There are four major species of Unix sysad:
Technical Thug: | Usually a
systems programmer who has been forced into system administration; writes
scripts in a polyglot of the Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.
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Admistrative Facist: | Usually a
retentive drone (or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced
into system administration.
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Maniac: | Usually an aging cracker
who discovered that neither the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a
living wage for computer espionage. Fell into system administration;
occasionally approaches major competitors with indesp schemes.
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Idiot: | Usually a cretin,
morpohodite, or old COBOL programmer selected to be the system
administrator by a committee of cretins, morphodites, and old COBOL
programmers.
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---------------- SITUATION: Low disk space. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Writes a suite of scripts to monitor disk
usage, maintain a database of historic disk usage, predict future disk
usage via least squares regression analysis, identify users who are
more than a standard deviation over the mean, and send mail to the
offending parties. Places script in cron. Disk usage does not
change, since disk-hogs, by nature, either ignore script-generated
mail, or file it away in triplicate.
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Admistrative Facist: | Puts disk usage policy in motd.
Uses disk quotas. Allows no exceptions, thus crippling development work.
Locks accounts that go over quota.
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Maniac: |
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: Excessive CPU usage. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Writes a suite of scripts to
monitor processes, maintain a database of CPU usage, identify processes
more than a standard deviation over the norm, and renice offending
processes. Places script in cron. Ends up renicing the production database
into oblivion, bringing operations to a grinding halt, much to the delight
of the xtrek freaks.
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Admistrative Facist: | Puts CPU usage policy
in motd. Uses CPU quotas. Locks accounts that go over quota. Allows no
exceptions, thus crippling development work, much to the delight of the
xtrek freaks.
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Maniac: |
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: New account creation. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Writes perl script that
creates home directory, copies in incomprehensible default environment,
and places entries in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group. (By hand,
NOT with passmgmt.) Slaps on setuid bit; tells a nearby secretary to
handle new accounts. Usually, said secretary is still dithering over the
difference between 'enter' and 'return'; and so, no new accounts are ever
created.
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Admistrative Facist: | Puts new account policy
in motd. Since people without accounts cannot read the motd, nobody ever
fulfills the bureaucratic requirements; and so, no new accounts are ever
created.
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Maniac: | "If you're too stupid to break in
and create your own account, I don't want you on the system. We've got too
many goddamn sh*t-for-brains a**holes on this box anyway."
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: Root disk fails. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Repairs drive. Usually is
able to repair filesystem from boot monitor. Failing that, front-panel
toggles microkernel in and starts script on neighboring machine to load
binary boot code into broken machine, reformat and reinstall OS. Lets it
run over the weekend while he goes mountain climbing.
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Admistrative Facist: | Begins investigation to
determine who broke the drive. Refuses to fix system until culprit is
identified and charged for the equipment.
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Maniac, Large System: | Rips drive from
system, uses sledgehammer to smash same to flinders. Calls manufacturer,
threatens pets. Abuses field engineer while they put in a new drive and
reinstall the OS.
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Maniac, Small System: | Rips drive from
system, uses ball-peen hammer to smash same to flinders. Calls
Requisitions, threatens pets. Abuses bystanders while putting in new
drive and reinstalling OS.
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Idiot: | Doesn't notice anything wrong.
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---------------- SITUATION: Poor network response. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Writes scripts to monitor
network, then rewires entire machine room, improving response time by 2%.
Shrugs shoulders, says, "I've done all I can do," and goes mountain
climbing.
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Admistrative Facist: | Puts network usage
policy in motd. Calls up Berkeley and AT&T, badgers whoever answers for
network quotas. Tries to get xtrek freaks fired.
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Maniac: | Every two hours, pulls ethernet
cable from wall and waits for connections to time out.
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: User questions. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Hacks the code of emacs'
doctor-mode to answer new users questions. Doesn't bother to tell people
how to start the new "guru-mode", or for that matter, emacs.
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Admistrative Facist: | Puts user support
policy in motd. Maintains queue of questions. Answers them when he gets a
chance, often within two weeks of receipt of the proper form.
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Maniac: | Screams at users until they go away.
Sometimes barters knowledge for powerful drink and/or sycophantic
adulation.
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Idiot: | Answers all questions to best of his
knowledge until the user realizes few UNIX systems support punched cards
or JCL.
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---------------- SITUATION: *Stupid* user questions. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Answers question in hex,
binary, postfix, and/or French until user gives up and goes away.
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Admistrative Facist: | Locks user's account
until user can present documentation demonstrating their qualification to
use the machine.
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Maniac: |
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Idiot: | Answers all questions to best of his
knowledge. Recruits user to system administration team.
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---------------- SITUATION: Process accounting management. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Ignores packaged accounting
software; trusts scripts to sniff out any problems & compute charges.
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Admistrative Facist: | Devotes 75% of disk
space to accounting records owned by root and chmod'ed 000.
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Maniac: | Laughs fool head off at very mention
of accounting.
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: Religious war, BSD vs. System V. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | BSD. Crippled on System V
boxes.
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Admistrative Facist: | System V. Horrified by
the people who use BSD. Places frequent calls to DEA.
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Maniac: | Prefers BSD, but doesn't care as
long as HIS processes run quickly.
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: Religious war, System V vs. AIX ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Weeps.
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Admistrative Facist: | AIX -- doesn't much
care for the OS, but loves the jackboots.
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Maniac: | System V, but keeps AIX skills up,
knowing full well how much Big Financial Institutions love IBM...
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Idiot: | AIX.
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---------------- SITUATION: Balky printer daemons. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Rewrites lpd in FORTH.
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Admistrative Facist: | Puts printer use policy
in motd. Calls customer support every time the printer freezes. Tries to
get user who submitted the most recent job fired.
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Maniac: | Writes script that kills all the
daemons, clears all the print queues, and maybe restarts the daemons. Runs
it once a hour from cron.
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: OS upgrade. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Reads source code of new
release, takes only what he likes.
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Admistrative Facist: | Instigates lawsuit
against the vendor for having shipped a product with bugs in it in the
first place.
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Maniac: |
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: Balky mail. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Rewrites sendmail.cf from
scratch. Rewrites sendmail in SNOBOL. Hacks kernel to implement file
locking. Hacks kernel to implement "better" semaphores. Rewrites sendmail
in assembly. Hacks kernel to . . .
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Admistrative Facist: | Puts mail use policy in
motd. Locks accounts that go over mail use quota. Keeps quota low enough
that people go back to interoffice mail, thus solving problem.
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Maniac: |
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Idiot: |
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---------------- SITUATION: Users want phone list application. ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Writes RDBMS in perl and
Smalltalk. Users give up and go back to post-it notes.
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Admistrative Facist: | Oracle. Users give up
and go back to post-it notes.
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Maniac: | Tells the users to use flat files
and grep, the way God meant man to keep track of phone numbers. Users give
up and go back to post-it notes.
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Idiot: |
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Other Guidelines | |
---------------- TYPICAL ROOT .cshrc FILE: ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Longer than eight kilobytes.
Sources the output of a perl script, rewrites itself.
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Admistrative Facist: | Typical lines include:
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Maniac: | Typical lines include:
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Idiot: | Typical lines include:
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---------------- HOBBIES, TECHNICAL: ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Writes entries for
Obsfuscated C contest. Optimizes INTERCAL scripts. Maintains ENIAC
emulator. Virtual reality.
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Admistrative Facist: | Bugs office. Audits
card-key logs. Modifies old TVs to listen in on cellular phone
conversations. Listens to police band.
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Maniac: | Volunteers at Survival Research
Labs. Bugs office. Edits card-key logs. Modifies old TVs to listen in on
cellular phone conversations. Jams police band.
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Idiot: | Ties shoes. Maintains COBOL decimal
to roman numeral converter. Rereads flowcharts from his salad days at
Rand.
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---------------- HOBBIES, NONTECHNICAL: ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Drinks "Smart Drinks."
Attends raves. Hangs out at poetry readings and Whole Earth Review events
and tries to pick up Birkenstock MOTAS.
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Admistrative Facist: | Reads Readers
Digest and Mein Kampf. Sometimes turns up car radio and sings
along to John Denver. Golfs. Drinks gin martinis. Hangs out in yuppie
bars and tries to pick up dominatrixes.
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Maniac: | Reads Utne Reader and Mein
Kampf. Faithfully attends Dickies and Ramones concerts. Punches out
people who say "virtual reality." Drinks damn near anything, but favors
Wild Turkey, Black Bush, and grain alcohol. Hangs out in neighborhood bars
and tries to pick up MOTAS by drinking longshoremen under the table.
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Idiot: | Reads Time and Newsweek
-- and *believes* them. Drinks Jagermeister. Tries to pick up close
blood relations -- often succeeds, producting next generation of
idiots.
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---------------- 1992 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Clinton, but only because he
liked Gore's book.
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Admistrative Facist: | Bush. Possibly Clinton,
but only because he liked Tipper.
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Maniac: | Frank Zappa.
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Idiot: | Perot.
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---------------- 1996 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: ---------------- | |
Technical Thug: | Richard Stallman - Larry
Wall.
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Admistrative Facist: | Nixon - Buchanan.
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Maniac: | Frank Zappa.
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Idiot: | Quayle.
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Compound System Administrators | |
Technical Fascist: | Hacks kernel & writes a
horde of scripts to prevent folk from ever using more than their fair
share of system resources. Resulting overhead and load brings system to
its knees.
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Technical Maniac: | Writes scripts that SEEM
to be monitoring the system, but are actually encrypting large lists of
passwords. Uses nearby nodes as beta test sites for worms.
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Technical Idiot: | Writes superuser-run scripts that sooner or
later do an "rm -rf /".
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Fascistic Maniac: | At first hint of cracker
incursions, whether real or imagined, shuts down system by triggering
water-on-the-brain detectors and Halon system.
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Fascistic Idiot: |
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Maniacal Idiot: |
Napalms the CPU.
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