Keeping Unix Running and Tuned 223Paying someone $40,000 a year to maintain 20 machines translates into
$2000 per machine-year. Typical low-end Unix workstations cost between
$3000 and $5000 and are replaced about every two years. Combine these
costs with the cost of the machines and software, it becomes clear that the
allegedly cost-effective “solution” of “open systems” isn’t really cost-
effective at all.
Keeping Unix Running and Tuned
Sysadmins are highly paid baby sitters. Just as a baby transforms perfectly
good input into excrement, which it then drops in its diapers, Unix drops
excrement all over its file system and the network in the form of core
dumps from crashing programs, temporary files that aren’t, cancerous log
files, and illegitimate network rebroadcasts. But unlike the baby, who may
smear his nuggets around but generally keeps them in his diapers, Unix
plays hide and seek with its waste. Without an experienced sysadmin to
ferret them out, the system slowly runs out of space, starts to stink, gets
uncomfortable, and complains or just dies.
Some systems have so much diarrhea that the diapers are changed automat-
ically:
Date: 20 Sep 90 04:22:36 GMT
From: [email protected] (Alan H. Mintz)
Subject: Re: uucp cores
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix.scoIn article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Don
Glover) writes:
For quite some time now I have been getting the message from
uucp cores in /usr/spool/uucp, sure enough I go there and there
is a core, I rm it and it comes back...Yup. The release notes for SCO HDB uucp indicate that “uucico will
normally dump core.” This is normal. In fact, the default SCO instal-
lation includes a cron script that removes cores from
/usr/spool/uucp.Baby sitters waste time by watching TV when the baby isn’t actively upset
(some of them do homework); a sysadmin sits in front of a TV reading net-
news while watching for warnings, errors, and user complaints (some of
them also do homework). Large networks of Unix systems don’t like to be