Category: Sysadmin

System administration is a special are of IT. It also has a special place in my heart. It is an interesting mixture of all the other disciplines, both common across the whole industry, and at the same time unique for each person, company, and geographical location. When I have something to say or share about system administration, I use this category.

Microsoft vulnerability, now served with plain text files

It is the year 2011 and we learn that even opening plain text files in Microsoft Windows is not as safe as you thought.

The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a legitimate rich text format file (.rtf), text file (.txt), or Word document (.doc) that is located in the same network directory as a specially crafted dynamic link library (DLL) file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user.

You’ve got all your buzz words here: remote code execution; legitimate rich text, text, or Word document; network directory; local user rights, etc.  It’s good to know that it’s fixed.  Yet it’s still worrying as to what else is there …

Sysadmins vs. programmers

In a Slashdot thread on the topic of the Programmer’s Day, I came across this insightful comment, with which, having been both a sysadmin and a programmer, I have to somewhat agree. No disrespect to any programmers intended, but sysadmins have it tougher.  I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that Programmer’s Day is not deserved – we all work hard, but I agree that Sysadmin’s Day is deserved more.

Having been both a sysadmin and programmer, I have to honestly say that while sysadmin day is deserved, programming day isn’t. There’s just simply much more to sysadmins that are underappreciated when compared to programmers:

  • Sysadmins setup routine systems that are built by programmers (who usually get the credit).
  • Sysadmins only get (negative) attention when something goes awry.
  • There’s usually no mention of sysadmins anywhere.
  • Unless you are very technical, you probably don’t even know that sysadmins exist!

In contrast, programmers have it nice in the sense that when they do a good job, they are seen as the heroes who created the system. People go to programmers for feature requests in addition to bug reports. Their names are usually listed in an about dialog or readme file somewhere. Also, unless you are completely technically illiterate, you know that someone has to create the software.

The final bit: the infrastructure will crash and burn without sysadmins, but without programmers, it’ll just cease to advance.

Having a Programmer Day in addition to Sysadmin Day is like having an Executive Day in addition to Labor Day: unnecessary, unjustified. In both cases, the former already has the glory on a daily basis that the latter is hugely lacking.

 

The purpose of an operating system

I came across a good reminder of the operating system’s purpose in this Slashdot comment:

The point of an OS is to make the software independent of the underlying hardware. Windows lost that independence a LONG while ago (Windows NT / 95). Linux still has it because of the underlying design of the whole thing.

The same comment also brought back some memories of the times when I was working as a system administrator at what is now known as PrimeTel.

Move a Windows server – you can be in for a world of hurt unless you want to fresh-deploy it every time. Move a Windows-client, historically you’d be prepared for blue-screens because you have the “wrong” processor type (Intel vs AMD – requires disabling some randomly named service via the recovery console, for example), reinstalling the vast majority of the drivers (probably from a 640×480 safe mode) and even then can’t be guaranteed to get anything back and working – not to mention activation, DRM, different boot hardware (e.g. IDE vs SATA), etc.

Move a Linux server – unless your OWN scripts do something incredibly precise and stupid with an exact piece of hardware, it will just move over. At worst, you’ll have to reassign your eth ports to the names you expect using their MAC address (two seconds in Linux, up to 20 minutes in Windows and a couple of reboots).

It’s been a few years since I did that.  But I remember vividly how we used to move servers from one piece of hardware to another, and since we used a mixture of Windows and Linux servers, the difference was obvious.  With everything else being equal, we could migrate a dozen of Linux servers in two-three hours, moving them in parallel.  Windows machines took days and had to be approached with very little concurrency.

RFC 2142 : Mailbox names for common services, roles and functions

I’ve always relied on my mail servers having a complete and correct /etc/aliases file with all the necessary aliases.  I never even thought about who puts them there and why.  It was just one of those many things that just work.  Today I discovered that there is actually an RFC 2142, which describes standard mailbox names for common services, roles, and functions.  Here is the abstract:

This specification enumerates and describes Internet mail addresses (mailbox name @ host reference) to be used when contacting personnel at an organization. Mailbox names are provided for both operations and business functions. Additional mailbox names and aliases are not prohibited, but organizations which support email exchanges with the Internet are encouraged to support AT LEAST each mailbox name for which the associated function exists within the organization.