UNIX System Administration Handbook - Evi Nemeth [460]
First of all, if you’re planning to run an operating system other than Windows on a PC, make sure you check to see what hardware devices are supported. Device manufacturers typically provide Windows drivers for all their fancy new widgets, but those won’t do you much good under UNIX. Some vendors have gotten a clue and are at least distributing drivers for Linux now.
Second, keep in mind that performance is based on a variety of factors. These days, processor clock rate is not the limiting factor. It’s usually I/O performance that will bring your system to a crawl first. Choose PC hardware that supports the latest and greatest high-performance bus and transfer rates. Pay special attention when buying devices such as disk controllers; make sure that they’re designed for true multiuser operating systems and can process more than one “command” simultaneously.
Another gotcha is inexpensive modems that require software on the host computer to do some signal processing. Since it’s unlikely that the necessary software will ever be ported to UNIX, you’ll need to choose modems that do all their own thinking.
Finally, be aware that prepackaged systems from places like CompUSA are usually designed and optimized to run the operating system that is installed at the factory, right down to special chips on the motherboard. These machines are usually not the best candidates to reinstall with some UNIX variant and use to host your startup .com web site. Consider purchasing production-quality PC hardware from shops that specialize in PC hardware for UNIX, such as Telenet Systems (www.tesys.com) and A2Z Computers (www.a2zcomp.com). These vendors supply industrial-strength hardware with redundant power supplies, extra fans, etc., and will guarantee their systems to work with some versions of UNIX.
26.9 SUGGESTED SUPPLEMENTAL READING
ECKSTEIN, ROBERT, DAVID COLLIER-BROWN, AND PETER KELLY. Using Samba. O’Reilly. Sebastopol, CA. 1999.
1. You can also mount PC-resident filesystems under Linux, but this arrangement is somewhat unstable.
2. Provided that the PC has already been configured for “Microsoft networking.”
3. Printers must already be set up on the UNIX host. Not all flavors of UNIX use printcap, but Samba can adapt to whatever system is in use in your environment. See Chapter 23 for more details.
4. smbstatus output contains some very long lines; we have condensed it here for clarity.
5. Two products that can help with this process are Symantec’s Norton Ghost and PowerQuest’s Drive Image Pro. A standard disk image file can be kept on the network or written to a rescue CD-R.
6. Wine is also available for FreeBSD.
27 Policy and Politics
This chapter covers some nontechnical topics that are often included in a system administrator’s repertoire. In addition to discussing various issues of law and policy, we talk about some of the interpersonal aspects of system administration and the political intrigues that occur at UNIX sites.
UNIX and computer networks are both quite young—a mere 25 years old—yet they are a microcosm of social issues that have existed for thousands of years. In many cases, the legal and social institutions of the real world have been slow to adapt to the implications of new technology.
The Internet is well on its way to replacing or at least greatly altering several large pieces of economic infrastructure: the publishing industry, the telecommunications industry, the entertainment industry, the postal service, and middlemen of every stripe and color—travel agents, book sellers, music retailers, stockbrokers, and on and on. In many of these contexts, our technological and financial capabilities seem to have leaped far ahead of the policy infrastructure that’s needed to support them.
For example, well-defined laws and conventions exist regarding the privacy, use, and misuse of paper mail. But what about email? Is it private, or does the owner of the disk