Established 1986
A well-tuned Unix system doesn't need forty hours a week of baby-sitting... but when you need an admin, you need one badly. If you are in the market for a contract admin, you are invited to use this document to get an idea about the level of support you should expect, and which we are prepared to provide.
This is a record of an installation I did over the course of a six-month assignment at a "typical" e-commerce client. Their design called for a three-tier Web server setup: web server, application server, database server. They had already signed a contract with a large service provider; my task was to set up a smaller version of the system in-house as a development and QA testbed. At first the plan was for me only to set up the hardware and do the initial install of the OS, but the client asked me to stay on and deal with their production system as well.
Do not use this document as a guide to doing a current installation. That's not why it's here. It's intended to show you what a sysadmin does every day -- thinking on one's feet, being flexible, and learning new packages and new skills on short notice. I was pretty raw back in 1999 -- see if you can figure out which of the tasks below were completely novel to me, and which were covered by Standard Operating Procedures.
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