Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

outsourced · Aug 1, 2005, 02:46 PM

Which should one actually study in order to find employment as a sysadmin or something comparable?

I know the system commands are very similar, but OS installation and support is very different. With Linux being predominant in the web hosting business, would it be better to study it?

Any professionals out there who have some insight into which would be the best route to spend time and money?

Personally, I'd like to study the hell out of OS X. I already have the hardware and software -- nothing to buy. With Linux, I'd have to build an Intel/AMD box and obtain a distribution (SUSE).

galarneau · Aug 1, 2005, 10:30 PM

My opinion is that you would be more marketable with more mainstream Linux/Unix experience.

Most of the nuts/bolts of sysadmin'ing is CLI on these platforms, so you won't need high end hardware. Even a Pentium I or II would be fine, and are available for next to nothing. My employer just gave away dozens of old P2-350 machines for free that would be fine for what you want to do.

I set my first box up with a AMD K5-150 and ran it headless. I would SSH in from my Mac and do everything from there.

Distro's are freely downloadable BTW

I would recommend learning FreeBSD as it's widely used and very well documented and laid out.

If you want to move to Linux after that, it will make a lot more sense.

(I started with RedHat, got befuddled, moved to FreeBSD then OpenBSD, and now Linux is a lot more palatable when I see how it SHOULD be done)

outsourced · Aug 2, 2005, 11:39 AM

Thanks for your input! You used the word I was searching for yesterday: marketability.

rwhiffen · Aug 3, 2005, 07:53 AM

I think it'd be a good idea to check the local paper or monster.com etc. for jobs in your area before picking the OS. For example, if there aren't any linux jobs in your area, you might get more out of x86 Solaris. If you have a better idea what employers are looking for it can help focus your studies in a direction that will pay more dividends. Were I live in Arlington, Solaris and Linux will get you further than the *BSD variants. Where I grew up, its almost all Microsoft and very few IBM Linux.

The trick is that you have to get past the HR drones before you can talk to the tech people in the interview process. The tech people know if you know BSD you know a majority of other UNIX variants. HR people aren't that clued in. They play buzz word bingo with your resume. If your resume matches key words in the add they placed BINGO! Interview!

In short, know the market you're trying to get into.

Cheers,

Rich

Arkham_c · Aug 3, 2005, 09:28 AM

Outside of being a sysadmin, all UNIX flavors are essentially the same. I was a platform manager for a while (porting software from one UNIX to another), so I've used them all. Once you learn SYSV and BSD flavors, you know all there is to know about general UNIX administration.

Beyond that all there is to know is platform specific stuff like kernel parameters and platform-specific configuration tools. If you really want a UNIX job in the enterprise though, go with Solaris and Linux. Everyone seems to use those.

outsourced · Aug 3, 2005, 11:45 AM

Yeah. Mostly MicroShaft up here in the great northwest (go figure). I considered Solaris once, but it seemed too expensive to get into. Although, the local college does have a few courses; but I'm a self-taught kind of guy. I've used AIX, but it's been a while.

Concerning BSD: One thing about OS X is that it is based on FreeBSD 5, right? So, could I learn "FreeBSD" by studying OS X? If not, I'll just go the Linux route because of the prolific amount of study materials.

Thanks again for everyone's input!

rwhiffen · Aug 3, 2005, 01:46 PM

You might want to check out Bochs and try running some of the x86 distributions on it.
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/
The 2.2.1 verison was released in July and there's an OS X .dmg installer. You could then go an get a 'linux live' cd ala knoppix or the like and boot the CD image in Bochs and play with it pretty simply. Or you could pay for Virtual PC and do the same thing. This assumes you have a relatively speedy mac currently of course. You could also install the x86 version of Solaris 10 in the emulator or on a used PC if you want to play with Solaris.

Yes on the FreeBSD: http://www.apple.com/macosx/overview...echnology.html So you do get FreeBSD knowledge from OS X.

Rich

CatOne · Aug 4, 2005, 07:55 AM

Originally Posted by outsourced

Yeah. Mostly MicroShaft up here in the great northwest (go figure). I considered Solaris once, but it seemed too expensive to get into. Although, the local college does have a few courses; but I'm a self-taught kind of guy. I've used AIX, but it's been a while.

Concerning BSD: One thing about OS X is that it is based on FreeBSD 5, right? So, could I learn "FreeBSD" by studying OS X? If not, I'll just go the Linux route because of the prolific amount of study materials.

Thanks again for everyone's input!

If you want to look at admin tasks for OS X, you need OS X Server. And most OS X Server management deals with things like Open Directory (and the command line dscl tool) and other things that may have no direct FreeBSD analogue. Sure, both platforms run Apache, and can run JBoss and MySQL, but these are peripheral admin tasks, not the core ones. Only a specific subset of organizations would centralize users in Open Directory -- most use Active Directory.

You could always tinker with Linux by getting Yellow Dog Linux and booting your Mac off that. It's a full port of Red Hat Linux to PowerPC, and is essentially identical from an administrative perspective. Whatever you learn there would be 100% transferrable to Red Hat Linux knowledge.

The thing is, there are about 417 Linux distros (and about 15 of them are the "most popular" like Red Hat, Suse, Fedora, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Gentoo, Mandrake) and they all use different admin tools (for package management, etc.,) so the tooks you use to do your job differs by "flavor" of Linux distro. Linux is really a morass of stuff, and is more confusing and complicated than it needs to be because people would rather have another "cooler" distro than improve an existing one to make it more usable.

outsourced · Aug 4, 2005, 11:06 AM

More great input! (ha. sounds like that robot from that old movie...can't remember the name, but the robot was called number 5.)

It would appear that this cunning plan of mine is more complex than I thought. I should probably setup a small lab with a central server running FreeBSD or Solaris to get the true UNIX admin capability. Then I could create small administration projects to manage users and whatever else one would do (filesystem allocation?).

I'm sure shell scripting will have to be thrown in there somewhere, as most jobs I've seen require it.

Ugh. This is going to take a long time.

outsourced · Aug 4, 2005, 12:39 PM

Whoa!! I just visited the Sun site and discovered OpenSolaris.

Free download?! Cool.
Available on DVD?! Extra Cool.

Looks like I found my server OS.

PBG4 User · Aug 8, 2005, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by outsourced

More great input! (ha. sounds like that robot from that old movie...can't remember the name, but the robot was called number 5.)

That would be Johnny #5 from the movie Short Circuit. I worked at a movie theater when that came out.

outsourced · 01:17 PM

Thanks, PGB4, for the movie name: Short Circuit. I think that's what my project should be named, because that's probably what will happen to my mind!

I recently searched for UNIX admin jobs on Dice.com and it looks like the prevalent UNIX OS is Solaris -- so, that would seem to be the right move as far as learning a *NIX and administration tasks. Linux is secondary with these jobs.

The OS X jobs were far and few between and were mostly located in large cities where the graphics/design firms reside. (Go figure.)

And, of course, some employers also wanted networking certification like a CCNA or better.

FYI: I installed SUSE Linux 9.3 using Virtual PC 6. Do not try this at home, unless you have a 2.7GHz G5. Holy crap, it was sloooow.

And, whatever you do, do not restart the system -- it will take from 7-10 minutes. If anyone is going to run Linux in a VPC environment on a G4, you'll be stuck using the terminal. (And that's ok in my case anyway.)

Looks like YDL (Yellow Dog) for the Mac; Solaris for an AMD/Intel box.

PBG4 User · Aug 11, 2005, 12:25 PM

Glad I could help.

I did some fooling around in SuSE 9.1 a year or so ago, but that was in school. Sounds like if I really want to learn *NIX I'll have to do a Linux install as well. I don't have an AMD/Intel box anymore so I can't run Solaris unless they come out with a PPC version.