USENIX Blog

Documentation Techniques for Sysadmins

Sysadmins famously come up with excuses to avoid writing documentation.  "The system should be self-documenting," they say; or "I don't have the time to write documentation."  There's even the "a lack of documentation gives me job security" line.  None of these arguments have any merit, according to Mike Ciavarella.  His Tuesday afternoon "Documentation Techniques for Sysadmins" focused not just on countering those excuses ("

The people who make me laugh in IRC

Blog Team Fearless Leader Matt Simmons told me Tuesday afternoon that I'm not contractually bound to write two blog posts per day.  I can only take that to mean that I need to write three posts.  Not really, but I did want to sneak in a few extra thoughts.  So far, the posts have mostly been about the training sessions that have been offered at LISA '10.  What can get overlooked is the informal interaction that goes on, even (especially) during training sessions.

Advanced shell programming

Every sysadmin has to deal with shell scripts sometimes.  Besides being a great way to automate tasks, shell scripts are an integral part of the boot/shutdown process.  Unfortunately, too many sysadmins tend to write their shell scripts quick and dirty.  The goal of the "Advanced shell programming" training taught by Mike Ciavarella is to teach admins to write advanced scripts.  In the context of this training, "advanced" doe

Real-World Insights on How to Secure and Route Your Linux Network

Networking is a fundamental part of systems administration and maintaining a reliable, secure network is key.  On Monday morning, Jason Faulkner of Rackspace taught a new training session all about maintaining a secure network, primarily by focusing on firewall rules.  Of course, we started out with a review of basic networking concepts like the OSI model and some differences between IPv4 and IPv6.

Time Management for System Administrators

Thomas A. Limoncelli is the author of the book "Time Management for System Administrators" and co-author of "The Practice of System and Network Administration" and he has been teaching the "Time Management for System Administrators" class since 2004.

IPv6: An introduction

The Internet is running out of addresses.  Current projections indicate the last available blocks will be assigned to regional registrars in May of next year, and that pool will be exhausted in January of 2012.  Clearly, there should be some urgency to begin the move to IPv6, but many sites appear to be in no hurry.  This generally seems to be due to the questions surrounding the 4-to-6 transition, which is why Rudi van Drunen's new

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