I disagree with the notion that troubleshooting cannot be taught. However, teaching troubleshooting, diagnostic skills, and problem solving are a *very* different arena than teaching technical information.
One of the resources that I often turn to is a set of articles Alan Carter called "The Programmers Stone" where he talks about mapping and packing as two modes of thinking. Packing is the collecting of facts (i.e. here's how you boot...), mapping is the process of developing an understanding of how things interrelate so that you can go from facts you know to the ones you need to know but don't have yet (i.e. why isn't this system booting...) Here's a link to the articles: http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/ I think the focus of sysadmin research lately has been driving forward technical tools like cfengine and puppet very well to improve the methodologies of the technical side of sysadmin. But I think there's a lot of work to be done in exploring the social-science side of sysadmin: diagnostics, troubleshooting, user interaction. My guess is that there is probably research in other disciplines on teaching diagnostic skills and such that could be transferred into the sysadmin realm. But finding it and making it applicable is no small task. -- Christopher Manly Coordinator of System Architecture Division of Library Information Technologies Cornell University Library c...@cornell.edu<mailto:c...@cornell.edu> 607-255-3344 On Jul 15, 2010, at 9:48 AM, Brodie, Kent wrote: My personal theory on this is, the typical type of troubleshooting skills that a good sysadmin has, simply cannot be taught. It has to do with your personality, how you were raised, your inquisitive nature, your willingness to take risks, and so on. The *technical* tidbits, yes, can be taught (“ok, here’s how you boot a *nix system into single user mode to begin a rescue…”), but the above-mentioned investigative skills? You either got it, or you don’t. (My $0.02…) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent C. Brodie Department of Physiology (and) Human and Molecular Genetics Center Medical College of Wisconsin bro...@mcw.edu<mailto:bro...@mcw.edu> +1 414 955 8590 <ATT00001.c>
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