In this volume, key contributions to the discipline are presented through
the words of the authors who contributed them. The forum for this thread of
ideas has been the USENIX Association's LISA conferences, originally the "Large
System Administration" conference. These conferences have played, and continue
to play, a unique role in cementing a relationship between researchers and working
network and system administrators.
Computer scientists,engineers, system administrators and students will each
find something of permanent value here. No matter what developments the future
brings, these words represent important conceptual foundations of the field.
These papers are reprinted here for the first time in a convenient form, along
with a commentary reflecting on their significance within the discipline as
a whole.
Introduction.
Chronology.
Sub-cultures of System Administration.
Trust and delegation.
Key to Selected Papers.
A Case Study of Network Management (M.K. Fenton).
Balancing Security and Convenience (V. Jones and D. Schrodel).
Creating an Environment for Novice Users (J.M. Smith).
Priv: An Exercise in Adminstrative Expansion (E. Heilman).
Experiences with Viruses on UNIX Systems (T. Duff).
Site: A Language and System for Configuring Many Computers as One Computing
Site (B. Hagemark and K. Zadeck).
Tools for System Administration on a Heterogeneous Environment (R. Finkel
and B. Sturgill).
Disk Space Management Without Quotas (E.D. Zwicky).
spy: A Unix File System Security Monitor (B. Spence).
Uniqname Overview (Doster, Leong and Mattson).
The Depot: A Framework for Sharing Software Installation Across Organizational
and UNIX Platform Boundaries (Mannheimer, Warsaw, Clark and Rowe).
Using expect to Automate System Administration Tasks (Libes).
Policy as a System Administration Tool (Zwicky, Simmons and Dalton).
Managing Program Binaries in a Heterogeneous UNIX Network (Anderson).
We Have Met the Enemy, an informal Survey of Policy Practices in the Internetworked
Community (Howell and Satdeva).
Torture-testing backup and Archive Programs: Things You Ought to Know but
Probably Would Rather Not (Zwicky).
Is Centralized System Adminstration the Answer? (Schafer).
Customer Satisfaction Metrics and Measurement (Kubicki).
Majordomo: How I Manage 17 Mailing Lists Without Answering "request" Mail
(Chapman).
Automated System Monitoring and Notification with Swatch (Hansen and Atkins).
Computer System Performance Problem Detection using Time Series Models (Hoogenboom
and Lepreau).
Horses and Barn Doors: Evolution of Corporate Guidelines for Internet Usage
(Hambridge and Sedayao).
Towards a POSIX Standard for Software Administration (Archer).
Open Systems Formal Evaluation Process (Keves).
Customization in a UNIX Computing Environment (Wills, Cadwell and Marrs).
The Amanda Network Backup Manager (da Silva and Gudmundsson).
The System Administration Maturity Model - SAMM (Kubicki).
Towards a High-Level Machine Confugration System (Anderson).
Monitoring Usage of Workstations with a Relational Database (Finke).
A Site Configuration Engine (Burgess).
Availability and Latency of World Wide Web Information Servers (Viles and
French).
Metrics for Management (Hogan).
Decentralising Distributed Systems Administration (Hogan, Cox and Hunter).
SLINK: Simple, Effective Filesystem Maintenance Abstractions for Community-Based
Administration (Couch).
An Analysis of UNIX System Configuration (Evard).
Wide Area network Ecology (Meek, Eichert and Takayama).
Boostrapping an Infrastructure (Traugott and Huddleston).
Computer Immunology (Burgess).
A Visual Approach for Monitoring Logs (Girardin and Brodbeck).
Accountworks: Users Create Accounts on SQL, Notes, NT and UNIX (Arnold).
Deconstructing User Requests and the Nine Step Model (Limoncelli).
A Retrospective on twelve years of LISA Proceedings (Anderson and Patterson).
It's Elementary, Dear Watson: Applying Logic Programming to Convergent System
Management Processes (Couch and Gilfix).
Theoretical System Administration (Burgess).
An Expectant Chat About Script Maturity (Couch).
Peep (The Network Auralizer): Monitoring Your Network With Sound (Gilfix
and Couch).
Tracing Anonymous Packets to Their Approximate Source (Burch and Cheswick).
