Know your Unix system administrator
A field guide
There are four major species of Unix sysad :
- The 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.
- The administrative fascist.
Usually a retentive drone ( or rarely, a harridan ex-secretary ) who has
been forced into system administration.
- The 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.
- The 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.
How to identify your system administrator :
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.
- Administrative fascist :
Puts disk usage policy in motd. Uses disk quotas. Allows no exceptions, thus
crippling development work. Locks accounts that go over quota.
- Maniac :
# cd /home
# rm -rf `du -s * | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'`;
- Idiot :
# cd /home
# cat `du -s * | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{ printf "%s/*\n", $2}'` | compress
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.
- Administrative fascist: :
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.
- Maniac: :
# kill -9 `ps -augxww | sort -rn +8 -9 | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'`
- Idiot: :
# compress -f `ps -augxww | sort -rn +8 -9 | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'`
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.
- Administrative fascist :
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.
- 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."
- Idiot :
# cd /home; mkdir "Bob's home directory"
# echo "Bob Simon:gandalf:0:0::/dev/tty:compress -f" > /etc/passwd
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.
- Administrative fascist :
Begins investigation to determine who broke the drive. Refuses to fix
system until culprit is identified and charged for the equipment.
- 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.
- 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.
- Idiot :
Doesn't notice anything wrong.
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.
- Administrative fascist :
Puts network usage policy in motd. Calls up Berkeley and AT&T, badgers
whoever answers for network quotas. Tries to get xtrek freaks fired.
- Maniac :
Every two hours, pulls ethernet cable from wall and waits for connections
to time out.
- Idiot :
# compress -f /dev/en0
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.
- Administrative fascist :
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.
- Maniac :
Screams at users until they go away. Sometimes barters knowledge for powerful
drink and/or sycophantic adulation.
- Idiot :
Answers all questions to best of his knowledge until the user realizes few
UNIX systems support punched cards or JCL.
Situation : Stupid user questions.
- Technical thug :
Answers question in hex, binary, postfix, and/or French until user gives up
and goes away.
- Administrative fascist :
Locks user's account until user can present documentation demonstrating
their qualification to use the machine.
- Maniac :
# cat >> ~luser/.cshrc
alias vi 'rm \!*;unalias vi;grep -v BoZo ~/.cshrc > ~/.z; mv -f ~/.z ~/.cshrc'
^D
- Idiot :
Answers all questions to best of his knowledge. Recruits user to system
administration team.
Situation : Process accounting management.
- Technical thug :
Ignores packaged accounting software; trusts scripts to sniff out any problems
& compute charges.
- Administrative fascist :
Devotes 75% of disk space to accounting records owned by root and chmod'ed 000.
- Maniac :
Laughs fool head off at very mention of accounting.
- Idiot :
# lpr /etc/wtmp /usr/adm/paact
Situation : Religious war, BSD vs. System V.
- Technical thug :
BSD. Crippled on System V boxes.
- Administrative fascist :
System V. Horrified by the people who use BSD. Places frequent calls to DEA.
- Maniac :
Prefers BSD, but doesn't care as long as HIS processes run quickly.
- Idiot :
# cd c:
Situation : Religious war, System V vs. AIX.
- Technical thug :
Weeps.
- Administrative fascist :
AIX-- doesn't much care for the OS, but loves the jackboots.
- Maniac :
System V, but keeps AIX skills up, knowing full well how much Big Financial
Institutions love IBM...
- Idiot :
AIX.
Situation : Balky printer daemons.
- Technical thug :
Rewrites lpd in FORTH.
- Administrative fascist :
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.
- 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.
- Idiot :
# kill -9 /dev/lp ; /dev/lp &
Situation : OS upgrade.
- Technical thug :
Reads source code of new release, takes only what he likes.
- Administrative fascist :
Instigates lawsuit against the vendor for having shipped a product
with bugs in it in the first place.
- Maniac :
# uptime
1:33pm up 19 days, 22:49, 167 users, load average: 6.49, 6.45, 6.31
# wall
Well, it's upgrade time. Should take a few hours. And good luck on that
5:00 deadline, guys! We're all pulling for you!
^D
- Idiot :
# dd if=/dev/rmt8 of=/vmunix
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 . . .
- Administrative fascist :
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.
- Maniac :
# kill -9 `ps -augxww | grep sendmail | awk '{print $2}'`
# rm -f /usr/spool/mail/*
# wall
Mail is down. Please use interoffice mail until we have it back up.
^D
# write max
I've got my boots and backpack. Ready to leave for Mount Tam?
^D
- Idiot :
# echo "HELP!" | mail tech_support.AT.vendor.com%kremvax%bitnet!BIFF!!!
Situation : Users want phone list application.
- Technical thug :
Writes RDBMS in perl and Smalltalk. Users give up and go back to post-it notes.
- Administrative fascist :
Oracle. Users give up and go back to post-it notes.
- 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.
- Idiot :
% dd ibs=80 if=/dev/rdisk001s7 | grep "Fred"
Other guidelines :
Typical root .cshrc file :
- Technical thug :
Longer than eight kilobytes. Sources the output of a perl script, rewrites itself.
- Administrative fascist :
umask 777
alias cd 'cd \!*; rm -rf ching *hack mille omega rogue xtrek >& /dev/null &'
- Maniac :
alias rm 'rm -rf \!*'
alias hose kill -9 '`ps -augxww | grep \!* | awk \'{print $2}\'`'
alias kill 'kill -9 \!* ; kill -9 \!* ; kill -9 \!*'
alias renice 'echo Renice\? You must mean kill -9.; kill -9 \!*'
- Idiot :
alias dir ls
alias era rm
alias kitty cat
alias process_table ps
setenv DISPLAY vt100
Hobbies, technical :
- Technical thug :
Writes entries for Obsfuscated C contest. Optimizes INTERCAL scripts. Maintains ENIAC
emulator. Virtual reality .
- Administrative fascist :
Bugs office. Audits card-key logs. Modifies old TVs to listen in on cellular
phone conversations. Listens to police band.
- 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.
- Idiot :
Ties shoes. Maintains COBOL decimal to roman numeral converter. Rereads flowcharts from
his salad days at Rand.
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.
- Administrative fascist :
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.
- 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 .
- Idiot :
Reads Time and Newsweek -- and *believes* them. Drinks Jagermeister. Tries to
pick up close blood relations -- often succeeds, producting next generation of idiots.
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.
- 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.
- Technical idiot :
Writes superuser-run scripts that sooner or later do an rm -rf /
- 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.
- Fascistic idiot :
# cp /dev/null /etc/passwd
- Maniacal idiot :
Napalms the CPU.