| location: |
|
Rohnert Park, California; about 50 miles north of San Francisco.
|
| site: |
|
Sonoma State University, the
Computer Operations group in
central IT.
|
| servers: |
|
According to our inventory system, about 75 that I'm responsible for to some
degree, but there's some systems that don't have installs yet and therefore
aren't in my list yet and maybe a few VMs that aren't in the list either...
About another 30-40 that the windows sysadmins in my group take care of.
|
| workstations: |
|
our group doesn't handle workstations, so just a handful of linux
workstations for people in our group. The campus as a whole probably
has a couple thousand workstations in addition to providing some level
of support for student systems, especially those in the dorms.
|
| sysadmins on staff: |
|
2 *nix; 3 Windows, a few application admins and a couple part-time
student employees in our sub-department. But depending on your
definitions, at least half of the rest of the IT staff of 46 and the 16
IT student assistants are sysadmins, too; just in different
sub-departments and with concentrations other than servers; like
networking, computer labs, workstations, helpdesk, etc...
|
| site overview: |
|
We're a small “state” university (one of 23 CSUs)
located in northern california with an FTE a bit shy of 8000,
best known for a
special liberal studies program
and
Project Censored. Our group handles core university IT infrastructure like LDAP (including automatic provisioning based on data from PeopleSoft HR and Student Admin), email, main campus web presence, calendaring, DNS, file servers, databases (mostly Oracle, one small MySQL install), learning management system, etc.; as well as servers for applications other departments use or manage, such as DHCP, CiscoWorks, document management, issue tracking and other more specialized services; and of course more servers to monitor and manage those.
|
| job title: |
|
I sometimes go by “Lead Unix/Linux Systems Administrator”,
but other paperwork calls me
“Operating Systems Analyst, Expert Level”.
|
| time at this job: |
| 2 years, 8 months. |
| years as a sysadmin: |
|
~8 years. Plus a few years of being a programmer and only doing sysadmin
on a personal server or two...
|
| first computer: |
| Commodore 64.
|
| first OS: |
| GEOS. Followed by DOS. |
| favorite OS: |
|
Probably Linux. Except when I hate them all and then I guess *nix is just
my “least hated”...
|
| first computer with root/administrator access: |
|
Netware server. I think it might've been a 386. Hooked up via ARCnet
to a bunch of XTs. Had a card inside of it with several 8088 systems
and serial ports that was hooked up via muxes+modems+leased line to some
terminals at a remote office with one set up to be usable for dial-in
access.
|
| first programming language: |
| Not sure if it was C=64 BASIC or Logo.
|
| favorite programming language: |
| Perl |
| most often used programming language: |
| Perl — especially during those few years I was just doing programming, it was mostly Perl and SQL with a few dashes of PostScript, HTML, C and CSS. |
| first sysadmin job, computer and os: |
|
Small web design/hosting company that briefly sorta tried to be an ISP,
too. Started with a pentium desktop pretending to be a server and a 386
without enough RAM acting as a secondary DNS server. I think RedHat 2.1
and 3.0.3 when I started... Later moved to servers that weren't
pretending so much, including a Sun (An Ultra Enterprise 1, I think it
was)...
|
| ideal sysadmin job: |
|
No pager, no overtime. Concentrating more on planning and architecture
than putting out fires. With some dot-com era perks like free weekly
chair massages. And really good food choices available nearby. With an
adequate supply of minions.
|
| favorite sysadmin tool: |
| Brains |
| most interesting sysadmin tool: |
|
Tsunami; our in-house inventory system (and more) that we're hoping to open source
some day.
|
| sysadmin tool I couldn't work without: |
| keyboard |
| education: |
|
AS with a CS concentration. Been thinking about using the staff fee
waiver program to get a bachelors, but I really don't want to have to
deal with all the math I'd need for a CS degree; I've forgotten all the
math I used to know. Maybe I should go for an art or philosophy major
instead.
|
| when I was growing up, I wanted to be: |
|
A dinosaur. Or maybe an astronaut. Either one with lasers, of course.
|
| If I wasn't a sysadmin, I'd be: |
|
A programmer; most likely some intersection of web, databases and
usability. Or maybe a baker; there's something satisfying about making
bread from scratch and I seriously considered going that route after
getting layed off during the dot-com bust.
|
| when friends and family ask me to
“fix” the computer or
“fix the internet”, I say: |
|
Friends never ask, probably because most of them are already pretty
computer savvy. My grandfather and mother I pretty much just help when
I can. Anybody else I cheerfully offer the “friends and family
consulting discount of $100/hr” and point out that I'm really not
an expert with the kinds of computers and problems they're asking
about.
|
| when I first meet someone,
and they ask what I do, I say: |
|
“I work in IT at Sonoma State”.
That usually elicits a response that leads
to an appropriately refined answer.
|
| system administration is ...: |
|
Lengthy amounts of detailed planning and work trying to avoid the
inevitable hour of groggy panic at 3am.
|
| advice to a junior admin: |
|
Don't just think how to solve the problem in front of you; think about
how what you're doing might affect your workload (or your replacement's
workload) over the next five years and how your solution will work when
you suddenly need to solve the same problem on dozens, hundreds or
thousands of systems. The quick fix is almost always the wrong one.
|
| advice to a senior admin: |
|
Remember to try something new every once in a while. I know they're
just reinventing something from many years ago that either worked fine
and needed no improvement or was so terrible it was never worth
exploring anything even remotely similar, but sometimes those
reinventions are actually major improvements that will help you do your
job easier or better.
|
| favorite food/cuisine: |
|
Vietnamese. Especially well made Cha Gio served wrapped in a lettuce
leaf with various herbs (cilantro, mint, basil, etc.) dipped in nuoc
cham made with lime (not vinegar) and high quality nuoc mam.
|
| pizza topping: |
| Sausage and olive. |
| work music: |
|
I've got a long playlist for that; on shuffle. Includes: Assemblage 23,
Caia, Cibo Matto, Flunk, Front 242, Gorillaz, KMFDM, Madonna, Massive
Attack, Muggs, Nelly Furtado, Northern State, Tricky, VNV Nation, and
various other artists... Or maybe something softer and bluesier like
some Tom Waits, Morphine, Robert Johnson, Dido, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny
Cash, Alicia Keys, Joss Stone, or Joan Osborne. Depends on mood.
|
| crisis music: |
|
Usually something with a beat, harder, maybe growly... Funker Vogt,
KMFDM, Skinny Puppy, White Zombie, Wumpscut... Or no music so I can
talk on speakerphone with the other people working on the problem.
|
| ___ gets me through the work day: |
| My co-workers.
|
| hobby/other job: |
|
Running user/professional groups. Started up a
SysAdmin group earlier this year
(inspired by LOPSA, LISA and Tom's Time Management class and book); helped
start a LUG back in 1997 that I continue
to help out with; just stepped down as the group's secretary in order to
concentrate on the sysadmin group.
|
| my office is: |
|
An actual office. With a solid wooden door on one side and a window big
enough to drive a small pickup truck through on the other side.
Sometimes a student assistant, too... The bottom two feet of wall is
several years newer than the rest.
|
| co-workers say my desk is: |
|
There's rumors that I might have one. Someplace under all the stuff. Also
infested with
magnetic
monkeys.
|
| learned the most from: |
| Breaking things. And fixing them.
|
| wish list: |
- a starting (SAGE II) *nix sysadmin
- a more experienced (III) *nix sysadmin
- a raise
- a new bicycle; front shocks would be great
- a new home system; maybe a 15" MacBook Pro...
- a pony
|
| daily web sites: |
|
Some comics, slashdot, various friends' blogs...
|
| editor: |
|
JOE
|
| mail user agent: |
|
I use mutt for most of my personal email and thunderbird when I'm at work.
|
| web browser: |
|
firefox. With SessionSaver, del.icio.us, and AdBlock extensions.
|
| gui or cli: |
|
Yes. I find a GUI the best way to manage my large collection of CLIs.
|
| computers at home: |
|
2. Mine and my SO's. Unless you count a couple TiVos...
|
| (primary) home computer and OS: |
|
Well, it was an almost 4 year old 700MHz iBook running the latest OSX,
but that's been having hardware problems (freakin' logic board again?)
and I'm gonna have to replace it sometime pretty soon. So I guess my
SO's Ubuntu box is it...
|
| oldest hardware in your garage or basement: |
|
Got rid of all that stuff when we moved a few years ago. I will never
collect old hardware again!
|
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