[SAGE] Re: Unix sys admin "run book" documentation standards and templates

[Will Partain <partain@dcs.gla.ac.uk>]

Bruce Hamilton <bhami@pobox.com> writes:

> My department, which has nearly 20 Unix sys admins running about as
> many distinct administrative domains*, needs to put together some sort
> of "run book" documentation so that any admin can come quickly up to
> speed in any other admin's domain.
> 
> We need standards and templates that are comprehensive but that at the
> same time can be broken into manageable chunks so that a sys admin
> with an hour here or there can produce something useful toward the
> goal.

The Arusha Project (ARK) [http://ark.sourceforge.net/], for
which I am a developer, is a framework [*] for a
"collaborative sysadmin's log book" and is intended to
address the kind of situation you describe.

For example, you might declare the existence of an ARK
"team" for each administrative domain, perhaps 'email',
'firewalls', and 'tools'.  Then you would add a 'common'
team, for shared stuff.

The 'tools' people could then describe how/when they (say)
reboot a host in

   tools/host/reboot.xml

which would have as a "prototype" (base class?)

   common/host/reboot.xml

The strategy I would have would be to decrease what's in
'tools', 'email', and 'firewalls', and increase what's in
'common'.

For more info, see the web site; our LISA 2001 paper is
available via http://ark.sourceforge.net/papers-and-talks.html
(Or just ask.)

Will

[*] framework - it doesn't do what you want, but it might
help in that direction :-)