Quick survey

[Erek Dyskant]

Hi Joshua and All,
	I answered the technical answers in the survey, but I consider a
lot of this to be a management issue.
	Personally, I would attempt to determine whether the chief admin
performs these sloppy practices when working on his own, or whether he
is having difficulty training the new person, and is choosing to teach
the 'easiest' way of doing things.
	Many technical workers have a hard time training people
thoroughly, as they are more used to "digging in" and doing the work
themselves.  I know for me, it is always a challenge to step back and
allow the less experienced people to try things for themself.
	It might be time to establish some clear policies
as to how things should be done, with strong input from the technical
staff. (i.e. After setting up a system, disable unnecessary ports and
services, all programs must be installed with the package manager, do
not transmit priveledged passwords over plaintext, etc.)  Maybe even a
new server checklist or the like. 
	The trick is making it seem a real proactive solution, and
not just more hassle/redtape.
	That way, the new people would know how they are expected to
perform their tasks, and the more expereinced techs will all have
standardized method. 
	I hope that you find this helpful, and I'd love to hear what
other people think.

Regards,
Erek Dyskant
On Sun, Dec 21, 2003 at 04:02:35PM -0500, John Seth wrote:
> Hey all, I've come up against some conflicts where I work for an unfortunate
> living. My chief systems administrator is training a linux newbie for a
> backup systems admin position to himself and myself since our Network Admin
> left the company.  In doing so, he installed Fedore Core 1 (Yarrow, latest
> release) and is now showing him how to install a server, and compile
> programs.  No big deal, usually....
> 
> My problem is this: normally, servers do not need to be installed with their
> GUI installers, doing so, usually installs X-Windows components onto systems
> with need for them, at least with RedHat. The trainee is a newbie, so I'm
> not too concerned, the fact that they should know both ways is best... but
> my sys admin won't show him text install for the reason "Who doesn't install
> with the GUI on a server these days? What does it matter if X is on a server
> or not?".
> 
> I feel 1) it's a waste of disk space, 2) if it is running on a server,
> that's increased memory, cpu & resource hogging and 3) security issues could
> compromise the server but wouldn't if X wasn't installed.
> 
> The last thing is, he's showing the trainee how to compile programs. No big
> deal again. It's good to know how to run your own ./configure & make
> statements.  However, being this is RH/Fedora, I feel he should also teach
> him how to use things like "RPM --build" and learn about things like the
> .spec files needed for RPM based systems.  Again, I was met with "why? who
> cares if it's RPM or not? Just overwrite the old RPM with the new compiled
> program...".  Hmm... so having, for example, httpd-1.3.28-devel-48.7.rpm
> installed, and compiling Apache 2.0.48 and installing it over the top of the
> old RPM installation.  I see problems with this, maybe not Apache, but other
> programs.
> 
> Being I've now written a novel to the mailing list ;) How about you tell me
> what you do with your systems... do you use the gui install? do you install
> Xwin to a server? why? Since I don't feel like spamming the mailing list,
> feel free to visit my website where I can more easily tally the results. 
> Mind you, it's a quickly thrown up survey...
> 
> http://www.phoenixwing.com/ has the survey.  Thanks for listening to my
> gripes ;)
> 
>  - Tony
> 
> -- 
> <? print(pack("c*", 74,117,115,116,32,/* Tony Evans                  */
>  65,110,111,116,104,101,114,32,80,72, /* Linux/Web Implementation    */
>  80,32,72,97,99,107,101,114,46,10));  /* http://www.phoenixwing.com/ */ ?>