New to UX; where to go?

[Felipe Rodriguez_1]

I took some Admin training at HP for version 10 about... 4 years ago.

I had very little hands-on, but because of Sys Admin background in other OS, I know I can catch on.

Question is, what is the best way to go about it? I know it will depend a lot on the work site, but in general what should I be looking for?

Thank you,

[Robert Salter]

Felipe,

Personally, the biggest thing between the various *nixes is command syntax and hardware addressing. I know folks will go on about the kernels and sys configs, etc. and they're probably right it would good to be aware of these things. But it still boils down to syntax and how to find the problem when it occurs.

This forum is a good place to find out info and ask questions. And using 'man' has pulled a lot of us through. As you get more hands-on time, you'll be able to focus on the areas you need to bone up on.

Good luck and never ever be afraid to ask a question.

robert

[Mohanasundaram_1]

http://docs.hp.com
http://itrc.hp.com

[Felipe Rodriguez_1]

Robert,

Thank you for your words of encouragement. I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time here and asking all kinds of questions.

[Mel Burslan]

1) hang around here, a lot ... This is serious advice.

2) I see that you are in the USA, go to ebay and buy an hp workstation system as cheap as possible on which you can run hpux v 11i and play with it. Nothing replaces hands on experience and god knows you do not want to gain the experience I am talking about on clients' production class servers. You're gonna break this system a lot.

3) find yourself a pet project, like list of CDs you have and the lists of songs in them, something stupidly simple and start writing a shell script to search your database of CDs for songs, performers, CD names etc. While playing with this project you will realize you are learning a lot about unix shells and shell programming. No sysadmin can do without full understanding of shell.

4) get a good book. Like Marty Poniatowski's HPUX 11i systems administration book

http://www.hp.com/hpbooks/authors/poniatowski.html

(one of the top 3 books in this list depending on the system you are going to work on)

and do not read it ! Use it as reference when you get stuck. This is not something you read in your spare time.

These are my suggestions. I am sure you will gat many more useful recommendations.

Good luck and welcome to the wonderful world of hpux :)

[Felipe Rodriguez_1]

I already like this place :-)

[Felipe Rodriguez_1]

Can you give me some ideas on what model machine to get? Should it have the OS pre-loaded?

[Patrick Wallek]

A workstation of the C or J class is a good machine for learning.

Having the OS pre-installed is not a requirement, but if it does not you want to make sure you get OS media. Installing the OS on your own a few times is also good practice so you can get familiar with the process and what all of the options are.

[Mel Burslan]

OS preloaded is a good idea but even better one is to get the server shipped with a set of coreOS and application CDs so that you can have experience re-installing a system.

As far as what to get goes,

this one is not bad for $169
http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-9000-C3000-Workstation-400-MHz-1GB-RAM-18-GB-HD-CD_W0QQitemZ5798296805QQcategoryZ11221QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

this one is even better at $304 if you want to use it as a whole house heater at the same time :)

http://cgi.ebay.com/HP-9000-L2000-HP-UX-Unix-Server_W0QQitemZ5798465143QQcategoryZ73322QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

pop into ebay and search for hp 9000 with at least 512 MB of memory and a ssystem new enough to accept hpux version 11i 64 bit version.

[Felipe Rodriguez_1]

"...this one is even better at $304 if you want to use it as a whole house heater at the same time :)"

LOL! That may not be a bad idea come winter time, with oil prices as they are!

Thank you everyone, you have all been so helpfull.

I'm going to check with the company and see if they have any kind of testing machines before I make any investments. But I will surely consider the option.

[Alan Meyer_4]

You can get some nice workstations on EBay for decent prices also.