Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with system and administration

What do I need to know about getting into OS X system administration?

Chris4d — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:06:04 -0800

What do I need to know about getting into OS X system administration? This is phrased broadly, so please feel free to give any advice. I'm coming at this as a potential career path, but I don't have a lot of professional knowledge. I am self-taught on PCs and Macs from a young age and have fiddled around behind the scenes a little (played with mysql, macports, apache, etc.) but don't have a lot of experience in a unix environment. I read slashdot and daring fireball and etc. Basically I am loosely plugged in to the IT world, but no more so than the next guy, so I need help developing expertise and finding out if this is worth pursuing. Originally trained in architectural design, urban planning and real estate, so those aren't going to be a huge help, except that I use computers a lot and I am the de facto fix-it guy wherever I go. Questions:

I know OS X isn't a big market (right now), but I look at it as a stepping stone/complimentary skill to unix administration and I like working in the OSX environment. is this a valid direction?

Is there job potential for a 20-something guy with intelligence but not professional experience? Job security? Money? What does the job market look like going forward? If you must know my secrets, I'm looking especially toward higher education and potentially design firms (when autodesk gets around to an OSX version of autocad)

Is it worthwhile to pursue the apple professional certifications? What other professional networks/certs/etc. knowledge should I be checking out? who/what should I know? What should I read? What should I focus on?

If you have personal experience in the field, what other advice would you give? What's the career like?

Thanks in advance!

Your victories and woes as a unix/linux sysadmin

Myles — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:36:17 -0800

What were your greatest victories and punishing woes as a unix/linux system administrator? I've been learning both unix and linux recently from a desire to use Solaris on a home server, and then the whole system administration thing hit me. So, I wanted to throw this one out there for the real world sysadmins out there: For those who are or were Unix or Linux system administrators, whether for a small company or large enterprise, what were some of the unique challenges or obstacles you encountered while working on the job? Not limited to just technical challenges, but it can be anything.

Help me learn to be the sysadmin I need to be!

Reverend John — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:34:00 -0800

What do I need to know and how should I learn it? I am the "IT" guy at my company, a small supplier of building materials, with an office staff of about 10, and a warehouse crew of about the same. Problem is I'm underqualified. Before I arrived here the network and all workstations were set up and supported by an outside consultant. When I arrived my primary responsibility was maintaining our web site, hosted elsewhere, and minor IT support when I could answer or fix immediate problems without having to call the consultant. I was A+ and Network+ certified around 4 years ago, but obviously thats not all that impressive, and really I haven't done much in depth there, haven't been building or fixing machines or doing significant network administration.

Unfortunately over the past year or so the consultant has gradually become less accessible to the point of being essentially useless, and I have recurring nightmares about something disastrous happening to our server or network and not being able to fix it, losing all of our business data, etc. I chatted with my bosses, the owners, last night and they've OK'ed me to upgrade my skills in order to make sure everything here is working well and secure.

Currently we have a single server running Windows 2000 server. The workstations are an amalgamation of Win XP pro and Win 2000 workstation. We have a 24 port switch tying it all together, and some networked printers, and a DSL connection to the internet. The server provides a shared directory, Active Directory services, DHCP, and hosts our business application server.

Given what we have my current plan is to self-study towards becoming an MCSA on Windows 2000 server. Some of the win 2k tests are discontinued, but since thats what we're running I figured I would work first on the tests which aren't discontinued yet, like 70-270 Admining Win XP, then working thru the self study books on Win 2k Server like 70-215 Adminning Win 2k server and 70-218 Managing a Win 2k Server network, as if I was going to try to take those exam. Then after I was up to speed on what we're currently running I might want to learn more on what we might want to move to in order to make sure our network is not too obsolete or insecure.

So, what I want to know from you technical mefites is, is my plan reasonable? Am I being foolish to consider studying for obsolete tests in order to fill out my knowledge of the stuff we already have? Is there a better way I should approach this?

Help! I feel overwhelmed and I live in constant fear that I'm going to come in one day and be told "nothing works, fix it" and not be able to.

Linux admin course needed

diode — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:34:06 -0800

I need to get up to speed on running Linux MySQL database servers so I can do a credible job of managing them. What are some resources I can access to do this? I've applied for a job which would utilize my Mac consulting background. It would be a terrific position except there are some servers to oversee that are Linux boxes running MySQL. From an administrative standpoint, I don't know diddly squat about Linux aside from the usual installing and mucking about. I've got a smattering of command line chops, know TCP/IP and get the general overview.

What resources could I use to get some administrator chops going with Linux and MySQL? I know that real administrative expertise is not something you just do an overnighter and set up shop but there are probably training tools I can use that will help me be effective within a few days or weeks of study.

Any tips appreciated.

Constant corruption - and I'm not even talking about the government!

twiggy — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:42:44 -0800

I have a few mysql tables that keep repeatedly getting corrupted - help! I'm running a website that uses OSCommerce, though that in particular may not be relevant to my problem. The sessions and whos_online tables both seem to keep getting corrupted. I run myisamchk -r on them (even after stopping mysql server altogether in order to do so, just in case) and they're fine for a very short while (measured in minutes, not even hours) and then both keep getting corrupted again.

I've rebooted the server (Red Hat linux), I've tried dropping the tables and recreating their structure, and I'm now at my wit's end.

I figured a reboot would run fsck to see if it was a disk issue. I must plead ignorance here -- I'm an amateur when it comes to being a sysadmin, and I built this box so long ago I don't remember if it ran fsck on boot automatically, or if some other job checks first if it should run fsck, or what... Anway, I looked a boot.log and see no record of fsck being run.

Anyone know what might be causing this, or what else I can look into? My understanding is that I can't run fsck on a mounted file system so I'm not sure what to do.

How do I do well on my phone interview?

drdevice — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:40:23 -0800

I have my first phone interview (and third job interview ever) for a sysadmin job on Friday, and I'm looking for some advice. I've just graduated from a university with a B.S. in Computer Science after working for about a year and a half as a student system administrator for a department at the university. I applied for a Linux System Administrator position at a fairly small nearby company, and just got a call to set up a phone interview for Friday. I'm pretty excited, but I've never had a phone interview before (or really any sort of serious interview for a job), so I'm also pretty nervous.

The job requires experience with Redhat, Debian, and Slackware, scripting languages like python, perl, and php, and other common system administration things (backups, etc). It's an entry-level position (one year of experience required), and will be mostly telecommuting.

I've looked through previous posts about phone interviews (which were helpful), but I was hoping for some advice specific to an IT job interview. What can I expect from a phone interview for a position like this? Are there things I should do to prepare for it?