11
Writing is a discipline.
I've done a lot of it, and I have as much of the basics down as an untrained person can get without documentation being a top part of my job. Time has shown me what documentation I produce will actually get read, and what will go on the Shelf of Eternal TL;DR. This is in fact the number one rule of writing anything:
Know your ...
9
A customer just asked me for this, so I compiled a short list of links I have found useful over the years. Not necessarily in the best order, and by no means complete, but thought it might make a good addition for anyone hitting this question:
http://www.nex7.com/readme1st (work in progress, can PM me if you have questions)
http://9to5mac.files.wordpress....
9
What to document? "EVERYTHING!".
As a sysadmin you must assume that one day you will be run over in the parking lot by a user who is upset you wouldn't let them download porn on the work network. Your successor should be able to pick up your documentation, read it, and take your place with virtually no questions/problems (at least in the ideal fantasy ...
9
I use FreeTDS on Debian to connect a php-driven website to a MS-SQL Server 2005 Database.
The explanation I can give to the config files:
/etc/odbc.ini
Holds the instance that is referred to within the handler (e.g. php) that connects to the database (see example below). The configuration defines the server it needs to connect to.
[...
8
I don't know that there are industry standards, but there are plenty of options. Some have been discussed here:
https://serverfault.com/questions/64259/what-is-the-most-effective-solution-you-used-to-label-cables
https://serverfault.com/questions/127454/whats-the-best-way-to-label-cables-in-a-data-center
I think the "standard" is Pick a labeling ...
8
Mike,
there are generally a few sources of good guides out there for security hardening.
The DISA STIGs
The NSA SRGs
NIST
CIS Benchmarks
Vendor guidance
SANS
Books specific to hardening
At my work, we use a combination of the DISA STIGs, along with puppet for Linux. I'd be more likely to say that is inadequate and push for some of the recommendations ...
7
Google Business View seems like the pro option ;)
Good luck.
6
NMAP results can be read into powershell rather easily. NMap has an option to output results in XML format. This is controlled by the -oX option. PowerShell likes XML.
nmap [options] -oX results.xml [targets]
Reading it in is easy:
[xml]$NmapResults = Get-Content results.xml
Which will create a data-structure in $NmapResults that you can move around in ...
6
If you only admin one or two small systems, setting up a large configuration management system like puppet or chef seems like overkill. (Though, if you plan to have more systems in the future, do it now!)
For a small setup like this, I'd recommend using something like etckeeper, a program which puts /etc into a git repository and provides a few useful ...
5
The standards you are looking for are the
TIA/EIA-568 Structured Cabling Standards
These standards determine everything from precise dimensions of peripherals to their physical properties to labeling criteria. It has various sub sections that deal with particular areas in a structural cabling topology like Horizontal cabling, vertical cabling etc.
5
I have written a rather extensive blog article about the topic, which you can find here:
http://2buntu.com/articles/1034/how-to-write-a-manpage/
5
Two things...
The most important document for you to read is the Oracle Solaris ZFS Administration Guide. It provides a comprehensive description of ZFS features and terminology. It also gives excellent examples.
Beyond that, you may want to look at NexentaStor as an option if you're primarily interested in the storage aspects of ZFS. It's a storage-...
5
Here's a quick script/collection of commands to get you started. Add commands (ifconfig, lspci, etc.) as you see fit:
#!/bin/bash
# hwcollect.sh - Collect general system information
# Hostname
echo -e "$HOSTNAME \n"
# Display system manufacturer, model, serial and other attributes
dmidecode -t 1 | egrep '(Manufacturer|Product|Serial)'
dmidecode -t 3 | ...
5
You could convert either before or after. I prefer before because the data will be ready once Percona Server is installed, up and running. I say this because there are some hairy things you have to address with regards to the grant tables. (This especially includes the mysql.user table since MySQL 5.0's mysql.user tables has 37 columns while MySQL 5.5's ...
5
You just have to update your documentation each time you make a change on the system. AKA Change Management.
The fact that most companies implement change management in such a ridiculous fashion as to make it worse than nothing should not detract from the utility of the basic concept or prevent you from doing it right.
I used to use html or some sort of ...
5
You're never going to get away from some documentation but as you intimated there are systems that can be integrated into your change process to cover a lot of it.
Use a config management tool (like puppet or chef).
Store your config in a change controlled manner. (like git or SVN)
Make sure config is readable/accessible by humans (i.e. plain text, ...
5
Best hit I got is from: http://devarthur.blogspot.de/2008/05/integrating-ubuntu-hardy-heron-804-with.html
Summarizing:
usershare_acl=Group_SID:access_modifier
To get the SID of the a group use:
wbinfo -n "DOMAIN\group"
SID "S-1-1-0" is Everyone
The access modifiers after the group SID are as follows:
R - read-only
F - full access
D - deny access
4
Facter, used in Puppet, will collect most of that information for you out of the box. It is fairly easy to add whatever other "facts" you want to collect to it.
http://puppetlabs.com/blog/facter-part-1-facter-101/
http://puppetlabs.com/puppet/related-projects/facter/
http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/custom_facts.html
4
There really is no single best way to do this. It depends heavily on the environment, the people, the systems, the budget, and individual preferences.
Before you can pick what the "best" option is, you need to understand your requirements. Specific requirements, not just "where do I put my documentation?". What hardware/software do you have available now?...
4
I personally use a little program called The Guide, which I find a lot faster than using a wiki (which I also use). You can even embed Excel files right into the pages, as well as many other file types.
There is a portable version, so you can take it everywhere you go on a USB flash drive. I just wish there was a Linux client which could read the same ...
4
Mathias,
You can find a list of both native and managed modules that are built into IIS here (Module Reference section). This documentation will only give you descriptions for the native, or utility, modules.
Since this is a minimal installation of IIS I am assuming you are not installing .NET integration. If this assumption is correct, then the above ...
4
If you only look at Unix implementations, you'll get some interesting ideas about how ODBC works. None of these implementations are 100% comparable to the reference implementation on Windows, produced by the maintainer of the ODBC spec, i.e., Microsoft.
There are two ODBC driver managers commonly found on Unix. iODBC, whose documentation relevant to this ...
4
My first essential building block is a desaster recovery plan for the awesome setup in question, ie. a step by step recipe for rebuilding it from scratch and restoring its data from the last backup. This includes a list of required components and where to get them, complete configuration, and the procedure for a full restore of the application data from the ...
4
It looks like you want to ssh into my.host.example.com, then have the rest of the script run on that host. If this is the case, you need to pass the rest of the script as input to the ssh command; as it is now, ssh is taking input from the script's stdin which is probably empty, so it opens a remote shell session, sends it an end of file, which closes the ...
3
You can use RSOP.MSC or GPResult against a target machine to see how the various policies are affecting that system (and also the specified user account).
RSOP.MSC:
One challenge of Group Policy administration is to understand the cumulative effect of a number of Group Policy objects (GPOs) on any given computer or user, or how changes to Group Policy, ...
3
It's a LaTeX file. The file(1) command is useful for determining a file's type, e.g.:
$ file /usr/share/doc/rpm-4.8.1/*
/usr/share/doc/rpm-4.8.1/builddependencies: ASCII English text ...
3
Well, I don't know what your specific requirements are in detail, but I can advice you what to avoid (based on my personal experience).
Don't use office suits for documentation, such as OpenOffice or Word since they store their data in their own formats, such as .doc or .odt. This can be very painful when you switch to another documentation system later.
I ...
3
We have been using Device42 for server and data center documentation. Great tool and those guys are constantly adding features. Not very expensive either, around $250 for 100 devices.
3
Is Google Docs a requirement?
I think it's a stretch to do this in a spreadsheet. I've certainly been in firms where IP's, network definitions and even rack elevation diagrams were represented in Google Docs Spreadsheets.
The process was a bit cumbersome and the eventual solution was to move to a purpose-built inventory-management system like Racktables. I ...
3
I've just looked in the package for 12.04LTS (0.6.3-0ubuntu1) I can see there's some documentation available in a few text files in /usr/share/doc/cloud-init alongside the examples which may help
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