This is for a Job Task Analysis Survey. It will contain many Job Task Statements that will rated for frequency of use and importance. And the analysis can help define if "specific" applications should be included in later certification.
Definitely NOT, that wouldn't be BSD UNIX certification, and one should go somewhere else to get application(s) "specific" certification(s) - like Apache, or Perl!
Topics, which I see as relevant to system administration are:
- general issues like UNIX history, organization of man pages, installing the system, adding/removing (supported) hardware,
hardware maintenance, etc.;
- very important would be the process of booting/shutting down of the system;
- the UNIX model of ownership, the superuser, and other important users like daemon, bin, sys, and nobody, adding/removing users, logging issues (removing, disabling users, passwords, etc., etc.);
- the file system, like organization, types of files, permissions, ownership issues;
- devices and their relationship with the file system (huge subject);
- adding and removing storage to/from a system, e.g., creating device
entries, formatting, partitioning, creating, monitoring, managing, checking, repairing disk file systems (and why not about IDE/SCSI specific issues), tuning, etc., etc.;
- syslog, logfiles management, and periodic processes (like cron, at);
- backups, backups and again backups;
- touchy OpenBSD subject, but kernel configuration must be included (YES);
- networking (arp, TCP/IP address space, configuration, troubleshooting,
networking hardware), internet (connecting to internet, pf and ftp would be important);
- as much DNS as possible (and resolver);
- as much NFS as possible (as file system sharing);
- electronic mail (and I would stick to sendmail - only(!) just because OpenBSD ships with sendmail);
- security (as much as possible, on every level - like physical system security, login security, running application, file system security, etc.);
- printing (huge subject);
- system performance analysis;
- daemon management (though this can be included elsewhere, I am talking about the internet, random, primordial process daemons, NFS and why not diskless client specific ones).
(This list is not complete, feel free to further develop!)
I know (and I admire) brilliant system administrators, who can easily manage a large cluster of UNIX servers running terrabyte big database management system. They probably know more about system tuning than anybody else, but if you ask them about Apache they will ask you `What`? Likewise, I know excellent web and mail system administrators, who doesn't know anything about forceloading tunable kernel parameters, semaphores and shared memory segment management.
What differentiates a junior and a senior system administrator
is the level of knowledge of a particular system or site, and NOT
which application he/she can install, configure, and manage, or which shell he/she using, or in which scripting language he/she proficient!
And, the certification should be BSD specific, and NOT distro specific!
Regards,
Ioan
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