From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Sep 2 09:59:04 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BEC3D16A4DE for ; Sat, 2 Sep 2006 09:59:04 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keith.phipps@gmail.com) Received: from wx-out-0506.google.com (wx-out-0506.google.com [66.249.82.225]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EDFB43D6E for ; Sat, 2 Sep 2006 09:58:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from keith.phipps@gmail.com) Received: by wx-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id i27so1298066wxd for ; Sat, 02 Sep 2006 02:58:57 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=g1xWEjAMOuOmAtQAnAfdT1Qz1m7vhu0VdxqjEmLxAq4bxF5U6SxlGUCsw9qqMp4EaksSe2DPC69qQDg70mWdq6O/UuZNH7pfXzaoRH/kNStdm5vleM59nNafrayZk+jTZazUyuhQ7tesCbs+xkwrE+W2ySPlV58E2KdTBtOW00Y= Received: by 10.70.21.10 with SMTP id 10mr1939011wxu; Sat, 02 Sep 2006 02:57:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ?192.168.1.107? ( [74.229.86.28]) by mx.gmail.com with ESMTP id 35sm2904801wra.2006.09.02.02.57.10; Sat, 02 Sep 2006 02:57:11 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <44F95580.5030603@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 02 Sep 2006 05:57:20 -0400 From: Keith Phipps User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.2 (Windows/20050317) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: Sparkling Brand New FreeBSD Admin X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 02 Sep 2006 09:59:04 -0000 Good Day, My name is Keith and I"ve just been promoted to our Unix SysAdmin at work. I'll be working with a team of guys in the Ops department but the majority are Windows Admins. I'm not completely lost when it comes to using *nix, I use it as my Desktop and know Slackware and Ubuntu fairly well. I've installed FreeBSD a few times on servers, but that's about the extent of my server knoweledge and BSD. My duties in the beginning are not going to be that complex, I'll be building out boxes, racking them, health checks, running backups, generating keys, etc.. However, soon after my promotion date (11th of September I start) I'll be given more and more boxes to manage. Most of our infastructure is built on BSD, so I'm going to have upwards of 40 appliances to manage and maintain. My questions really come down to this; I'll be working with 4.x and 6.1 boxes. Are there any global issues with them I should be concerned about, something you guys as admins have to deal with regularly. The boss also said something that confused me, said I'd need to make the builds and compile php, perl, and mysql into the Kernel. I've never done much Kernel work (much, lets start with any) but it's always been my understanding that with BSD if I wanted to install PHP, PERL, and MySQL on a box, I'd just pkg_add it. I've never heard of it actually being compiled in the kernel. Right now my biggest resources have to be google and the O'Reilly book "Essential Sys. Admin." but I'd like to have a reference guide more suited to only the FreeBSD platform. Any recommendations on this as well? Thanks for your time, -Keith