[Gllug] Hacker Attack

[ccooke]

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.
> 
> These are pretty much the same skills you need to be a first-rank
> programmer, although that has more skills as well (the ability to
> abstract and generalize, for starters).
> 

A good sysadmin (or at the very least, a good sysadmin *team*) needs to
have those skills, too - they're just used on a different scale. A lot
of the work in my jobs has involved designing and building networks of
servers for particular loads, for instance. Just like programming, it
all comes down to elegant plumbing ;-)

To be properly lazy, you need to be a good programmer, as well -
otherwise, you just can't automate things properly.  There is, however,
a big difference between applications and systems coding - I've known 
many first-rank programmers who just couldn't get their priorities 
straight for systems programming (and many sysadmins who get bogged down
in systems stuff when doing application coding).  It's mostly a mindset 
thing - which area you concentrate on.
 
-- 
for((P=10**8,Q=P/100,X=320*Q/(`tput cols`-1),Y=210*Q/`tput lines`,y=-105*Q,v=\
-220*Q,x=v;y<105*Q;x=v,y+=Y));do for((;x<P;a=b=i=k=c=0,x+=X));do for((;a*a+b*\
b<2*P*P&&i++<99;a=((c=a)*a-b*b)/P+x,b=2*c*b/P+y));do :;done;(((j=(i<99?i%16:0\
)+30)>37?k=1,j-=8:0));echo -ne "\E[$k;$j"mE;done;echo -e \\E[0m;done # ccooke
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