Management 101: Effective Communication

Geoff Halprin and Elizabeth Zwicky

Monday 11th August - 9:00am to 12:30pm

You may have noticed that being technically adept is not sufficient. You have to be able to deal with people: your fellow team members, your boss, your customers, the finance people, the legal department, and even upper management. You need them to do things for you (even if only by leaving you alone). System administrators, on the whole, find talking to people much more stressful and less productive than talking to computers. People do not operate by the same rules that computers do, and the process often seems random, irrational or incomprehensible.

This tutorial is about becoming a more effective system administrator through improved communication skills. We will help you understand how communication works, so that it becomes a tool you can use instead of a source of frustration.

In this tutorial, we examine the many facets of communication and introduce various systems, tools and techniques that you can employ to ease your stress and improve your ability to attain the outcomes you desire.

Topics include: Oral communication (effective listening, effective talking, presentations); Written communication (progress reporting, technical documentation, writing proposals, buy-vs-build evaluations, cost-risk evaluations, audit reports, journals); Understanding others (understanding various communities, conflict resolution, personality types); and Managing Upwards (Your relationship with your boss, status reports).

Who Should Attend:

System administrators who wish to become more proactive in managing their duties and learn tools and tips which will assist them to communicate more effectively with their managers, users and other important constituents and users of their services.

Building and Using WLAN Security Assessment Tools

David Ross

Monday 11th August - 9:00am to 12:30pm

You can pay thousands of dollars to review the security of your Wireless LAN or you can run up a few commonly-available tools and do a large portion of the work yourself.

This is an ENTRY-LEVEL tutorial, but does involve compiling linux kernels and modules. It gives a high-level overview of the current state of the art of IEEE 802.11 WLAN security, including the current technologies and their inherent problems. It discusses and demonstrates the deployment and testing of wireless network security in the home, SOHO, commercial or government environment.

While participants are welcome to just sit and watch, by far the most value for money will be for those participants who want to deploy the tools on their own laptops during the tutorial. To take advantage of this, participants must have a laptop with a minimum 20GB spare partition, preferably 30GB or more and preferably with Fedora 9 pre-installed, to make the most of the available time. You are welcome to use a VM or any other linux/BSD OS, but the tutorial works with Fedora 9 in a dual-boot environment, so to use anything else, you will need to be familiar with your particular system and kernel. These tools require a wireless NIC with an Atheros chipset. Once again, they may work with others but they won't work in the half-day we have for the tutorial. For a start, the packet injection will only work with a particular old revision of the madwifi drivers and so must use an Atheros chipset.

The tutorial covers the basics of IEEE 802.11 networks, the `a', `b', `g' and `n' modes of operation, as well as the IEEE 802.11i security enhancements. The tools we are building do not, at time of writing, work with IEEE 802.11n, but the ath5k developers are advancing in leaps and bounds to get IEEE802.11n fully functional. The tutorial briefly covers the differences between WEP, WPA, WPA2, IEEE802.11i, RSN and TSN. This is not a detailed presentation of media access protocols, but only enough to understand the differences in the transmission modes and their strengths and weaknesses.

Once we have built some commonly-available tools, the tutorial then demonstrates the use of these tools and techniques to ensure the security and practicality of any WLAN installation, including how a consumer-grade store-bought low-end Access Point can be more secure than badly configured commercial-grade equipment. These demonstrations shall include the free and not-so-free commonly available tools for all common platforms and any size of organisation.

David Ross is a Chartered Professional Engineer (Electrical) and IT security consultant with the ANTACS Group in Brisbane.  He is currently also undertaking a PhD in wireless network security, with the Information Security Institute at the Queensland University of Technology.  He has worked in the computer industry for 20 years and specifically in IT security for over half of that.  He also undertakes casual teaching with the Universtity of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology from time to time.  His consulting roles typically involve security infrastructure development, commissioning and review, as well as enterprise architecture and policy development for the finance, resources and government sectors.

Management 201: Effective Team Management of System Administrators

Geoff Halprin and Elizabeth Zwicky

Monday 11th August - 1:30pm to 5:00pm

As you grow in seniority a funny thing happens; you are expected to pass that wisdom onto others. You are given projects to run, teams to lead, apprentices to mentor, and ever larger budgets to manage effectively. The one thing, however, that you almost never given is management training.

Management, like any system, can be learned. There are tools, techniques and tips that you can call on to be effective in your "organisation facing" duties.

This tutorial examines many of the diverse areas of team management and provides you with a large set of insights, tools and tips in how to conquer this brave new world.

Topics covered include: The role of manager; New skills and tools (Meeting management, Consensus, Risk management); Managing your team members (Motivating people, Setting objectives, Delegation, Situational leadership, Coaching/Mentoring); Managing your team (Getting to know your team, Managing the team, Managing the workload); Managing system administrators (The workflow of system administration, SysAdmin productivity, Growing and keeping SysAdmins); and The HR lifecycle.

Who Should Attend:

System administrators who have found themselves (or are hoping, or anticipating with apprehension) being given responsibilities for "wetware systems" (i.e. other people).

Hiring Great Technical People

Tom Limoncelli

Monday 11th August - 1:30pm to 5:00pm

After reading many "interview horror stories" on thedailywtf.com Tom decided to put the interviewing tips from The Practice of System and Network Administration into a tutorial. This tutorial covers the process of interviewing and hiring technical people with a focus on the interview proess: from job description, to phone screen, to interview. This tutorial will save you, your candidates, and your team-mates time. Most importantly, it will prevent your company from
being the next "interview horror story."

Time Management for System Administrators

Tom Limoncelli

Tuesday 12th August - 9:00am to 12:30pm

Tom explains techniques for improving your productivity and increasing your efficiency. Imagine a world where your days are less stressful, more predictable, and you go home early. Don't have enough time to take this class? You definitely need to take this class! (Includes material from O'Reilly's "Time Management for System Administrators")

Topics include:

• Why typical "time management" books don't work for sysadmins.
• Email management
• What makes "to-do" lists fail, and how to make them work.
• How not to forget a user's request ever again!
• How to prioritize tasks so that users think you're a genius.
• Ways to have more time for fun (for people with a social life).
• How to leave the office every day with a smile on your face. 

MySQL Replication & Backup Strategies

Arjen Lentz

Tuesday 12th August - 9:00am to 12:30pm

An in-depth look at the methods available for MySQL replication and backups, for the purpose of disaster avoidance and containment. Which methodologies will allow you go stay online, or get back online as quickly as possible? This and more will be explored.

Help! Everyone hates our IT department!

Tom Limoncelli

Tuesday 12th August - 1:30pm to 5:00pm

Has your IT department or system administration team fallen into a hole and can't climb out? Users hate you, managers want to cut your budget, and nobody is sure what to do next? Useful for help-desk and desktop support groups, or anyone that interfaces directly with customers, this tutorial takes aim at fixing the most basic problems that occur time and time again. It is based on the newly released second edition of The Practice of System and Network Administration, by Limoncelli, Hogan, and Chalup.

Introduction to Dtrace

Paul Armstrong

Tuesday 12th August - 1:30pm to 5:00pm

This half day lab will give students an introduction to Dtrace, a system inspection tool available on Solaris, FreeBSD and MacOS X (Leopard).

It is aimed at sysadmins or developers who do not yet know Dtrace but wish to be able to use it to debug servers they manage or code they write.

At the end of this lab, students will have an understanding of the basics of the Dtrace language, how it can be used for both system wide analysis and single process analysis and some tricks and traps. The lab element will also provide students with some hands on time to solidify the concepts learned.

Students will be required to bring a laptop so they can SSH into a supplied Solaris machine.

Effective Change Management - Making System Integrity Easy

Geoff Halprin

Wednesday 13th August - 9:00am to 5:00pm

As a system administrator, you perform change management every day. Every time your finger hovers over the return key - that's risk management. Every time you apply a patch to your desktop before you apply it to production - that's change qualification. Every time you stay late to apply a patch out of hours - that's change scheduling. Whilst you may do it now, you have probably never considered the deeper aspects of what you do, and how you might do it better.

Of the many disciplines that contribute to mature system administration, one of the most important is Change Management. Change Management is the process of controlling change to a computing environment. It is a core meta-process, sitting above the domain tasks that comprise the actual change. Mastering effective Change Management, and making it second nature, is the difference between a novice and a mature system administration professional.

This tutorial examines the many aspects of effective change management; the process, the tactics, the tools and tips. Topics covered include: the basic change management process; building a change plan; regression planning and risk management strategies; change execution tools and techniques; managing an organisation's change pipeline; emergency changes and downtime conferences; and quality assurance across the change life cycle.

Who should attend:

System administrators who wish to learn how to better manage change and risk, and become more professional in their system management practices.

System administrators who are responsible for developing or managing their organisation's Change Management process; those who are frustrated by, and hoping to influence and improve their organisation's process.

Efficient Administration of Debian-based Systems

Alexander Zangerl

Wednesday 13th August - 9:00am to 5:00pm

Debian and especially its derivative Ubuntu have become fairly common Linux distributions. From an administrator's perspective, the main benefit of choosing Debian over other distributions is its rich and well-designed environment for efficient, ongoing administration of a computer system.

Debian has a long-established reputation for being a solid platform for server use, and in that role its features and quirks are quite well known to senior Unix aficionados. However, with recent developments Debian and Ubuntu have found an entrance to the desktop market as well.

Regardless of server or desktop, administrating a Debian box can be a very pleasant experience (even for very junior administrators) but without sacrificing efficiency or flexibility (for enterprise-scale deployments).

This tutorial aims to describe and demonstrate the main operational activities related to keeping a Debian-based system alive and healthy, with a focus on where and how Debian-specific administration features can make life easier for the admin.

The tutorial covers the way the best current practices for keeping systems consistent have been incorporated into Debian, and also discusses how the (almost) inevitable local customizations can be made to interface cleanly with Debian's View Of The World. The tutorial will also include slightly advanced topics like remote and/or unattended and/or automatic administration and roll-out activities and what mechanisms Debian provides in that area.

A brief outline follows:

• Why would you choose Debian?
• Isn't this just Yet Another Linux Distribution?
• What are the key differences between Debian and the rest of the pack?
  • free software
  • open development team
  • strict design guidelines
  • advanced package management
  • consistency efforts in all areas
• How does system administration benefit from these differences?
• For which type of user is Debian most interesting?
  • Debian on a server is a straight-forward choice
  • Debian (or Ubuntu) on the desktop: what is special?
• How to bootstrap a system initially
  • Debian-specific concepts
  • Ubuntu-specifics
  • packages, repositories and releases
  • the main steps to get your system up & running
• Efficient Administration: What's that?
• How do Debian's policies affect ongoing administration?
  • Why consistency is good
  • Where consistency is enforced
  • What mechanisms do we have to prod a Debian system
• Where do I find things?
  • things on your computer
  • software for your computer
  • packages, repositories and how/who we can trust
• What admin tools does Debian come with?
  • apt, aptitude, dpkg (the good, the bad, the ugly)
  • debconf magic
• Do What I Mean!
  • how to ensure that your config changes are not lost
  • basic preferences regarding the run-time enviroment, the Debian way
• Automate, Automate, Automate!
  • which repetitive chores are easily handled by a Debian box
  • how can we interface programmatically with Debian admin tools
• The Long View
• How to avoid reinstalling from scratch, ever
• Keeping up-to-date security-wise
• Herding Lots of Boxes: how to stay sane
• Stabilizing the Bleeding Edge: mixing and matching package sources
• I beg to differ: what to do when your Debian box disagrees with you
  • How to fool the package management system For Fun And Profit
  • How to recover from conflicts
  • How to coerce a Debian box into behaving, once and for all times
• Open-source Fanatics and Common Sense
  • What to do when Debian's Free Software Guidelines make you suffer
• Reboot, Reinstall, Repeat? No Way!
• Efficient Rollout of Debian-based systems
  • rolling out many similar systems is easy
  • keeping them resemble the same state is not too hard, either
• Dealing with many but dissimilar systems
  • non-image based methods like FAI
• How much interaction is necessary?
  • pre-configuration with debconf

The primary intended audience is (prospective) newcomers to Debian, but the tutorial will contain sufficient hidden gems to keep moderately seasoned Debian administrators from being bored. The only people likely not to benefit would be other Debian/Ubuntu Developers.