Get your own Free Home PageThursday, February 28, 2002 12:49:55 AM Somewhere, sometime last year, I read an article by a person who claimed that we instructors are making Linux too difficult for the average user. Not that Linux is too difficult. There are perfectly good office suites in Gnome, KDE, and StarOffice. A user could switch from Microsoft products to open source products without much discomfort. Installing Linux has become practically a no-brainer, with excellent installation programs provided by the likes of Red Hat. No, the criticism was that the way we teach Linux is the problem. Legacy details such as the low-level configuration of devices, direct programming and configuration of the X Window System, and how to use emacs and vi, make an intimidating atmosphere that drives the average user back into the open arms of Microsoft. Granted, the average user does not have to know anything about emacs or vi. But I train programmers and system administrators, who are likely as not to encounter environments where the X Window System is unavailable. Microsoft no longer has an equivalent editor (edit was its name); you actually need the full Windows system running in order to maintain it. What's wrong with this picture? For one thing, the system you might be working with could be on the other side of the world. When I was working at Visa International, I had occasion to access a Windows system only 5 miles away, on a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), using the esteemed product, pcAnywhere. Screens were painted on a pixel-by-pixel basis, and if I opened or closed a window I had time to get a cup of coffee before I was ready to do any useful work. Furthermore, glitches in pcAnywhere would leave patches of unpainted pixels here and there on the screen on my desk, which was supposedly a "mirror image" of the screen five miles away. Even worse, the simple editor that I was using, Notepad, painted its characters on the screen pixel by pixel. I mean, I could watch and count the pixels coming down the line. The data rate of the MAN was nominally 16 megabits/second. Contrast that with a typical support problem in the Corporate Customer Support Center (CCSC) at Pyramid Technology, a company that made, to this day, the largest massively parallel database servers in the world. An enterprise server would call in (yes, call, over a phone line, or email a message if it were connected to a public data network) and report itself inoperative. We would dial into it and conduct software diagnosis and repair. Occasionally the system would be in Lima or in Capetown, and our modems would synchronize at the blazing (the brand of the modems was Trailblazer, you know) speed of 2400 bits/second. 2400 bits/second, and you might on a typical Windows machine have an 800x600 resolution, defined with 8 bits of data per pixel. Hmm ... is that 27 minutes to paint a screen? The X Window System, designed for Unix at MIT, encodes the screen image in raster graphics and only transmits the changes, but experiments with NCD X terminals in 1991 indicated that firing up an X session over a modem was no more desirable than using pcAnywhere. Of course, since Pyramids were some of the most advanced corporate servers in the world, system administrators, engineers, and programmers often sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the CCSC working on sick servers around the world. So much so that the CCSC sometimes took on the character of theater-in-the-round. What did we use for terminals? Wyse 50s, simple pieces of plastic that could only display ASCII characters, nothing more. The ASCII code is extremely compact compared to any graphical interface, and a typing speed of 30 words per minute comes out to about 30 bits/second. If you've watched characters coming in over a 300 bit/second modem connection you know you would be hard-put to keep up. So ASCII, a code that was developed for long-distance communication in the first place, turned out to be the ideal code for ... uh ... long-distance communication! OK, so Notepad is out. textedit is out. Gnotepad and Kedit are out. What is in? What editors are strictly character-based and require no window system support? ed, emacs, and vi. Even many hardcore system administrators avoid ed. It turns out all Unix and Linux systems have vi on them. So it would be a good idea if system administrators, engineers, and programmers learned to use vi. If a Windows machine goes down in Riyadh, someone is going to have to fly a technician to the Windows machine, or fly the machine to a repair center. Response time runs into days or weeks. If a properly equipped Unix server goes down in Djibouti, then for the price of a phone call, and at the same speed, software repairs can be completed. So I don't mind if teaching vi or low-level interfaces might daunt the average computer user. For the technician or programmer who is on the line, and for a corporation that has gone off-line, vi is the best thing since sliced bread. A programmer who knows it well, when 30 managers are watching him or her dial into a system on the other side of the planet, will feel happy to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. For my students, the knowledge of vi is a reasonable pursuit.
Wednesday, February 27, 2002 12:33:04 AM One of the best things about teaching is watching students learn. Many of the students in my current class are already computer professionals, and several of them are way ahead when it comes to things like how to login to a Unix system, list files, and such. Combine that with a couple of academic students, the kind who are degree candidates, who have decided to pick up a little practical training along the way. The end result is a room full of students who are highly motivated and who actually like to learn. Some of them zip through the exercises, and it's fun watching them chomp at the bit, raring to go. We'll get a chance to challenge them all in the next eight weeks. Others are working earnestly to grasp the fundamental concepts in a curriculum that has been likened to "drinking from a fire hose" (an alumnus' words, not mine). It's a thrill to watch a frown of concentration turn into a smile of comprehension. It's delightful when a student asks "Do you mean that ...?" and paraphrases the lecture with exactly what I mean. And then there's the occasional "ah ha" as a student, a computer professional, tells me he has been working with Unix 3 years and had not discovered something that he has been told on the second day of class. I drew that 3-year datum out of him, not to embarass him in any way, but to illustrate a point that the facts and techniques the students are learning in this curriculum might not be discovered for years, if at all. It's a great feeling knowing without doubt that they will graduate from the program with a solid understanding of the core competencies. Over the long haul they will have a distinct advantage over self-taught system administrators and programmers, of which the high-tech industries have seen all too many.
Monday, February 25, 2002 7:46:51 PM Here's a little Business Week article, "Climbing out of the job pool." It declares the thesis, with statistical support, that people are finding this a good time to return to school. I suspect that one incentive is that pesky BSCS requirement that has cropped up on job descriptions everywhere. Another might be the laundry list of expertise that inevitably appears. Have you noticed that the laundry list often includes UNIX, C, and C++? That may be part of the advantage the older labor force is enjoying at the moment. You don't get "8 years of Solaris, Linux, storage arrays, ... 3 years of Oracle, Apache, C, C++, Java, ... HP-UX and AIX" overnight. This may also drive more professionals into our program. It looks like about a third of the class that started today are professionals that have been in computing industries a long time, and who are now looking at UNIX in detail. Another third are people who were drawn into computing during the dot-com bubble, and who are taking the business lull as an opportunity to upgrade their skills. What Business Week has observed seems to be true here in San Francisco.
Friday, February 22, 2002 9:03:53 AM Last night Paul Evans spoke at the Bay LISA meeting on lessons learned at Webvan during the period of 1999-2000. Actually, he presented a few insights and then opened the floor for public discussion. In his well-thought-out presentation he drew parallels between the public political and business climate and that of the individual companies participating in the dot-com bubble, and then he got down to the specifics of incidents at Webvan itself. Although some of the observations were contradictory, anyone who was reading business magazines at the time would remember that the times themselves were contradictory. What came out for me was the disconnect between what Paul called the "operational management," or the managers who were responsible for the day-to-day business, and the "strategic management," or the president and the board of directors. It appeared that the operational management was unable to communicate to the strategic management the common business sense that they had acquired through their prior experience. Is this true, or is it simplification? I tend to think that the missteps along the way were shared by all, that the miscommunication occurred on both sides of the arbitrary fence. We heard an example of non-redundant production equipment in a mission-critical application failing, without spares on hand. Many of the system administrators in the audience saw this as a red flag, while Paul seemed to think that this was a necessary evil due to the budgetary constraints of the earlier, less extravagant, incarnation of Webvan. Paul also seemed to blame new, more ambitious management for ignoring this warning and deciding to roll out its services in numerous markets before the concept was proven in the first market. However, a contractor in the audience indicated that Paul's team had done exactly the same thing by ignoring the implications of an earlier failure on the same mission-critical application. I don't think there's a disconnect between operational management and strategic management. I've seen the scramble for safety and the fear of being blamed in the rank-and-file, as well as in the boardroom. I have observed how managers, both of operations and of research and development, have side-stepped critical issues because they did not want their names associated with an obvious problem. I have seen how corporate politics works at all levels to subvert corporate profitability. I once thought this was a phenomenon reserved for old companies, but the Webvan presentation showed me that it can happen anywhere, that it is more a phenomenon of society than of one company or another. Paul made a very strong point that the only real way for system administrators to apply their personal experience to board-level decisions is to climb into the board and participate. He mentioned the suit phenomenon, where employees can be promoted into management because of their appearance. I'd like to keep in mind that I have only one chance to make a first impression, and that the suit, or at least a business-casual appearance, must be maintained continuously. I would like to point out, however, that it is often corporate expectations that provide the social pressure for technicians and engineers to "dress down." Managers don't want to be confused into thinking that their line employees are also managers. That doesn't fit into their mindset. Yes, in their minds there is a class distinction between "management" and "labor," and while engineers, programmers, and system administrators are not typically unionized, managers tend to think of them as labor. System administrators will not find changing management perception an overnight project. Engineers have been trying to change this perception for a hundred years, and as far as I can tell they have made no progress at all.
Saturday, February 16, 2002 4:39:57 PM Today I received America Online 7.0 in a metal can. Sigh. In bright colors I am tempted with the blurbs "1000 Hours for Free," "for 45 Days," and "No Credit Card Required!" Then I also see the words, "See Inside for details." One way or another they are going to get me to open that can. Never mind that AOL service sucks. Never mind that they have a stupid, non-standard interface that may be nice for ten-year-olds, but is totally worthless to adults. Never mind that they censor their material and monitor their customers. Never mind that whenever users tell me they can't do something as simple as click on a hyperlink in an email message, their ISP turns out to be AOL. (Actually, there's another ISP I know of that is withholding the "real internet" from its customers through proxy servers, CompuServe.) Now AOL is attacking the environment directly. They reached their #1 position simply by mass-mailing free copies of their software to every household in America, with free introductory service. Just try to get rid of that software after the introductory period is over. (I don't fault them that; try to remove Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator and you'll see the same problem.) Now I'm thinking about the 20 million little cans that were used to ship their latest and greatest broken software to me. Of course it's going straight into the trash. Or at least, with a 5% response rate, 19 million of these little mailing cans are going straight into the trash. Minus a few that environment-conscious consumers take the care to dispose of properly. Unwrap the shrink wrap (not recyclable). Open the can and remove the CD (not recyclable). Throw the enclosed brochure and can into the appropriate recycling bins. OK, that's about 50% efficiency, for one of the 20 million households. When I lived in Virginia, that state devoted a lot of political and legislative energy toward protecting the environment from pollution and destruction. I would think a company with headquarters in Virginia would have a little more conscience than this.
Wednesday, February 13, 2002 7:00:00 AM "Information wants to be free." That was the controversial cry of precursors to the open source movement. Equally controversial is today's concept, "information wants to be bound and gagged." Major movement is afoot to make sure that consumers and commercial companies have no idea what software they are buying. We're not talking about games and office products here. We're talking about operating systems, security software, and databases, in addition to your usual DVD and Napster controversies. Two current articles on SecurityFocus bring this message home. The first article, "Software Licensing: The Hidden Threat to Information," by Richard Forno, explains how software publishers already have taken action to assure that their products are not benchmarked or compared to other products publicly, and that their products' vulnerabilities are not advertised. The second article, "Charney an Ominous Microsoft Pick," by Tim Mullen, notes that Microsoft's new Chief Security Strategist is not a technologist, but an attorney. Oh, excuse me! I thought that security was a technology issue. Perhaps I should apologize for presenting myself as a security expert to the computing community. Check back later, after I earn my J.D. Meanwhile, all you companies who are concerned about security had better rewrite your job descriptions. It's not about technology at all! Oh, wait a minute! Maybe Microsoft has a hidden agenda. Wouldn't that be a surprise?
Saturday, February 09, 2002 6:50:25 PM Recently the requirements for system administrators have gone through the roof. I sometimes wonder whether this is the HR departments' revenge for all the scorn they received in the 1990s. Even when companies find qualified candidates these days, they usually don't hire. It seems like they are window shopping and bargain hunting. One company representative who talked with me recently gave me the following job description. Interestingly, he noted that nobody he had talked to with the proper qualifications was the least bit interested in permanent employment. Let's see why: Senior Unix Administrator: Responsibilities: Maintain the high availability services of the company's Unix Department. Work with all IT staff to maintain and advance Solaris and Oracle environment onsite as well as at a collocation facility. Design, implement, and maintain scripts to automate and monitor services in both locations to provide 24x7 uptime. Install, configure, & maintain Oracle Databases. Configure and administer DNS, Sendmail, and web servers. Set backup and restore procedures for all services. The ideal candidate would meet the following skill set: 7-8 years of technical experience with Solaris 2.6 - 7, Linux, HP Openview, Sparc Hardware, Storage Arrays, & Veritas (Volume Manager, File System, Net Back-up, Cluster Server) products. 3+ years of technical proficiency with Oracle, Apache, MS IIS, Perl, shell scripting, C, C++, CGI, Java, and application servers. 4+ years of technical experience and proficiency with Checkpoint, Cisco, and Foundry products. 2+ years as a Senior Unix Administrator. HPUX and AIX experience a plus. BS in Computer science, Electrical Engineering or equivalent. Advanced degree preferred. There are a few obvious problems, as well as some more subtle ones. Solaris 2.6 was only released about 3 years ago, and MS IIS doesn't run on Unix systems. I'm also not sure why someone with 2+ years as a senior Unix administrator would be looking for the same job again. The job describes a system administrator, a storage administrator, a webmaster, a programmer, and a database administrator. It sounds like the company wants to hire God, and I think he's busy. I suspect that the only person who has these qualifications is already working for the company, and he never wants to go back to system administration again. Just two years ago a person with these qualifications would have been wildly overqualified for any kind of system administration position. People with experience like this were system architects, or better. Instead of cowering before all the propaganda the hiring managers are pouring onto today's job seekers, let's ask for what we want as well. Perhaps we can find a meeting of the minds. I don't mind permanent employment at all! I simply wish to find a company that meets some decent minimum standards: Actually profitable company: Environment: The company must allow all employees to telecommute. All administrative tasks should be achievable by virtual private network, over 56kb dial-up connections and the public information infrastructure. Internal connections and external interfaces shall be reliable and secure. The company will bear all connection costs. Hours shall not be set, although the company may require all members to be present for staff meetings. Accountability shall be through weekly reports and quarterly objectives, with guidance and feedback by committee. Access shall be granted directly to the Chief Financial Officer and the Chief Executive Officer, not through a middle manager. Training shall be granted and financed at the department's recommendation, for all of its members. Performance shall be evaluated on the same terms as the company. Budgets for capital and personnel shall be determined with input from the IT department, which shall have veto power over the marketing and engineering departments with regard to project deadlines. Hiring decisions shall be made by the IT department, not by the HR department. The ideal company would meet the following skill set: Have a proven track record, doubling gross sales and earnings per share over the most recent five-year period. Salary shall be in the 90th percentile for the job description for each title in the department. Employees shall be chosen with consideration for geographic proximity, with no employees living more than 25 miles from their respective company sites. All relocation expenses shall be paid by the company. The company will locate in a desirable area, which shall be physically comfortable and entertaining for all its employees. All federal holidays will be strictly observed, and no vacation accounts will be drawn down by irregular time-off programs. Additional paid vacation time shall be added to achieve parity with European employers. Annual raises shall always exceed the increase in the consumer price index. Are you laughing? Why? If the description of the ideal company is less than realistic, is the description of the ideal employee also?
Thursday, February 07, 2002 3:25:33 PM Yesterday I received a phone call from a web portal provider at One Market Street in San Francisco. They're looking for system administrators and senior system administrators. The job was half tempting. But today I signed a contract with Linkage, and I will be the day instructor for the SFSU CEL UNIX/C/C++ program for the entire calendar year. So I will forward the One Market Street opportunity to my alumni and to other interested parties.
Tuesday, February 05, 2002 12:25:27 PM There was no follow-up after the Thursday phone interview, so I figured the interviewer found me just as unimpressive as I found him. Friday morning, as I was wrapping up my system maintenance in the laboratory, I told the program director at SFSU that I was ready to teach the day class again. I feel like I have come out of hibernation. Last night I took a copy of the announcement from the company I phone interviewed with, and forwarded it to an email group that has a lot of senior level system administrators. I got a thank-you call from the recruiter this morning, saying she is already receiving responses from candidates. Yesterday I found that the kaffe I got with Red Hat 7.1 does not support Java 2. I downloaded the real Java 2 SDK from Sun Microsystems, 24 MB in about 90 minutes, and I am off and running. I'll go through the exercises in Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours, and then move on to Thinking in Java.
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