Re: [SAGE] Enterprise Documentation

["Adam S. Moskowitz" <adamm@menlo.com>]

Craig,

Congratulations -- you've discovered the "gotcha" of Gigabit Ethernet!

> 1) Unix kernel heirarchy
> 2) Device drivers
> 3) File system structure
> 4) Network issues
> 
> Is this stuff you learn from expierence or from a book.

Both, but a book is a good place to start. Actually, you mostly just
need to understand how device drivers are part of the kernel, not how to
write them, so it's really only three topics. For now.

Check out http://menlo.com/folks/adamm/prog-books.html; in particular,
McKusick et al. Bach, and Stevens (_TCP/IP Illustrated_). It's worth
reading Stevens' _Advanced Programming_ to get a feel for how programs
actually make use of kernel services; also, Comer and Tanenbaum give a
good overview of networking in general.

USENIX offers several good tutorials on these topics, although you may
have to go to the Annual Technical Conference as well as LISA to find
the right ones.

> I think I have reached a cross roads where howto's and books aren't enough
> anymore for me to learn.

You can always learn from books; you just need to read the right books.
The ones I suggested are considered "classics" in our field. Of course,
classes are often faster and easier -- but don't write off books. Not
yet.

One last piece of advice: If you *really* want to understand this stuff,
learn to program. In C, using Unix system calls, building TCP client-
server programs. You don't have to be good at it, but I think it will
give you the deepest and most complete understanding of Unix -- which
really means understanding the Unix kernel (and the network protocols
implemented therein), and that's the theoretical basis for nearly
everything we do in SysAdmin.

Good luck,
AdamM