The Importance of a System Administrator

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Solaris™ Operating Environment Boot Camp
By David Rhodes, Dominic Butler
Table of Contents
Chapter 1.  The System Administrator's Role


"Just put it in the corner and we will switch it on when we need it."

"Yes, we know what to do; we have used a PC before."

"Leave it there, I'll sort it out later."

These are some of the misconceptions that users have when installing their first UNIX system. They assume the machines can sit happily in the corner and be switched on and off whenever they require to use them, and that they will function correctly throughout their lifetime. Unfortunately, this isn't the casethe machines are much more complex than that.

The reason for this is mainly because they provide the user with a level of services that is not available on many non-UNIX machines. These services include facilities such as:

  • The ability to allow many users to log on to the system at any one time (termed multi-user)

  • A mechanism to allow users to work on more than one "job" at a time (termed multitasking)

  • A printing service that schedules jobs sent by any number of users to the same printer

  • The ability to communicate with users both local and remote to the system

  • The ability to schedule tasks for "out-of-work" time hours

As you would expect, although many services are provided with the system, they will not configure, run, and monitor themselvesall those tasks are the job of the system administrator. Some common tasks that would need performing are as follows:

  • Starting the system in the correct sequence

  • Shutting the system down correctly

  • Adding users to the system (and removing them)

  • Backing up and restoring the data on the system

  • Adding software packages to the system

  • Connecting hardware to the system

  • Administering the system disks and filesystems

  • Managing network connectivity

  • Knowing what to do when something goes wrong

To enable the system administrator to actively monitor all those tasks, the system provides us with a number of log files. These are files that record such things as who has been connected to the system. The potential problem with these is that, if left unattended, they will grow and grow until they fill up all the available disk space on the system. Managing these is also a task for the administrator.

We stated earlier that UNIX is a multi-user, multitasking operating system, and as such there can be many different users logging on to the system at any one time. There needs to be a mechanism for providing users with some degree of security for their files, and for specifying to the system which users are allowed to actually log on to it. This is another role of the system administrator.

If anyone and everyone were allowed to manipulate the system files and perform the tasks listed earlier, it would be a recipe for disaster, especially on large systems where hundreds of users can be connected at once. By assigning a system administrator, we can control the number of people that are able to make changes to the system, and, from there, maintain a smooth running system.


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    Solaris Operating Environment Boot Camp
    Solaris Operating Environment Boot Camp
    ISBN: 0130342874
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2002
    Pages: 301

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