“It’s a sad fact that most system administration learning is
done in the minutes and hours after you say the words, “Wow. I’ve
never seen something get broken that way before.” Learning to be a
sysadmin means you discover how to fix all the problems that pop
up. When you find a problem you?ve never run into before, you
scramble to learn how to fix that, and you’re fine until the next
new Unidentified Weird Thing® happens. And so on.
“Fortunately, about 90 percent of Unix Web/mail/etc. server
problems can be discovered or fixed with just a few tools – much
like 90 percent of all household repairs can be done with a
screwdriver, a wrench or a baseball bat. Knowing just a few likely
trouble spots and troubleshooting tools can help you resolve a lot
of that unidentified weirdness without getting so frustrated you
want to rip the hard drives out of the computer and make
refrigerator magnets out of them.”
“The key here is that, unlike quantum mechanics or carburetors,
everything that goes wrong on a Unix system happens for a clearly
defined reason. While that reason may sometimes be freakish or
undocumented, it’s almost always one of a few fairly common
issues.”