Recommendations for becoming a system admin

[Marc Lanctot]

Ck wrote:
> I should clarify a little I guess. I'm 27, have a wife and three kids,
> a degree/diploma isn't what I had in mind exactly. I need a change and
> a challenge, and I want to enjoy what I do again. I don't want to
> travel the world or get rich just happy. so I was thinking a
> certificate program that would get me in the door and  I can build on
> would be good. As I said before I have learned a lot on my own playing
> (I'm in the process of building a network I don't really need just to
> see how.) but its more or less I look things up as I need to. The
> suggestions I've gotten here have helped a lot so far. Google is good
> people are better. I guess my goal would be to manage a small to
> medium sized Unix-like network and gain the the skills necessary to
> more directly contribute to open source. It's not that I can't use
> windows I just don't want to. Besides in my past experience I waste to
> much time and resources tiring to stabilize and secure windows instead
> of using windows. and I can't afford a mac. Of course now I waste to
> much time messing up perfectly good Linux installs. That being said I
> do realize I'd have to learn more about MS as well, at least a little.

I'm not from Toronto so I can't recommend any trade school or technical 
colleges for you here that offer certificate programs. In Montreal there 
would be Herzing and a few others..

.. but what I can tell you is that I've worked as a Linux system admin, 
in several departments at McGill University as well as at Ubisoft.
I know a few people at Google California; they tend to work 10-12 per 
day on average. So working for the cool guys is sometimes not so cool. 
Personally, I preferred by far working for McGill because it was a more 
relaxed atmosphere and I could relate to the students and academic 
lifestyle more than to the industry, but I'll tell you a few things you 
should know.

It's hard to completely escape Windows. People use it, and if that ever 
changes I'm not sure it will be any time soon. At McGill, it was the 
admin staff. At Ubisoft it was most of the programmers. At McGill NCS 
(their "main school-wide tech people") most of the servers were Linux or 
other Unix (Solaris) based, but most admin staff used Windows. Linux 
authentication via Active Directory was a big project because a lot of 
departments used Linux. Many researchers in the Science faculty used 
Linux other forms of Unix; at Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences they were 
using SGI Irix machines but had to use Windows for certain programs. So 
it's rare that you'll be able to evade the Windows support altogether, 
but if you can, that's great. BUT! If your users are using Linux 
desktops then you'll have to be in charge of security patches for Linux. 
In general I found this to be easier (using certain distros) and more 
pleasant but it can be equally as painful and boring sometimes.

I will also say what someone else said: as soon as you turn a hobby into 
a career it tends to make you like it less. I loved helping people and 
"being in charge" so I'd still consider being a system admin, but 
sometimes lack of support or lack of documentation etc. got on my 
nerves. And all the responsibility can be stressful. When something 
breaks, guess who is blamed.

You mention wanting to get into a position where you could contribute to 
open source. What you describe sounds like a great job. I'm sure a lot 
of us would like that, including myself. From what I gather -- I am not 
an authority on this -- that's just the problem; there are more people 
that want these types of jobs than are available. I was doing something 
like that at McGill, but I had contacts that got me in. I worked on a 
patch to Samba; I don't remember what it was exactly, but it never got 
submitted anyway.

I'm not trying to discourage you.. what I'm saying is that research 
institutions or research divisions of large companies (ie. IBM?) is 
where you'll find these. It might make you feel better to know that I 
gained all my expertise from using Linux as a hobbyist at home. I had no 
official certificates to claim I was a "Linux expert", my department 
just happened to need a Linux sysadmin and I was around. That gave me 
the official experience I needed to get into Ubisoft. That was only 3 
years after I'd installed Linux for the first time at home. So, it 
sounds like you have the experience but you need the "in". With this 
economy, good luck with that, but keep in mind that when people lose 
jobs they tend to go back to school, so UofT, Humber, Sheridan, etc. is 
a good place to start looking. And if you do a certificate somewhere 
(Sheridan?) then you will get to know the sysadmins there and have your 
"in".

Marc

-- 
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which
differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people
are even incapable of forming such opinions.
   -- Albert Einstein
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists