UNIX System Administration Handbook - Evi Nemeth [470]
For this reason, some sites limit the data that they log, the length of time for which log files are kept, and the amount of log file history kept on backup tapes. Some software packages (e.g., the Squid web cache) help with the implementation of this policy by including levels of logging that help the sysadmin debug problems but do not violate users’ privacy.
System administrators should be familiar with all relevant corporate or university policies and should make sure the policies are followed. Unenforced or inconsistent policies are worse than none, from both a practical and legal point of view.
Software licenses
Many sites have paid for K copies of a software package and have N copies in daily use, where K << N. Getting caught in this situation could be damaging to the company, probably more damaging than the cost of those N-minus-K other licenses. Other sites have received a demo copy of an expensive software package and hacked it (reset the date on the machine, found the license key, etc.) to make it continue working after the expiration of the demo period. How do you as a sysadmin deal with requests to violate license agreements and make copies of software on unlicensed machines? What do you do when you find that machines for which you are responsible are running pirated software? What about shareware that was never paid for?
It’s a very tough call. Management will often not back you up in your requests that unlicensed copies of software be either removed or paid for. Often, it is a sysadmin who signs the agreement to remove the demo copies after a certain date, but a manager who makes the decision not to remove them.
Even if the jobs is the best one you’ve ever had, your personal and professional integrity are on the line. Fortunately, in today’s job market, quality sysadmins are in high demand and your job search will be short. We are aware of several cases in which a sysadmin’s immediate manager would not deal with the situation and told the sysadmin not to rock the boat. The sysadmin then wrote a memo to the boss asking to correct the situation and documenting the number of copies of the software that were licensed and the number that were in use. The admin quoted a few phrases from the license agreement and cc’ed the president of the company and his boss’ managers. In one case this procedure worked and the sysadmin’s manager was let go. In another case, the sysadmin quit when even higher management refused to do the right thing.
Spam: unsolicited commercial email
Advertisers, marketing folks, and con artists have flocked to the Internet in droves to take advantage of “free” email communication. The cost of junk mailing an ad to thousands of people is tiny compared to the cost of sending traditional paper mail, and the response rate is apparently better. This scenario creates two big losers: consumers, who have to wade through mounds of spam every day, and ISPs, who pay for the traffic on their networks.
We won’t go into the technical details of spam tracing and spam fighting in detail here. That subject is covered more thoroughly in Chapter 19, Electronic Mail, starting on page 595. However, we will mention a few of the legal aspects.
The United States has laws, mostly at the state level, that have been used to successfully prosecute the senders of spam. In at least one case, the senders were required to pay for each piece of mail sent because the spam interfered with a business’s normal operations. Unfortunately, most recipients of spam just delete it and don’t bother to try to track down the spammer and retaliate.
ISPs do try to keep spammers from using their facilities, not only because of the bandwidth they use but also because the spam typically violates the appropriate use policy of their upstream provider and thus puts them in jeopardy of losing their own network connection.
You can find a useful page of links to spam-related resources