Excellent Unix administrators should have 9 qualities

How does an excellent UNIX System Administrator work? Paul Venezia from InfoWorld tries to summarize nine features of excellent UNIX system administrators. Paul is a senior editor and consultant who focuses on Perl, PHP, SQL, FreeBSD, Linux and Windows.

A good UNIX Administrator should have one of the qualities: We do not use sudo

Just like Caps Lock, sudo is just a walking stick for geeks. If we need to do something to root, We need to Su to root. This sudo nonsense is meaningless.

In fact, for Unix-like operating systems that force all users to use sudo, the first thing we need to do is sudo Su-and then change the root password, so that we can su more conveniently in the future
-. Using sudo is like bowling in a sink with an inflatable Shock Absorber-it's safe, but you don't want to show it.

The second quality that a good UNIX Administrator should possess: We use VI instead of Emacs, not pico or Nano.

Although we know that for many Unix administrators, Emacs is more intimate, but in fact it is only a unix version of Microsoft Word. VI (and VIM) is a powerful tool in the hands of real UNIX geeks. They need to complete the task without being messed up by the useless things that come with Emacs. Emacs has a built-in Tetris game!

Although I can only reluctantly admit that the fancy functions (such as code folding and syntax highlighting) in VIM may be just a mistake, at the end of a day, it is an indisputable fact that the real UNIX work can be well integrated with the VI model editing concept. In addition, its slim shape and general portability make it a real editor. Thank you bill! Thank you Bram! (Edit Note: Bill Joy is the developer of the vim editor. Later, Bram moolenaar improved it ).

Excellent Unix administrators should have the third quality: We take regular expressions as our weapon

The rejection of regular expressions, or even indifference, seems to be the consequence of an "evil" keyboard. However, for us, it is as elegant as poetry. Its powerful performance is that no other famous tool can be used with PCRE.
(Perl Compatible Regular Expressions. If you need to replace the third character of each line in the 100000 line file (except for the characters that are followed by numbers 4 ), then the regular expression is not just a tool to complete this task-it is also the only tool to complete this task. Poor people often receive string fragments and tearful requests in their emails (seeking for a regular expression to parse these strings ), generally, you are also promised to have a drink (but it has never been fulfilled ).

Recommended for editing: Full learning manual for regular expressions: getting started with cainiao

Excellent Unix administrators should have four qualities: We are naturally lazy.

When we encounter a problem that seems to require a lot of manual and repetitive work to solve, our conservative UNIX representatives will definitely choose to write some code to fix it. This usually saves more time than manual operations, although sometimes this is not the case. In any case, we would rather spend time on jobs that can be referenced or used in the future than simply fixing the problem. Generally, when we encounter a similar problem a few years later, we can start from a file named Yank in our home directory with hundreds of lines of Perl code, after solving this problem in just a few minutes, we can get a return when looking back at other code that can improve work efficiency. Or, we can play Angry Birds.

Recommended for editing: how to be a good and lazy System Administrator

Excellent Unix administrators should have five qualities: We prefer elegant solutions.

If there are several ways to fix a problem or achieve a goal, then, we will choose to spend more time developing a solution that can solve the current problem and prevent similar problems in the future, rather than simply sticking a Bondy card. This is because we hate encountering problems that have been solved in our impressions again. We believe that if we can consider a few more steps in advance to prevent similar problems in the future, we can save more energy in the future. Usually we are right.

Excellent Unix administrators should have six qualities:

Enlightenment has enough confidence to bring your basic UNIX knowledge to a certain level. This means that we never think that a problem will survive until we find it. Tell a good UNIX Administrator that a file named "vanished" will only sneer at you. Prove to her that this really happened, and he will study the problem tirelessly until he can find a reasonable reason and solution. Many people think this is an arrogant and conceited expression. Indeed -- but we have this capital.

7. What qualities should a good UNIX Administrator have: when we study the problem, it is more detailed than what doctors do.

When dealing with a big problem, we spend much more time on "autopsy" than we do on solving it. If we don't have too much work pressure to study this problem, we will be sure to figure out the exact cause of this problem. There is no incredible phenomenon in the work of a powerful Unix administrator. In each case, you must have a logical starting point and follow the appropriate path to trace the source. In short, there is a reason for everything. before finding this reason, we will never give up!

For us, it is easy to "stop" a process through hupping, or change the permissions of a file or 777 directory, but this is not even successful. Why must the process be restarted? This is not necessary. We need to know why.

Recommended for editing: What soft skills does the system administrator need to master?

Excellent Unix administrators should have eight qualities: We know a lot about Windows (we used to pretend we didn't know it)

Although we may not run Windows on our own machine, and we seem to be dismissive about Windows servers, we are doing our best to diagnose and fix windows problems. This is because when their "blood" flows to our "territory", we have to deal with these problems. However, we do not like to acknowledge this fact, because in most cases Windows does not have the logic foundation as profound as UNIX, which makes us very troubled. Refer to quality 5 and quality 6 above.

Excellent Unix administrators should have nine qualities: almost never choose to restart

UNIX devices do not need to be restarted. If there is no other choice, we will spend several hours fixing the problem while the system is running, rather than restarting. Our idea is that except for kernel or hardware changes, there is no reason to restart in other cases. Restarting is only a temporary solution to this problem. If this problem occurs once and is "fixed" by restarting, it will happen again. We would rather fix the problem than simply unplugging the power and wait for it to happen again.

From the perspective of "lie", some of these qualities seem a little different or hard to understand, because they are. When others only see difficulties and difficulties, we see revelation, learning, experience, and more importantly, we see logic.

From: It O & M Chinese Network: http://www.zhuanyou8.com/forum.php? MoD = viewthread & tid = 51 & extra = Page % 3d1