Learning Unix Administration

[Jesse Hall]

I'm trying to learn Unix Administration. I've been with this company now for about two years. When I started I did not know any Unix none what so every. I started on 3 shift and now I'm on second but my problem is that I'm here all alone no one to help me are to learn from. There is no work are any hands on with day-to-day operation on my shift. I'm more of a computer operator than an administrator. I've taken two Hp classes, which are Hp fundamentals to Unix and Hp system and network administration. I've read and study both books. On second it a lot of monitoring less hands on, so I do a lot of reading. I fine it very hard to remember all that I???ve read and not being able to put it to use on a day-to-day base. If you have any suggestion please help because I???m get frustrated.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Jesse,

Welcome to the forum. We would be glad to assist you in any way we can. This is an hp-ux forum but there are other ares too where you can post your questions and seek answers. you can also reply to forum questions posted on this site and contribute to the forum which will help you in understanding the problems faced by others and what they do to resolve those problems. Many of my own problems have been resolved by just going through earlier posts on the forum.

Hope this helps.

regds

[someone_4 · Accepted solution]

hey there ..
This is a great place to learn. And here is a link that you might want to save on your favs. It is a great link.

Submit Very Basic System administration commands and win easily points

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x59b5c8ecad09d6118ff40090279cd0f9,00.html

Richard

[Kelli Ward]

Hi Jesse and welcome.
This is a great place to come for answers to your questions. Sanjay is excellent and well deserving of his pharoah hat, he has assisted me many times in the past and there are many other very talented individuals on this forum. I have learned a great deal from them. Coming from a "self-taught" HP-UX backround, I know there are many gaps in my knowlegde and this is a great place to help fill them.
A couple of suggestions:
Don't be afraid to ask questions and
Print and save any Q and A's that interest you (even other people's) you'll be amazed at what you can learn.
All the best,
Kel

[Patrick Wallek]

If you havea machine, or can talk the powers-that-be into purchasing one, that you can use to just play on, that would be thing to do. Something like a B or C class workstation can be obtained fairly inexpensively. Preferable you would want it to have a couple of disk drives, a tape and a CD-ROM. With 2 drives, if you happen to purchase the software, you can play with mirroring as well.

You want it to be something that is PURELY a crash-and-burn box. If you break it, well, then you have to fix it.

Nothing beats just having a box to play on and not have to be worried about breaking a production system.

[Kelli Ward]

Another thought,
A crashn-burn system is a great thing to have. I have a couple of them and have well, crashed and burned them many times, but it has reduced my fear of crashing the "real thing" and taught me more than I can say. A low-end HP-UX system can be had cheap on places like ebay and will give you just what you need to play, but even if you configure an old PC with Linux, this will help. There are many differences between linux and hp-ux (this is true of most of the Unix OS's), but fundamentally, if you can get a good grasp, on a Linux box, you are well on your way. Plus, I've found, the more OS's I learn the easier it is to pick up the next one. And remember, if you're not having fun, it's probably not worth it.
Good luck!
Kel

[Peter Kloetgen]

Hi Jesse,

I am working as trainer for HP-UX and for the reason I have to do a lot of training days there is too less time left to practise for me. As all the others said, for me it is very helpful to stay here, read the questions and try to find solutions for those problems. Problems which are discussed here could also appear on your computers. Additional there are some really good books, which I read:
UNIX System Administration, by Aileen Frisch, O'Reilley
UNIX Programming, Brian Kernigham
and some more. But don't spend to much time in theory, practising is allways better in my opinion.

Allways stay on the bright side of life!

Peter

[Bill Thorsteinson]

A useful resourse is the Unix System Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass, and Trent R. Hein.

As noted Linux does have a number of differences from HP-UX, but is also has a lot of similarities. You can find a number of useful resources at http://www.linuxdoc.org.

[Josh_13]

my suggestion is to go to the local office depot and invest in a 2" or 3" 3-ring binder and a pad of paper for it.

when you get stuck, write down how you fixed the problem. then put it in the binder.

after a while you might want to get some dividers. divide the notebook into sections based on the type of command or frequency of use. this will become your bible (for lack of a better term).

i was told to do this by a co-worker here. i've found it to be the most helpful thing i've done. he showe me example of one he did. every time someon gave him the answer on a piece of paper he either cut it out and attached it to a sheet for the binder and then wrte comments on the page underneath it. if he found it on the web he printed it, punched holes in the paper and added it. he has one book for each operating system he's worked on. this technique worked great for him and is doing quite well for me. i strongly suggest trying it.