Congratulations on getting that systems administration job that you’ve worked hard for! Now, it’s time to get both feet wet and get after it.

What to focus on during your first month:

As with any job, there are two general areas that you should excel in when you first become a sysadmin. One is the work itself. You should be able to function well as the systems admin and get a grasp on what you are doing overall. And two, you should work on your people skills because you’re not going to be working exclusively with machines, the network, software and programming. A large part of what you will be doing involved interacting with people.

So what do you tackle in month one? Here are some considerations.

1. Full audit of all IT resources and equipment.

Right off the bat you will want to familiarize yourself with the equipment that you’re going to use and administer. First conduct a visual audit of your equipment and then a physical audit.

When conducting a physical audit, you need to take note of the machine’s specifications, the operating systems, the hardware, and the software installed.

Check out how licenses are being tracked, which ones are expiring soon, and which are in need of renewal.

You should also work out the infrastructure, the cables, and even the wireless appliances.

If there are any helpdesk systems in place, you should familiarize yourself with that as well.

More importantly, examine how secure the organization’s systems are, network vulnerabilities, security controls, encryptions used, passwords, user accounts and other security features being used.

2. Talk with your subordinates as well as with other employees in the company.

If you are in a management position, you may be the boss, but it would really help if you talk to your subordinates in order to find out their needs, before making policies and changes. Take note of their skills and training to fully understand what they can do and for what functions you could tap them for when the need arises.

As a system administrator, you will also be tasked to help other non-IT employees with their IT-related problems. During your first month, it would help people from other departments to get to know you, so you should try to make the rounds and talk to key people in other departments.

Introduce yourself, and if you can, ask a few questions about how they are using IT resources.

During the first month, you should take time to introduce yourself to other employees and give off the impression that you are approachable. This will make it easier for you to build rapport with them.

Furthermore, ask them what they would like see and what problems they usually encounter in terms of the IT infrastructure. It could be as simple as not being able to connect to the company’s Wi-Fi network, or having difficulty with a slow and under performing desktop computer.

This way, you would know what problems are prevalent and see whether this is something you can fix. Gaining immediate wins is a great way to start off a new job.

This is also an opportune way to know what FAQs and information you need to come up with. You could even come up with information, relevant to your organization, on how to troubleshoot simple IT problems – such as rebooting a Wi-Fi router or troubleshooting the department printer.

In effect, you are educating employees on how to do simple troubleshooting, freeing you from having to do these in the future.

This will also help you know what types of training and in-house seminars the employees need. Are there a lot of employees who use the network and don’t know how to troubleshoot it? You can suggest a networking seminar to the management to help employees with it. Are employees using their own devices ( BYOD), only the users don’t know the first thing about securing their devices? Conduct a security training!

3. Do a little housekeeping.

During your first few days on the job, you should make sure that you have all the necessary login information (usernames, passwords, PINs, etc) that you need to perform your duties.

It would be advisable to change sensitive information, such as the passwords, to ensure that no unauthorized people would have access to secured equipment and systems.

4. Learn!

If there is any documentation left by your predecessor, you will want to read those to ensure that you know what to do or where to look should a system break down. Also, make sure that the installed programs, systems and software developed internally have proper documentation. If you cannot find any, ask the previous system administrator for a copy if you are able to. If not, ask any of the staff if they were able to assist and come up with or create new documentation instead.

Also, see if there are any software and systems that are being used that you are unfamiliar with. For example, if you’re not familiar with a certain network management software, then spend time looking for manuals or online resources that would help you learn it. If you have time during your first month, look over the materials you have to learn about the software and how to operate it.

The People You Should Know

It is ideal that you should get to know each and every employee in your company, but we know that this is very time consuming. So focus on the people you would be working closely with and those you need to know in order to do your job well.

Of course, you would need to get to know your team, as well as your superiors. This will help you work better, especially in bigger organizations where there are people (such as IT architects and quality assurance personnel) who will be sharing your work and doing some of the things that a systems admin in a smaller organization would do.

If you get to know the heads of various departments and the big bosses, this will help you get to know what they require of you. Also, if you should ever need resources, you’ll have an easier time in negotiations for those assets.

Standard Rules Apply

Soon enough, they might even bake you a cake!

Remember that even as a systems administrator, you will still be starting a new job. You’ll be a newbie in a new company. Be observant of the “rules” and “norms” of the company. If the atmosphere is generally laid back and informal, there is probably no sense to be stiff and formal when talking or dealing with people.

Just be yourself, do your job well, and you will be fine.

Comments

wget

Since, proxy servers are very common today – in companies, universities etc. almost all of the applications today have proxy support. As far as wget is concerned, there are two ways of doing so, either set the appropriate environment variables and wget will act according to them or configure the wget configuration file – wgetrc.

Wget Proxy: Set the environment variable

Before setting the environment variables, lets first see if there are any preset proxy variables present. We can get that information using the following command.

[shredder12]$ env | grep proxy

http_proxy=http://foo.bar:3128
no_proxy=localhost,127.0.0.1

If no proxy environment variable is set, it will go for direct connections. Lets take an example of my college. We use a HTTP proxy server. Running wget without setting the http_proxy environment variable just fails. So, lets set this env. variable first

[shredder12]$ export http_proxy=”http://foo.bar:8080″

Now, run Wget and it should work like a charm. If your proxy also requires authentication i.e username & password then use this format

[shredder12]$ export http_proxy=”http://username:password@foo.bar:8080″

Similarly, for other type of proxies – ftp_proxy, https_proxy etc. All we need to do is set the appropriate environment variable.

Please note that, the above commands will be in effect only till the user session expires, i.e. by running the above commands we are just setting the proxy env. for a session, not permanently. And usually we wouldn’t want to run the command everytime we login. So, to make it permanent, we can either set the value in wget’s configuration – wgetrc file or set the environment in ~/.bashrc file.

[shredder12]$ echo “export http_proxy=http://foo.bar:8080/” | tee -a ~/.bashrc

It should be noted that, this way we might be affecting the user’s proxy settings. A better way is to set the settings permanently in wget’s configuration file, this way no other app. is affected.

Wget Proxy: Configuring the wgetrc file

Like most of the applications wget has a configuration file too – wgetrc:

/etc/wgetrc,
~/.wgetrc.

The former is for global changes and the latter one is for local settings(user specific). We will go into the details later, lets just see how to apply the proxy settings. Its similar to setting the proxy environment variable, just exclude the export command. Open the file ~/.wgetrc file. If one doesn’t exist, then create it.

[shredder12]$ vim ~/.wgetrc

Now, add the following statement in the file

http_proxy=http://foo.bar:8080

Wget Proxy: How to disable/turn-off the proxy settings

Once you have configured the proxy settings in the wgetrc file, everytime you run wget, it will automatically connect to the proxy server. Sometimes for local/LAN based downloads, you may not need the proxy server. In such cases we can turn off the proxy settings using –no-proxy argument in the command

[shredder12]$ wget –no-proxy http://10.0.0.1/file.tgz

Wget Proxy: If the proxy requries authentication – Username & Password

We already know the format for setting the environment variable with username and password. Wget provides you two methods to mention the username and password for proxy server.

Mention it in the command in the form of arguments.
Set the values in the configuration file, /etc/wgetrc or ~/.wgetrc

If the authentication you are using is static, then its better t set it in the configuration file. If its just one time thing or if you want to overwrite the settings in configuration file then you can use the –proxy-user & –proxy-password options.

[shredder12]$ wget –proxy-user=username –proxy-password=password http://foo.bar/file.tgz

For permanent changes, its always advised to change the configuration file.

Once again, for global changes modify the /etc/wgetrc file otherwise go for ~/.wgetrc file. Open any of the file and append/add the following lines in it.

proxy_user=username
proxy_password=password

In a similar way, you can set the ftp proxy along with the authencation credentials.

How to ovewrite a preset proxy in Wget

If you see the first proxy example, we are actually overwriting the pre-defined environment variable(if any). But since, we are executing the export command, rather than editing any configuration file, the proxy setting will be removed as soon as we close the terminal ( in case of GUI, gnome-terminal etc.) or logout of the session.

And, if for some reason we are interested in using separate proxy for wget, then instead of overwriting the variable we can just edit the ~/.wgetrc or /etc/wgetrc file. Please note that, a local wgetrc file (~/.wgetrc) will overwrite the settings on /etc/wgetrc. Once again, remember that ~/.wgetrc is a local/user-specific setting where as /etc/wgetrc is a global one.

Finally, the high command in this hierarchy are the variables provided at command execution time. (–proxy-password, –no-proxy etc.), i.e.

(Exec. time command options) > ~/.wgetrc > /etc/wgetrc > environment

This is just a big picture, only for proxy settings. It might not be the same in all the cases.

cephas@work

Your First Month as a Systems Administrator