When I get my copy of ;login: from USENIX I page through looking to see if there is a tool that I can use. I pay more attention to the PERL Tools section as I want to learn more about PERL and add it to my tool belt. But I have yet to really wrap…
I work for a school district and this is our busy time with creating new accounts for all the new hires. For some reason, this year the admin folks filling out the new account form have been mis-spelling many of the user names. Took a bit of digging by our helpdesk folks to find that…
To some of you this may be a trivial thing but for me it is like finding that extra money in your wallet or even hitting the lottery. Some of you may know I am a single sysadmin shop. I do have other sysdmins in my Department but I am actually on my own to…
Normally, after a replacment, I usually do a largely unnecessary 'zpool scrub'.* But, I hear reports that something is still not quite right after I had left it resilvering….though in what I could find in my terminal scrollback before I got disconnected from the console session, didn't reveal any indication that there'd be a…
If you happened to be on #lopsa a few nights ago, you might have seen this: Thu 00:54:15< lkchen> uh, oh….zpool import – "The pool cannot be imported due to damaged devices or data" Thu 00:54:27< lkchen> was in the process of replacing a disk in the root zpool, when the system got killed…
I was reading the submissions for LOPSA's SysAdminDay contest earlier this morning, and it got me to thinking. Each of the entries has a slightly different viewpoint on what being a systems administrator is. This might, in a nutshell, be a microcosm of LOPSA's biggest problem — I'm not sure we really know what a…
eval
As the Mentorship Program continues to grow, we are now working on streamlining how we manage, and pair, proteges and mentors. We're looking for someone (or, someoneS?) with some or all of… Django skills – the target language for the project Python skills – just enough to be able to understand some existing Python code…
I'm pleased to announce our new board members! Our independent monitor Andrew Hume compiled the results of the election and the report. Welcome our new and returning board members: William Bilancio Paul English Chris 'Ski' Kacoroski Atom Powers The new board members will assume their positions at the next annual in-person board meeting, which will…
Someone had to say it.