[H-GEN] Simple Linux editors

[Greg Black]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

David Jericho wrote:

| Now fellow sys admins, if you'd done your backups right, and actually
| planned for situations like this[1], you wouldn't need to use ed to repair
| a system. It would quite probably be quicker to restore your system, or the
| broken bits via your bootable restore images.

You're assuming that every system is something that you've seen
before -- real sys admins often first meet a system after the
problems have already arisen and have to work with what's there
if they're going to save the day.

It's the ability to function usefully in such circumstances that
makes the best people stand out from the crowd.

| I've been involved in quite a few large networks before, both HA and
| just large in size, and am yet to see a valid reason as to why ed
| just had to be used.

You're just lucky, or inexperienced; and you never wanted a job
in a shop where I was working.

| In fact, I'm yet to hear of one from members of
| SAGE-AU.

I don't know them, but I'd be really astonished if there were no
members who could give you examples.

| When my pager starts beeping like a mad Hong Kong taxi driver 
| at 3am, there's no way in a frozen over Hell that I've arrived at flying  
| Pig Airlines, that I'm going to be using ed to repair a broken system 
| file.

Then you'll be less attractive than somebody who bothered to
learn ed if you ever get invited to solve a real problem.

| I could have just as easily booted the machine using my Super 
| Wonderful Lotso'Sleep bootable cdrom and restore onto my (possibly) newly 
| swapped system drives.[2]

Again, not always.  Of course, if it's a system you administer
in the normal course of events, you should have those facilities
available and be ready and able to use them.  But real problem
solvers can still function in the face of unfamiliar systems or
systems where disaster has struck.

| [1] You only "repair" systems that have failed. If a system is munged to
| start with, you build a new system and roll that into production.

In many situations that I've been involved with, the entire
hardware is one of a kind custom stuff that would take months to
replace[1].  You don't just build a new one and roll it out.
And there are many more modes of "failure" than you're taking
into account.

[1] No, this isn't a wise choice, but defence budgets are so
    structured that unwise choices tend to get made rather
    frequently.  And we have to work with what we've got.

Greg

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/