On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, John Nemeth wrote:

# On Aug 3,  9:08pm, "Kevin P. Neal" wrote:
# 
# } After all, what's the qualified person going to do in the middle of the
# } night? Type the same command in to get the system limping along, and
# } then go back to sleep. The real problem can be fixed during normal
# } business hours (at least typically, in my experience). 
# 
#      I don't know what your experience is, but I would say that you are
# missing real world experience.  I have spent many hours in machines
# rooms in the middle of the night, usually because of hardware problems
# (systems that I run rarely go down for any other reason), or because
# I'm doing off-hours upgrade/maintenance.  If the machine is important
# enough that the qualified person has to come in during the middle of
# the night to get it going, then it is important enough that it be fixed
# completely.  This is either because the machine is 24x7 mission
# critical, or because it would cost major money for the machine to be
# down during normal business hours (think of lost wages due to many idle
# hands and/or lost sales; these items are why you see really high costs
# attributed to downtime, it's not the costs of repairing the system and
# bringing it back up).

As a member of a 24x7 operation who has spent several nights about 180
degrees out of phase with a normal sleep schedule lately, I can vouch
for this.  "Limping along until normal business hours" (at which point
downtime is more costly) is not an acceptable mode of operation.

The reason for the init.d stuff has already been made clear:  It is mostly
for automation of scripts, as well as to flatten the learning curve a bit.

<sarcasm>
Face it, it's "easier" to type
	# sh /etc/init.d/foobard restart

than it is to type
	# ps axc | grep foobard | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill

isn't it?

And this is what we are doing.  We are making it so that a systems
administrator doesn't have to take the time to learn the real tools of
the trade.  Such a noble end, don't you think?

</sarcasm>

# 
# } You can even use sudo/ru/similar to keep the night watchman from 
# } executing any commands other than /etc/init.d/* to minimize the
# } damage that said person can do while still allowing for a big
# } cost savings from not calling the skilled person.
# 
#      You can do a h*ll of a lot of damage with just that, especially
# since most of those scripts aren't written in a secure manner.  And,
# there is still the issue of diagnosing the problem.  If the person is
# capable of diagnosing the problem and choosing appropriate corrective
# actions then they might as well be the sysadmin.

This (and some other omitted stuff) seems to reaffirm the following:

	+ Your number one quality grade systems administration tool had
	  best be your systems administrator.

	+ A UI is pretty damned important from the point of view of anyone
	  who has to maintain the machine.

				--*greywolf;
--
BSD: Use the ENTIRE computer!