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Advent of Sysadmin 2025

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Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#51

Post by hansmayer »

technion wrote: post #46
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #14

Here's 12 Sysadmin/DevOps (they're synonyms now!) challenges, straight from the day job: 1. Get a user to stop logging in as root. 2. Get all users to stop sharing the same login and password for all servers. 3. Get a user to upgrade their app's dependencies to versions newer than 2010. 4. Get a user to use configuration management rather than scp'ing config files from their laptop to the server. 5. Get a user to bak…

I know its a common view that sysadmin/devops are the same these days, but witha current sysadmin role nothing youve mentioned sounds relevant. Let's give you my list: 1. Patch Microsoft exchange with only a three hour outage window 2. Train a user to use onedrive instead of emailing 50mb files and back and forth 3. Setup eight printers for six users. Deal with 9gb printer drivers. 4. Ask an exec if he would please l…

What you describe sounds more like a MS "Modern Workplace" / IT support in a corporate environment.

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#52

Post by [deleted] »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #14

Here's 12 Sysadmin/DevOps (they're synonyms now!) challenges, straight from the day job: 1. Get a user to stop logging in as root. 2. Get all users to stop sharing the same login and password for all servers. 3. Get a user to upgrade their app's dependencies to versions newer than 2010. 4. Get a user to use configuration management rather than scp'ing config files from their laptop to the server. 5. Get a user to bak…

[deleted]

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#53

Post by hnlmorg »

technion wrote: post #46
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #14

Here's 12 Sysadmin/DevOps (they're synonyms now!) challenges, straight from the day job: 1. Get a user to stop logging in as root. 2. Get all users to stop sharing the same login and password for all servers. 3. Get a user to upgrade their app's dependencies to versions newer than 2010. 4. Get a user to use configuration management rather than scp'ing config files from their laptop to the server. 5. Get a user to bak…

I know its a common view that sysadmin/devops are the same these days, but witha current sysadmin role nothing youve mentioned sounds relevant. Let's give you my list: 1. Patch Microsoft exchange with only a three hour outage window 2. Train a user to use onedrive instead of emailing 50mb files and back and forth 3. Setup eight printers for six users. Deal with 9gb printer drivers. 4. Ask an exec if he would please l…

That sounds more like Desktop Support than a SysAdmin role. My condolences if that's the job you landed when interviewing for a SysAdmin role

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#54

Post by n4bz0r »

swyx wrote: post #49
shoo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roll 2d6, sum result. Your CI migration target is: 2. migrate secret manager. Roll again 3. cloud build 4. gocd 5. jenkins 6. gitlab 7. github actions 8. bamboo 9. codepipeline 10. buildbot 11. team foundation server 12. migrate version control. Roll again

somehow i am really liking the kind of people that comment in the comment sections of sysadmin posts. i wonder what personality type this is

Sysadmin.

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#56

Post by n4bz0r »

bionsystem wrote: post #48
sharts wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly jenkins really isnt that bad

Yeah I was thinking of using it for us actually. Connects to everything, lots of plugins, etc. I wonder what the hate is from, they are all pretty bad aren't they ? Will test forgejo's CI first as we'll use the repo anyway, but if it ain't for me, it's going to be jenkins I assume.

Cons:

  - DSL is harder to get into.
  - Hard to reproduce a setup unless builds are in DSL and Jenkins itself is in a fixed version container with everything stored in easily transferable bind volumes; config export/import isn't straightforward.
  - Builds tend to break in a really weird way when something (even external things like Gitea) updates.
  - I've had my setup broken once after updating Jenkins and not being able to update the plugins to match the newer Jenkins version.
  - Reliance on system packages instead of containerized build environment out of the box.
  - Heavier on resources than some of the alternatives.
Pros:

  - GUI is getting prettier lately for some reason.
  - Great extendability via plugins.
  - A known tool for many.
  - Can mostly be configured via GUI, including build jobs, which helps to get around things at first (but leads into the reproducibility trap later on).
Wouldn't say there is a lot of hate, but there are some pain points compared to managed Gitlab. Using managed Gitlab/Github is simply the easiest option.

Setting up your own Gitlab instance + Runners with rootless containers is not without quirks, too.

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#57

Post by Xiol »

hansmayer wrote: post #51
technion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know its a common view that sysadmin/devops are the same these days, but witha current sysadmin role nothing youve mentioned sounds relevant. Let's give you my list: 1. Patch Microsoft exchange with only a three hour outage window 2. Train a user to use onedrive instead of emailing 50mb files and back and forth 3. Setup eight printers for six users. Deal with 9gb printer drivers. 4. Ask an exec if he would please l…

What you describe sounds more like a MS "Modern Workplace" / IT support in a corporate environment.

i.e., Hell

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#58

Post by athrowaway3z »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #14

Here's 12 Sysadmin/DevOps (they're synonyms now!) challenges, straight from the day job: 1. Get a user to stop logging in as root. 2. Get all users to stop sharing the same login and password for all servers. 3. Get a user to upgrade their app's dependencies to versions newer than 2010. 4. Get a user to use configuration management rather than scp'ing config files from their laptop to the server. 5. Get a user to bak…

  9.  Get management to give you the authority to force users to rotate their AWS access keys which are 8 years old.
Saying "keys which are 8 years old" implies you're worried about the keys themselves, which is just wrong. (Their security state depends on monitoring)

You can definitely make a strong argument that the organization needs practice rotating, so I would advise reframing it as an org-survivability-planning challenge and not a key-security issue.

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#59

Post by n4bz0r »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #14

Here's 12 Sysadmin/DevOps (they're synonyms now!) challenges, straight from the day job: 1. Get a user to stop logging in as root. 2. Get all users to stop sharing the same login and password for all servers. 3. Get a user to upgrade their app's dependencies to versions newer than 2010. 4. Get a user to use configuration management rather than scp'ing config files from their laptop to the server. 5. Get a user to bak…

> Sysadmin/DevOps (they're synonyms now!)

I've notified the authorities and social services.

Re: Advent of Sysadmin 2025

#60

Post by technion »

hansmayer wrote: post #51
technion wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know its a common view that sysadmin/devops are the same these days, but witha current sysadmin role nothing youve mentioned sounds relevant. Let's give you my list: 1. Patch Microsoft exchange with only a three hour outage window 2. Train a user to use onedrive instead of emailing 50mb files and back and forth 3. Setup eight printers for six users. Deal with 9gb printer drivers. 4. Ask an exec if he would please l…

What you describe sounds more like a MS "Modern Workplace" / IT support in a corporate environment.

Are we arguing that corporate workers arent "real sysadmins"?
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