222 System Administration other operating systems, Unix makes these tasks more difficult and expen- sive than other operating systems do. The thesis of this chapter is that the economics of maintaining a Unix system is very poor and that the overall cost of keeping Unix running is much higher than the cost of maintaining the hardware that hosts it. Networked Unix workstations require more administration than standalone Unix workstations because Unix occasionally dumps trash on its net- worked neighbors. According to one estimate, every 10-25 Unix worksta- tions shipped create at least one full-time system administration job, making system administration a career with a future. Of course, a similar network of Macs or PCs also requires the services of a person to perform sysadmin tasks. But this person doesn’t spend full time keeping everything running smoothly, keeping Unix’s entropy level down to a usable level. This person often has another job or is also a consultant for many applica- tions. Some Unix sysadmins are overwhelmed by their jobs. date: wed, 5 jun 91 14:13:38 edt from: bruce howard bhoward@citi.umich.edu to: unix-haters subject: my story over the last two days i’ve received hundreds and hundreds of “your mail cannot be delivered as yet” messages from a unix uucp mailer that doesn’t know how to bounce mail properly. i’ve been assaulted, insulted, frustrated, and emotionally injured by sendmail processes that fail to detect, or worse, were responsible for generating various of the following: mail loops, repeated unknown error number 1 mes- sages, and mysterious and arbitrary revisions of my mail headers, including all the addresses and dates in various fields. unix keeps me up for days at a time doing installs, reinstalls, refor- mats, reboots, and apparently taking particular joy in savaging my file systems at the end of day on friday. my girlfriend has left me (muttering “hacking is a dirty habit, unix is hacker crack”) and i’ve forgotten where my shift key lives. my expressions are no longer reg- ular. despair is my companion. i’m begging you, help me. please.

Keeping Unix Running and Tuned 223 Paying someone $40,000 a year to maintain 20 machines translates into $2000 per machine-year. Typical low-end Unix workstations cost between $3000 and $5000 and are replaced about every two years. Combine these costs with the cost of the machines and software, it becomes clear that the allegedly cost-effective “solution” of “open systems” isn’t really cost- effective at all. Keeping Unix Running and Tuned Sysadmins are highly paid baby sitters. Just as a baby transforms perfectly good input into excrement, which it then drops in its diapers, Unix drops excrement all over its file system and the network in the form of core dumps from crashing programs, temporary files that aren’t, cancerous log files, and illegitimate network rebroadcasts. But unlike the baby, who may smear his nuggets around but generally keeps them in his diapers, Unix plays hide and seek with its waste. Without an experienced sysadmin to ferret them out, the system slowly runs out of space, starts to stink, gets uncomfortable, and complains or just dies. Some systems have so much diarrhea that the diapers are changed automat- ically: Date: 20 Sep 90 04:22:36 GMT From: alan@mq.com (Alan H. Mintz) Subject: Re: uucp cores Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix.sco In article 2495@polari.UUCP, corwin@polari.UUCP (Don Glover) writes: For quite some time now I have been getting the message from uucp cores in /usr/spool/uucp, sure enough I go there and there is a core, I rm it and it comes back… Yup. The release notes for SCO HDB uucp indicate that “uucico will normally dump core.” This is normal. In fact, the default SCO instal- lation includes a cron script that removes cores from /usr/spool/uucp. Baby sitters waste time by watching TV when the baby isn’t actively upset (some of them do homework) a sysadmin sits in front of a TV reading net- news while watching for warnings, errors, and user complaints (some of them also do homework). Large networks of Unix systems don’t like to be