On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Craig Miskell <craig.misk...@opus.co.nz> wrote: > > Aaron McCaleb wrote: >> How is any novice supposed to know that one course of action is >> preferable to another? How is any novice supposed to know that they >> should trust one source of information in one circumstance vs. another >> source in a different circumstance? The novice needs to gain >> experience. Experience can be gained through practice, or it can be >> shared (as is happening in most of the posts, now.) > > I've been thinking about precisely this for a while now. I have been looking > for some sort of collection of "accumulated wisdom", or "Best Practices" for > system administration (the "sharing" part you mention). Many bits of > individual > software, or disciplines, have their own collections, but I've yet to find a > nice location where such practices and reasons are shared, updated, and > discussed in a permanent format. As you say, this list seems to be doing a > bit > of that, but to be honest, I think there's a need for a "distillation" format; > the archives are ok for searching, but I don't think are the best way to > present > the final result. I do think that a browseable curated index would be really > useful, allowing casual exploratory browsing, rather than directed searching. > This would be beneficial for both novice and experienced admins. > > Does anyone know of such a beast already? If not, does anyone else think it's > worth creating?
I think a guide to the sys admin body of knowledge would be worthwhile. This guide would give an overview of the normative literature in the field - publications that lay out the norms of the field, or what is general agreed (i.e. best practices). There might not be a lot of such (recent) publications. Work on such guide would make that hole very visible. The guide would also define what system administration is, what the boundaries of the field are, and what other fields are adjacent to system administration. This is something I've been meaning to write but haven't gotten to yet. Here's the first part, the literature. Aleksey List of normative literature (describing norms or standards) in the field of (Unix/Linux) system administration: "The Practice of System and Network Administration", 2nd ed. (2007) Limoncelli and Hogan http://everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html "Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook", 4th ed. (2010) Nemeth et. al www.admin.com "Essential System Administration", 3rd ed. (2002) Frisch RFC 1178 "Choosing a Name for Your Computer" SAGE booklets SA-BOK draft by Geoff Halprin (1997) http://www.sysadmin.com.au/sa-bok.html Thanks to Jonah Sinowitz for help compiling the list. I considered the books by Mark Burgess ("Principles of Network and System Administration" and "Analytical Network and System Administration") but did not add them, as I only know one sysadmin who read them, and I did not get through them myself (too math-heavy for me at the time). I considered the Sysadmin Book of Knowledge project by Halprin and Kolstad (2000) but it did not publish anything so I can't refer people to it. Feedback welcome. I would like to publish this list at www.lopsa.org/sabok or something like that. I'm also following with interest the SWEBOK 3rd edition which is in the state of being born. (www.swebok.org) _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
