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SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR OF THE WEEK: Week of December 19, 2005
| site: |
| Tufts University |
| servers: |
| ~300 |
| workstations: |
| 5 |
| sysadmins on staff: |
| 9 |
| site overview: |
|
Tufts University has approximately 10,000
users spread among 3 campuses, with the usual
population of students who have traveled abroad
for a semester or a year. Most of the users' mail,
web, and calendar services are concentrated down
a single group of servers, maintained by the USG.
|
| job title: |
| Systems Administrator |
| time at this job: |
| 6.5 years |
| | |
| years as a sysadmin: |
| 8 |
| first computer: |
| Tandy 1000SX |
| first OS: |
| Dos 3.0 |
| favorite OS: |
|
FreeBSD for my workstation,
Solaris for my servers,
OS X for my games
|
| first computer with root/administrator access: |
|
Compaq Presario 982
|
| first programming language: |
| BASIC |
| favorite programming language: |
| Perl |
| most often used programming language: |
| Perl (closely seconded by PHP) |
| first sysadmin job, computer and os: |
|
Locking out non-paying customers using billing
software that died at random points in the database;
and also upgrading a RedHat 4.1 installation to RedHat 5.2
on EOLed donated hardware with the back
of the case locked closed by the previous owner.
|
| ideal sysadmin job: |
|
My current job with 10 fewer hours in my work week,
and no pager.
|
| favorite sysadmin tool: |
| cfengine |
| most interesting sysadmin tool: |
|
The auditdb I grew out of our inability to keep
up with all of our boxes for a while.
|
| sysadmin tool I couldn't work without: |
|
A manager to keep the bureaucracy at bay.
|
| education: |
| B.A. in CompSci from Wellesley College |
| when I was growing up, I wanted to be: |
| A writer |
| If I wasn't a sysadmin, I'd be: |
| A lot less stressed. |
| when friends and family ask me to
“fix” the computer or
“fix the internet”, I say: |
|
What did you do to it?
|
| when I first meet someone,
and they ask what I do, I say: |
|
Systems Administration --
uh, I help make Email work for Tufts.
|
| system administration is ...: |
| Necessary meglomania |
| advice to a junior admin: |
|
Write it all down with keywords so you can use
grep to find it in the middle of the night when
the pager goes off.
|
| advice to a senior admin: |
|
Don't let them promote you into management;
your staff will quickly know more relevant
technical stuff than you do, and you'll annoy them
if you try to keep your hand in too much.
|
| | |
| favorite food/cuisine: |
|
Not American. (Just about anything else is good.)
|
| pizza topping: |
| Onions and green pepper |
| work music: |
|
Peter Gabriel, Suzanne Vega, Indigo Girls,
Cirque du Soleil, Dead Can Dance, Jack Wall,
Tim Larkin, Robyn Miller, Sesame Street
|
| crisis music: |
| Assemblage 23 |
| ___ gets me through the work day: |
| Laughter and tea |
| hobby/other job: |
|
Writing, Books, Gaming, Kung Fu and Karate, Japanese, Myst
|
| | |
| my office is: |
|
A cube, but it has a southern facing window full
of plants, and it's in a room with a door.
|
| co-workers say my desk is: |
| Tidy, decorated, green |
| learned the most from: |
|
Grabbing all the stuff I could get my hands on and
figuring it out from the inside out.
|
| hot standby/failover or redundancy: |
|
Hot standby until we get the kinks worked out of
the load-balancer and have a chance to seriously
stress-test that thing.
|
| editor: |
| vi |
| mail user agent: |
| mutt |
| web browser: |
| mozilla |
| gui or cli: |
| cli |
| computers at home: |
| 9 (that are mine) |
| (primary) home computer and OS: |
| G4 Powerbook with OS X 10.3.9 on it |
| oldest hardware in your garage or basement: |
| Sparc 20 |
|
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