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Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

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Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#51
3 year Linux Sysadmin, here my 2c:

Buy ASAP both "UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook" and "Practice of System and Network Administration".

UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook -> Will give you the necessary tech skills and concepts. This is a sysadmin bootcamp.

Practice of System and Network Administration -> Will show you how to the job right. This is more like 'how to manage' an operations team.

Each book is massive and will take you 1 month to read. I suggest you start with UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook.

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#52
Keep in my mind that HN has a healthy mix of developers. Thankfully HN is more diverse today and represents more people in the tech industry than just developers.

Keep the above in mind with any responses here. Most developers hate sysadmin and don’t believe they have a place in any company. They think the infrastructure is just a Linksys device and a cheap NAS. No need for sysadmin. Yes, my response is cantankerous, but also hits the situation pretty accurately in a lot of orgs.

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#53
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there's certainly something that rings a warning bell here, let me present a counter-opinion: The biggest strides in my career have been the ones where I had to stretch the farthest. It always felt scary as hell, but with a bit of "fake it until you make it", these phases served me as massive boosters for learning, career and personal development. I didn't have too many indications to read if the culture over t…

The indication of the culture for me is pretty clear from the followings: - no indication in the post that they going to hire a new person - If your company IT infra is down, you are probably dead in the water, leaving it to be managed by a single person who does not have any IT infra management experience is a pretty bad business decision - No indication in the post that the person offered any training or anything -…

I agree that it sounds like a tire fire. But he can also leave whenever he wants. So until it becomes too stressful, he's actually got something of an opportunity to learn a huge amount in a small time by trial and error. It's not like they're going to fire him for any mistakes at this point! He can always quit when he gets sick of it, but until then, it seems like a great (though challenging, of course) opportunity. And he'll have a great story to tell in his next job interviews: "how I was put in the hot seat and saved the day"

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You now have a shitty job! I enjoy sysadmin, partly because of the variety of problems you are called-on to solve. But the fact is, if you do the job well, and everything works well, nobody gives you any credit. When things go wrong everybody will be looking at you, and if you haven't fixed it within 20 minutes, then you must be incompetent. So you're the only sysadmin in a multi-campus company? As someone noted up-t…

Re Laptop make sure you have one that has a serial port and all the custom cables to plug into the switches / routers etc. (possibly having a second laptop for redundancy) And seconding the physical logbook.

Why the physical logbook?

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#55
post #25

Op here ~~ Thank you all for the advice, I've been reading all of your comments and my heart and mind feels more light now. I would like to share some skills I do have: Programming background in C and python, also bash and powershell programming. Knowledge of networking and computers in general( I know how to fix hardware in general and know how to deal with Linux and Windows) My background is in InfoSec, so I Know h…

You sound like me when I started 20 years ago. You're gonna do fine. Probably better than many other experienced sysadmins, in some respects!

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re Laptop make sure you have one that has a serial port and all the custom cables to plug into the switches / routers etc. (possibly having a second laptop for redundancy) And seconding the physical logbook.

Why the physical logbook?

The reason I used a physical logbook is that if you use software, you have to have the software and the logfile on-hand all the time. You can keep them both on a stick, of course; but you still need the right OS/FS drivers etc. Also, your screen and keyboard may be connected to a machine that's crashed, or being repaired.

And it's easier to scribble a line in a physical logbook than to crank-up some editor, open the logfile, append an entry, save the file etc. If you're going to log absolutely everything, then adding an entry needs to be as easy as signing your name.

You could rely on your laptop; but laptops break and crash. a physical notebook is crashproof, drop-proof, and can even survive being dropped in a puddle. And short of pencils and erasers, it's intrinsically an append-only medium (except that you can still annotate old entries).

Maybe an electronic logbook works for you; I found that my logs were more comprehensive and generally easier to use if I kept them on paper. I got through about two notebooks a year; I used a stack of old ones to elevate my monitor (phone directories are hard to come by these days).

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#57
post #16
post #14

The components of this job may or may not include: - desktop (human!) support - networking inside buildings - networking between buildings - server maintenance - OS administration - authentication systems - local services (DNS and NTP are the most important, but your end users will think of file sharing and printing as most important) - external services - security (information, yes, but possibly physical systems, to…

> Get a copy of Limoncelli and Hogan's book, The Practice of Systems Administration Seconding this. Here's a link to the latest edition. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321919165/ref=dp_ob_neva_mob...

I haven't read this but the description seems very comprehensive!

After he's got his sea legs, I would also get books on how to implement ITSM. IT Service Management is the most straightforward codified way to run an IT department or set of IT services. Learn about Change Management, Incident Management, Disaster Recovery, Availability/Reliability/Redundancy. Learning about any legal regulations/laws that relate to IT. Then eventually dive into SRE, Lean, DevOps, Agile (but far down the road, not immediately).

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the physical logbook?

The reason I used a physical logbook is that if you use software, you have to have the software and the logfile on-hand all the time. You can keep them both on a stick, of course; but you still need the right OS/FS drivers etc. Also, your screen and keyboard may be connected to a machine that's crashed, or being repaired. And it's easier to scribble a line in a physical logbook than to crank-up some editor, open the…

A physical logbook isn't just for sysadmins, by the way; I kept another one for development work, so that at the morning SCRUM I knew what I had been doing the previous day. That started when I got dinged once, for not being able to tell the SCRUM what I had done yesterday. The benefit is the same; it doesn't compete with your work for access to the screen and keyboard, and you can have it open all day.

Also, opening a big notebook before describing your activities confers an aura of reliability on you; there's a reason why policemen whip out notebooks when testifying in court.

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#59
Is this a corporate job, or do you work for a school district or some other kind of entity?

I ask because much of the advice here is assuming the corporate world - and if that is true, it is all mostly valid advice. But what you are describing is fairly typical for IT in small government environments (schools, libraries, etc.)

So I'll give a little advice in case you are not in a corporate world -- let your boss know you are in a bit over your head and need some help with learning and training to fill in knowledge gaps. In non-corporate orgs, this is completely normal - the IT folks there work what they know, and ask for help when they don't know. They also tend to network with each other - maybe the guy who runs the library in the next county over has some different skills, and you can cross-train each other, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Tips on Sysadmin Job

#60
post #9

This is not a promotion, this is making you to do something you have no experience with and making you do the job what the fired person done besides yours. Also being responsible for the whole IT infrastructure alone is definitely what I would not do without any experience. If that’s how the company handles this, I would start to look for a new job immediately.

While there's certainly something that rings a warning bell here, let me present a counter-opinion: The biggest strides in my career have been the ones where I had to stretch the farthest. It always felt scary as hell, but with a bit of "fake it until you make it", these phases served me as massive boosters for learning, career and personal development. I didn't have too many indications to read if the culture over t…

Absolutely agreed.
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