KNOW YOUR UNIX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR-- A FIELD GUIDE

There are four major species of Unix sysad:

1) The TECHNICAL THUG.  Usually a systems programmer who has been
forced into system administration; writes scripts in a polyglot of the
Bourne shell, sed, C, awk, perl, and APL.

2) The ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST.  Usually a retentive drone (or rarely,
a harridan ex-secretary) who has been forced into system
administration.

3) The MANIAC.  Usually an aging cracker who discovered that neither
the Mossad nor Cuba are willing to pay a living wage for computer
espionage.  Fell into system administration; occasionally approaches
major competitors with indesp schemes.

4) The IDIOT.  Usually a cretin, morpohodite, or old COBOL programmer
selected to be the system administrator by a committee of cretins,
morphodites, and old COBOL programmers.
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HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR: 


---------------- SITUATION: Low disk space. ----------------

        TECHNICAL THUG: Writes a suite of scripts to monitor disk
usage, maintain a database of historic disk usage, predict future disk
usage via least squares regression analysis, identify users who are
more than a standard deviation over the mean, and send mail to the
offending parties.  Places script in cron.  Disk usage does not
change, since disk-hogs, by nature, either ignore script-generated
mail, or file it away in triplicate.

        ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts disk usage policy in motd.  Uses
disk quotas.  Allows no exceptions, thus crippling development work.
Locks accounts that go over quota.  


        MANIAC:
# cd /home
# rm -rf `du -s * | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{print $2}'`; 


        IDIOT:
# cd /home
# cat `du -s * | sort -rn | head -1 | awk '{ printf "%s/*\n", $2}'` |
compress

---------------- SITUATION: Root disk fails. ----------------

        TECHNICAL THUG: Repairs drive.  Usually is able to repair
filesystem from boot monitor.  Failing that, front-panel toggles
microkernel in and starts script on neighboring machine to load binary
boot code into broken machine, reformat and reinstall OS.  Lets it run
over the weekend while he goes mountain climbing.  


        ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Begins investigation to determine who
broke the drive.  Refuses to fix system until culprit is identified
and charged for the equipment.  


        MANIAC, LARGE SYSTEM: Rips drive from system, uses
sledgehammer to smash same to flinders.  Calls manufacturer, threatens
pets.  Abuses field engineer while they put in a new drive and
reinstall the OS.
        MANIAC, SMALL SYSTEM: Rips drive from system, uses ball-peen
hammer to smash same to flinders.  Calls Requisitions, threatens pets.
Abuses bystanders while putting in new drive and reinstalling OS.

        IDIOT: Doesn't notice anything wrong.

---------------- SITUATION: Poor network response. ----------------

        TECHNICAL THUG: Writes scripts to monitor network, then
rewires entire machine room, improving response time by 2%.  Shrugs
shoulders, says, "I've done all I can do," and goes mountain climbing.

        ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts network usage policy in motd.
Calls up Berkeley and AT&T, badgers whoever answers for network
quotas.  Tries to get xtrek freaks fired.

        MANIAC: Every two hours, pulls ethernet cable from wall and
waits for connections to time out.

        IDIOT:
# compress -f /dev/en0

---------------- SITUATION: User questions. ----------------

        TECHNICAL THUG: Hacks the code of emacs' doctor-mode to answer
new users questions.  Doesn't bother to tell people how to start the
new "guru-mode", or for that matter, emacs.

        ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts user support policy in motd.
Maintains queue of questions.  Answers them when he gets a chance,
often within two weeks of receipt of the proper form.

        MANIAC: Screams at users until they go away.  Sometimes
barters knowledge for powerful drink and/or sycophantic adulation.

        IDIOT: Answers all questions to best of his knowledge until
the user realizes few UNIX systems support punched cards or JCL.