Linux System Administration

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Chapter 1: Requirements for a Linux System Administrator

Let’s continue analyzing the job responsibilities described in the previous section.

The last set (“Administer infrastructure services”) can give you a sense of the stan-

dard Linux skill set. Employers want system administrators who can handle what

they deem “infrastructure services.” Notice the Internet technologies involved. Of

the list of Linux components with which familiarity is required, most tasks will

involve DNS, LDAP, FTP, SMTP, and Postfix/Sendmail. We will cover most of these

components in Chapters 2–6.

The other job descriptions fit mostly into the category of in-house enterprise needs.

These include escalated service desk support, technical support, and on-call consult-

ing advice for the hardware and operating system environments. Most Linux system

administrators should have the skills required to provide these services, but they are

outside the scope of this book because they are not purely technical.

The remaining responsibilities fall under the category of “soft skills.” In the past, one

would not have expected a typical system administrator to learn to function as a liai-

son with other internal support groups such as Application Development, Engineer-

ing, Database Administrators, or Web Services. However, a system administrator is

no longer just a techie with knowledge of some arcane systems; he’s a member of the ...