Eschew Obfuscation

Today I learned a valuable lesson about the /tmp directory. Now in the afternoon halfdime asked me if I could create a vol on one of our filers of about 100GB, and I’m like sure no problem. So I go abouts creating the slice, adding it to the exports file, and creating the fstab entry (which I slightly screwed up), but honestly that wasn’t the problem. I for some reason known to only myself and god (if you swing that way) decided to test whether I could mount the dir on the /tmp directory. Now I usually know better than to do something like that, though I know we all make noobish mistakes, that was pretty high on the list of n00bish mistakes I have made. It was funny watching my linux system die a slow death of not being able to write anything to the /tmp directory (this is where my screwing up the fstab comes into play), so I wonder if I had set the permissions correctly would my data meant for /tmp have been written to the filer? (I am going to guess yes, but there is still a lot of magic I don’t understand about some of the underpinnings of the *nix OS). So my advice the newb, noob, and n00b systems administrators out there, don’t mount remote filesystems on the /tmp dir.

Ok, so here’s the caveat, we all know and understand the being a system administrator is an interrupt driven job, and I was going to mount then umount the dir on the tmp (I still don’t know why I choose tmp and not mnt, but whatever), but I got distracted.

written by meh. \\ tags: /etc, /tmp, exports, filers, fstab, linux, n00b, netapp, newb, newbish, noob, OS, sysadmin, systems administrator

Ok,

Let me start by saying I understand that vendor meetings are part of our jobs as system adminsitrators, to have the competitive edge and all that (I know there are a myriad and plethora of other reasons, I am claiming laziness on writing them all down). But I also wonder how in the heck we are supposed to get anything done with so many meetings within a day. After one of our senior people left all of the storage stuff fell on our collective shoulders, not that we weren’t busy to begin with as there are only 3 of us who handle all of the data/backups/filers etc.  Now I have traditionally handled the backups and for me this is a great new learning experience, as I get to deal with our netapp filers (I am always up for learning experiences).  But to be honest we have some *needy* customers and there just isn’t enough time in a day to get things done as it is, let alone with vendor meetings.

Now mind you I like meeting with some vendors better than others (I happen to really like our EMC reps, as well as the Netapp peeps), but taking 3 hours our of my day doesn’t help me with getting done what I need to get done.  Some would mention that I need to read Limoncelli’s book, and while that may be correct, there are also things that I cannot simply do at home (hardware, etc).  Don’t get me wrong, I spend a good portion of my night working, as anyone that has been a sysadmin will tell you, the job never stops, and I love it (sometimes it bothers my wife, but she is uber understanding.  I just happen to think that someone should write a vendor course in how to deliver tech information to techies in a short condensed version so that we can get the information we need and go, and let management deal with the sales bs.  Just my humble opinion though, so take of it what you will.

written by meh. \\ tags: backups, emc, filers, limoncelli, meetings, netapp, networker, storage, system administrators, time management, time sink, vendors