[BSDCert] Unix sysadmin requirements

[Kevin Reiter]

My bad - I saw "Piotr" and didn't look at the last name.  I thought the
original poster was reponding to my response.  Sorry 'bout that.

-Kevin

(I top-posted so everyone would see this first without having to re-read
the entire post.)

Kevin Reiter wrote:
> Piotr Klein wrote:
> 
>>Not at all !!!
>>
>>
>>
>>>Hi All.
>>>
>>>From my experiences, good admin should have sufficient knowledge 
>>>about C programming. He/She sould be familiar with system functions 
>>>like:
>>>- fork(), waitpid()
>>>- open(), read(), write()
>>>- socket(), bind(), listen(), accept()
>>>- shm*()
>>>- ...
>>>
>>>I can't see the possibility about proper system understanging and 
>>>tuning without such knowledge. In the end, FreeBSD is written in C.
> 
> 
> Define "system understanding."
> 
> Tuning in what context?  Disk I/O?  Network load balancing?  One of them
> requires knowledge of C to modify, the other doesn't.
> 
> 
>>You are talking about "System Engineer" not "SysAdmin"
> 
> 
> Then why did you start your original post with:
> "From my experiences, good admin should have sufficient knowledge about C
> programming." ?
> 
> 
>>>I've found out, that people with poor understanding of C system 
>>>functions are also poor admins, when we speak about high volume  servers.
>>>They simply can't diagnose/explain/solve heavy traffic problems.
> 
> 
> There's that "admins" word again...
> 
> 
>>SysAdmin should do much, much more than solve traffic problems
> 
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> 
>>>If i'd have to make a choice of recruitment, that would be  important
>>>topic at the interview.
>>>
>>>For the purpose of certification, I'd suggest for example a piece (s)
>>>of broken/badly written C code with questions about a problem  there.
>>>
>>
>>again -  System Engineer, Programmer...etc NOT "SysAdmin"
> 
> 
> admin = SysAdmin - not Engineer or Developer.
> 
> Perhaps you meant to say, "Engineers should have sufficient knowledge
> about C .." ?
> 
> I'd be willing to bet money that there are a LOT of good, experienced,
> high-level *nix admins who don't know a thing about programming in C.
> They leave that for for the developers.
> 
> Which brings up the subject about the nature of the cert itself - is it an
> "Admin" cert or an "Engineer/Developer" cert?  Both would have vastly
> different requirements.
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