Linuxcare: A User’s View: Dear Diary: System Log Book

“As anybody in this business will tell you, disaster planning
means thinking about and planning for the worst. Consider what you
would do if you simultaneously lost your hard drive and all your
backups. The rarity of such simultaneous disasters doesn’t seem to
stop them from happening every single day. Lulled into inaction
by the reliability of today’s hardware, we all drop the ball on
protecting ourselves. It was with these facts in mind that I
recently put together a project to document my systems. I started
with any administrator’s best friend: a system log book.“

“First, I needed a notebook that has pocketed dividers, the kind
that any college bookstore sells by the thousands. Since many of
the entries in this book will be short, I prefer one of the smaller
notebooks. The separate section is useful for dividing various
types of information. The pockets are handy for inserting computer
generated reports. A calendar is useful, too.”

“I established the following sections with an eye towards
recording all the vital system and configuration data necessary to
successfully administer my system: Hardware, Space Utilization,
Software, System Anomalies, and Future Planning.”

Complete
Story