Friend is interested to learn Linux Sys admin, will it help for his Career 4670

Most of us recognize that we're not "elite kernel hackers;" I think his statement of there being a "mbuttive shortage of *good* Linux-Unix people" seems pretty fair.

If Linux is being used, then one of the things that can help separate those that "have a high comfort level" from those that are complete poseurs is the notion of having a reasonable comfort level with building the kernel.

Someone who's afraid of even trying to build a Linux kernel from source doesn't, to my mind, have much comfort level with Linux, since a kernel is what Linux actually is...

I could hardly disagree more totally.

Sysadmins are responsible for documenting *the shape of the systems*.

- A "tech writer" will not have access to the systems required to prepare the systems documentation.

- The "tech writer" won't have pbuttwords to the Cisco routers, or to other firewall appliances.

- The "tech writer" doesn't decide what the host names will be.

These are all sorts of things which the sysadmins configure and manage.

We're not talking here about writing enduser documentation on how to use some internal company application, but rather the "3AM Unhappy Sysadmin Guide To Fixing The Mail Server."

My group (the database admins) has a whole series of "3AM Unhappy DBA Guides" to various problems that have been known to arise. This is documentation by DBAs for DBAs. Subsbreastute "sysadmin" as needed... -- If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.