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A message to sys-admin wanna-be-s




one plot that i seem to see here rather too often, is some people that
work as real system administrators (i.e. admin networks of machines other
then their own machne at home) but never bother learning the essential
material in an orderly manner. thus, they keep asking questions here, but
they never get the big picture.

for those of you who wish to become real administrators, here is a short
list of books you should definatly read, to help you understnad this world
better. this is not a complete list, and everyone (that knows something)
is invited to add more reading material.

1. DNS and Bind , by O'rreily and associates.
2. Sendmail, by O'rreily and associates. (note - even if you use qmail,
   there areparts in this book that relate more to the interaction
   of the mail server with the dns server, and are true for all mail
   server).
3. Internetworking with TCP/IP, volume I - by douglass commer.
    a sys admin that does not understand how TCP, IP, routing
    protocols, and protocols such as SMTP work, will likely get into
    a lot of struggling when they encounters problems related to these
    protocols.
4. some general book about unix system administration (i tihnk there's a
   book with that name, called 'unix system administration').
5. Some book about unix security (e.g. practical unix security).
6. some book about network security (e.g. building network firewalls).

when managing a larger site, other books become relevant as well, such as
orreily's book about NIS (yello pages), etc.

and please note: a sys-admin wanna-be that claims they have no time to
read the many books required to become a proper sys admin, would find it
hard to become anything more then mediocre administrators.

as for the price: a ful set of such books costs less then 1000 NIS. that
is about 1/10th of the yearly payment for an academic edgree in a
university these days, and would pay back very quickly.

note that you may find the same info by reading material off the internet
(e.g. various RFCs and security related web sites) but unless you alread
know what to look for, you'll find it a very patchy way to learn, and
you'll have a lot of holes left in your knowledge.

good luck,

guy



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