How Did You Become a UNIX Administrator?

xylix asks: "I figure there must be a number of UNIX admins among the Slashdot readership and I am wondering how you got into that field to start with. The reason I am asking is that I really want to be a UNIX admin but don't know how to get from here to there. What kind of education did you have(CS or other)? How did you start out (as a junior admin or moving laterally from another position)? What certifications are useful?"

"I am an English teacher now but am a techie at heart and spend all my time coding and using various Linux / BSD distros. I figure I am capable of handling a junior position, but most ads I see for *nix admins are looking for several years of work experience (on specific platforms), CS or EE degrees (I have a BA in philosophy) and perhaps years of experience in a specific industry (financial, wireless, transportation...).

I have been told by a couple people that at 33 I am far too old to start ANY kind of tech career (with no previous work experience). Anyone out there with experience to counter that? I know the job market is tough right now, but I am thinking long term."

Oh, that's a short story...

Simple...I was told to "upgrade the NT servers," so I installed FreeBSD :)

Re:Oh, that's a short story...

If you want a state job with total control, go to a University. It's basically anarchy on the networks, because every group has their own research needs that would be impossible to meet centrally.

Get in with a fun group and you can do whatever you like as long as you aren't running an MP3 server and sucking up half the bandwidth of the whole campus.

We've got pretty much every OS under the sun running on different test servers.

Re:Oh, that's a short story...

Hmm... I thought all it took was a deep masochistic streak and a fondness for curry.

Re:Advice

I'd enjoy being SysAdmin - if it weren't for the users...

That is to say that you do not enjoy being a sysadmin.

If it weren't for the users there would be no system to admin. Give them their sandbox and when they trash it, delete the user and their resources. If they complain, then tell them not to fuck around and hand them a policy sheet.

Admining a system is not about tinkering with the OS and hardware, it is about making the box useable to others. This implies dealing with users. If you don't like dealing with users then you need to look elsewhere for another job, because this one doesn't fit the description.

Having a system admin who hates dealing with the users is like having a developer that hates writing code.

leave sysadmin experience off your cv

When I arrived at my current place of work, I admitted to knowing a few linux hacks. Suddenly I'm the sysadmin, in addition to my real job. Now I get to spend hours and hours helping newbies configure their systems, cut ethernet cables, and clean up the carnage when we get hacked.

Don't make the same mistake I did. Never admit to sysadmin knowledge, or you will be marked for life.

How I did it

I grew a beard, started wearing only t-shirts and jeans, and developed a surly attitude. The group accepted me, and I've never worked a full day in my life since then.

Re:jeans and a t-shirt...

hmm.. you still bother with the jeans??

//rdj

Never too old!

I have been told by a couple people that at 33 I am far too old to start ANY kind of tech career (with no previous work experience). Anyone out there with experience to counter that?

This is rubbish. My wife is 33 and just started a new career as a developer. She had previously been doing international trade development, hated it, was bored silly by the politics, got out, took a two-year course at a local community college with a good reputation and is merrily writing business applications. Her previous career stood to her in that, unlike a lot of fresh developers, she understands business and accounting. I know of another developer who at age 48 retrained and has been doing that for a few years. Good luck to you!

No, you don't

I am wondering how you got into that field to start with. The reason I am asking is that I really want to be a UNIX admin

Just find a surgeon and get your fingers removed. Now. Trust me, it will be less painful in the long run.

Re:No, you don't

Heh, you hit the nail on the head, pal :)

The real "Ask Slashdot" challenge would be "I'm am ,at present, a UNIX system administrator. How the hell do I get out of this job, but still stay in a computer related field?"

I was shanghi'd into being a UNIX sysadmin for about a year. It was the nastiest experience of my life, especially since I was considered to be the "unix expert" by my non-UNIX cohorts, and was expected to waive a magic wand to get things to work. I developed a whole new relationship with SCSI cables that I never suspected even existed before.

First Mistake

I really want to be a UNIX admin

Ahh - This is your first mistake. Anyone going into the poky comms room meeting the grumpy sysadmin realises that all sysadmins would rather be anywhere else doing anything than what they are doing at that point. Serial murder for example.

Miserable Bastards

:-)

Re:First Mistake

A sys admin would never commit serial murder. Why go to jail and spen the rest of your life is a small room with no windows when you can continue to get paid while sitting in a room that is less luxurious!

Re:First Mistake

I think 'no windows' is the key reason.

start at the bottom and work your way up

Sounds cliche but that's what I did. I'm only 25 and I'm making more than your average MCSE right now (considering that MANY mcses are unemployed right now).

Started in Help Desk at college.
Did miscellaneous consulting jobs for friends, etc...
Got a job as a Jr. Admin.
Got another job as a Sr. Admin.

Education?

I started at age 26 after majoring in Art and getting into the industry through web design. My advice; find a small shop (5-10 people) that supports a few Linux/UNIX systems, and doesn't mind you learning on the job. That's the best learning environment you'll ever have. Usenet and a million other web-based resources are out there if you run into a brick wall on a problem.

Good luck, and you're never too old!

Becoming a Unix Admin

You are not too old to become a tech person at 33. As a matter of fact, you are more likely to be taken seriously then someone who is 20.

Becoming a Jr Unix admin requires that you know the basics of Unix/Linux: creating user accounts, installations, problem determination, permissions, disk space, adding hardware, backup strategies, and simple shell scripting to name a few. Solid end user knowledge of a real *nix like Solaris, AIX, HPUX, or True64 is a huge plus.

Getting your foot in the door is often more important than what you know. You usually have to have someone on the inside who knows you before you have a chance of getting hired. Unix administration isn't a job that you can get by walking in off the street. Since you are a programmer, you do have a much better chance.

Getting Started

There's any number of College Extension departments, like UCSC-EXT [ucsc-extension.edu] in the San Jose area, which offer many classes, even a program. RedHat [redhat.com] has Certification programs for Linux (and if you can admin Linux, it's a small jump to Unix)

For good practice you might want to get a PC and install FreeBSD or one of the Linuxes to familiarize yourself with the resources, shell programming, etc.

Re:Getting Started

For good practice you might want to get a PC and install FreeBSD or one of the Linuxes

I'd avoid Linux. I may well love the OS, and have been using it since the Linus boot/root disk days, but I'd advise something else for learning how to admin the box. Linux makes life too easy, with the consequence that you get used to the niceties and are then stuck when confronted with an OS that doesn't have them (and most of the paid Unix admin jobs will have such an OS).

Writing bash scripts, for example, gives you some syntactic sugar, but little in the way of real added value over and above plain Bourne shell. But it means your scripts won't be portable, and when confronted with an OS without bash, you're stuck.

I'd recommend OpenBSD or Solaris, or preferably both. Both can be acquired at zero cost for PC hardware, and hence make good choices to play with. Try to do everything you do without resorting to adding extra toys to the system (via the ports collection or sunfreeware.com, for example). Some might claim that's making your life hard for the sake of it, but I'd say it gives you invaluable experience that you'll welcome later in your Unix admin career. Get exposure to as many different versions of Unix as you can lay your hands on, and learn the differences between them. I've met (and in fact, interviewed recently) too many admins that only know Linux, or only know Solaris. Ultimately, Unix is Unix, but if you can show exposure to a wide variety, you're demonstrating an ability to deal with the variance between systems. I've met AIX admins who didn't know how to use a system without smit/smitty, and hence are useless on any other version of Unix.

Re:Get some education..

I want to put in a plug for getting started at non-profits (not volunteer work, but a paying gig at a non-profit). They tend to be a bit more relaxed about qualifications, since they usually can't pay as well as businesses can. Since they usually have fewer people to throw at a problem, you'll get a chance to work with more environments than you might if you just became the mail-server-backup-guy at a corporation with an IT staff of 500. And you won't have much of a budget, so you'll learn how to make your existing stuff work instead of just having the option of throwing money at a problem.

passionate curiousity and reckless experimentation

I am sure that others will have more specific helpful advice, but the fundamental principle is simple. It's the same way you learn to program -- or play the piano, or dance the watusi -- passionate curiousity and reckless experimentation. Education and experience are both very valuable, but both of these are offshoots of a self-driven desire for knowledge.

So, install Linux on a partition (I imagine you probably have already). Network your apartment/house/dorm room. Set up a web server and host your friends' sites. Set up a firewall. Follow the security updates for the software you have installed. Put a free database on it and write some useless but entertaining CGI on it. Translate the code into Java, Perl, and PHP just for kicks. Get excited, and the rest will follow.

Two Relevant Examples

I got my start as an admin in college. I was a CS major, and the CS department network was run entirely by students (supervised by a full-time staff member who was management only, and not too technical). I started as a lab consultant, helping people with their editors and compilers and such. It was more of a general helpdesk position, with light administration duties. I was promoted fairly soon after to a real administrator, with the root passwords and everything. By the end of my college time, I was the head of this group, which made getting my first admin job outside pretty easy.

During this time, I also helped a friend of mine (who was an English major at the time) learn to use the Unix workstations and the Internet. He parlayed this into a position within the help desk organization and then eventually into the administrator group also. So it's possible to do if you have one person who can give you the first break.

If you're not in a university environment, probably your best bet is to try to get involved in the Linux community somehow, get your name attached to some projects that you can use as partial credentials on your resume. Also, if you're not already running a network of at least a couple of Linux machines at home, you probably should. There are several skills you'll need to develop which can't be practiced on a single machine (NIS, NFS, DNS, sendmail or other mailer, etc). Good luck!

Admin fashion tips

Don't ever go out in the sunlight, bathing is optional, answer all questions with a clear and concise grunt, and use one word e-mail replies (my personal favorite is "NO").

You'll know you're good when you are like a phantom and you're co-workers can't describe what you look like and are too afraid to try finding you.

It all began on a fall day 7 years ago...

when I started a C programming class at San Diego State University. I was introduced to Unix at that time, and fell in love with it's power and simplicity.

I was content to be a user, but when I started working in the computer industry in 1995, I was introduced to Linux by a co-worker and fellow Unix lover (Thanks Martin!). I got bitten by the sysadmin bug then. We had a part-time consultant sysadmin then, and I emailed him with problems I was having with my Linux box, and he helped out immensely. Even when I brought down the email system with a badly configured sendmail.cf, he was patient and walked me through it.

As I started taking over day-to-day administration of the Solaris and SunOS servers at work, I found it invaluable to use the knowledge of the Unix propeller-heads at work. All were engineers, but they knew enough about Unix to give me a hand when needed. I also made friends with some old-time Unix-heads that proved to be a wonderful resource.

Don't underestimate the power of a mentor. Find someone with a long beard to talk with regularly. Also, read, read, read. Surf the net. Install software "just because". You will screw up, and have to recover. Nothing compares to removing "libc.so",

I now have 6 years of sysadmin experience under my belt. Even when sysadminning wasn't my official job title, I still found a way to do some. I've got the sysadmin bug, and bad. I love the challenge of it. I love knowing that every time I upgrade some software, or tune a system, that the people who make the product that pays my salary are able to do their work that much more easily and quickly.

As far as certification, it might look good on a resume for a PHB, but in real life don't mean much. Like an MCSE. You know the books, but real life can be much different. In short, if you have the time and $$$ to burn, go ahead. But your time can be equally well spent hacking on a system.

Do it, do it, do it. I love this job.

Jeremy

Practicing to be a sysad:

1) Repeat 10 times a day: "this change should not affect end users.

2) Type 20 times a day: "rm -fR ~user"

3) 10 reps: "what did *you* do to screw this up?"

4) Stop showering. Now.

5) Smash your pager, claim it was "killed in the line of duty".

6) Pick any given operating system, and develop an intense hatred for it. You will work with this os for the rest of your life.

7) rinse, repeat.

I went to class.

That's it. I was in a boring-as-hell lower-level CS class, and usually skipped it. One day, I went, though I sat in the back and read some novel or something. Late in the class, a couple guys from the university Consulting Lab (UMCP's faculty/staff computer help desk) got up to recruit. I joined the team a few weeks later, and got hurled into the marvelous world of admin when our VAXstation 2000 (X-windows, 40MB hard drive) crapped out and I had to rebuild it from a 10mb tar file on a remote server (an early NeXT cube, no less :) )

The rest, as they say, is history.

How would you get into it now? Don't really know. Certainly, it'd help to "play" with the stuff at home, but unless you've got 4-10 machines at home, networked, in regular use, you simply won't have the need to do a good job administering the server (and won't hit upon any of the major challenges).

Is 33 too old to start a tech career? From the standpoint of unconcious hiring discrimination, maybe you'll have a problem there. Plus, there's always the "why are you swtiching careers?" question. From the standpoint of being too old to learn -- bullshit. If you're smart, and can learn new tricks, you'll have a fighting chance.

Best advice -- learn to type fast, and find all the online documentation centers (man pages, web, etc.). If you type and can research the problem fast enough, nobody will ever know you don't know the answer ('cause you'll have just gotten the answer). After that, learn perl. Any time you find yourself doing the same thing more than once, spend the 20 minutes (or three hours) to write a script to do it instead. Then the next time it'll take 30 seconds to do, and you'll look smart. :)

Where do you teach english? If it's at a high school, you might be able to help part-time with in-house stuff, though I wouldn't be too surprised if a lot of that got given to students. If you're at a college, try the same tack with the help desk or whatever there... Then, maybe, look for jobs with contractors doing help desk in a UNIX or UNIX-Server shop (if you live in the Washington, DC area, there are LOTS of these jobs). You won't be doing admin, per se, but you'll be seeing the "lighter" side of it, especially the customer-side of things, and if you show enough aptitude and interest, you should be able to ease into a SysAdmin side. Another bonus for gov't contractor stuff -- they're used to "second careers" as military enlisted types retire and start working as geeks.

Good luck!

a common path

Try to become a programmer and fail.

How I became a UNIX Admin

After I was hurt in a parachute accident in the US. Army, I moved to Tampa and started with a contractor answering phones at a support center for a large retail chain.
After a few months of training on my own, listening to processes the analysts were going thru etc. I was promoted to Tech Support Analyst Level 1. I read man pages, looked thru the available documentation on the systems etc. And kept learning. I then progressed to a Level 2 Analyst, and after a few months I was hired onto the company that I was contracted out to.. IBM!
After a few months as a Level 2 Analyst, I applied for a position in Technical Services. Here again I studied the OS we were using, SCO Open Server 5.04. Studied Korn shell programming, Learned PERL, Learned Perl OO methodology, learned hardware specific stuff like SCSI, IO, IRQ's etc.
During all of this time my passion was Linux, so I was also studying it as well. In March 2001 I received my RedHat RHCE, and applied for a position as a Software Engineer providing Linux Solutions for Xseries IBM servers.
By the way, I