Systems Administration Software

1. Develop a policy describing the services provided
2. Develop procedures to implement those policies
3. Write programs to automate those procedures

Automation increases customer satisfaction by allowing them to get things done themselves rather than having to ask someone to do it for them. It also frees the support staff for things that can't be automated, like answering questions and providing new services.

prod

prod (PROcess Daemon) continuously monitors the running processes and implements policies by renicing or killing processes and sending messages to users. Now I don't need to watch "top" 24 hours a day. I hear that Sun has come up with a product that does this sort of thing, but prod has been working for me for almost a decade, so I'm not in a hurry to switch.

answers

Why call or send mail to CETS with a question when you get the answer in just seconds yourself, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

clean-acct

This program goes through a home directory and suggests what files might be removed or compressed. When someone asks, "Why am I over quota?", clean-acct will patiently spend as much time as the person wants.

raisequota

It's 3:00 AM. It looks like you'll be able to make that 9:00 deadline. But you just hit your disk quota. Give up? Wake up a SysAdmin at home? No, just run raisequota.

mailcop

If mail is delivered directly into a person's home directory, then it will get lost if the person is over quota. If mail is delivered into a separate spool directory, it will get through even when the recipient is over their quota. But, if the spool fills up then no one can receive mail. mailcop reminds people to delete their old mail or save it into their home directory. If necessary, mailcop will move a person's oldest messages for them. This is better than quotas, because incoming mail is never lost.