You, too, can be a UNIX guru!!

[lmc at denelcor.UUCP]

With regards to the message asking whether an non-UNIX experienced system
administrator can easily become a UNIX guru, I can offer my own experience:

        I was a systems programmer with experience on MODCOMP Classics,
Modcomp II's, DG Nova's, Standard Computer IC7000's (*that* is a story in
itself), and XDS Sigma series (ah, now there was an architecture).  No DEC,
no IBM, no CDC, no micro experience at the time (1978).  I was drafted into
a project at a major aerospace company which had fore-ordained a VAX system
with UNIX for initial program requirements analysis and documentation, and
asked to tradeoff the UNIcies available, configure it and the VAX, and be
the system guru.  While I knew a fair amount about UNIX at the time, I had
no hands-on experience with it, even as a user.

        I specified 4.1bsd for a VAX 780, and did the procurement.  As part
of this, we bought one week of time from a well-known UNIX consultant to do
initial startup and to get our procedures in line.

        He came on Monday.  The software arrived on Tuesday, thanks to a
lot of effort from several people on the west coast.  We had the system
running by Tuesday evening, had most of the software running Wednesday
(including all of the Rand software - mh, the Rand editor, etc) and users
were on the system on Thursday.

        On Saturday, after the consultant left, both system disks (and the
drives) suffered head crashes.  The tape drive had been out of alignment
(it was brand new) and had been realigned on Friday, so all the backups
were bad.  Your classic Murphy.  It took a week for DEC to scrape together
enough heads to get two RM05s working again.

        When I finally got the system back, I managed to redo all the work
that we had done together over the weekend, with the help of the Berkeley
documentation set.  From then through the next two years, there was no
occasion to use the support services we bought, and only a few calls made
to the consultant to get some item or another straight.  That same project
(minus myself) now has two VAXs and a UNIVAC 1100/82 (running UNIX-1100
from AT&T), and a single associate level engineer as guru (although he is
somewhat exceptional).

	I also was required to teach rudimentary unix operations to most
of the 120 people (mostly engineers, some managers, secretaries, etc) who
had to use the VAX. In this I found the learn processor distributed with
4.1 to be a good starting point, after cleaning a number of errors in the
lessons out. I even wrote a set of lessons for the Rand editor.

        Now, they are not doing anything extraordinary with their systems;
just normal document processing (some huge nroff's), applications programs,
and internal mail.  Nor can I say that I am exceptional; I just happen to
have experience on a lot of (really) different kinds of systems.  The ease
with which I was able to perform my job, in the face of *no* UNIX or VAX
experience, sold me on UNIX (at least Berkeley's type) as the kind of
system on which I want to work.

        The moral: if you have any knowlege about operating systems and
system administration, you too can be a UNIX wizard.  I don't think that
can be said for a lot of operating systems.

        I'm sending this through the news.  In my ignorance I do not know
how to send something from our system to an address like:

		    ...sri-unix!FIGMO at kestrel

If someone would be so kind, I may learn something new. If anyone finds this
narrative instructing/amusing/apt-to-the-philosophy-discussion, so much the
better.

				      Lyle McElhaney
				      ...{hao|brl-bmd}!denelcor!lmc