From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 100 21:00:44 -0600 (CST) Subject: how to turn off Power saving on Solaris 8? Message-ID: <200012070300.eB730j902243@speck.spectracom.com> Can anyone tell how to turn the Power Saving feature off on Solaris 8? Thanks in advance!!! Jianguo From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 100 13:28:13 -0600 (CST) Subject: How to install missed components from Solaris 8 software CD ? Message-ID: <200012121928.eBCJSEl13226@speck.spectracom.com> Hello all, After the installation of Solaris 8, I realized that there are more components I need to install. Even though I chose all necessary components I need but somehow some package e.g. Disksuite 4.2.1 is still not there. Can anyone tell me how to install the missing component from Solaris 8 software CD? Thanks in advance! Jianguo From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Wed, 13 Dec 100 15:57:28 -0600 (CST) Subject: repartition "swap" partition problem - Message-ID: <200012132157.eBDLvSC21506@speck.spectracom.com> Hello all, I am using Disksuite 4.2.1 to mirror the hard drives with the existing system (Soalris 8.0). I need to repartition the swap space in order to have space for the db file. However when I tried to label the disk partition table after the modification, the error message said "Cannot label disk while its partitions are currently being used for swapping." Could anyone know how to solve the problem. The detail dmessages or steps attached here. Thanks in advance, Jianguo # df -k Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on /dev/md/dsk/d0 1661823 1167907 444062 73% / /proc 0 0 0 0% /proc fd 0 0 0 0% /dev/fd mnttab 0 0 0 0% /etc/mnttab swap 1568120 0 1568120 0% /var/run swap 1568136 16 1568120 1% /tmp /dev/md/dsk/d37 17413250 9 17239109 1% /usr2.1 partition> pr Current partition table (original): Total disk cylinders available: 3880 + 2 (reserved cylinders) Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks 0 root wm 486 - 2073 1.64GB (1588/0/0) 3430080 1 swap wu 0 - 485 512.58MB (486/0/0) 1049760 2 backup wm 0 - 3879 4.00GB (3880/0/0) 8380800 3 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 4 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 5 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 6 unassigned wm 0 0 (0/0/0) 0 7 home wm 2074 - 3879 1.86GB (1806/0/0) 3900960 partition> 1 Part Tag Flag Cylinders Size Blocks 1 swap wu 0 - 485 512.58MB (486/0/0) 1049760 Enter partition id tag[swap]: Enter partition permission flags[wu]: Enter new starting cyl[0]: Enter partition size[1049760b, 486c, 512.58mb, 0.50gb]: 484c partition> la Cannot label disk while its partitions are currently being used for swapping. partition> From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Wed, 3 Jan 101 11:50:37 -0600 (CST) Subject: Virtual host configuration doesn't work in Solaris 8 Message-ID: <200101031750.f03Hobh01053@speck.spectracom.com> Hello all, For some reason, the configuration for virtual host doesn't work with my Solaris 8. Here is the detail: # ifconfig -a lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 hme0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2 inet 204.178.194.9 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 204.176.194.255 ether 8:0:20:8c:ac:81 # ifconfig hme0:1 www.mydomain.de up ifconfig: SIOCGLIFNETMASK: hme0:1: no such interface Any ideas? Thanks in advance! Jian From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 101 12:50:36 -0600 (CST) Subject: Looking for FAQ document - Message-ID: <200102261850.f1QIobZ02519@speck.spectracom.com> Hello all, Can anyone tell where I can find the FAQ document for this mailing list? Thanks, Jianguo From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Fri, 18 May 101 15:07:01 -0500 (CDT) Subject: NFS failure - Message-ID: <200105182007.f4IK71K19377@speck.spectracom.com> Hello all, Suddenly the NFS sharing failed for no reason. All configurations including share and mount have no change. I tried restart nfs.server and unshare and shareall but it still doesn't work. The error message likes: # su - jianguo No directory! The home directory is configured in /etc/auto_home which is in a separate box. Any advices are appreciated. Thanks, Jianguo From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Fri, 18 May 101 23:37:52 -0500 (CDT) Subject: NFS problem - more error message Message-ID: <200105190437.f4J4bqA01976@speck.spectracom.com> Hello, When I tried to access my home directory, I got following error message: NFS lookup failed for server mydomain.com: error 7 (RPC: Authentication error) No directory! I reboot mydomain.com machine but it still doesn't work. mydomain.com has Solaris 2.7 installed. Any hints to solve the problem are appreciated! Thank you. Jianguo From jianguo at speck.spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at speck.spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 101 13:30:07 -0500 (CDT) Subject: trusted remote hosts failure - permission deny Message-ID: <200106191830.f5JIU7805555@speck.spectracom.com> Hello all, I have three machines A, B and C. A tape drive for system backup is installed in A. B is able to access the tape drive in A but C can't! I created /.rhosts in A for both B and A entries. A and B are running Solaris 2.5.1 but C is running Solaris 8. The error message from C: ufsrestore ivfs A:/dev/rmt/0 1 permission denied Any hints please!? Thank you in advance. Jianguo From jianguo at spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Wed, 25 Jul 101 16:05:33 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Warning message from network linking cable - Message-ID: <200107252105.f6PL5Yu18690@speck.spectracom.com> Hello all, When I just configured the network interface, I got the following error message from console: Internal Transceiver Seleleted Auto-negotiated 100 Mbs Full-Duplex Link Up This message continuously repeat. Any hints to stop it? Thanks, Jianguo From jianguo at spectracom.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: jianguo at spectracom.com (Jian-Guo Sun) Date: Mon, 30 Jul 101 22:47:54 -0500 (CDT) Subject: tar or ufsdump for tape backup? Message-ID: <200107310347.f6V3lsY29743@speck.spectracom.com> Hello, Without graphic tool like Veritas software, I need to do backup from multiple Sun boxes to a central tape device by using either tar or ufsdump in Solaris 2.x. Any comments between tar and ufsdump? Thanks in advance! Jianguo From sreddy at miel.mot.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: sreddy at miel.mot.com (Satya Narayana Reddy[C]) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 101 13:16:34 +0530 (IST) Subject: hi Message-ID: <200108140746.f7E7kYQ23551@soliton.miel.mot.com> Hi all I wanted reboot a sun machine so that it will go down and then comes back after one hour. i mean, it has to go down immediately and it should not come up at that instance. it has to wait for sometime say 1 hour, and then it has to comeup. how can i do this.?? thanks -- satya From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: UNIX systems' worth of disk throughput on a single 1000mbps link. I'm using Veritas DMP to get aggregated bandwidth across multiple paths. The "systems" are primarily E10K domains, with a small number of E3500/E4500 systems targeted for future connection to the SAN. I'm using JNI HBAs and a collection of Brocade Silkworm and Inrange Directors make up the SAN. Thanx, _Johan From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: UNIX systems' worth of disk throughput on a single 1000mbps link. I'm using Veritas DMP to get aggregated bandwidth across multiple paths. The "systems" are primarily E10K domains, with a small number of E3500/E4500 systems targeted for future connection to the SAN. I'm using JNI HBAs and a collection of Brocade Silkworm and Inrange Directors make up the SAN. Thanx, _Johan From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: Yes, it works great. I've not only done upgrades from one release of Solaris 8 to another, but also upgraded Solaris 2.6 to 2.8, with no trouble. In addition, I've re-sized filesystems, collapsed filesystems, and split filesystems during upgrades. Also, I've installed patches using it. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: I've run several tests on Live Upgrade and found it to be a valuable tool. As you said that you are not running any volume managment you probably will have no problems. The beauty of Live Upgrade is that it gives you a fall back should you have problems. As usual, posted below is the original question. Thien On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Thien Vu wrote: > Hi, > > I've been asked to look into upgrading a Sun E450 running Solaris7 to > Solaris 8 using Live Upgrade. > > I was wondering what experiences people have had. Are people actually > using LiveUpgrade when performing OS upgrades? Have there been any > caveats/problems/issues that need to be resolved? Or does it really work > as advertised? What type of feedback/reactions did you have while using > it? Where there any reasons against using it? > > I've read through the Live Upgrade 2.0 Guide, and it seems pretty > straight-forward; just follow the steps. We have a fairly simple setup > (ie, no VxVM or any other volume management software). > > Thanks, > > Thien > _______________________________________________ > sunmanagers mailing list > sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org > http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: How do i find out, how much cache the CPU has ? Internal as well as external. Other commands ? Oh well, for Solaris-2.6. Thanks (mk) -- Matthias Kurz; Fuldastr. 3; D-28199 Bremen; VOICE +49 421 53 600 47 >> Im prdmotorischen Cortex kann jeder ein Held sein. (bdw) << From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: "...it is possible for some buggy application program to put a file into a bizarre, inconclusive state: quasi-directories that rm interprets as such but rmdir doesn't, [OR, in my case] files that ls lists but rm can't find, and the like. Users can also create such files if they experiment with certain filesystem manipulation tools..." Use the directory editor feature of the emacs editor. OTHER POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS ========================== (Many thanks to *ALL* who responded, too many to name!) > It's probably not the 'ls -l' versus the 'ls' that makes the difference, it's more likely the 'sprc*' versus the 'sprcboot.html'. You probably have an unprintable character in the filename. Try using 'ls -b' in the directory where the "problem" file is, and look for a \xxx string (with 3 numbers where the x's are) in the filename. For each \xxx number string, put a ? in the filename you use with the 'rm'. So, for example if you get "sprcboot\003.html", try "rm sprcboot?.html". > Try rm -i * and say 'no' to all but the file you want to delete > Execute ls -lab sprc* and it might show what it is. The 'b' will show any strange characters in escaped form. There might be something in the name of the file that doesn't show on your screen. And, if you want to remove it, you can access it by its' inode number .... find . -inum 170669 -exec rm {} \; > Run 'ls -q' on the directory, which shows non-printable characters as question marks. >Try running ls -l | od -c | more to see if there are non printing characters embedded in the filenames > This should print out the entire filename, including "hidden" characters such as space: for i in `ls -1 sprc*` ; do echo \"$i\" ; done > It appears that you need to do: rm sprc*/sprcboot.html From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: "UDP and TCP Negotiation During initiation, the transport protocol is also negotiated. By default, the first connection-oriented transport supported on both the client and the server is selected. If this does not succeed, then the first available connectionless transport protocol is used. " http://docs.sun.com/ab2/coll.47.8/NETSHARE/@Ab2PageView/7221?DwebQuery=nfsd&oqt=nfsd&Ab2Lang=C&Ab2Enc=iso-8859-1 Is there a way to change this default procedure without rebooting the clients? Our situation: We have servers that have establish TCP mounts to a Network Appliance Filer. We want to change the way the clients maintain or reconnect to the Filer. It seems that once the Solaris clients succeed with a TCP negotiation they will not retry the NFS connection once TCP goes away in favor of UDP on the Filer. In short, how do we force a Sun NFS client switch to using UDP instead of TCP, even if TCP is available on the server. Thanks much, Paul -- __________________________________________________________________ Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop at Netscape! http://shopnow.netscape.com/ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/ From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: which is my 'head-instance' for my trunk which contains qfe0 - qfe3 I'm only getting the stats for data that passed through the actual qfe0 interface not the aggregate stats which is what I'm interested in. Does anyone know of a way to get this info via snmp or know of an external script to get the aggregate throughput to pass that data back to mrtg ? When using mrtg to graph stats on qfe0 i see 'Current In: 18.2 Mb/s' When using nettr ( the trunking util ) I see: Name Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs Collis Crc %Ipkts %Opkts qfe0 1664 0 585 0 0 0 25.63 19.57 qfe1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00 qfe2 4828 0 2405 0 0 0 74.37 80.43 qfe3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00 0.00 (Aggregate Throughput(Mb/sec): 76.05(New Peak) 85.71(Past Peak) 88.73%(New/Past)) The aggregate throughput is really 76.05 Mb/s which is what I'm looking for. Todays root password is brought to you by /dev/random .-------------------------------------. | Steve Mickeler * Network Operations | +-------------------------------------+ | Neptune Internet Services | `-------------------------------------' 1024D/ACB58D4F = 0227 164B D680 9E13 9168 AE28 843F 57D7 ACB5 8D4F From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: execute a map as a script, passing the directory key in as an arg on STDIN and expecting to get a map record on STDOUT. This would work great for me as I need to do a little processing prior to a mount occuring, and I'd really like to find a way to use automounter for my purposes. I've set up a very simple case: auto_master contains: /var/remote /etc/auto.test auto.test contains: autotest host23:/var/tmp/export_test Works like a charm. Nothing tricky here. I was hoping the following would work: auto.test contains: echo "autotest host23:/var/tmp/export_test" but no dice. Curiously, running automountd with -v doesn't provide me with any diagnostics - as it is wont to do when I make mistakes. Does the map need an interpretor specified? (#!/bin/sh ?) Tried it, but no change. All execute bits have been set in the map file. (755 root:other) Any thoughts appreciated! Cheers - Andy -- Andrew F. Mitchell afm at mifydnu.com security = 1/convenience From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: execute a map as a script, passing the directory key in as an arg on STDIN and expecting to get a map record on STDOUT. This would work great for me as I need to do a little processing prior to a mount occuring, and I'd really like to find a way to use automounter for my purposes. I've set up a very simple case: auto_master contains: /var/remote /etc/auto.test auto.test contains: autotest host23:/var/tmp/export_test Works like a charm. Nothing tricky here. I was hoping the following would work: auto.test contains: echo "autotest host23:/var/tmp/export_test" but no dice. Curiously, running automountd with -v doesn't provide me with any diagnostics - as it is wont to do when I make mistakes. Does the map need an interpretor specified? (#!/bin/sh ?) Tried it, but no change. All execute bits have been set in the map file. (755 root:other) Any thoughts appreciated! Cheers - Andy -- Andrew F. Mitchell afm at mifydnu.com security = 1/convenience From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: zcat reloc.cpio.Z | (cd /tmp; cpio -iu) Then would simply cp over the binaries from the directory structure below /tmp. I need to replace a couple of what I believe to be corrupt binaries from a Solaris 7 cdrom and I noticed that the cpio archives are not present. It looks like I would have to issue a : pkgadd SUNWcsu which is definitely not what I want as this would replace everyting. I know there is a work around for this and I checked the archives but didnt seem to couple with a whole lot. If anyone has some feedback on this I would greatly appreciate it. TIA Yahoo! Sports - sign up for Fantasy Baseball http://sports.yahoo.com From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: -- Jim Winkle, UNIX System Administrator, UW-Madison, DoIT. Contact info: BioComp: help at biocomp.doit.wisc.edu http://www-biocomp.doit.wisc.edu/ Other: jwinkle at doit.wisc.edu http://jwinkle.doit.wisc.edu/ Or use 264-HELP for help with services, 262-9507 to reach me directly. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: they rely on maintenance contracts for most problems above & beyond. But an organization that has SA's this knowlegeable should endeavor to retain them. Gene L. Huft City Of Seattle Public Utilities IT --- From: Chris Hoogendyk [choogend at library.umass.edu] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 9:37 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ngand Internals to a UNIX System Admin? my gut reaction would be, "No, there are many other more important areas." however, there is always an exception, and it would depend on the particular situation. if a company were a VAR assembling systems for customers that would integrate with exotic devices, then that could be important. it certainly helps for a sysadmin to have programming background and skills. knowing C helps in troubleshooting software builds, even when the sysadmin is not writing any of the software. personally, I have yet to find a real use for C, although that could be because I'm dealing with lots of software configurations and setup that are available from sunfreeware and builds I have had to do from scratch have gone pretty smoothly. what is absolutely essential for me are the unix tools and utilities like grep, sed, awk, shell scripting, and occasionally perl. knowledge about the applications I'm running is important (Apache, Samba, EZProxy, etc). security issues are an ongoing and important area that requires a constant expenditure of effort. disaster recovery is an important topic. I suppose it also depends on the size of a systems group and whether they can specialize beyond the generic sysadmin. Ultimately, if a sysadmin wants training, and wants the company to pay for it, then they should be prepared to translate the skills into specific tasks and responsibilities that will be enabled -- "you've asked me to do ..... that requires ..... with this training I can do .....", and then be prepared to deliver. --------------- Chris Hoogendyk -- O__ ---- Network Specialist & Unix Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Library Information Systems & Technology Services (*) \(*) -- W.E.B. Du Bois Library ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst --------------- From: Jim Winkle [jwinkle at doit.wisc.edu] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 9:07 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Hi Buddy -- Depends on what the sysadmin will be doing. Without knowing that, I'd say it's more important to know Perl than C. -- Jim Winkle, UNIX System Administrator, UW-Madison, DoIT. Contact info: BioComp: help at biocomp.doit.wisc.edu http://www-biocomp.doit.wisc.edu/ Other: jwinkle at doit.wisc.edu http://jwinkle.doit.wisc.edu/ Or use 264-HELP for help with services, 262-9507 to reach me directly. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: --- From: Bill_Royds at pch.gc.ca Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 9:04 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: C Programming understanding to UNIX sysadmin I think that one needs to know how computers operate (what a stack is, what a process entails etc.) and because of that, how a programming language works. C is the most important programming language on Unix, so it is unlikely that one would understand UNIX without at least understanding the C paradigm (what include files are, what is a structure, pointer, subroutine etc.) and being able to read C code to understand what a utility is doing. This does not mean that you have to be able to create C programs from scratch and be an expert C program creator. But you should be able to understand Man sections 3 and 4 easily. --- Bill Royds Acting System Administrator, Canadian Heritage Information Network Virtual Museum of Canada http://www.virtualmuseum.ca (819) 994-1200 X 239 From: Brian Dunbar [Brian.Dunbar at Plexus.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 8:20 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? It is relevant for a sysadmin to know C, UNIX internals - not sure about the device drivers. IMHO - yes the 'company' should pay for this - but this may not always be an option. If the company wants to keep their sys admins around forever, they will . Standard arguements for it - "everything" important in UNIX is written in C, you'll be a better admin for knowing "why" things happen as opposed to a button pushing monkey. Note that 99% of the time you WON'T need the knowledge. But that 1% of the time you DO need you'll really need it bad. I don't know C, Internals or device drivers yet. Once upon a time I was a dBase/Clipper code monkey - then after being a bad programmer I became a better LAN / Network Administrator. But I was a *better* admin for knowing how those flaky damn dBase/Clipper* apps worked when they fubared and I was the only IT guy around. Brian Dunbar *dBase/Clipper - I was enlisted in the Marines from 1985 - 1993. For a long time it seemed like the "answer" to every problem was to write a dBase III app for it, extended into an .exe via Clipper. I even wrote a little utility prog in Clipper to examine the logs from our Banyan Vines servers, much to my shame. The point being - everyone had clipper apps for stuff that could have been dumped into a spreadsheet - and they were RAM hogs. --- From: Edward Scown [eascown3 at yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 7:56 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? For starters, unix IS a C/C++ program -- at least it's collection of them working in concert --- think about THAT as you ask yourself your question again. It's not absolutely necessary to have c/c++ programming skills, but those skills come in handy when you need to compile a software package. Generally, writing device drivers is the job of a developer or vendor, and not necessarily the administrator. In having good C/C++ skills, you will be a better administrator. Whether or no you choose to get some C/C++ programming skills, LEARN HOW TO SCRIPT. Pick a shell -- sh, ksh, bash, and learn to SCRIPT --- learn sed awk and grep! Learn PERL --- Oh yeah, all the shells, sed,awk, and PERL are C programs... So ... while having C programming skills is not necessary, they truly help... ditto on the internals. Edward --- --- From: Kevin Buterbaugh [Kevin.Buterbaugh at lifeway.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 7:53 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Buddy, Let me begin my answer by stating that I personally: 1) know how to program in C, 2) have at least a basic understanding of Unix Internals (I've read (and most understand) both "Unix Internals" by Vahalia and "Solaris Internals" by Mauro / McDougall), and 3) would have no clue how to write a device driver. Having said that, my 2 cents worth is that none of those 3 skills are a requirement to be a successful Unix administrator. I'm one of 2 SysAdmin's here, and the other one has none of those 3 skills. He is still a very talented system administrator. Just as one does not need to know Hebrew / Greek to understand the Bible, one does not have to know C / Unix internals to understand Unix system administration. I think it is advantageous to a Unix admin to know C and have at least a basic understanding of Unix internals. I see no reason for the typical SysAdmin to need to know how to write a device driver, however. As far as paying to train a SysAdmin in those areas ... I'd maybe pay for a C programming class (but personally, I consider shell / Perl programming to be a more important skill for a SysAdmin). Once an admin knows C, they should be able to pick up either of the aforementioned Internals books and learn what they need to know from them. Of course, all of this is just my 2 cents worth... Kevin Buterbaugh LifeWay "Failure is not an option. It's a standard feature of every Micro$oft product..." Sent by: sunmanagers-admin at sunmanagers.org To: sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org cc: Subject: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? --- From: Andrew J Caines [Andrew.J.Caines at wcom.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 7:47 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Buddy, > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX > System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device > drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). As a unix sysadmin of eight years who lives and breathes unix at home and work; builds, packages and/or installs software on an almost weekly basis, I can say that not only do I not know C (or C++ or Java or Pascal or...) nor do I expect to do so. Part of this is the increasing quality of software packaging and build environments. You don't need to know C to run "configure && make && make install" or pkgadd or rpm or whatever. If I was responsible for supporting C coders, however, then I am sure that knowledge of C would be valuable. > is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators > in these areas. If it provides specific value to the position, then it should be considered. If C knowledge is really required (an not just written on the job ad, as it often is), then training may be necessary. I think there are many more valuable ways to spend $$ on training and informing your sysadmin than training them as a programmer. -Andrew- -- ________________________________________________________________ | -Andrew J. Caines- 703-886-2689 Andrew.J.Caines at wcom.com | | Unix Systems Engineer, WorldCom Andrew.J.Caines+page at wcom.com | From: dana at dtn.com Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 7:45 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? It is important as a career progression step, if you ever want to proceed beyond intermediate level sys admin you need it. I would think it would be up to the sys adm in to get the training, a couple of classes from your local community college should be enough (your employer should of course allow this to be reimbursed if such a program is in place). Dan "Lumpkin, Buddy" cc: Sent by: Subject: Opinions Needed: How important is an sunmanagers-admin at sunma understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to nagers.org a UNIX System Admin? 03/18/02 06:41 PM --- From: Thomas_J_Jones at eFunds.Com Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 7:25 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Please don't take this as fact,, it's just my opinions gathered over the last few years. While it is not as important for an admin to know C as it once was, not all that long ago, it will help give them that "deeper understanding" which will improve their ability to diagnose and solve system problems. Learning UNIX internals can build on this directly. It does not, however, seem as important that an admin be able to write device drivers as it once was, since interfaces are more standardized than in the past and most manufacturers include their device drivers with their peripherals. Of course, any company that pays their admins to learn these skills wil benefit from it as mentioned above, however, most can't be bothered with another expense. If you can talk your employer into it, congratulations! TJ --- From: Mike's List [mikelist at sky.net] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:59 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? As a system administrator you do not need to know/understands C programming, although it will help. You do need to know basic scripting (shell scripting) as an administrator. So to answer your question directly, no the company should not put out the money for a system administrator to learn C, Unix internals, or writing device drivers. The above are all for programmers/developers not system administrator. - Mike --- > From: Tim Chipman [chipman at ecopiabio.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:57 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of CProgrammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Unless your sysadmin work is desperately idle and you have nothing to do, AND you have an interest in learning C, "just for fun", then ... IMHO, learning C, programming skills & internals has very little to do with system administration skillset. Certainly, (unless said Co. has much $$ to burn) I wouldn't expect sysadmins to be trained in pay-$$ courses about programming. Possibly sysadmins should be "trained" in perl / csh / shell scripting .. officially or unofficially ... ? plus of course be given a significant hunk of "play" time to try out new & relevant stuff that will revolutionize the universe as we know it :-) Ultimately, it really depends on what your site is doing I guess. If the "sysadmin" is the sole IT employee also wearing the hat of programmer, web developer, etc etc .. then "maybe" it makes sense? :-) just my 2 cents, --Tim Chipman "Lumpkin, Buddy" wrote: > Hello All, > > I found myself discussing the importance of C Programming skills and internals with a colleague today.. > > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). > > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. > > I'll leave my own opinions aside in an attempt to not color any answers. > > Any opinions at all are very much appreciated; I will Summarize. > > Thanks in advance, > > --Buddy > _______________________________________________ > sunmanagers mailing list > sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org > http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers From: boss [boss at I-Sphere.COM] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:56 AM To: Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Eh, i was a fairly competent sysadmin without any real knowledge of any of those topics. Its far more important to know perl, shell, sed, awk, etc as programming languages, and to know network theory. Unless you're working in something like a commercial development environment, looking for ways to tweak the kernel to make a package run faster or something. Most sysadmins are just trying to keep the boxes running for their users :-) boss --- From: Andrew_Rotramel/CCHLIS at cch-lis.com Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:48 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I have been a Solaris admin for about four years. I took a semester in C a year or so ago. I did fine without knowing anything about programming, but knowing a smidgen of programming helps me with scripting (which after all is just programming). I took a class in internals a year ago and it has helped tremendously. Here is my opinion C = nice to have, but not essential Unix internals = essential if you want to do more than partition, share, set up users, etc. If you want to administer a computer rather than just operate it, you need to know how it works and what changes you can make in a given situation writing device drivers = I have not the faintest idea how to do this, and don't know that I will ever need to do it. I have worked for Exxon and now I work for a document sharing company. In each case we used off-the-shelf components. If the vendor expects us to give them money, they damn well better provide the drivers needed for Solaris to use their hardware. Andrew --- From: Harrington, David B (Contractor) [dharrington at dscr.dla.mil] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:37 AM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Buddy; My $.02 = It depends. I have seen some entries here on this listservice for help in writing drivers, but must of the time, it appears to be for people who found some orphan piece of equipment and were trying to resurrect it from the trash heap. Obviously, skill in writing drivers is appropriate for manufacturers and for some service companies, but I don't see it at the 'user level', which is where I would put most SA's. Is C language appropriate? - maybe at a basic level, but the nature of the enterprise is an issue here. Knowing something about C is good, but the depth of the knowledge required is subject to debate. Is knowledge of UNIX Internals appropriate? I have a problem with interpreting what you mean by internals. That being said, I guess my answer is basic C, Yes. The others? Make a case in dollars and cents, and efficiency. Dave Harrington --- From: Ray Ballisti [ballisti at ifh.ee.ethz.ch] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:29 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of CProgrammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? "Lumpkin, Buddy" wrote: ... > > I found myself discussing the importance of C Programming skills and internals with a colleague today.. Hello Buddy I have sometime a bad feeling, but I am not fluent in C because I never have to use it, beside some small adjustment of some existing programs. My work as a System Manager require more scripts then C programming. I still do all with the Bourne shell, and you can do quite well with it!! I never had to write device drivers. I am working as System Manager since 1986 when we got our first three SUN Workstations. This does not means that you should not have any idea of C or FORTRAN or Perl; everything can be useful! Bye Ray -- From: Christopher L. Barnard [cbar44 at tsg.cbot.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:27 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I got my master's degree in Computer Science and did a *lot* of coding in C. I then became a unix sysadmin. That was seven years ago. The only time between then an now that I have needed my C coding experience was to write main(){return(0);} to test the license managers for the C compilers. So in my case: totally, absolutely, positively not needed at all. perl, csh, ksh, etc. is more than enough. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Christopher L. Barnard O When I was a boy I was told that | | cbarnard at tsg.cbot.com / \ anybody could become president. | | (312) 347-4901 O---O Now I'm beginning to believe it. | | http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/~cbarnard --Clarence Darrow | +----------PGP public key available via finger or PGP keyserver---------+ --- From: Jeff Kennedy [jlkennedy at amcc.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:12 AM To: Lumpkin Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of CProgrammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I don't think C should be a requirement for System Administration; after all, that's what a programmer does. An SA *does*, however, need to know whatever is needed to fulfill his duties; whether that be shell scripting or perl or something else. Writing device drivers is an occupation all on it's own. Expecting SA's to do this show's some ignorance towards the duties and functions of a systems administrator. As for paying to train an SA to do this, chances are it's waste of time. Generally an SA enjoys what they do, which does not include programming. If they wanted to program they would have been a programmer after all. And spending the amount of time for an SA to learn these things is time better spent learning or honing the skills an SA needs to do his actual job. Of course, just my opinion. ~JK --- From: Allan West [allan at clas.ufl.edu] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:09 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I would say that C is important since there will always be a few tweaks needed in compiling and an understanding of C makes that much easier. I also think understanding unix internals is useful, though slightly less so, as a means of knowing where to check for performance tweaking and troubleshooting. I have never written a device driver, nor do I expect to do so any time soon. I would love to know how, so that I could use various USB devices with my SunRays. It's a _very_low_ priority, though, since device drivers have never stood between me and getting work done. This would probably be different if I used an under-development environment like Linux instead of the more stable Solaris and AIX. Allan --- From: system administration account [sysadmin at astro.su.se] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 6:06 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? On 2002-03-18 17:41:43 -0700, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a > UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing > device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). In my view, a reading knowledge of C is absolutely essential. Familiarity with the system API (at least to the extent of knowing how to look up the details in the man pages) is perhaps even more important, although it's probably enough to know how to use it from Perl rather than C. (That doesn't make much of a difference in practice.) Writing device drivers, on the other hand, I don't think of as a system administration skill. A system administrator may occasionally need to *read* the source code to a device driver (especially in the Linux/*BSD world), but writing one from scratch is a different story. The typical use of reading the source code is for documentation purposes ("what does that error message really mean?", "how do I use that ioctl?"). An understanding of UNIX internals certainly doesn't hurt when one's job duties include system tuning and troubleshooting. > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train > UNIX System Administrators in these areas. I'm agnostic on that one. Ask the system administrators' trade union. (Also, I have a hunch that the answer will depend on the size of the company. In small places, the system administrator needs to be more of a jack-of-all-trades. In larger ones, there may be room for both operators and site analysts.) From: William Enestvedt [Will.Enestvedt at jwu.edu] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 5:47 AM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Erm, I don't have any programming experience besides shell scripting and some Perl -- and while I'd *love* it as background, it hasn't kept me from getting things done. Sure, it'd be nice to know, and probably very valuable as a trouble-shooting aid, but an admin's job is to keep the system running, and lack of programming skills shouldn't be a show-stopper. (I will readily admit that being able to puzzle out device drivers and C programs is useful both for the upkeep of old hardware and for fighting off the script kiddies.) > > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay > $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. > Yes: again, it shouldn't prevent a hire, but any company really ought to consider broadening its employee's skills in this way. -wde -- Will Enestvedt UNIX System Administrator Johnson & Wales University -- Providence, RI From: Eric Priebe [epriebe at ACUS.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 5:41 AM To: Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com Subject: sysadmins knowing how to program I think that one needs to be carefull about seperating 'good programming skills' with 'C' programming skills'. To me, good programming skills means someone is able to think logically through a problem, plan a course of action and record what they did so that the next person can see what was done. Those skills are necessary for good sysadmins. The ability to know the 'C' syntax , or the difference between a function and a subroutine are almost useless in most sysadmins lifetimes. With that said, I do think that a sysadmin MUST know how to program in shell. Yes, I've spent 10+ years programming in different languages, and also 10+ years doing sys/database/network admin... HTH, Eric Priebe From: Place, Richard [rplace at uslec.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 5:15 AM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Knowing C would definitely be an added benefit, due to the fact that UNIX is written in C and that many of the utilities are derivitives of C syntax, but it really isn't necessary. I've been a SysAdmin for 12 years and the only C I had was about 10 years ago in a college course as a prerequisite to another class. UNIX internals on the otherhand would be an added benefit right from the start, as UNIX is a really complex monster and the more you can learn about the low level OS the better you'll be able to handle the day to day problems you can expect to face. It would make it a lot easier to actually solve the problems vs. putting a band-aid on it. Writing device drivers would really only be needed if you actually had to write them yourself for hardware that your company creates. Drivers are readily available, and come with configuration files that don't require an understanding of how the driver itself is written. Hope this helps, Rick Place Sr. Unix Systems Administrator US LEC of North Carolina --- From: Boldin, Bob [Robert.Boldin at bellsouth.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 4:48 AM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Buddy, Just my opinion of course - However I think those skills would be beyond the skill set of a Sysadmin and at that point into the realm of a Systems Programmer/Engineer. A Sysadmin should be able to script in native shells / perl in order to automate tasks. They should also be able to compile from source code in order to add software. If by some means you get compelling information to the contrary and you think you can provide the basis for getting a company to pay $$ for this training I would of course be willing to learn beyond my self-taught 'c' skills. Looking forward to this Summary: Robert Boldin: Operations System Admin. BellSouth Technology Services, Inc. Internet Delivery and Services Group Email: Robert.Boldin at bellsouth.com Voice: 678-969-8544 --- From: Bara Zani [bara_zani at yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 4:45 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Strange , I've mailed the same questiona while back . most replies said it is the next step in sysadmin but is not neccessary . I myself have managed ( with the help of this list and google ) to avoid any C programming . i do how ever feel i need to learn it . i think it will take my unix skills to the next level but it does not affect my preformance and sysadmin functions now . ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lumpkin, Buddy" To: Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 7:41 PM Subject: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? --- From: ed.rolison at itc.alstom.com Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 1:48 AM To: Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? In my opinion, C programming and unix internals are extremely useful. (I'm reading unix internals as an understanding of how the kernel works with C etc). There have been a number of occasions when I've found being able to write a few lines of C to accomplish a task, rather than search for, or grow a huge botch of a shellscript to accomplish the same task. This does trace back to 'are programming skills important in a sysadmin' and FWIW I think that that's a definite yes. You can get by without writing a shell script, and without writing any C, but your life is so much easier (and effficient) if you can. Writing device drivers, I'm not so convinced. As for getting a company to pay for it, well, I guess that would depend on the company. It is definitely going to be a benefit to your job, and so if that's enough for them, then great :) I've had enough trouble convincing my company to send me on the Solaris training courses (I'm not entirely convinced I need them to be fair, but I would rather like to get the Solaris Cert). --- From: Steve Elliott [se at comp.lancs.ac.uk] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 1:07 AM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Erm, well I've been a sys admin for 12 or so years now. My C is VERY rusty and very limited. writing device drivers? ha! no, never had a need for that. Steve Elliott --- > From: Merrell, Vince [IT] [vince.merrell at ssmb.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 11:13 PM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Hey Buddy, My personal take on the subject is that if a System Administrator has got the time to learn C, Unix internals and/or write device drivers then he's probably not doing a very good job of administering the systems he's looking after. Perhaps these are the kind of skills an SA acquires naturally over time but shouldn't really be the skills a company spends good $$ on making an SA acquire. After all, being an SA doesn't really suggest an interest/aptitued towards being a programmer does it?? Therefore, spending $$ to push an SA in that direction may not pay off at all. Also, be mindful that you're empowering a person to a new level. Say he/she *loves* what they learn, they may decide they can double their salary elsewhere and not need to be an SA no more :) The deciding factor has to be, whether your site will benefit from upskilling the SA to these new heights. If so then yeah, go do it. If no, I don't think there's much benefit from doing it. Be interested to hear the opinions of others, especially your original conversation. Vince --- From: Gert-Jan Hagenaars [gj at hagenaars.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 11:02 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Hi, I've been a unix system administrator for almost ten years, and I've not had to write a C program in all that time. Knowing what things _are_ is important though: you should know what system calls are, what libraries are, and how they are used. You have to be able to edit Makefiles (see? I'm old school... no ./configure :). You have to be able to look at source code and understand what's going on. It helps. I've trained system administrators with no C programming background, and they still do their job well. So I would say it is not a necessity. If a company is willing to train a unix system administrator (and I have yet to find a company that's willing to train beyond the "oh yeah, sure" at your interview), send them to usenix or lisa and mingle and get to know people. _that_'s valuable. --- CHeers, Gert-Jan. -- +++++++++++++ -------- +++++ --- ++ - +0+ + ++ +++ +++++ ++++++++ +++++++++++++ sed '/^[when][coders]/!d G.J.W. Hagenaars -- gj at hagenaars dot com /^...[discover].$/d Remembering Mike Carty 1968-1994 /^..[real].[code]$/!d UltrixIrixAIXHPUXSunOSLinuxBSD, nothing but nix ' /usr/dict/words I'm Dutch, what's _your_ excuse? From: Craig Reynolds [craig.reynolds003 at cyf.govt.nz] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 8:08 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ngand Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Once upon a time, it was considered extremely useful. Nowadays, it seems to be discouraged. Cheers Craig --- ------------------------------- This email message is intended solely for the person or entity to which it is addressed. The information it contains is confidential and may be legally privileged. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of this email may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify us immediately and destroy the email from all sources. Thank you. Child, Youth and Family Service accepts no responsibility for changes made to this email or to any attachments after transmission from the Office. ------------------------------ From: Vinarsky, Boris [Boris_Vinarsky at maxtor.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 6:53 PM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? It depends on the job functions. 99% of the tasks are pretty routine, and do not require any advanced skills. However, at some point these skill may become critical, and make a big difference. Even when you use help of a technical support it is helpful to understand the subject better. I use some rudimentary C to build PLI modules for EDS tools for my users, and use some kernel understanding to tune HP-UX kernel for EDS tools. Boris Vinarsky --- From: Thomas Wardman [wardtj at hoser.ca] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 6:53 PM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Buddy, It would all depend on the tasks that a particular Sysadmin was asked to perform. In general, a good working knowledge of programming in almost any language would be valuable. It's not the skill to know a language, such as C, that is important. The important part is the thought process in regards to problem solving. Typically, good programming skills will lead to not bad problem solving abilities. The best employees can easily learn a new language in a few hours. The question to ask is, "If I have all these programming skills, why would I want to do sysadmin, especially since it pays less..." That's exactly the attitude that many people have. If the person has skills that enable them to write device drivers, they should be working at some development company, getting the money they deserve. Again, it all comes down to scope of the job. At a smaller company, these skills would probably be more valuable, while at a larger firm or institution they may not be. Hope this helps, Thomas Wardman @Hoser.ca -- Get it eh? --- From: Steve Sandau [ssandau at bath.tmac.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 6:51 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of CProgrammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I find a little knowledge of C to be necessary as an admin, but only because I compile programs. If I knew C very well, I'm afraid I'd lose sight of the "big picture" and tend to micro-manage everything by writing a C program for it. I think shell scripting is much better for system administration. If the job entails specialized equipment, being able to write device drivers might be a real asset. In my case, the company would *never* pay for a course for me to learn C, no matter what type of administration I was doing. I currently administer several Solaris workstations, a dozen or so Linux boxes, and a few Solaris servers. They run Oracle, Informix, firewalls and standard Internet services like DNS, mail, http, ntp, etc. Just my $.02 --- Steve Sandau ssandau at bath.tmac.com From: Nicholas Tang [ntang at mail.communityconnect.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 6:44 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Well, I'll start off with a question: is it ever bad to understand more about what you're working with? Having said that, there's a whole lot of sys admin work you can do without knowing how to program in C and without being incredibly fluent in Unix internals - but they help. It depends very much on the type of work you're doing. Are you doing project work, installs or configs and the like? Are you tuning existing boxes for performance and reliability? Are you auditing code and/or modifying existing code for the environment and/or situation? Answers to questions like that really answer your question. In other words: it depends on the job and the environment. It never hurts, but it's not usually necessary. If you need an admin that really can dig down into the nitty gritties of the system, then having someone with those skills and/or training them in those skills can be helpful. If not, then it's less helpful, although as I mentioned, it never hurts. Nicholas --- From: Carl Ma [carl_ma at scotiacapital.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 6:27 PM To: Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? When I was in university, our teacher,who taught us operating system, drew a picture in class - two biases , one is 30 bevel, one is 60 bevel. He said if you want to reach the same level, with 60 bevel, it can save you a lot of time even thought the process is more difficult. Programming just likes the 60 bevel, if you want && LOVE to understand OS better, you should choose this road. You should follow the way like: student -> programmer -> senior programmer -> system admin -> architect I am lucky to have a good teacher when I was young. It has proved that he is correct even though there are a lot of admins with only 6 month school training, a lot of misunderstanding of admin's duty. That is also why I refuse M$. It leads people to 30 bevel and try to fool people. Above is my .02 cent opinion. :-) carl Btw, this subject is off topic of this list. :-) :Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 17:41:43 -0700 :From: "Lumpkin, Buddy" :Subject: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? :To: sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org :MIME-version: 1.0 :X-BeenThere: sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org :Delivered-to: sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org :X-Original-Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 17:41:43 -0700 :X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.8 :List-Post: :List-Subscribe: , :List-Unsubscribe: , :List-Archive: :List-Help: :List-Id: The Sun Managers Mailing List --- From: Christophe Dupre [duprec at scorec.rpi.edu] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 6:15 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). Here's my personnal opinion on this, which parallels what my department is looking for when hiring SysAdmin staff. I think knowledge of several programming languages is a must. Bourne Shell is a very important as it's the lowest common denominator between all types of Unix. Another scripting language (like Perl or Python) is also a strong requirement for heavy-duty scripting. Basic knowledge of C is a big plus, as a sysadmin often has to compile packages (and find where the problem is if things do not compile). This is open-source stuff of course, but also commercial programs delivered in source form (happens a lot for scientific software). Then also, there are some things that are hard to do in scripts, like special-purpose SUID programs, where C (or C++) is required. Unix Internals should also be well understood - how are you supposed to troubleshoot problems if you don't know what's going on under the hood ? As for device drivers, general knowledge of how they work is necessary (but I think that's included in unix internals), but I don't see actual development of drivers as a requirement - I've never heard of an admin having to do that in all my years of admining. > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. Well, that really depends - I wouldn't hire an admin with no programming experience and no kernel internals knowledge, except in a very junior position. And then I would expect him to learn from his peers. I don't believe in any coursework for unix internals - the best information is in books (so yes, paying for a few good books is worth it). As for programming, it's easy to pick up C if you have Java or Perl experience. If the admin has NO programming experience whatsoever, then yes, it's worth it as a jump-starter (just look up Computer Science 101 at your local College). -- Christophe Dupre System Administrator, Scientific Computation Research Center Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY USA Phone: (518) 276-2578 - Fax: (518) 276-4886 From: Jay Lessert [jayl at accelerant.net] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:52 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 05:41:43PM -0700, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: [long lines wrapped for readability] > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a > UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing > device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned > prior). IMO, a senior sysadmin should be fluent in C, plus at least one runtime debugger and one source revision-control package. You can read section 2 and 3 man pages and understand what they're saying. You can read /usr/include/* and understand what *they're* saying. You can write secure setuid wrappers and other small C programs when there isn't any other way to do what you need to do. You can debug and fix open-source software. You can debug (with truss and a debugger) closed-source software, increasing your chances of getting a fix or workaround quickly. Other languages are lovely, but C is mandatory. Kernel internals, hmmm. Again, for a senior sysadmin, you certainly need a working knowledge of the high-level architecture of kernel subsystems: I/O, VM, signals, process scheduling. But detailed knowledge of particular kernel data structures, etc. would be hard to justify unless you're running an open-source OS shop, and even then... But high-level architecture, yes. Device drivers? Yet a bit more esoteric, unless your shop actually does custom driver development. In general, I'd rather make sure a sysadmin knows network protocols. > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to > train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. You mean budget for a continuing education that includes conference tutorials, and college/university tuition reimbursement? By all means. That's pretty much industry standard, isn't it? What isn't industry standard would be salary for time spent in class for college/university credit hours. -- Jay Lessert jay_lessert at accelerant.net Accelerant Networks Inc. (voice)1.503.439.3461 Beaverton OR, USA (fax)1.503.466-9472 From: Deb [deb at tickleme.llnl.gov] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:47 PM To: Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C All I can give you is my experience. I've been a unix sysadmin since 1989, and in all that time I have never had the need to write a device driver. HOWEVER, it depends upon the industry the SA is in, whether or not there is a need to interface non-standard hardware to some Unix OS. For the most part, this is a programmer's job. That said, I think it is extremely useful for a syadmin to understand and apply unix internals knowledge. I don't think it needs to be terribly in depth, but it does come in handy. Understanding what the kernel is, how it can be manipulated, why some areas should be manipulated and others left alone - all this is very good knowledge in an engineering environment, for example (my kind of environment for the last 20 years). Gotta run, deb "If it dies, it's biology. If it blows up, it's chemistry, and if it doesn't work, it's physics." -- University bathroom graffito t?t ~ From: blymn at baesystems.com.au Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:20 PM To: Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C According to Lumpkin, Buddy: > >Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). > Some knowledge of C is a definite advantage... knowing how make works as well helps a lot also from the point of view that if you are trying to install a tool from source and it falls over you can just fix it. Knowing kernel internals, IMHO is recommended but not essential, you could get by without them but knowing what goes on under the hood does make a lot of things less mysterious (like why zombies or processes in the D state cannot die). Writing device drivers...mmmm... interesting, less recommended than kernel internals but does give an even better idea of what is going on, less mystery but not that useful in day to day running. >even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. > If they are willing to pay for it then great.... I would suggest basic C and shell programming would be a good thing to have. Deeper training is hard to find (at least that is what I have found) and may be of dubious value, the other thing to consider is that a lot of admins are simply not interested in that level of detail. -- =============================================================================== Brett Lymn, Computer Systems Administrator, BAE SYSTEMS =============================================================================== From: Ian Clements [ian at artisan.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:20 PM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? depends on what you expect to achieve. my opinion is that a certain percentage of a large staff should know how to program but once you get beyond the basic stuff, then you're talking big $$ salaries and then, how often do you write (or even maintain) device drivers? pay the cost to train in the areas you spend time working. as folks get more sr., then it's ok if they take additional classes. on the flip side, say you are a development organization and someone comes in that has a lot of potential, then it's worth it to the organization to spend the time training. the benefit to the company over time will be well worth the investment. ian --- From: Douglas Palmer [palmer at nyed.uscourts.gov] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:20 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a > UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing > device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned > prior). From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: numerous programmers -- it's a different skill set. While it may be useful to train someone on UNIX internals and C as part of a career path (moving from one specialty to another), it is manifestly *NOT* necessary for a successful SA to be able to write a C program (though that skill would never hurt), let alone a device driver. Just one opinion, of course. -- DCP From: Mark Luntzel [mark at neurosis.net] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:10 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I think that it really depends on the primary function of the sysadmin - for me, it'd be ludicrous to expect my company to train me in the areas you described, as I'm responsible for a set of webservers/appservers/databases and not anything really low-level such as you describe. For other applications, it may be advantageous for the sysadmin to learn at least some basic skills. Maybe not too much you didnt already know. With large, sharp teeth, Lumpkin, Buddy chortled: --- -- From: Dave Mitchell [davem at fdgroup.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:08 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 05:41:43PM -0700, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: > Hello All, > > I found myself discussing the importance of C Programming skills and internals with a colleague today.. > > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). > > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. I would expect that only a small percentage of UNIX administrators could program in C, and of the those, only a tiny fraction would have the skill or need to write a device driver. Of course, I am one of those few ;-) (IMHO...) Dave. From: Richard Grace [rgrace at aapt.com.au] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:06 PM To: Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of CProgrammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System A > Any opinions at all are very much appreciated; I will Summarize. Well, here's mine :-) I don't consider writing device drivers to be important. Most critical hardware is well supported on a variety of platforms. However, C programming, is just as important as shell scripting, as there is usually poor support for platforms (such as Solaris) among the free/open source software movement. I've lost track of the number of applications which were written by a home Linux hacker which took half a day or more of porting before they would compile on Solaris. In particular, it is most important in this area to understand the compiler options, the Makefile syntax, how to find libraries and headers, and also the Imakefile for some applications. I know most people probably use the packages on Sun Freeware nowadays, but there are plenty of applications/systems which are not supported in their distributions. I hope this makes some sense. Richard Grace Unix Systems Administrator AAPT Limited From: Raj, Dilip (SD-EX) [DRaj at gi.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:01 PM To: 'Lumpkin, Buddy' Subject: RE: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Progr ammi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? It depends on the seniority of Unix Admin. If you are a Senior Unix Admin in a Development Team, then C, Unix Iternals, and Wrtting device Driver skills will be useful. Remember, we are a System Administrator not a Software Enginner. Shell Scripting is more useful for Junior Sys Admin than writing Device driver. Dilip -----Original Message----- _______________________________________________ sunmanagers mailing list sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers From: Mark Montague [markmont at umich.edu] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 5:00 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). Is it necessary to know these things? No. "Should" someone know these things? Debatable. Does it help to know these things? Will knowing these things make someone a better system administrator? My opinion is "definately yes". Also, the ideal system administrator should know digital logic design and computer architecture. My reasoning is the more you know about how a computer operates the better you will be able to troubleshoot esoteric problems, and the better you'll be able to understand limitations of the system and explain these limitations to others (management, end users, etc.) > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. If the company can afford it, yes, but it shouldn't be the highest training priority. The "ideal" system administrator would study these things on his/her own if the company did not pay. Mark Montague LS&A Information Technology The University of Michigan markmont at umich.edu From: Mark Pfeiffer [markpf at mlp-consulting.com.au] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 4:46 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? This is from USENIX 1993, In an email I received that year describing Systems Administrators. You will note they expect small C programs and an understanding of some of things you mention, but not full on abilities. Here is a partial Job Description for a Senior Admin: Level IV, Senior System Administrator: Required skills: Strong inter-personal and communication skills; capable of writing proposals or papers, acting as a vendor liaison, making presentations to customer or client audiences or professional peers, and working closely with upper management. Ability to solve problems quickly and and completely. Ability to identify tasks which require automation and automate them. A solid understanding of a UNIX-based operating system; understands paging and swapping, inter-process communication, devices and what device drivers do, file system concepts ("inode", "superblock"), can use performance analysis to tune systems. A solid understanding of networking/distributed computing environment concepts; understands principles of routing, client/server programming, the design of consistent network-wide filesystem layouts. Ability to program in an administrative language (Tk, Perl, a shell), to port C programs from one platform to another, and to write small C programs. Required background: More than five years previous systems administration experience. Desirable: A degree in computer science or a related field. Extensive programming background in any applicable language. Publications within the field of system administration. Appropriate responsibilities: Designs/implements complex local and wide-area networks of machines. Manages a large site or network. Works under general direction from senior management. Establishes/ recommends policies on system use and services. Provides technical lead and/or supervises system administrators, system programmers, or others of equivalent seniority. Has purchasing authority and responsibility for purchase justification. On Mon, 18 Mar 2002 17:41:43 PDT "Lumpkin, Buddy"'s good news was: --- cheers mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Pfeiffer |Email : Mark.Pfeiffer at mlp-consulting.com.au Computer Systems Engineer |WWW : http://www.MLP-Consulting.com.au UNIX Systems Integration |Snail : PO Box 334, Oatley, NSW, 2223, Aus MLP Consulting Pty. Ltd |Phone : 0417 447 538 Intl: +61 417 447 538 From: Daniel David Benson [dan at spoontail.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 4:44 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I don't think UNIX admins necessairly need C, but I do think they should have a CS degree (this might imply the C skills). I have met too many Admins without the proper computer problem solving skills. Plus, it's not just C, but also algorithms. I have seen too many perl scripts with no structure. -Dan On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Lumpkin, Buddy wrote: --- From: geoff mcnamara [geoffm at rni.net] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 2:36 PM To: Lumpkin, Buddy Subject: Re: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? I do not usually have the time to respond to messages the way I would like, but this one strikes a nerve for me... YES, unix is founded deeply in C. And too often questions come up as a system admin that involve memory leaks, buffer over flows, ipcs, or a gazillion other gotchas that have some association with the basics of C. Learn it, pay for learning it, better yet, have someone else pay for it. I would call it the crucial factor between the standard Unix Admin and the "ole salt". -geoff --- Original Post: From: Lumpkin, Buddy [mailto:Buddy.Lumpkin at nordstrom.com] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 4:42 PM To: sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org Subject: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programmi ng and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? Hello All, I found myself discussing the importance of C Programming skills and internals with a colleague today.. Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. I'll leave my own opinions aside in an attempt to not color any answers. Any opinions at all are very much appreciated; I will Summarize. Thanks in advance, --Buddy > -----Original Message----- > From: Lumpkin, Buddy > Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 4:42 PM > To: sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org > Subject: Opinions Needed: How important is an understanding of C Programming and Internals to a UNIX System Admin? > > Hello All, > > I found myself discussing the importance of C Programming skills and internals with a colleague today.. > > Specifically, im interested in any opinions for or against, whether a UNIX System Administrator should learn C, UNIX internals and writing device drivers (once they are fluent in the two topics mentioned prior). > > even more specifically, is it relevant for a company to pay $$ to train UNIX System Administrators in these areas. > > I'll leave my own opinions aside in an attempt to not color any answers. > > Any opinions at all are very much appreciated; I will Summarize. > > Thanks in advance, > > --Buddy From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: find inexpensive storage solutions, -> Snap is really targetted at windows-clients, NFS is functional but not "super great". For minimal ##'s of actual "users" (ie, a cron account on each client box or something thus) it shouldn't be a big deal, as would be the case for you in a backup type scenario -> If you want cheap storage which integrates easily into a solaris environment, external raid bricks with IDE drives are really the best way to go. Clearly not optimal for a production Oracle Server to keep its data on but for backups, fileserver, etc it is perfectly OK I think. There are tons of vendors that sell these things, typically you get a 3-U rackmount form factor box that holds 8,10, or 12 drives (depending on the vendor). The drives are built into a Raid5 array (or raid 0+1 .. but again raid 5 is preferable for optimizing storage volume with some redundancy and then presented as a single SCSI volume to the host computer via (typically) Ultra-160 LVD scsi. Some examples of gear that you can get like this, -Promise (www.promise.com) Ultratrak 8 - 8 drive bays - retail for empty box is ~ $2200 USD plus however much for 8 IDE drives. Cost per gig is roughly $6 USD if you get 120 gig IDE drives or cheaper if you use bigger disks (160 gig is biggest single IDE volume right now I think?) -AC&NC sell "jetStor III" units, their IDE model would run ~ $5500 USD for an 8 x 120 gig unit which is approx $6.55 USD per gig of storage in Raid5 -there really are a ton of vendors selling boxes like this, for a "full " listing check: http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Hardware/Stor age/Subsystems/RAID/ The huge benefit from using this kind of direct- attached storage to a Unix box (over a NAS / Snap server type device ...), -> simple management: Users groups etc all managed inside solaris natively -> even can be attached to your tape backup host if you want to subsequently archive onto tape without eating network bandwidth -> cost per gig storage is typically as good as (or even better) than the cheapest brand-X NAS boxes. Also: be warned that Snap Servers are, AFAIK, running some linux-derivative internally and have software raid on X86 against intenal IDE disks. ie, this is *NOT* based on a "true hardware raid controller" ASIC (i960 for instance is a very common raid controller used in some external raid bricks) .. so maybe is considered by some to be a bit of a kludge. However, inherently there is no reason this can't work, and I'm a big believer in Linux so have no doubts it can work just fine .. Anyhow. Much blather. All this to say, -> NAS devices should work OK but may have a bit more management overhead / possible "points of failure" than cheapo- IDE-based direct-attached storage raid bricks. Here was my question: > I have been asked to look into 2nd method of backing > up our computer telecommunications hosts. The > computer telecommunications device has a Sun Sparc to > control the system. The first method of backup that > we use is a local tape drive and use the cpio command > to copy data from the HD's to the tape cartridge. We > seem to have problems with tape backups failing from > time to time and since these are at remote locations, > we need to need to have another method that can hold > us over. > > Since there will be more than one device per site and > each system can have about 8 GB of data to be archived > (each site will be different with 24 GB being the > smallest and 300GB being the biggest), I am looking at > a NAS device such as the Quantum Snap 4100 NAS to be > used as disk backup unit. I am looking into something > like this unit because of pricing. It looks like this > device can be mounted via nfs and I could possibly > write a script to move data from the computer > telecommunications device to the NAS. > > Since I have never used a NAS device before, I am > hoping someone out there has done something like this > and can give me some pros and cons, such as what NAS > device they used and their experience. If some of you > have used a consultant to get this accomplished please > let me know so that I can make some recommendations. > I will summarize From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: > Hello - > > We have a SunFire 880 with RSC (remote system control) and can get the > system temperatures (CPU, IO, etc) via the GUI, but I can't see how to > get them via the rscadm command line utility. Is this possible? Or is > there another method to get this information on the command line? > > We want be able to log the system temperatures. Has anyone done this? > > Thanks for any help, > Debbie > -- > +== Debbie Tropiano == Mommy to Nathan 8/17/95 & ^Sara^ 10/25/00-11/7/00 ==+ > | God shows His opposition to cancer and birth defects, not by | > | eliminating them or making them happen only to bad people (He | > | can't do that), but by summoning forth friends and neighbors to | > | ease the burden and to fill the emptiness. -- Harold S. Kushner | > +== debbie at icus.com ============= URL http://www.icus.com/personal.html ==+ > -- +== Debbie Tropiano == Mommy to Nathan 8/17/95 & ^Sara^ 10/25/00-11/7/00 ==+ | God shows His opposition to cancer and birth defects, not by | | eliminating them or making them happen only to bad people (He | | can't do that), but by summoning forth friends and neighbors to | | ease the burden and to fill the emptiness. -- Harold S. Kushner | +== debbie at icus.com ============= URL http://www.icus.com/personal.html ==+ From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: locking issues with SRM that were causing our servers to just hang - would respond to a ping, but nothing else - couldn't even get a console response, or login from network. Only thing we could do was halt the system, and reboot. Specific to our environment - there is the fact that SRM is a hard limit. We are using Tomcat, and when the customer tries to do a compile, it would take much more memory than was allocated. Having watched the system, we know the users aren't using that much, so we limit customers to half of the memory - now they can do the compile, but no one customer can take over the machine. Doug Granzow: We use it here and fortunately have not had any real issues with its use. It works as advertised. There are a couple of things to understand when installing it.. here is a cut-and-paste from the internal documentation we have for it: ----- Different versions of Solaris Resource Manager (SRM) apply to different versions of Solaris. SRM version 1.2 runs on Solaris 8 SRM version 1.1 runs on Solaris 7 SRM version 1.0 runs on Solaris 2.6 The SRM 1.2 CD-ROM contains all three versions and will automatically install the appropriate version. Installation Notes SRM must be installed in single user mode, and a reboot is required after installation. The following patches must be installed *before* installation of SRM: Solaris 8: no patches required Solaris 7: kernel patch 106541-04 or later Solaris 2.6: check Sun documentation Run /cdrom/srm_1_2/Installer to install SRM. The following patches must be installed *after* installation of SRM (reboot again after these patches): Solaris 8: patch 111078-02 or later Solaris 7: patch 110489-05 or later patch 109256-01 or later Solaris 2.6: check Sun documentation _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: If a "+" (plus sign) is given for the netmask value, the mask is looked up in the netmasks(4) database. The default broadcast address is the address with a host part of all 1's. A "+" (plus sign) given for the broadcast value causes the broadcast address to be reset to a default appropriate for the (possibly new) address and net- mask. Michael Hocke: Use 'broadcast +' in your ifconfig command and it will set the correct broadcast address: # ifconfig eri0:1 10.192.2.70 netmask 255.255.248.0 broadcast + # ifconfig -a ... eri0:1: flags=1000842 mtu 1500 index 2 inet 10.192.2.70 netmask fffff800 broadcast 10.192.7.255 ... Thomas_J_Jones: Try setting your broadcast, ie: # ifconfig hme0:1 10.192.2.70 netmask 255.255.248.0 broadcast + up Fabrice Guerini: So would I, except that your network number, for this netmask and address range is 10.192.0.0. Try putting this in your /etc/netmasks: 10.192.0.0 255.255.248.0 Darren Dunham: How about the man page? You didn't set the broadcast address... 'netmask' and 'broadcast' are separate keywords. Setting one does not set the other. You can avoid doing all that work in the future simply by creating a "/etc/hostname.hme0:1" file with the IP address (or hostname) inside. The scripts that activate it do the equivalent of this.. ifconfig plumb up inet netmask + broadcast + The '+' bit means to look at /etc/netmasks for the address or mask to be used. Without that, it'll use the pre-cidr expectation that 10.x is a class A address. matthew zeier: Try: ifconfig hme0:1 10.192.2.70 netmask 255.255.248.0 broadcast + up However, on Solaris 8, you can do: ifconfig hme0 addif 10.192.2.70 netmask 255.255.248.0 broadcast + up And let the OS figure out the virtual interface instance. Dan Astoorian: Try inserting "broadcast +" in the ifconfig command, just before "up". You can also probably use "netmask +" instead of "netmask 255.255.248.0" if you want, since you've entered the subnet into your /etc/netmasks file. Hope this helps. Nathan W. Lindstrom: Just specify the broadcast address on the ifconfig line, for example: # ifconfig hme0:1 10.192.2.70 netmask 255.255.248.0 broadcast 10.192.7.255 up --- UnixAdmin wrote: > Hi Managers, > > I am trying to add an additional IP Address to a NIC > on an Ultra 10 running SOlaris 8. > > The commands I am running are: > # ifconfig hme0:1 plumb > # ifconfig hme0:1 10.192.2.70 netmask 255.255.248.0 > up > > When I do ifconfig hme0:1 I get: > > hme0:1: > flags=1000843 > mtu > 1500 index 2 > inet 10.192.2.70 netmask fffff800 > broadcast 10.255.255.255 > > The entries in /etc/netmasks is: > 10.192.2.0 255.255.248.0 > 139.7.156.0 255.255.248.0 > > What bothers me is the broadcast address. Using a > netmask of 255.255.248.0, I would expect a broadcast > of 10.192.7.255. I have looked on docs.sun.com and > sunsolve but didn't find anything that helped. > > Thanks in advance for the help. > > -Joe Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/ From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: pSeries 6H1 and xSeries, 330, 360, and 440 Is this an apple to apple comparision? Is this a matter of someone trying to sell a mainframe and jack the price later, etc? I haven't heard the comparable prices yet. :wq! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert L. Harris | Micros~1 : Senior System Engineer | For when quality, reliability at RnD Consulting | and security just aren't \_ that important! DISCLAIMER: These are MY OPINIONS ALONE. I speak for no-one else. FYI: perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);' From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: My Enterprise server, which is my webserver stops responding suddengly. If I try to restart the enterprise server it gives an error similar to the following: Unable to bind to port 80, server cannot be started. The only way to bring up my server is reboot the machine. Please help in solving this problem. Thanks in advance to all. regards Srinivas Bandaru --------------8051C287985304DBFE414B1E Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="srineeb.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for B.Srinivas Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="srineeb.vcf" begin:vcard n:Bandaru;Srinivas tel;pager:9628-923497 tel;cell:91 98492 52795 tel;fax:91-40-7846459 tel;work:91-40-7846463 x-mozilla-html:FALSE org:TATA ELXSI LIMITED;Customer Support version:2.1 email;internet:srineeb at tataelxsi.co.in title:Sr.Executive adr;quoted-printable:;;126, Jayamansion=0D=0AIst Floor, S.D.Road=0D=0A;SECUNDERABAD;ANDHRA PRADESH;500 003;INDIA fn:Srinivas end:vcard --------------8051C287985304DBFE414B1E-- From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: redirects them to my tftp server where they get their load file. I would like to be able to get them to load their configuration and a menu as part of the boot process. then I could take all the security and additional configuration stuff that I have and get it into all of them without having to type it in to every single one. Thanks to all those who helped. --------------- Chris Hoogendyk -- O__ ---- Network Specialist & Unix Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Library Information Systems & Technology Services (*) \(*) -- W.E.B. Du Bois Library ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst --------------- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Xyplex Terminal Servers bootp setup & process Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 16:30:01 -0500 From: Chris Hoogendyk Reply-To: choogend at library.umass.edu Organization: UMass Library To: Sun Managers Anyone familiar with Xyplex MaXserver 1600 Terminal Servers and their bootp process? I've inherited a situation where support was dropped and the people who did it are no longer available. I have to get them working from my own server. I've set up bootp and tftp and managed to get them presumably doing a bootp and getting their load file from my server, but it only works within my subnet. I can't get it across subnets for the branch libraries, and I just realized that the ones that "work" here cannot telnet across campus. When I connected with a terminal and asked it to show me the server's IP configuration (SHOW SERVER IP at the Xyplex prompt), the subnet mask and gateway had not been set. But the bootp server is configured to set both of those. If someone is familiar with this kind of setup, I would greatly appreciate being able to exchange a few technical questions. At this stage I don't know whether I should be focusing attention on the terminal server configuration or on my setup of bootp on the server. One thing that might be useful is if I could force the whole thing to factory settings with some default password for SET PRIVILEGE that would allow me to get in and control everything. At the moment, I can control some configuration information by going in under single user mode; but, there is other stuff that appears to be available if only I had a password (these things ran for years without any intervention, people retired, other people got moved to other projects and departments, ...) xyplex was a strong believer in security by obscurity. in the single user mode it claims it is busy loading if you hit the return key. but, if you type "access" and return, you get a menu that allows you to change the basic configuration. I can also telnet to a running terminal server, but it doesn't give me any prompt and I don't know what it is looking for. I have about a dozen of these among three branches. Anyway, I could fill this up with other questions, but there is no point unless I get some response to the basic questions. TIA --------------- Chris Hoogendyk -- O__ ---- Network Specialist & Unix Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Library Information Systems & Technology Services (*) \(*) -- W.E.B. Du Bois Library ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst --------------- _______________________________________________ sunmanagers mailing list sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: increases this timeout period which makes me think that Sun don't really want people doing it. That would make sense to me as I think increasing the time it takes for the system to failover is a bad idea anyway but I need to investigate it anyway. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how one would go about doing this if it proved to be a "management" priority? Kindest regards, Callum A. Hughes Unix Systems Engineer e: callum.hughes at sis.securicor.co.uk ********************************************************************** The information contained in this e-mail message is intended only for the individuals named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you should be aware that any dissemination, distribution, forwarding or other duplication of this communication is strictly prohibited. The views expressed in this e-mail are those of the individual author and not necessarily those of Securicor Information Systems Limited. Prior to taking any action based upon this e-mail message you should seek appropriate confirmation of its authenticity. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately notify the sender by using the e-mail reply facility. ********************************************************************** _____________________________________________________________________ This message has been checked for all known viruses on behalf of Securicor Information Systems by the MessageLabs. For further information visit http://www.messagelabs.com or Email: mailsweeper.info at sis.securicor.co.uk From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: databases and logs have change accordingly. However, when I used "vxdisk list c1t5d0s2" against the only disk on the disk-group, here is the information I get: configs: count=1 len=2630 logs: count=1 len=398 It is saying that the configs and logs counts are 1. What is this field mean? How does it relate to the changes on the number of logs and databases above? Carlos ________________________________________________ Get your own "800" number Voicemail, fax, email, and a lot more http://www.ureach.com/reg/tag From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: databases and logs have change accordingly. However, when I used "vxdisk list c1t5d0s2" against the only disk on the disk-group, here is the information I get: configs: count=1 len=2630 logs: count=1 len=398 It is saying that the configs and logs counts are 1. What is this field mean? How does it relate to the changes on the number of logs and databases above? How many of you use "vxedit set nconfig=all nlog=all rootdg" as a best practice? Carlos ________________________________________________ Get your own "800" number Voicemail, fax, email, and a lot more http://www.ureach.com/reg/tag From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: xxx#ssh yyy warning: Remote server talks SSH-1.5 protocol. root's password: why it asking me root password ? I want to ssh without root password. Can any one sun guru help me or point me to right direction. Regards _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: devices listed in e.g. iostat -x output to the local disk devices. One thing I haven't been able to find is the mapping for nfs devices. iostat -x will tell you "nfs1" "nfs2" etc. Can someone shed some light on which NFS mount is which device? Is there an easy way to identify which is which after a system is booted (and there may not be entries in vfstab)? Thanks in advance. -- Key fingerprint = AB4B 584D B0FF D770 2B70 10B5 5708 E111 9A52 9B97 "There are no mistakes, only happy accidents." -- Bob Ross From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: We have tried the following remedies to solve the problem boot cdrom -s fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a check that there is no restoresymtable file intallboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 umount /a fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 init 6 This unfortunately did not bring up the machine. We have tried booting from Install cdrom and disk 1 of 2 We have also tried boot disk:0 System is Solaris 8 Openboot 3.5 Any more suggestions before we reinstall? _________________________________________________ Kamalan Govender Computer & Network Services University of the Witwatersrand Tel: +27 11 717 1671 Fax: +27 11 339 1225 Web-site: www.wits.ac.za From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: We have tried the following remedies to solve the problem boot cdrom -s fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a check that there is no restoresymtable file intallboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 umount /a fsck /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 init 6 This unfortunately did not bring up the machine. We have tried booting from Install cdrom and disk 1 of 2 We have also tried boot disk:0 System is Solaris 8 Openboot 3.5 Any more suggestions before we reinstall? _________________________________________________ Kamalan Govender Computer & Network Services University of the Witwatersrand Tel: +27 11 717 1671 Fax: +27 11 339 1225 Web-site: www.wits.ac.za _______________________________________________ sunmanagers mailing list sunmanagers at sunmanagers.org http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: palette, even though all our graphic cards support at least 8bit. It also seems that the performance of the graphic cards depends on other running graphic application. Are there any parameters in which I have to set when loading the X server in order to get real 256 colors? Or anything else that can help? Graphic cards: MACH64 , 4MB OS: Solaris 8 Graphic environment: CDE Web browser: Netscape 4.78 Thanks ! -- Zeev Fisher - Unix System Administrator Galileo Technology Ltd - A Marvell Company Moshav Manof, D.N. Misgav 20184, ISRAEL Email - zeevf at galileo.co.il Tel - + 972 4 8225046 ext. 1402 Cell - + 972 54 995402 Fax - + 972 4 8326420 WWW Page: http://www.marvell.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by telephone, or by e-mail and delete the message from your computer. [demime 0.99c.7 removed an attachment of type text/x-vcard which had a name of zeevf.vcf] From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: indicating Up and Gateway, could not associate to a interface.Multiple combinations of route add did not get the routes to associate. We tried route add -net 146.141.15.0 146.141.15.9 -interface qfe0 route add -net 146.141.15.0 146.141.15.9 -iface qfe0 route add qfe0 146.141.15.0 146.141.15.9 The box is an Enterprise E450, hme and quad card. uname -a = SunOS Eos 5.8 Generic_108528-14 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-4 ifconfig -a = lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 hme0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2 inet 146.141.14.2 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 146.141.14.255 ether 8:0:20:90:d8:9 qfe0: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 3 inet 146.141.15.9 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 146.141.15.255 ether 8:0:20:90:d8:9 qfe1: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 4 inet 146.141.97.2 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 146.141.97.255 ether 8:0:20:90:d8:9 netstat -nr = Routing Table: IPv4 Destination Gateway Flags Ref Use Interface -------------------- -------------------- ----- ----- ------ --------- 146.141.15.0 146.141.15.9 U 1 5 qfe0 146.141.15.0 146.141.15.9 UG 1 0 146.141.14.0 146.141.14.2 U 1 1 hme0 146.141.14.0 146.141.14.2 UG 1 0 146.141.97.0 146.141.97.2 U 1 1 qfe1 146.141.97.0 146.141.97.2 UG 1 0 146.141.0.0 146.141.15.1 UG 1 5 default 146.141.14.6 UG 1 2 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 1 0 lo0 Under /etc we have the following files hosts: # # Internet host table # 127.0.0.1 localhost 146.141.14.2 Eos loghost 146.141.15.9 Eos.internal loghost 146.141.97.2 Eos.dmz loghost hostname.hme0: Eos hostname.qfe0: Eos.internal hostname.qfe1: Eos.external netmasks: 146.141.14.0 255.255.255.0 146.141.15.0 255.255.255.0 146.141.97.0 255.255.255.0 146.141.0.0 255.255.0.0 gateways 146.141.14.2 146.141.15.9 146.141.97.2 _________________________________________________ Kamalan Govender Computer & Network Services University of the Witwatersrand Tel: +27 11 717 1671 Fax: +27 11 339 1225 Web-site: www.wits.ac.za From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 50 Mb Fremem, and 2 GB freeswap? Also, my sar -g output looks like this. ******************************************* Checking Page-Out Activity using sar -g Option ******************************************* SunOS grizzlies 5.5.1 Generic_103640-29 sun4u 04/30/02 00:00:01 pgout/s ppgout/s pgfree/s pgscan/s %ufs_ipf 01:00:00 0.07 0.40 0.40 0.00 0.00 02:00:00 34.20 262.58 357.67 950.90 0.00 03:00:01 6.21 47.06 179.09 1299.10 0.00 ..................................... 18:00:00 0.09 0.64 0.73 1.63 0.00 19:00:00 0.08 0.43 0.51 1.45 0.00 20:00:00 0.05 0.31 0.35 0.75 0.00 21:00:00 0.06 0.41 0.52 1.92 0.00 22:00:00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 23:00:00 1.60 10.93 65.82 581.24 0.00 00:00:01 pgout/s ppgout/s pgfree/s pgscan/s %ufs_ipf Average 1.93 14.66 27.25 129.68 0.88 Obviously, my pgfree/s and pgscan/s indicates very high values. ( But what is the bottom line) Am I running low on Memory. I will summerize it. Thanks ---------------------------- Dilip Raj System Engineer. Access Control Center. Motorola Broadband Communication Sector. Phone: (858)-404-3878 mailto:dilip.raj at motorola.com ---------------------------- From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: open with our service provider). When the connection drops, users get kicked out of their telnet session. I'm wondering if there is a more forgiving program(in.telnetd) that would allow a couple of couple of packets to be dropped? Thanks Karl PS: screen might be one way to go because users can re-attach their sessions. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 1) I would highly reccomend the Cyrus IMAP distribution. It is available at asg.web.cmu.edu. Its really versatile and allows for many different auth methods, via SASL ( also at the above site) Some of the key features is that berkley DB is used to keep track of mailbox info, also each mail message is in its own file, rather than a berkley mailbox file. This is really good for users who have large mailboxes. Also Cyrus has features such as duplicate email message supression, in case user receives two of the same email, etc. It was a pain to get working initially due to minimal docs, etc but we got it to compile and all work in 64 bit mode, on Solaris 8. IF you decide to got this route and run into any problems or would like to see our "build notes" which has our compile flags, etc let me know. Also as a data point we use use Kerberos 4 or plaintext auth, along with sieve filtering, etc. Len Smith University of Michigan College of LSA, IT 2) From : Dave Steinberg ds111 at cornell.edu My personal experience is largely with Qmail - I liked it very much b/c of the Maildir format - its not easily corrupted like mbox. That was the big plus that drew me to qmail. That, and the mass of documentation holding my hand through the setup. See www.lifewithqmail.com. Qmail is definitely simpler to use once you get the hang of it - the conf files are much easier to understand than in sendmail. However, if you don\271t want to install the myriad of additional tools that DJB recommends, you may find yourself with a beast trickier than sendmail. The reliability and ease of comprehension were the two things that led me to Qmail. I came to this with a relatively clean slate, so if you're solid with Sendmail, then don't consider a moment longer - go with Sendmail. 3)) Alex Stade" Personally I like sendmail because that is what I've worked with for 8 years. But postfix is nice and simple to configure as well; something that sendmail isn't. I've found that qmail, while very fast and quite stable, lacks many features of sendmail and postfix and is quite the mess to set up. You basically have to compile from source. During the build phase of qmail, UIDs and GIDs get compiled into the binaries. I suppose this was done as a security precaution, but it really doesn't make much sense if you need to package something up. Sendmail is probably the undisputed champion in SMTP land, mainly because of the broad user base and that functionality is always added to it. However, if you're very paranoid about security, you should probably look more toward qmail than sendmail. Postfix is supposedly very secure as well. 4) Fabrice Guerini For SMTP: Sendmail 8.12.x For IMAP/POP: iPlanet Messaging Server Should you follow this advice, it would mean you'd have to use different servers to handle the different protocols, otherwise iPlanet will monopolize the port 25. Many people recommend Postfix because it is easier to configure than Sendmail (this is true), but nothing is as versatile as Sendmail, and an ISP should have the expertise to configure it. 5) Tim Chipman IMHO, you should use postfix and not sendmail, due to -security -speed -ease of configuration there are other nice features for postfix which make it ideal for large ISP mail server environments as well ; for an excellent article on deploying such, you might want to read the URL, http://www.horde.org/papers/Scalable_webmail_HOWTO.php for some good infos. (even if you are not rolling out webmail ... ) There are lots of good free pop mail softwares available, qualcomm gives one away that is quite widely used and has been somewhat improved in its implementation with the most recent version, I think. (it also supports various secure auth modes which is a bit of a good novelty IMHO - most pop daemons are inherently VERY insecure, doing plaintext password auth by default). 6) Nicolas Cartron" Qmail is very simple to configure, and Postfix rather secure. Both are much simplier than sendmail 7) Karl Vogel" Qmail is safe, fast, and you can set up neat things like quota-checking out of the box. http://www.qmail.org/ has the source plus docs. http://Web.InfoAve.Net/~dsill/lwq.html 8) Steve Hunt exim (www.exim.org) rocks highly recommended is an excellent installation and usage guide. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 1) "ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0" will reinitialize the interface. Your interface will probably go offline for 3~4 seconds when it does so. (Darren Dunham) 2) "ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0" actually forces the interface to reset its speed. (Martin Hepworth) Here is my new question: Will "ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1" ignore the other ndd commands running before it? For example: # ndd -set /dev/qfe instance 3 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100hdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10fdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10hdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1 Will the last command " ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1" ignore all the previous ndd commands? Will the last command " ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1" just go to communicate with the hub connecting to the qfe port 3 and set the proper parameters based on the communication with the hub? (Sorry I don't have a spare system to test this question). Thank you again! John Lee LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: available until the 2.4 kernels.. Armed with that, I went back to the kernel.org homepage and started looking for sun4c support. Not finding anything recent, I joined the sparc linux mail-list and asked there. Almost immediately I got a response that sun4c support just got fixed. I can either wait for the next kernel release or apply a patch. So, I've put this thought on hold until the new kernel. Thanks for the help everyone. Jeff -- This message brought to you courtesy of the Dragon King. http://thelair.dynamic-site.net dragonking at carolina.rr.com From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: 1) "ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0" will reinitialize the interface. Your interface will probably go offline for 3~4 seconds when it does so. (Darren Dunham) 2) "ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0" actually forces the interface to reset its speed. (Martin Hepworth) Here is my new question: Will "ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1" ignore the other ndd commands running before it? For example: # ndd -set /dev/qfe instance 3 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100hdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10fdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10hdx_cap 1 # ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1 Will the last command " ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1" ignore all the previous ndd commands? Will the last command "ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1" just go to communicate with the hub connecting to the qfe port 3 and set the proper parameters based on the communication with the hub? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Answer 1 - From Darren Dunham: From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: doesn't 'ignore' anything. It's just passing it along to a driver. The driver when set to "autonegotiate" may choose to ignore the settings of the other advertisements. From my understanding, it does just that, but if it's important in your environment, you'd want to test it before relying on it. Setting 'adv_autoneg_cap' to anything (even the current value) appears to cause the driver to check all current settings and reinitialize the interface based upon them. So if your changing them, changing that one last is usually a good idea. > Will the last command " ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1" just go to communicate with the hub connecting to the qfe port 3 and set the proper parameters based on the communication with the hub? It will try to. Whether or not that setup is successful depends on a variety of things including the capability of programmers on the sun hardware and software side, and on the side of the other switch (not hub) that you're talking to. (If you're talking to a hub, it may or may not do autonegotiation, but it doesn't do full duplex). Answer 2 - From Homan, Charles (NE): I'm not absolutely positive, but I believe that the adv_autoneg_cap only tells the interface whether to auto-negotiate or not. The other command still define what are "valid" speeds/modes to negotiate to. Check out this link: http://abelew.web.wesleyan.edu/docs/explainhme0.html. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Anthony Miller (anthony.miller at vf.vodafone.co.uk) wrote a long answer for my previous question: Have attached a script that we use to set up interfaces. Its kinda generic but good because it makes setting up qfe's etc easy: Create the script /etc/rcS.d/S32sunps.ndd containing the following code. Ensure it is owned by root:sys with permission 744. Change the variables n100H (100Mb half-duplex) and n100F (100Mb full duplex) as appropriate. #!/bin/sh # /etc/rcS.d/S32sunps.ndd # set the speed as defined # for all the ports on QFE cards 0 and 1 (qfe 0-7) n100H="1 2 4 5 6 7" n100F="0 3" n10F="" n10H="" AUTO="" for nic in $n100F do ndd -set /dev/qfe instance ${nic} ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 1 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0 done for nic in $n100H do ndd -set /dev/qfe instance ${nic} ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100hdx_cap 1 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0 done for nic in $n10F do ndd -set /dev/qfe instance ${nic} ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10fdx_cap 1 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0 done for nic in $n10H do ndd -set /dev/qfe instance ${nic} ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10hdx_cap 1 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0 done for nic in $AUTO do ndd -set /dev/qfe instance ${nic} ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_100hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10fdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_10hdx_cap 0 ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 1 done # eof Reboot the system then use dmesg again (as above) to confirm that all interfaces are configured appropriately. Note: The following commands can be used interactively to check the configuration settings of network interfaces should dmesg output nolonger be available. Use the netstat utility to confirm which network interfaces have been configured. # netstat -i Select an interface and query all configuration parameters: # ndd /dev/qfe \? | more Select an interface you are interested in and query the specific configuration parameter you are interested in (all available parameters are shown in above). The example below uses interface qfe0 (qfe instance 0) and parameter adv_100fdx_cap (100Mbits full duplex). An output of 1 indicates parameter is on/set and a 0 indicates it is off): # ndd -set /dev/qfe instance 0 # ndd /dev/qfe adv_100fdx_cap 1 LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: the ideal solution) for spreading out data, indexes, logs, rollback segments, temp space, ... Working with my developers I have helped to size this down to 7 drives/LUNs for the location of this information. We are looking at Fiber Channel solutions, in particular Sun StorEdge T3(s). My question concerns how many controllers would be ideal to meet this solution? It would appear that seven controllers with the requirement for this data to be striped/mirrored would best be met by using physically 14 controllers for 7 mirrored drives/LUNs. In the past I have always lived by the philosophy of striping along a controller and mirroring across controllers. I guess I am curious if this thinking is "old school" when using directly attached Sun StorEdge T3 arrays (or any modern style fiber channel solution)? I am currently working with systems that utilize Sun StorEdge A1000 arrays and I would like to move away from that technology. [40/Mbps DIFF UltraSCSI vs. 100/Mbps Fiber Channel as one reason]. Does the performance and resilience of fiber channel technology dismiss past hardware conventions due to its inherent multipathing and full-duplexed speed capabilities. BTW; any alterntive(s) [both array and controller HBA] that anyone would suggest as comparable or better than the Sun StorEdge T3 solution? Thanks for your time. Will summarize. -- LOAD your email! Timothy Lorenc USmail: Lorenc Advantage, Inc. Consultant 6732 E. State Blvd. PMB 304 Email: tim at load.com Fort Wayne, IN 46815 http://www.load.com ***DISCLAIMER*** If this communication concerns the negotiation of a contract or agreement, the Uniform Electronic Transaction Act does not apply to this communication: contract and/or agreement formation in this matter shall only occur with manually-affixed signatures on original documents. From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: -------------------------snip------------------------- in.rdisc: No interface up Assertion failed: have_ext_net_info(rc)==True, \ file main.c, line 931 Abort - core dumped Starting remote procedure call (RPC) services: \ sysidns done -------------------------snap------------------------- Seems that the sysid process hangs. Any ideas? cu alexs From bogus@does.not.exist.com Mon Dec 17 20:30:57 2007 From: bogus@does.not.exist.com () Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 01:30:57 -0000 Subject: No subject Message-ID: and 'nfs31' have some I/O distribution problems. Is it correct? How can I prove it? The system uses Veritas Volume Manager. # iostat -xc 5 ................. nfs28 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 nfs29 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 nfs30 277.9 0.8 199.9 5.8 0.0 0.3 1.0 3 25 nfs31 47.1 35.9 1413.1 1144.1 0.0 1.0 12.4 2 32 nfs32 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 nfs33 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 nfs34 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0 0 ................. Thank you! John Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com Fr