On Fri, 1 May 2009, Damien Hull wrote:
> Okay, maybe the commands are there but we don't use them any more. Things like "pwconv". That was on the old test. There were one or two commands I couldn't find on my Ubuntu system. They might have been red hat commands.
It's true that most, if not all, distributions use shadow passwords by
default now. But, as part of the shadow suite, it's extremely important
that you a) know what software is installed on your system, b) why they're
there, which should lead you to c) how it works (shadow passwords
specifically) and they benefits they provide.
And, you never know if you might be called into to add a new workstation
into a legacy NIS network, in which case knowing pwunconv, et al, is
essential.
As for the RH commands, if they were teaching the little distro-specific
helper scripts instead of the actual commands doing the work in the
background, they should be flogged.
> There were some questions on XFree86. I would be surprised if any of the config tools were still around. I can't remember any off the top of my head.
The X stuff is different for almost every variation of UNIX out there, and,
of course, Linux predominantly uses the Xorg fork of XFree86, so we'd have
to expect change.
Overall, though, you have to take a step back and marvel at the longevity of
what we have in UNIX and UNIX-like clones like Linux. If you hone your
skills on the UNIX CLI you have well over thirty years worth of operating
systems you can work on and be productive on immediately. For that matter,
you can essentially reverse engineer the particulars of any UNIX variant or
clone to figure out the administrative tool set as well. This knowledge is
portable and long lasting.
No other operating system family can claim that level of continuity. Hell,
look at Microsoft. Things were familiar and stable (well, in terms of the
command set) during the DOS days, but all bets were off from WinNT 3.51 and
on. Every major incarnation found different places to hide the same
functionality, with new interfaces for half of it.
Not so in our world. And thank goodness, I'm getting too old to learn
another incarnation of the freaking control panel. Give me a shell and vi
and I'll have the damn thing doing what I want in short order.
--Arthur Corliss
Live Free or Die
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Received on Fri May 1 20:22:47 2009
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