[Gllug] Hacker Attack

[Bruce Richardson]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2006 at 12:28:39PM +0000, Nix wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jan 2006, Bruce Richardson yowled:
> > Actually, that is not a reassuring statement.  What I described was a
> > little more than the ability to compile a kernel.  People who assume
> > that this is enough are a real problem.  Managing production systems is
> > about more than basic technical ability.
> 
> Indeed. The signs of a first-rank sysadmin are three, I think:
> 
> - ability to work with others (at least other sysadmins ;) )
> - the aforementioned technical ability (Larry Wall's `laziness',
>   too; it doesn't matter if you've got technical ability if you
>   never use it to automate anything)
> - paranoia! Assume everything will go wrong. Hunt ceaselessly
>   for points of failure and plug them. Assume everything is your
>   enemy and is out to get you.

A good Sysadmin is also going to consider, before making a change, not
just what it achives in the short term but how maintainable it is in the
long term (and maintainable by other people, not just by him/her, so
this is more than just "benign laziness").  That includes considering
how reproducible the change is, how it affects recovery strategies etc.

This should be the case even with office infrastructure but even more so
in a production environment where uptime (and SLAs, very likely) are a
factor.  In that scenario, the restrictions imposed by such a change are
likely to affect the need for downtime in case of change, for example.

People who know how to compile kernels but don't consider the
implications of installing them have caused me quite specific pain in
the relatively recent past.

-- 
Bruce

It is impolite to tell a man who is carrying you on his shoulders that
his head smells.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 261 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug/attachments/20060111/dee7531a/attachment.pgp>
-------------- next part --------------
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug