Piotr Rybicki wrote: > Hi All. > > From my experiences, good admin should have sufficient knowledge about C > programming. He/She sould be familiar with system functions like: > - fork(), waitpid() > - open(), read(), write() > - socket(), bind(), listen(), accept() > - shm*() > - ... > > I can't see the possibility about proper system understanging and tuning > without such knowledge. In the end, FreeBSD is written in C.
I disagree. I know nothing about programming, so does that mean I don't know how to properly admin a server? I can shell script, lockdown and monitor services, tune the system using the included tools, install and uninstall software, and configure firewall rules - all of which are the basic (I think) major requirements to admin a *nix server. None of that requires any knowledge of programming in *any* language. > I've found out, that people with poor understanding of C system > functions are also poor admins, when we speak about high volume servers. > They simply can't diagnose/explain/solve heavy traffic problems. Knowledge of networking protocols, network performance tuning, and networking in general is a good base of knowledge - where does programming come into play? I know lots of good programmers who couldn't get 2 systems to communicate over a VPN tunnel, so why would I trust them to maintain a server? Diagnosing a connectivity issue requires that a person have knowledge of programming in what way? You can modify C code all day long, and then discover the wrong gateway IP was being used, which was why you couldn't ping Google in the first place. No coding involved. Regarding heavy traffic problems, if you don't know how to setup and configure the server to begin with, programming won't save you. > If i'd have to make a choice of recruitment, that would be important > topic at the interview. Pure nonsense. Hire me as a programmer, and I'll talk programming to you all day. Hire me as an admin, I'll tell you to hire a programmer if you need that capacity. > For the purpose of certification, I'd suggest for example a piece(s) of > broken/badly written C code with questions about a problem there. I suggest that programming knowledge be left for programming certs. The LPI, RHCE, Linux+ and Solaris tests (that I know of) don't require any knowledge of C programming - why is *BSD so different that it's certs *should* require it? -Kevin _______________________________________________ BSDCert mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/bsdcert
