Unix® System Management Primer Plus

Writing System Documentation

Few (if any) system administrators would rather spend time documenting their systems than actually designing, deploying, and maintaining those systems. Nevertheless, that documentation is a necessity. System administrators are human, and they easily can forget details of procedures they last implemented months ago. And system administrators aren't the only people using their system; other administrators, users, or even auditing firms may, at some point, need to view a system's architecture and procedures.

Every IT organization develops its own specifications for system documentation, but most system administrators document the following three types of information:

• Network diagrams map the network architecture and ...