-----Original Message----- From: owner-m...@openbsd.org [mailto:owner-m...@openbsd.org] On Behalf Of openbsd misc Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 2:27 PM To: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Re: OT: Old School Unix vs. Modern Day Support "Professionals" - was (Defending OpenBSD Performance)
>Fact of the matter is that I have > become convinced that those that know how to actually TROUBLESHOOT > problems are in the very small minority in this industry. > I think this is really the crux of the matter, I find the ability >to troubleshoot multi-vendor complexity is getting to be a rare >commodity, its something thats very hard to interview people for. >Nowadays people are so proud of their certification and specialized >domain knowledge >that they actively avoid learning or thinking about stuff outside of >their specialized area. And that is specifically my point. People want to justify their own worth and bloat their value beyond what it is by calling others names or by raising their "specialization" higher than the median thereby making themselves better about themselves. In reality it is understanding the median rather than the specialization that will allow one to find the solution to the majority of problems. So many times I tell our clients - I don't care who's fault it is - let's just get it fixed (this is usually in response to a finger pointing in our face by another vendor trying to save face - blaming us for something we have absolutely no control over...). In order to just get it fixed one has to stop worrying about who's fault it is and man up (or woman up - don't want to seem discriminatory here...) and take responsibility to follow it through to a solution. Unix folks had to "know" what they were doing because you had to understand how it all worked. You actually had to read the manual and understand what effect enabling this or disabling that would do. The best part is you couldn't accidentally point, click, and stop or remove a piece of software that hoses the entire system - you had to use the command line to do administrative tasks - which meant you had to (or should) know the commands to use before attempting anything. That is why I love OpenBSD. Everything is documented, source is available, and you have to understand the system to use it... ...if you don't understand it - and are unhappy with the system - and are unwilling to spend the time to learn it - then the best thing for you to do is login as root and type in the following: ********************* cd / rm -rf * ********************* ...and now you learned something - DONT DO ANYTHING WIHTOUT UNDERSTANDING IT FIRST!!!! *** Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for the results of running the above commands although I would be intensely interested to hear the results of anyone who does run them and their personal experiences immediately following. Run them only at your own risk AFTER understanding what they do... That is where these folks that want to LOUDLY complain about something not working in OpenBSD or want to complain because feature X is not in the OS really kill me. They try to use OpenBSD to fit into a mold that it was not designed for and want feature X to work. Either take the initiative and contribute feature X, politely ask if there is a need for feature X or if has been thought of, or be quiet. OpenBSD works great for everything I use it for - unfortunately until I can run MS SQL and .NET 3.5 (yes mono is getting close - and - MySQL is maturing very nicely in its featureset!!) to run on it I am relegated to a MS based system for now as my work PC. But for my firewalls and mail filtering systems OpenBSD rocks and is rock solid. There isn't anything I have tried to use OpenBSD for (knowing the limitations on it - such as it can't run apps written for Windows - which is something other people seem to forget) that has not worked. I never claim or even suspect that I know all the answers (but I know where to find them) - and that is the strength and difference between those people that know how to fix problems and those that do not. If you think you know it all - then there is no more room for knowledge and you are unwilling to accept you might be wrong - which will forever hinder your ability to learn from your mistakes. If you approach every problem with no preconceived notions and look at it as if you had never seen it before you are more likely to find the right solution the first time - and yes sometimes it is YOUR fault! Again - feel free to obliterate my thoughts - but know that if your comments are negative I might not and probably will not lose any sleep over it..... Thank you to those that continue to devote their time and money to this project and I will make a great attempt and not extending this thread longer than I have already.. :)
