From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Sep 24 22:41: 1 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mailhost01.reflexnet.net (mailhost01.reflexnet.net [64.6.192.82]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8A85237B424 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 22:40:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com ([64.6.211.149]) by mailhost01.reflexnet.net with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.197.19); Sun, 24 Sep 2000 22:39:45 -0700 Received: (from cjc@localhost) by 149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com (8.11.0/8.11.0) id e8P5es462282; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 22:40:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cjc) Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 22:40:54 -0700 From: "Crist J . Clark" To: "Jason C. Wells" Cc: Haikal Saadh , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: So what do (unix) sysadmins do anyway? Message-ID: <20000924224054.H59015@149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com> Reply-To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu References: <20000925032828.3958.qmail@web1610.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from jcwells@nwlink.com on Sun, Sep 24, 2000 at 09:52:46PM -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sun, Sep 24, 2000 at 09:52:46PM -0700, Jason C. Wells wrote: > On Sun, 24 Sep 2000, Haikal Saadh wrote: > > > Am I missing the obvious? > > Coming from the environment that I do, I state that there is no such thing > as a system failure. Huh. NOT! The admin's at our office spend a _lot_ of time fixing systems that die from hardware failures. Sure, you have backups (data and hardware backups) but you still need (1) to get the backup on-line (it's seldom 100% automated), (2) to fix/replace broken hardware (can't be running without on the backup for too long), and (3) to do the inevitable little tweaks to get both (1) and (2) to really work. With literally hundreds of heavily used UNIX-type boxes you _will_ have a small failure of one type or another every few days and you're bound to have something pretty bad on the scale of months. Once you get a UNIX box up and running, you can forget it... until some hardware breaks, some user manages to screw up their stuff so bad they come to the admin to fix it, a user wants to "upgrade" some horendous monster of an app, etc. -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@alum.mit.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message