>> : Iam finding it very hard to even get looked at by >> : empolyeers.Basically i have made a career change 1 1/2 years ago >> : from being a factory worker to supporting pc's (sadly win9x/win2k >> : for a uk comapany,name withheld to protect my job :-), at least it >> : got my foot in the door).
Hmm, my experience (ok, not just mine, that goes for at least ~ 40 people I know personally, in a small country like .at) your best bet would be looking for a job at an ISP. Preferably somewhat less $VBC-like than AOL or T-online. If you don´t mind doing 1st-level-helpdesk for a year or two, this gets not only your foot in the door, but puts you also in very close proximity to the local gurus. And believe me, nothing´s more valuable than being on good terms (and preferably only one cubicle away from) the local gurus. Cluons (see jargon) tend to emanate from them in high concentrations ;-) >> Try to leverage that foot in the door, can you work in a cheap linux >> box to do firewalling, mail, fileserving, intranet webserver, VPN ? >> >> Be creative and see if there's anything you can do with old machines >> going out of service or a really low end PC, so it won't cost your >> employer much if anything, and then you'll have "official" linux admin >> on your CV If you already know enough for a basic file-/print-/web - server and masquerading box, I think it would be more profitable (and not only to your knowledge level) to aim for very small businesses and admin their firewall-boxes in your spare time. I did (and even do) that for some years now, and it doesn´t exactly look bad on your CV: "adminning $NUM servers for $NUM customers in spare time" >Also try to learn at home as much as possible. Networking, mailing, >firewalling, etc. I would especially take care of things like volume >management, high availability, shared filesystems (Coda, GFS) and >other enterprise features. If you have knowledge in this fields, no >matter on which flavor of unix, you can pick out your >employer. Scripting is a must, I would recommend python. Try to >automate with failure checking and everything needed in a production >environment. That´s self-explanatory, AOL. >> : Also I would be inclined as Iam to start playing with something like >> : Solaris as its more Unix based than say debian/rh/mandrake (if you >> : know what I mean) Doesn´t really matter, if you know your way ´round Debian and some of the more horrible (hey, all software sucks) distributions (did anyone say SuSe!?) you´ll catch up with the admin-side of Slowlaris over a single weekend. Been there, done that. >> All my "important" servers are Sun machines running Solaris, so yes >> it's important to know. <...> I'd go so far as to say the >> difference between RH and Debian is greater than the difference >> between Debian and Solaris. <sigh> I second that. Except for AIX[0]. >> That said, they're running Solaris because of the Sun hardware, and >> Sparc Linux isn't quite where we'd need it to be. > >Here the same. No one decides to use solaris, but to use SUN hardware. obSunHardware: just got a shiny (well, dusty, actually) SS1 for playing ´round (I adminned a Debian/Sparc-box a while ago, but need to get some more recent hands-on-experience), fscking micropolis-harddrive, in the docu there are jumpers for SCSI-terminations, but all hardware sucks, too, so they aren´t present physically. Anyone in .at-land who could provide me with a external SCSI- (8bit, single-ended) terminator? 0: to quote a fellow cow-orker: AIX: Space animals ate my UNIX compatibility! cheers, &rw -- -- "It's 106 light-years to Chicago, we've got a full chamber of anti- -- matter, a half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing -- visors." "Engage." -- Paul Tomblin in asr ----
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