Training System Administrators

These are some thoughts on training people to set up and administer SocialTools servers, based on some experience of training beginning sysadmins.

Don't underestimate the amount of knowledge required even to do basic maintenance on a Linux server. Experienced sysadmins tend to forget how much knowledge they take for granted even when doing simple things. Someone who has never used any Unix-like system before has to master a lot of new concepts, and practice them regularly, before being ready to take on system administration tasks. If they aren't already interested in computers, they're likely to get discouraged by having to learn so much before being able to do anything really useful.

Therefore, prospective sysadmins should be people who are interested in computers, who already use Linux every day, and who have access to a Linux machine other than a production server (e.g. their own machine at home) that they can learn on.

-- BenjaminGeer
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