Essential System Administration

• Adding new users.
• Adding toner to electrostatic plotters.
• Doing backups.
• Restoring files from backups that users had accidentally deleted or trashed.
• Answering user questions ("How do I send mail?"), usually not for the first or last time.
• Monitoring system activity and trying to tune system parameters to make overloaded systems have the response time of an idle system.
• Moving jobs up in the print queue, after more or less user whining, pleading or begging, contrary to stated policy (about moving jobs, not about whining).
• Worrying about system security and plugging the most noxious security holes I had inherited.
• Installing programs and operating system updates.
• Trying to free up disk space (and especially contiguous disk space).
• Rebooting the system after a crash (always at late and inconvenient times).
• Figuring out network glitches ("Why isn't hamlet talking to ophelia?"). Occasionally, this involved physically tracing the Ethernet cable around the building, checking it at each node.
• Rearranging furniture to accommodate new equipment. Installing said equip- ment.
• Figuring out why a program/command/account suddenly and mysteriously stopped working since yesterday, even though the user changed nothing.
• Fixing-or rather, trying to fix-corrupted CAD/CAM data files.
• Going to meetings.
• Adding new systems to the network.
• Writing scripts to automate as many of the above activities as possible.