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ImErina
n00b
Joined: 10 Feb 2022
Posts: 51
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 Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 1:46 pm Post subject: How to become a more proficient system manager? |
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I learnt to become a system manager with an ancient material: a 2003-printed system manager's handbook(I read it in 2020 from my school library, about 600 pages).
It taught me something about networks, hardwares, backups (with tapes!), the system, users & groups...... The basic stuff. Of course not including how to configure a kernel and make a initramfs lol.
The fact is, things have changed, a lot. Systemd showed up.(I'm using OpenRC tho). Lots of newer and way more powerful hardware & software have been in our lives.
Many of the basic things the book have told me...... are quite obsolete now, and it do not cover some skills I now use very often, such as configuring a kernel, writing udev rules etc..
How should I become more proficient?
Now, a great part of my system management skills come from trial and error. Having installed more than 20 Arches and Gentoos(mostly on one single device, messed up and try again).
Putting my hands on more hardware surely made me more knowledgeable. But there are many problems I can't solve.
I have the following questions:
1. How to systematically learn the "newer" basics? Are there some good materials that you would recommend?
2. Kernel: I have a working kernel. Are there some recommended options to enable? (Should I upload my kernel config for this?)
3. Hardware: When I have a new hardware of which I can't find much information on the internet, How should I quickly identify what drivers & kernel modules are in charge?
4. System management workflow? Are there some tools for it?
5. Any more general tips & tricks on system management? Are there a compilation of such tips & tricks?
Any ideas and materials are welcome! |
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pingtoo
l33t
Joined: 10 Sep 2021
Posts: 939
Location: Richmond Hill, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2023 3:13 pm Post subject: |
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From your questions you appear want to be a more proficient of system user, not system manager.
If you are system manager, you will not need to focus on how to get kernel work, if you have a hardware that have no kernel that can work on that hardware, than change the hardware, because you job is get system ready to perform task, not getting a OS to work.
You need to review and think why you have to do more than 20 times to install OS, why is not able to getting one OS do applications so some real thing happen. Or even better get more than 20 system that work together a one system for applications.
Please note, I am not discourage you become a more proficient OS builder, what I trying to said is understand what is your desire. the questions you ask is not for system manager jobs. |
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ImErina
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Joined: 10 Feb 2022
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 5:23 am Post subject: |
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| pingtoo wrote: | | From your questions you appear want to be a more proficient of system user, not system manager. |
This makes sense. I was used to speaking both as "system manager", but in fact they are quite different.
After some thoughts I want to become a better "Linux User"...... That is, I can build working systems faster, manage systems(small or large) more effectively, diagnose problems more accurately and solve them. I'm also going to be one of the "official" system managers of my university.
As for the OS install count...... I always miss something, breaking the system, partly because of the outdated recommendations on the 2003 handbook. Also, some really bad habits brought from Ubuntu and openSUSE still lingers. (Such as terrible package management and improperly moving files to system directories (stupid workarounds done exactly wrong......) etc......) I was always trying to roll a stable release(when I use them) that some bad habits had formed.
I think the questions I asked above is actually what I'm not so good at and resembles what is troubling me most now. e.g. I have manually configured and built kernels and they are running decently now, however I'd like to optimize them more and haven't got materials with which I can learn systematically.
I guess my questions reflects that I'm not that eager to learn hot to properly manage a system. That's possibly true, as I can manage the system with the "old way", it works but a lot of the features are not incorporated. In the field of system management I guess the "proficient" should be "mordern", given my current knowledge. In the field of system building I guess "proficient" can describe what I need.
Anyways, thanks for your pointing out my misunderstandings and and helping me review my needs and desires.
p.s. The 2003 handbook is actually older than me! I just...... haven't found a later one...... |
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pingtoo
l33t
Joined: 10 Sep 2021
Posts: 939
Location: Richmond Hill, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 10:40 am Post subject: |
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I have been there, similar thinking, taking me many years to try to better at something but may have missing understood the big picture.
I have one idea for you to review, This I learn from modern term "CI/CD". the "CI/CD" idea exist since the day computer invented  however it was not expressed in very simple way.
So review your many time re-install, try to think of where in the process you think you know it by heart, Try to automate that part, while you in the process of design the automation, think how to document it so after 3 month you can pick up without need to dig in to your notes or think how to share the process with someone have no idea of howto can easily adopt.
Please think the "documentation" part not necessary only as write a "README", but more of in the script comment or even naming function/variable. And give out messages/prompt in the automated process. While you try to design the automation that is easy to adopt you will learn so much more you can use it everywhere. |
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szatox
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Joined: 27 Aug 2013
Posts: 3165
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 11:06 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | That is, I can build working systems faster, manage systems(small or large) more effectively, diagnose problems more accurately and solve them. I'm also going to be one of the "official" system managers of my university. |
It looks like the uni will provide you an opportunity to get some real-world experience. That's actually a pretty good start. Way better than usual.
| Quote: | | As for the OS install count...... I always miss something, breaking the system, partly because of the outdated recommendations on the 2003 handbook. |
Make an installation script for your own gentoo. Creating an official installer doesn't make much sense, but making a personal one is a good exercise.
You might get a chance to use it doing your uni duties too.
| Quote: | | I have manually configured and built kernels and they are running decently now, however I'd like to optimize them more and haven't got materials with which I can learn systematically. |
Don't know about systematically, I learnt from doing projects/challenges.
Started with following more detailed guides on simple things, then gradually moved on to taking shortcuts and mostly using guides as checklists while ignoring most of their content.
You mentioned that installation manual is outdated. I don't know, haven't used it in years, but if it is the case, perhaps you can update it? This is a great way to organize and solidify your knowledge too.
Make a liveCD.
Make a RAM-only image.
Make scalable farm. One that would allow you to plug in a brand new computer, hit the power button and have it come up with your pre-built system and uniquely identify itself on the network. I think you can even use virtual machines for this.
Make a usable system as small as possible.
Get as high numbers in a benchmark of choice as possible.
| Quote: | | I guess my questions reflects that I'm not that eager to learn hot to properly manage a system. That's possibly true, as I can manage the system with the "old way", it works but a lot of the features are not incorporated. |
Yeah, well, the good thing about unix-like world is that it doesn't change very fast. At some point I've been working with a machine running Solaris. It's look and feel was pretty much just like linux, even though it's a different OS. Very convenient. I wasn't in a sysadmin position, but I did not require any additional training to service that particular enterPricey application I was in charge of.
Don't worry too much. The whole ecosystem is too big to learn everything, but there are things you will hit again and again and again, there are experiences you can reuse in new situations, and there are things you just need to ask someone else about once you encounter them (because you're not going to know which manual covers the topic at hand).
Even though there are new ways of doing things now, these are kinda distribution-specific. By all means, do learn them if you have some of those tools in your system, push their limits, break them and put back together, but don't go out of your way for sake of a new and shiny thing you don't even want to play with, let alone actually use. |
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ImErina
n00b
Joined: 10 Feb 2022
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 12:30 pm Post subject: |
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Make an installation script for your own gentoo. Creating an official installer doesn't make much sense, but making a personal one is a good exercise.
You might get a chance to use it doing your uni duties too.
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When mass-installing systems this can be very useful, I can even try to enable netboot when doing so. My university holds an annual Linux install event. Kinda ridiculous, but it sure is very fun, educating Windows & mac users about Linux. Maybe this can have its work there. As installing Arches and Gentoos with the official method is really laborious, especially when on another person's computer, you have to ask their opinions about partitioning, software selection etc. I guess with an install script with some basic user interface can at least ease my part of work.
I guess others won't allow me to use Gentoo on servers and mass install them in IT classrooms tho.
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I learnt from doing projects/challenges.
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I see. Some of these are quite common in my life, some Linux distros is really just a "challenge". Puppy linux is a (series) RAM-only capable systems. NixOS is a replicable system (not exactly a scalable farm, but is quite similar). Gentoo is designed to meet the last two challenges decently with relative ease.
I can try building LFS systems, I can try make a OS that runs smoother on my rPi 4B. There really is infinite possibilities. Thank you for pointing out a way for me.
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installation manual is outdated.
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No, actually. I haven't used it for quite long too. But the last time I checked it, a lot has changed. Its under active maintenance. It changed the recommended gentoo-sources to using gentoo-kernel, which really surprised me.
What is outdated is my sysadmin Handbook, which dates back to 2003, and things really have changed quite a lot since then.
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Yeah, well, the good thing about unix-like world is that it doesn't change very fast.
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True. Or I'm going to get tons of news everyday lol.
However my knowledge is like, really really outdated. 20 years can see a lot of changes.
In the book, Sysadmins do backups with tapes, manage most (if not all) daemons with /etc/inittab, and the book spent chapters talking about VGA ports and other ports that I can't really find on my workstation and moniter......  Newer networking tools has appeared too, and I don't have to configure router tables by hand.
That's not totally a terrible thing. Thanks to the book, I can survive a fully posix system. I have to admit it really taught me much.
Anyways, thank you for so much advice! |
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szatox
Advocate
Joined: 27 Aug 2013
Posts: 3165
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | In the book, Sysadmins do backups with tapes, manage most (if not all) daemons with /etc/inittab, and the book spent chapters talking about VGA ports and other ports that I can't really find on my workstation and moniter...... Newer networking tools has appeared too, and I don't have to configure router tables by hand. |
Those things are still in use (though less popular than they used to) and only inittab is a part of system.
I think systemd ditched it completely, but other init systems I know work as helpers that manage services while inittab defines directly attached terminals (sits).
Anyway, when you join an organization, you will have to learn their tools, their procedures, their command chain, and finally their stack.
It doesn't matter if you do tape backup or disk backup; you still have to mind your capacity and data volume, retention policy, backup cloning, recovery procedures and recovery times, transfer errors, system load (on both, server and client), monitoring jobs and reporting.
You will not care if it's an ancient LTO2, LTO5, FTP share or a compressed ZFS pool. It's just a bag you stuff with your data. Do you have enough capacity to last you until another scheduled pruning? Yes: good, no: panic.
Tapes may have been MOSTLY phased out, but cd, ls, uptime, top, less, grep, vim and sed work just the same way they did 20 years ago.
You're not going to care about VGA either. VGA, HDMI, DP, it's all the same. You shove one end into a monitor, and the other end into a PC. Done.
Nobody's going to ask you about data rates and voltage levels.
It doesn't matter if you use apt or yum, pacman or emerge. They all are very similar in the way they operate, they use centralized repositories and index available software, and let you install things with all dependencies with a single command. Moving from one to another is pretty easy, because your expectations will be mostly accurate, even though they come from experience with something else. Just repeat it 2-3 times and you have a new habit.
Windows uses a very different process: the packages are all over the internet, so you have to google it and download 666MB installer full of evil libs you already had but must be included for your convenience. If you try moving from one to another, you're bound to get frustrated with absolutely nothing working the way you're used to.
Has anyone ever managed to add a program with the tool called "add/remove programs"?  I tried, it didn't go well |
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ImErina
n00b
Joined: 10 Feb 2022
Posts: 51
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| Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 2:00 pm Post subject: |
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| szatox wrote: |
Has anyone ever managed to add a program with the tool called "add/remove programs"? I tried, it didn't go well |
Sometimes Windows users asks me to aid them...... Without much tinkering things can go smoothly, but some of the time it just messes things up, and worsens when you use a newer version of Windows, and worsens more when you try an older software.
However, chocolatey solves some of the problem. But it is still not using global .dll files. But it can detect some windows updates, and I recommend everyone who sticks to Windows to get one. I sometimes resolve issues by typing choco install KB******* or so.
And I have to say, Windows sucks when you see nearly game you own contains fmod.dll, UE.dll etc. It's just fustrating.
| Quote: | | Anyway, when you join an organization, you will have to learn their tools, their procedures, their command chain, and finally their stack. |
Hmm, I think I have most of the skills required for a sysadmin. It's just the new tools I don't know that overwhelmed me. I was kinda overly anxious.
I can migrate to newer ones gradually, I don't have to hurry that much. |
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