Unix as a Second Language

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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 25 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She currently works for TeleCommunication Systems -- a company that builds innovative technologies to make critical connections happen -- where no one else necessarily shares any of her opinions. This blog offers advice for everyday Unix systems administration and some clever ways to approach more challenging problems. Send comments and suggestions to mailto:bugfarm@gmail.com.

by Sandra Henry-Stocker

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Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 25 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She currently works for TeleCommunication Systems -- a company that builds innovative technologies to make critical connections happen -- where no one else necessarily shares any of her opinions. Send comments and suggestions to bugfarm@gmail.com.

Setting up Jumpstart clients: Create a profile

Posted Jul 17, 2008 - 04:38 pm

Setting up client jumpstart profiles might seem tedious, but can save you a lot of time, particularly if you will be installing many identical systems.
Operating Systems, installation, Jumpstart
Setting up Jumpstart clients

Posted Jul 10, 2008 - 06:25 pm

Setting up jumpstart clients can be tedious, but you can make the process easier with simple scripts and some insights into the files that are added to and updated on your jumpstart server.
Operating Systems, Jumpstart, Sandra Henry-Stocker
Building a Jumpstart server

Posted Jul 03, 2008 - 10:56 am

There may be little that's new about using Jumpstart to install Sun servers, but setting up a new jumpstart server is something that I do rarely enough that I want to make the process simpler and more reliable. So, on building a jumpstart server for Solaris 10 05/08, I decided to augment the customary procedure with a few helpful scripts and to document the steps precisely and simply so that I have a reference for next time.
Software, Jumpstart, Sandra Henry-Stocker
Reducing your cable mess

Posted Jun 25, 2008 - 08:56 pm

Five basic rules for managing your cable quagmire
Hardware, cables, Sandra Henry-Stocker
DVD mounting problems

Posted Jun 19, 2008 - 03:46 pm

Most of my systems do not have CD/DVD drives but only CD drives so when I need to load software from a DVD drive onto a system which lacks such a drive, I have to mount it from another system, share it and then mount it on the system on which I want to extract the software. This is a little painful, but it generally works.
Open Source, Sandra Henry-Stocker, Unix
Graphing system activity with SAG

Posted Jun 19, 2008 - 10:09 am

Here's a script that turns sar data into useful little performance graphs using sag, the system activity grapher. The sag utility reads data from sar's binary files and, provided with a graphical terminal, creates a line chart showing CPU usage or some other sar data.
Open Source, sag, Sandra Henry-Stocker

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