6ECE7C86AB1A46@CYPRUS.COM> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Anyway, since we're now on the subject of 'purpose of this > list', allow me to > say this: I don't find it at all interesting that, > for instance, the next meeting of the 'B.F.E. Sage|LISA' > group is on date X. > Does anybody have an opinion on that? I don't mind these at all. It let's me know what the various SAGE/LISA groups are doing, what they're talking about and so forth. It provides good ideas that maybe, sometime, if Mountain SAGE ever gets off the ground and actually instituted [no frustration here ;-( ], we can use. gil -- Gil Gilliland Cyprus Amax Minerals Unix Systems Administrator 9100 E. Mineral Circle jgilliland@cyprus.com Engelwood, CO 80112 (303) 643-5980 From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 08:25:28 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA00390 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:25:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (ocee.groupsys.com [155.229.202.35]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA19610 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 18:15:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ocee.groupsys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ocee.groupsys.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id VAA29724; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 21:12:24 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199807160112.VAA29724@ocee.groupsys.com> To: Jim Sheafer cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:33:38 EDT." Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 21:12:24 -0400 From: William LeFebvre Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Jim wrote: > How? I have not been a member of USENIX for 8 months now. I have put in 3 > different unsubscribe requests including to the list owner to get off this > list. You are here for good, pal. Have you ever thought of asking majordomo@usenix.org to remove you? All the Usenix and SAGE mailing lists are run by majordomo. Try sending a message to "majordomo@usenix.org" that contains this line in the body of the message (NOT the Subject, just the body): unsubscribe sage-members Unless it is sending messages to you via a different address than your current one, you will be gleefully removed, automagically. Isn't software wonderful? > I'll bet I can setup procmail to bounce every message I get back to the > list and the list owner, but that would be rude. Yes it would be terribly rude. FYI: there is also sage-members-digest for those who don't want multiple daily messages, and there is sage-announce for those that don't wish to participate in all the wonderfully insightful dialog that this list engages in. Quoted from the information about this list: -- The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on this mailing list. The SAGE-Members mailing list is also available in digest form (sage-members-digest@USENIX.ORG). If you want to keep up with SAGE-related announcements, but don't want to be on a discussion list, you should subscribe to the SAGE-Announce list rather than this list. -- Take care, William LeFebvre Group sys Consulting +1 770 813 3224 From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 08:27:32 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA00535 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:27:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gd2050.swissptt.ch (outmail.swisscom.com [138.190.3.11]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA03942 for ; Wed, 15 Jul 1998 23:36:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gd2jkw.swissptt.ch (138.190.164.13) by gd2050.swissptt.ch (MX V5.0) with SMTP; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:33:16 +0200 Received: from gd2.swissptt.ch by gd2jkw.swissptt.ch (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id IAA25033; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:31:33 +0200 Message-ID: <199807160631.IAA25033@gd2jkw.swissptt.ch> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 24/2/98 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 15 Jul 1998 16:33:38 EDT." MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:31:33 +0200 From: Roy Culley Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > How? I have not been a member of USENIX for 8 months now. I have put > in 3 different unsubscribe requests including to the list owner to get > off this list. You are here for good, pal. Yup, it does make you wonder. If they can't manage their own mailing list ... I've asked to be unsubscribed as well and I got some automated reply saying someone would look at it and I'm still here. May procmail is the answer :-) Roy -- Roy G. Culley Tel: +41 31 342 56 62 Dept. CIT-AD-56 Fax: +41 31 342 04 62 Swisscom Email: Roy.Culley@switzerland.org Key fingerprint = 6B AD 68 79 30 0B C0 5F 16 BC 90 57 35 E9 FC 40 From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 09:12:01 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id JAA03224 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 09:12:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from jrl@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA02464 for sage-members; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:59:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Jim Lawson Message-Id: <199807161559.IAA02464@usenix.ORG> Subject: subscription requests To: sage-members Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 08:59:50 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL26 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk There have been several messages indicating problems with getting subscription requests honored. Usually the problem stems from the fact that the subscriber is trying to unsubscribe a different email address from the one submitting the request. This should trigger an ADMIN request which the list owner should see. In the past, these ADMIN requests have been processed on a weekly basis, which seemed appropriate due to the low volume of list traffic. I've changed the policy today so these requests should be processed in a more timely fashion. This should have no impact on those requests issued from and for the same email address; they should be processed immediately. I apologize for anyone who has been inconvienced by this. From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 12:16:59 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA13683 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:16:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from metis.microunity.com (metis1.microunity.com [192.86.6.23]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA13672 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:16:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gaea.microunity.com (gaea.microunity.com [192.216.192.134]) by metis.microunity.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA22554; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:13:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from oceanus.microunity.com (vancleef@oceanus.microunity.com [192.216.199.57]) by gaea.microunity.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA29483; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:10:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (vancleef@localhost) by oceanus.microunity.com (8.8.5/8.8.7) with SMTP id MAA08186; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:08:53 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: oceanus.microunity.com: vancleef owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:08:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Bob Van Cleef X-Sender: vancleef@oceanus To: Pat Wilson cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: <199807161328.JAA85475@rigel.dartmouth.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk I, personally, am on the verge of unsubscribing. Announcements of local sage meetings in other parts of the country and technical discussions are of NO interest to me. I can read/ignore the various usenet groups anytime I want to be in those kind of discussions. I'm not sure what I want to see, but if it is not directly related to sage I know that don't need it. My systems send me enough e-mail as it is. Bob ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> Bob Van Cleef, Member of Technical Staff (408) 734-8100 MicroUnity Systems Engineering, Inc. FAX (408) 734-8136 475 Potrero Ave., Sunnyvale, CA 94086 vancleef@microunity.com From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 20:44:44 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA09123 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 20:44:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ni1.ni.net (ni1.ni.net [192.215.247.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA09106 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 20:44:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from biz.compata.com (root@biz.compata.com [199.107.69.240]) by ni1.ni.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA02302 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 20:41:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from biz.compata.com by biz.compata.com (Linux 2.0.32) with ESMTP (8.8.7/8.8.7) id UAA17880 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 20:41:39 -0700 Message-Id: <199807170341.UAA17880@biz.compata.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron X-Face: $?&5f7w4GjUJOb-[FmngebA}V`5Dv)QEdHg|d%mytVRm]'o}*{J6:PP%(LfN LmOcb#>"^wDF*|ZzuS??S*vLH[.miV( Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > The SAGE-Members@USENIX.ORG mailing list is for discussions of items > of interest to SAGE members. Discussions are explicitly encouraged on > this mailing list. My only complaint with the postings to the members list is the folks who cc their messages to the announce list. It shouldn't be necessary and it results in twice as many messages. Yeah, I know one list is not a proper subset of the other, and some people might not be on both. But a posting should go to the appropriate list. What's the point of a discussion list versus an announcement list if all announcements are also sent to the discussion list? Please, folks, one or the other, but only one! Thanks. -- Dave Close, Compata, Costa Mesa CA "Politics is the business of getting dave@compata.com, +1 714 434 7359 power and privilege without dhclose@alumni.caltech.edu possessing merit." - P. J. O'Rourke From sage-members-owner Thu Jul 16 23:27:50 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA17727 for sage-members-outgoing; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 23:27:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from goole.octacon.co.uk (goole.octacon.co.uk [193.118.80.1]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA17702 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 23:27:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from claymoor.octacon.co.uk (claymoor.octacon.co.uk [193.118.80.32]) by goole.octacon.co.uk (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id HAA27379 for ; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 07:25:23 +0100 Message-Id: <199807170625.HAA27379@goole.octacon.co.uk> From: "Adam Morris" To: "sage-members@usenix.org" Date: Fri, 17 Jul 98 07:28:56 Reply-To: "Adam Morris" Priority: Normal X-Mailer: PMMail 1.91 Evaluation Version For OS/2 (Unregistered) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: RE: purpose of sage-members Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Speaking personally, I have absolutely no problem with seeing announcements of local group meetings, even though they are all based in the states, and I am not. I joined Usenix and SAGE because we don't have an equivalent to SAGE over here... we have the United Kingdom Unix Users Group (UKUUG) but nothing like SAGE. I find it interesting to know what's going on, and you never know, one day I might be in the area and decide to go to a meeting... ;-) If any of the people who have said that they don't like announcements or technical discussions being on here could actually say what they wanted to see on here, then perhaps we could please more of the people? :-} Adam Morris - -- Adam Morris -- Onyx Internet -- Systems Engineer http://www.onyx.net e-mail: Adam.Morris@onyx.net vox: +44 (0)1642 216200 fax: +44 (0)1642 216201 * * If the message isn't signed it probably isn't me * * -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: cp850 iQCVAwUBNa79NzxztoTO1QFNAQFTTAP9FgVV9qhZ2UUD4e975cc/nXgxlgs8JORr +59lslaVu3JL+aCeeRbBcLYe0fMk/L8UWzMpMqVvZ2MX/m8GoGCKyUBfJOBex7hq Q7m37fYWjO81WyUa6nNHbDXOA6UuErfZbQ+bi0T5hD1EhADTm/aH8smwHGDBS7HC PkhgfFPNWAM= =2lx4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From sage-members-owner Fri Jul 17 10:23:15 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA20384 for sage-members-outgoing; Fri, 17 Jul 1998 10:23:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from westnet.com (levins@westnet.com [206.24.6.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA13902 for ; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 12:20:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (levins@localhost) by westnet.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id PAA13399; Thu, 16 Jul 1998 15:17:36 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 15:17:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Adam and Christine Levin To: Roy Culley cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: !running tar from cron In-Reply-To: <199807160631.IAA25033@gd2jkw.swissptt.ch> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, Roy Culley wrote: > > How? I have not been a member of USENIX for 8 months now. I have put > > in 3 different unsubscribe requests including to the list owner to get > > off this list. You are here for good, pal. > Yup, it does make you wonder. If they can't manage their own mailing > list ... > I've asked to be unsubscribed as well and I got some automated reply > saying someone would look at it and I'm still here. And you've all tried unsubscribing? According to the list welcome message: If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, you can send mail to "majordomo@usenix.org" with the following command in the body of your email message: unsubscribe sage-members The only thing I can suggest is to make sure the email address is your full email address as it appears from your mailer -- any change and majordomo probably won't know it's you. -Adam Rutherford, NJ USA Free speech online!_/ "...Only people can build a better http://westnet.com/~levins/ _______/ world for people. Otherwise it's just <*> __________________________/ a cage. Besides, you don't build a better -O / world by choppin' heads off and giving decent girls away to frogs." From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 20 18:35:42 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA09470 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 20 Jul 1998 18:35:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jupiter.superlink.net (jupiter.superlink.net [204.97.220.88]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA09431 for ; Mon, 20 Jul 1998 18:35:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plts.org (vmailer@plts.superlink.net [208.200.84.254]) by jupiter.superlink.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA21192; Mon, 20 Jul 1998 21:32:38 -0400 (EDT) Received: by plts.org (VMailer, from userid 21643) id 137407628; Mon, 20 Jul 1998 20:55:50 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <19980720205549.02883@plts.org> Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 20:55:49 -0400 From: Tom Limoncelli To: "Gilliland, James (EN) 5980" Cc: sage-members@usenix.org, tommy@bell-labs.com Subject: Re: purpose of sage-members -- Was: !running tar from cron References: <02C0E47635B0BD118C6ECE7C86AB1A46@CYPRUS.COM> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.84 In-Reply-To: <02C0E47635B0BD118C6ECE7C86AB1A46@CYPRUS.COM>; from Gilliland, James (EN) 5980 on Thu, Jul 16, 1998 at 08:28:00AM -0700 Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk > Anyway, since we're now on the subject of 'purpose of this > list', allow me to > say this: I don't find it at all interesting that, > for instance, the next meeting of the 'B.F.E. Sage|LISA' > group is on date X. > Does anybody have an opinion on that? I think it is very useful to know what other groups are doing. In fact, I think many new groups have been created because people on this list have seen the interesting things happening around the country and wanted to make it happen near them too. $GROUPNAME is extremely careful to only send one announcement per month (our members get announcements 14, 6, 2 and 1 days before any meeting, aren't you lucky to only see it once?). If this mailing list has received >1 announcement per month, then we apologize. (Actually, I don't think it's gotten any recently, but we'll be fixing that :-) ) While I'm saying that, I would love if other similar groups sent one announcement per month to the $GROUPNAME mailing list (and gave us permission to do the same). Please contact tommy@bell-labs.com if you'd like to make such a "swap" policy. I equate this with old user groups doing newsletter exchanges with each other. That was back when we had trees and used this funny white stuff called paper. --tal P.S. $GROUPNAME is the littleLISA group in New Jersey. http://www.groupname.org -- Tom Limoncelli -- http://mars.superlink.net/user/tal -- tal@plts.org "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, can never bring about a reform." Susan B Anthony "As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever." Clarence Darrow From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 27 15:30:07 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA00326 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:30:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhost2.u.washington.edu (mailhost2.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA00317 for ; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:30:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cellworks (vidar.mbt.washington.edu [128.95.231.94]) by mailhost2.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with SMTP id PAA16603 for ; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:27:12 -0700 Received: by cellworks (5.65v3.2/1.1.10.5/13Jan98-1007AM) id AA18117; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:26:23 -0700 From: Hal Miller Message-Id: <9807272226.AA18117@cellworks> Subject: network NFS performance stats To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:26:23 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hi all, Does anyone have a good feel (hopefully with data to back it up) about how NFS performance is affected by having a router between the NFS server and client? I'm certain I've seen data on this in the past, but can't find a thing now. Thanks! -- HM From sage-members-owner Mon Jul 27 16:55:55 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id QAA04998 for sage-members-outgoing; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:55:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from peak.org (root@PEAK.ORG [198.68.22.17]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA04986 for ; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:55:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (sechrest@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by peak.org (8.8.5/8.6.7) with ESMTP id QAA27105; Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:52:59 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199807272352.QAA27105@peak.org> To: Hal Miller Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: network NFS performance stats In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:26:23 PDT. <9807272226.AA18117@cellworks> Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:52:58 -0700 From: John Sechrest Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Hal Miller writes: % Hi all, % % Does anyone have a good feel (hopefully with data to back it up) about % how NFS performance is affected by having a router between the NFS % server and client? I'm certain I've seen data on this in the past, % but can't find a thing now. We have done some NFS mounting across several routers in the past. When you have slow links, you need to adjust the time outs and adjust the read/write sizes. But when you do you can get acceptable performance. If it becomes a real issue, then you can switch to the tcp based NFS and get better performance that way. But in general, having one router with ethernet on both side has never seemed to make much of a difference at the level that I pay attention to NFS. ----- John Sechrest . Helping people use PEAK - . computers and the Internet Public Electronic . more effectively Access to Knowledge,Inc . 850 SW 15th Street . Internet: sechrest@peak.org Corvallis Oregon 97331 . (541) 754-7325 . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 28 05:54:51 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA11309 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 05:54:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from aretha.jax.org (aretha.jax.org [192.43.249.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id FAA11300 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 05:54:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mollie (mollie.jax.org [192.233.42.5]) by aretha.jax.org (8.6.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id IAA21585 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:51:59 -0400 Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:51:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Gregg TeHennepe X-Sender: gat@mollie To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: network NFS performance stats In-Reply-To: <199807272352.QAA27105@peak.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, John Sechrest wrote: > We have done some NFS mounting across several routers > in the past. When you have slow links, you need to adjust > the time outs and adjust the read/write sizes. But when you > do you can get acceptable performance. We do much the same constantly without troubles. Note that the NFS implementation and server NIC & drivers may play a part. > If it becomes a real issue, then you can switch to the tcp based > NFS and get better performance that way. Running NFS over TCP provides greater *reliability* at the cost of poorer performance. TCP is a stateful protocol (thus the reliability), UDP is stateless and relies on the application to provide error-checking. See _Managing NFS and NIS_ from O'Reilly, pgs 9-10 for a discussion of this issue. Cheers - Gregg Gregg TeHennepe | Unix Systems Administrator | The Jackson Laboratory gat@jax.org | http://a.jax.org/~gat | Bar Harbor, Maine USA From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 28 08:38:29 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id IAA20041 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:38:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from europe.std.com (europe.std.com [199.172.62.20]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id IAA20032 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:38:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from world.std.com by europe.std.com (8.7.6/BZS-8-1.0) id LAA21420; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:35:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: by world.std.com (TheWorld/Spike-2.0) id AA08034; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:35:35 -0400 Message-Id: <199807281535.AA08034@world.std.com> Subject: Re: network NFS performance stats To: sage-members@usenix.org Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:35:35 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Gregg TeHennepe" at Jul 28, 98 08:51:59 am From: "Adam S. Moskowitz" Reply-To: adamm@menlo.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk Gregg TeHennepe wrote: > Running NFS over TCP provides greater *reliability* at the cost of poorer > performance. I beg to differ: While it is true that TCP will (in general) provide greater reliability over UDP, our results show as much as a 60% gain in performance using NFS over TCP rather than UDP. To be fair, we're also comparing NFS v2 and NFS v3; we have not measured NFS v3 over TCP versus NFS v3 over UDP. AdamM From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 28 10:05:57 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA25092 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:05:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fw1.tek.com (fw1.tek.com [192.65.17.16]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA25083 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:05:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fw1.tek.com (root@localhost) by fw1.tek.com with ESMTP id KAA14392 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:03:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from orca.wv.tek.com (orca.wv.tek.com [134.62.8.23]) by fw1.tek.com with SMTP id KAA14384 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:03:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pogo.wv.tek.com by orca.wv.tek.com (SMI-8.6/8.2) id KAA06131; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:03:02 -0700 Received: from catenary.WV.TEK.COM by pogo.wv.tek.com (4.1/8.0) id AA24577; Tue, 28 Jul 98 10:03:02 PDT Received: from catenary.wv.tek.com by catenary.WV.TEK.COM (SMI-8.6/8.2) id KAA27016; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:03:02 -0700 Message-Id: <199807281703.KAA27016@catenary.WV.TEK.COM> To: adamm@menlo.com Cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: network NFS performance stats In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:35:35 EDT." <199807281535.AA08034@world.std.com> Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:03:02 -0700 From: Sean Kamath Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk [In a message on Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:35:35 EDT, ""Adam S. Moskowitz"" wrote:] >Gregg TeHennepe wrote: >> Running NFS over TCP provides greater *reliability* at the cost of poorer >> performance. > >I beg to differ: While it is true that TCP will (in general) provide >greater reliability over UDP, our results show as much as a 60% gain in >performance using NFS over TCP rather than UDP. To be fair, we're also >comparing NFS v2 and NFS v3; we have not measured NFS v3 over TCP versus >NFS v3 over UDP. Never being one to hold back: As I recall from some presentation by some Sun guru at some Sun-oriented conference, V3 vs V2 was so much of a performance win that it was possible to absorbe the hit of going from UDP to TCP *on a 100% clean network* and *STILL* get a 15% performance increase. And if you don't have a 100% clean network, well, performance really only increases. Note 100% clean doesn't imply no collisions, but no late-collisions, CRC errors, etc. Sean From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 28 11:23:48 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA29685 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:23:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from psasolar.psa.pencom.com (psasolar.colltech.com [208.229.236.14]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA29674 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:23:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (jpe@localhost) by psasolar.psa.pencom.com (VER/What/1.0) with SMTP id NAA07339 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:20:54 -0500 (CDT) X-Authentication-Warning: psasolar.private.psa.pencom.com: jpe owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:20:53 -0500 (CDT) From: John Eisenmenger X-Sender: jpe@psasolar To: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: network NFS performance stats In-Reply-To: <199807281535.AA08034@world.std.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, Adam S. Moskowitz wrote: > Gregg TeHennepe wrote: > > Running NFS over TCP provides greater *reliability* at the cost of poorer > > performance. > > I beg to differ: While it is true that TCP will (in general) provide > greater reliability over UDP, our results show as much as a 60% gain in > performance using NFS over TCP rather than UDP. To be fair, we're also > comparing NFS v2 and NFS v3; we have not measured NFS v3 over TCP versus > NFS v3 over UDP. Whether one is faster than the other is largely a matter of the status of the underlying network. If the network is clean (low collisions, switched connections, whatever) and retransmissions are rare then UDP will be faster because it doesn't have the handshaking overhead of TCP. If the likelihood of a packet being dropped is significant, then TCP will quickly emerge as the faster choice. This is because for each dropped fragment of an NFS request, the entire NFS request must be resent under UDP while under TCP only the lost fragment will be sent again. That amounts to a 6 to 1 difference in what is retransmitted! In the past (or if TCP was not an option) one would reduce the NFS data block size to minimize the number of ethernet frames used to conduct a transaction. By doing that the overhead of retransmitting an NFS request could be reduced significantly, usually resulting in faster speeds. As far as the original question is concerned (if I remember it correctly), I would expect a router to introduce some latency, but otherwise not affect the performance (or lack thereof) of one's NFS. If it is adversely affecting NFS performance, then it's probably a performance problem with the router. However I do not have real data to support this hypothesis, which is why I didn't respond in the first round. -John -- John P. Eisenmenger Collective Technologies Email: jpe@colltech.com A Pencom Company Pager: 1-800-SKY-8888/279-0239 http://www.colltech.com From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 28 12:09:42 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA02511 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 12:09:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from philabs-gw.philabs.research.philips.com (philabs.research.philips.com [192.207.123.2]) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA02502 for ; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 12:09:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from smap@localhost) by philabs-gw.philabs.research.philips.com (8.8.7/8.6.12) id PAA02919; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:06:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from mailman.philabs.research.philips.com(130.140.67.12) by philabs-gw.philabs.research.philips.com via smap (V1.3) id sma002870; Tue Jul 28 15:06:10 1998 Received: from gumby.philabs.research.philips.com (gumby [130.140.67.69]) by mailman.philabs.research.philips.com (8.8.8/8.6.12) with SMTP id PAA13886; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:06:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (jam@localhost) by gumby.philabs.research.philips.com (SMI-8.6/8.6.12) with SMTP id PAA05999; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:06:08 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: gumby.philabs.research.philips.com: jam owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 15:06:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Murf To: John Eisenmenger cc: sage-members@usenix.org Subject: Re: network NFS performance stats In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 28 Jul 1998, John Eisenmenger wrote: > As far as the original question is concerned (if I remember it correctly), > I would expect a router to introduce some latency, but otherwise not > affect the performance (or lack thereof) of one's NFS. If it is adversely > affecting NFS performance, then it's probably a performance problem with > the router. With current technology this can happen fairly easily if you have routers with different speed interfaces. File servers are more likely to have a 100+ Mb network interface, and it isn't uncommon for desktops to have only 10s. The router can become overloaded with server traffic that is coming in at 100 and trying to get back to the desktop at 10. We've experienced this more with ethernet switches that have smaller, limited, per port buffers. They tended to quietly drop the overflow. Murf -- John A. Murphy (better known as Erin's dad) jam@philabs.research.philips.com 345 Scarborough Road One one-trillionith of a surprise: picoboo Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510 millihellen: The beauty needed to launch 1 ship (914)945-6216 ** My views and opinions do not reflect those of my employer ** From sage-members-owner Tue Jul 28 13:52:05 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by usenix.ORG (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA07763 for sage-members-outgoing; Tue, 28 Jul 1998 13:52:05 -0700 (PDT) R