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Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

scholz.ruhr

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Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#51

Post by 404mm »

jmillikin wrote: post #48
404mm wrote: post #42

I’ve been there. Many technologies OP listed .. it all becomes a nightmare without proper HA (but who want’s to have _multiple_ servers at home (servers as enterprise HW, not a computer designation). Then you hit an issue with licensing, old HW not being supported by recent releases (looking at you, ESXi), loud and heat producing boxes in your closet... I am grateful for having this awful experience but I moved on as…

> cattle methodology takes away any deeper level of troubleshooting and > pushes “SRE” towards not only focusing on their app code but also away > from understanding the OS mechanics This is a minor point, but as a former SRE: We are the people writing the layer between the OS and the product developers (owners of the "app code"). Understanding the OS mechanics is a core part of the job. I know some places are trying…

SRE seems to mean something else at every company. As a current SRE, I agree that this is what _I_ do most of the time. But while saying that, I also don’t see myself as “true SRE”, not the way Google defined it. SRE should become the code owner once it becomes stable. This alone adds heavy emphasis on having a background in software development.

Most of the time, I see two kinds of SRE around me. 1. The “rebranded sysadmin” SRE. Typically heavy on Ops skills and deep OS level knowledge but no formal education or experience in Software development.

2. The “SDE in Cloud” SRE. Person coming from software development side, having very little Ops experience, relying on benefits of quick and disposable computational power from your favorite Cloud provider.

I don’t mean to “shame” either of those cases, I am just pointing out that person with years (or decades) of experience on one side cannot suddenly become well balanced SRE the way Google defined it.

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#52

Post by bamboozled »

blinkingled wrote: post #11

It's absolutely fine and I'd argue essential to know Linux system administration even for people who mostly work in the cloud. From my recent experience sys admin skills seem to be a lost art - people no longer have to care about the underpinnings of a Linux system and when problems hit it shows. It's interesting from a job market standpoint how little incentive there is to learn the basics when more and more we are…

I agree, I'm lucky that in my career I've been exposed so many different disciplines of Network and Linux administration that I know (mostly) what "the cloud" is made of.

So when problems do occur, I can make some pretty good guesses on what's wrong before I actually know for sure.

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#53

Post by sophacles »

blueflow wrote: post #24
neoromantique wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you only run your own software and are conscious about your dependencies, then dependency creep is gonna be less of an issue, but don't forget that your dependencies often bring theirs too. And third-party software is very often much less mindful of it. But even besides dependency creep, containers simplify your software env, simplify backups, migrations, permissions(although container are not replacement for secu…

It makes it easier in the sense of "better accessible", not simpler. The docker network setup and namespace management are actually quite complex.

I don't find docker networking particularly complex, it's just a simple bridge and some iptables rules.

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#54

Post by UncleEntity »

> For my own personal tasks I plan on avoiding sudo at all. I've often found myself using it as shortcut to achieve things.

That’s all I use (for administration stuff), found out not too long ago I don’t even know the su password or it isn’t set up to allow users to su — dunno, never missed the ability until a couple weeks ago when I got tired of typing sudo for multiple commands.

Also found out a long time ago installing software to /opt turns into a big enough PITA that I’ll go to all the trouble to make an rpm and install stuff using the package manager. Usually I can find an old rpm script thingie to update so isn’t too much hassle and there’s only a couple libraries I use without (un)official packages. Why, one might ask, don’t I try to upstream these rpm so everyone will benefit? Well, I’ve tried a couple times and they make it nearly impossible so I just don’t care anymore.

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#55

Post by blueflow »

sophacles wrote: post #53
blueflow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes it easier in the sense of "better accessible", not simpler. The docker network setup and namespace management are actually quite complex.

I don't find docker networking particularly complex, it's just a simple bridge and some iptables rules.

When you only need docker to isolate your dependencies, its unnecessary overhead.

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#56

Post by blinkingled »

jbotdev wrote: post #34
blinkingled wrote: post #11

It's absolutely fine and I'd argue essential to know Linux system administration even for people who mostly work in the cloud. From my recent experience sys admin skills seem to be a lost art - people no longer have to care about the underpinnings of a Linux system and when problems hit it shows. It's interesting from a job market standpoint how little incentive there is to learn the basics when more and more we are…

I think nowadays requiring that all application developers should also do ops (DevOps?) is a bad idea. Sure they should have basic shell skills, but when you’re on Kubernetes or similar, understanding what’s underneath is not vital. Instead, rely on specialized teams that actually want to know this stuff, and become the experts you escalate to only when things really go sideways and the abstractions fail (which is ra…

But then there's the problem that now you have two teams - ops team doesn't understand the app and app team doesn't understand the ops/infra side. I of course agree with your point that there should be two teams but you need a few guys who understand both app dev and ops/infra/OSes/k8s internals etc. And finding these people has been nearly impossible.

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#57

Post by sophacles »

blueflow wrote: post #55
sophacles wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find docker networking particularly complex, it's just a simple bridge and some iptables rules.

When you only need docker to isolate your dependencies, its unnecessary overhead.

You made a point about complexity, I'm talking about that, why are you talking about overhead?

As for overhead, what is the quantified measure of it? Like sure there's overhead, but exactly how much?

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#58

Post by greggyb »

megous wrote: post #50
greggyb wrote: post #47

Are there any good resources for what to mind as a sysadmin? It seems that most resources I find when searching, or that come across my radar (like this article) are focused on mechanism and how-to. I often feel a bit out of my depth when dealing with sysadmin tasks. I can achieve pretty much any task I set out to, but it is difficult to ascertain if I have done so well, or with obvious gaps, or if I have reinvented…

Depends on what system you want to administrate. The topic is very broad. But it never hurts to understand the fundamentals: - networking (IPv4/IPv6/TCP/UDP/ICMP/various link layer technologies (ethernet, wifi, ppp, USB, ...)... and concepts like VPNs/VLAN/bridging/switching/routing/...) - protocols (DHCP, DNS, NTP, SMTP, HTTP, TLS, ...) - chosen OS fundamentals (so on Linux things like processes, memory, storage, pr…

This is a helpful review of the fundamentals to cover. I will definitely be doing my own searches for content on the topics.

Do you have any good references for resources in the vein of teaching the fundamentals. Not like "DNS: here is how to configure a BIND server" but like "DNS: Here are the core concepts, what you will typically need to set up, common issues / confusions, and further reading."

I have tried going through RFCs for a lot of these, but they tend to be focused on implementation rather than "why". Similarly, software-specific content is "how to achieve this outcome with this implementation", but lacks context on why one would want that outcome.

Re: Old school Linux administration – my next homelab generation

#59

Post by MaKey »

blinkingled wrote: post #56
jbotdev wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think nowadays requiring that all application developers should also do ops (DevOps?) is a bad idea. Sure they should have basic shell skills, but when you’re on Kubernetes or similar, understanding what’s underneath is not vital. Instead, rely on specialized teams that actually want to know this stuff, and become the experts you escalate to only when things really go sideways and the abstractions fail (which is ra…

But then there's the problem that now you have two teams - ops team doesn't understand the app and app team doesn't understand the ops/infra side. I of course agree with your point that there should be two teams but you need a few guys who understand both app dev and ops/infra/OSes/k8s internals etc. And finding these people has been nearly impossible.

I am one of those rare people :) Coming from the Linux sysadmin and networking side I'm currently working on going deeper into programming and expanding my knowledge there. In Europe the pay for someone like me appears to be capped at slightly above six figures though, which I will reach soon, so I'm currently a bit unsure on how to progress career wise.
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