Users as we all know are the main reason for a systems admins life, they come in all shapes and sizes and all kinds of demeanor’s. Some are deferential some think rather naively that they can bully you and of course some don’t actually think. However as a systems admin you have to learn to work with the people who are the users of your systems. We have a nice group of users in the main, they will come and see you usually it’s a simple task – but sometimes it’s a simple user. Usually at that point things get difficult, the users that have only to use an application aren’t generally a problem but the users who have shell access they can be a very different proposition. As any systems administrator will tell you, when you think that you’ve made the system idiot proof – the management just goes out and upgrades the idiots.
The past few weeeks has provided several fairly fundamental examples of this, like the developer who recently typed “rm * .dat” and was rewarded with the error message “rm? .dat not found”. Most days there wouldn’t have been a problem, but when you’re trying to delete some .dat files from one of the main source code directories today there was a problem. Some checks on the main backup server caused a systems administrator headless chicken moment as this server didn’t seem to be in the backup schedule, however a quick call to operations did reveal that the backup on the server was to local tape.
On a system where you have a source code control system and the users of that system can log-in with enough privilege to delete files, killing the users is an option but won’t solve the problem in the long term – you’d just find that you’d have to have a regular cull of the users. Although the management team have a collective I.Q. approaching that of a pea-pod, they would in time become suspicious. They may well start ASCII the stupid questions, as a systems admin your only option would be to give them a stupid ANSI.