Why do I write these articles?
- for myself, so that once I have spent some time learning about something, I don't have to spend so much time when I come to do something similar again months or years later.
- to contribute material that will help those who come after as I have been helped by those who came before.
- so that when someone asks for help in a familiar area, I can refer them to something a little better that whatever I can manage to toss off the top of my head at the time and with less effort.
- to give clients a feel for my areas of system and network administration and for some of my attitudes and opinions.
- writing helps formalise my thoughts.
Assumed Background
At the very least, the reader should be comfortable with simple, standard command line tools and basic concepts of TCP/IP networking. The practical articles here are concerned with unixlike systems, since those are the tools I use. A background in administration of unixlike systems will help significantly. I am not targetting the complete beginner, but rather the generalist with relevant background who hasn't done $foo yet (or recently).
Other articles are more philosophical or theoretical; the ideas in these are likely to be more widely applicable. These articles will likely be found in the "Practice" or "Opinion" categories.