How I became an admin (Score 1)

Was working in 1984 at a computer lab for a large university in LA (Lower Alabama). We had just wired an engineering lab for token-ring - my job was to get the boot proms working with Netware v3.x. Did that - was quite impressed with myself. Sadly so were others. Next thing I realize is that I'm a lab manager. (grin)

A (the) graduate assistance over us handled a rather large cluster of IBM RT115s/RT120s running AIX 1.x/2.x. One day he goes bonkers - literally. Dropped out of school and just....left. *poof* The dean of engineering comes to me and says "Ok, even though you are an undergrad you are now responsible for the Unix boxes as well...we will let you hire OTHERPERSON to handle the day to day Novell 3.x stuff...". No sweat - things were great!

....until a professor walks in three days later and says "...blah blah...oh, by the way, /home on SERVER3 is almost full..."

I had no clue. Crash course in reading and much help from a friend in the university's computer center got me thru that episode. I then started learning about unix commands, scripts, variables, (etc) and after about two years (with _much_ help from a much older, more experienced unix admin at the school's computer center) I was managing the boxes just fine (5 servers, 300 client machines, NFS/yellow pages from hell. etc). Was hired full time when I graduated in 1988.

Fast forward to 1990. The computer center finally realizes "Oh shit! Perhaps SNA is not the 'end-all--be-all' we think it is. What is Novell? We need to know!" and now wants a Novell person. I apply. Since I had unix experience at the COEnginnering, I was able to play with this new OS called AIX370 (AIX running as a guest OS under an IBM4090 running VM/CMS). The computer center also got a brand new, pre-production IBM RS6000 running this new OS called AIX v3.x and also needed someone to help with cisco routers (Cisco TRouters, AGS routers, etc). I volunteered. From there to Solaris/X86/Enterprise 6000 and Cisco 4700s, 2500s, 7600s, etc. Finally (recently) to linux and back to Netware v4.x/5.x and 6.x

Each step along the way saw me learn various new skills. The fact that I started out on a non-linux OS seemed to have helped me alot. Bottom line - you got to 1) want to do it and 2) be willing to re-install after issuing stupid commands like "rm -rf `find / -print`". It will happen to you.