Re: System Administration Certification & Capabilities

[Pat Wilson <paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu>]

Andy Poling <andy@globalauctions.com> is the latest to say:

	> Sheesh.  This has gone from a discussion about whether certification
	> is a good thing into a discussion of what it means to be an SA.
	
	Which, as someone else pointed out, is kind of important.  If you cannot
	determine the latter, how can you do the former?

This is why the certification proposal that the Board is comptemplating
is a *baseline*.

There are many folks now teaching college undergrad courses in systems
administration - many (most?) use Evi's book as a guide.  It _might_ be
possible to construct an evaluation that indicates whether someone has been
exposed to concepts like filesystems (and fsck), user issues, common
security issues (why don't we keep passwords in /etc/password anymore?),
and basic networking stuff - this wouldn't mean that the person was
anything more than reasonably educated.  Certainly it won't measure
real-world skills (ok, you might be able to think about essay questions, or
hands-on practicals), but could indicate that someone who "passed" had at
some point been introduced to the basics.  Obviously, folks who teach these
courses for credit have _some_ way to tell whether the students are
learning anything...

Mind you, I'm not saying that we can actually achieve this.  OTOH, _having_
such a test would help folks just starting out as they try to figure out
what's important and anticipated that they know.  

I've set up a "FAQ-o-Matic" at 
	http://cobweb.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/paw/fom
with a subcategory of "what every sysadmin needs to know".  Anyone
can play (but don't be destructive, and don't be profane) - follow the
model question that's there.  If you've not used FAQ-o-Matic before,
you'll probably want to check out the user guide at
	http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jonh/ff-cache/2.html

The rest of the SAGE Advice FoM is also ready for input - it's still really
disorganized as I try to figure out how it makes most sense.  Feel free to
contribute, re-organize, or whatever.  If we _are_ going to certify by
testing knowledge, we need to have written that knowledge down; in any
case, having accumulated "wisdom" someplace will help us all.

Pat Wilson
paw@dartmouth.edu