[H-GEN] Simple Linux editors

[Robert Kearey]

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Greg Black wrote:

[interesting thoughts]

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

What - to dive into an unknown system, with unknown problems, and start 
blundering around with a basic text editor?

*shudder*

Gods, if I ever saw a consultant doing that, I'd be *demanding*, in no 
uncertain terms, to know what the hell he or she is doing.

I'm sure that's not quite what you mean, though.

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

Crivens, are you the Darth Vader of sysadministry?

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

 > ... but I'd be really astonished if there were no
> members who could give you examples.

Of course. David's not arguing that skills in wearing your underpants on 
the outside and the use of ed aren't valuable, but that if all you've 
got left is ed then something is /extremely wrong/ and it's time to 
rethink your strategy. Using ed to Save The Day can only work in a 
select set of circumstances.

> | 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.

Greg, cut it out with the snippy intellectual hairshirtness, please. All 
problems that need to be solved, quicksmart, are Real Problems [tm].

Sorry if I seem abrupt, but I accidentally set my coffee machine to 
Psychosis this morning. I need a hug.

> | 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.

What, it'll reconfigure your buggy router? It'll save you from a 
corrupted kernel image, or intermittently dodgy RAM? Or any of the 
umpty-thousand non-trivial foobars that can occur with a modern complex 
server?

Not many people are placed in situations where they need to bootstrap a 
minimal unix off a tape via a dot-matrix teletype these days. That's 
just how it is.

> 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.

A point, but that'd suggest (to my perhaps naive and inexperienced mind) 
that they haven't taken hardware redundancy seriously. Not your problem, 
I guess, when the crap goes down, so long as you're commanding the big 
dollars for you skills.

> [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.

Eep.

I rather think that you and I work in very different worlds, Greg.

Whilst I don't agree with your position that not knowing inscrutable ed 
off by heart is an offense unto good order and makes one a Bad and 
Incompetent Sysadmin, I do see the value of having such skills. I'll 
certainly brush up on them myself.

> Greg

-- 
Rob K - Ich mag Chips mit brauner Soße
http://members.optushome.com.au/mammal
Please abbreviate 'bandwidth' as 'bndwth'
thereby conserving precious bndwth.


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