Re: Sysadmins

[prikulis]

Again as a user I hope this would be useful:
In my experience if it turns out, a sysadmin is lazy, then sometimes I
start to feel I have to get back to paper technology. Once i had to make a
graphics and I tend to use Gnuplot. And it turned out that our admin had
upgraded something and one library required for gnuplot was not installed
so i had to use MS Excel, because the features in OpenOffice.org were not
enyough yet. I think it is a problem, when the sysadmin has too much
power. It is better to allow the user to install programs.

Regards,
Janis Prikulis



>
>
>
>> Message du 05/11/05 17:46
>> De : "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <address@hidden>
>> A : address@hidden
>> Copie ?  : address@hidden, address@hidden
>> Objet : Re: Sysadmins
>>
>> On Sat, 2005-11-05 at 11:49 +0100, Emmanuel Colbus wrote:
>> > In the main
>> > areas, policy isn't that strong, and the total amount of disk
>> > space is far lower than the sum of all quotas...
>> >
>> > Therefore, it's also the administrator's business to ensure users
>> > aren't wasting their space for nothing...
>>
>> The first statement is true, and it follows necessarily from the
>> mathematics of resource management.
>>
>> The second statement does not follow from the first. Here are two
>> alternatives:
>
> There is a misunderstanding here.
>
> I think I need to remind you of the context of my sentences in this
> thread.
> I was arguing against an architecture who would have *required* that users
> installed all their own software, or trust some other users, in order to
> need
> fewer interventions from the admin.
>
> Therefore, I argued that it was the business of the admin to ensure users
> didn't had to do such things - that is, not choosing a system who would
> have
> required such operations.
>
> Anyway, we can discuss this particular issue too :
>
>>
>>   1. It is the system administrator's duty to monitor *usage* (as
>>      opposed to content) and determine whose usage needs to be
>>      curtailed. Any subsequent negotiation about whether the content
>>      is valuable can be undertaken between the humans without requiring
>>      architectural support for spying.
>
> Yes, that's the good idea, I think. But, as I stated in
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/l4-hurd/2005-11/msg00060.html ,
> it sometimes doesn't works that easy.
>
>>
>>   2. Alternatively, it is the system administrator's duty to buy
>>      more disk.
>>
>> The second point deserves more thought than we usually give it: in many
>> cases, the cost of a new disk drive is substantially less than the cost
>> of the employee-time to throw things away.
>
> Yes, if he administrates a PC which has enough space to get a new disk,
> and
> enough hardware to archive its data, and not too much other requirements.
>
> But if it comes to a great computer, I don't think it's a valuable
> approach.
>
> Additionnaly, adding disks is a strategy which has limits; and current
> system design doesn't make that easy to do at all : for example, if
> accounts
> are stored on the same partition, splitting them can be difficult
> (problems
> include eg. hard links, user scripts (because their $HOME would change),
> some administration scripts, etc...).
>
> Emmanuel
>
>
>
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