WYNTK: UNIX System Admininistrator

Tell the administrator what you tried.

If in your adventures you don’t solve the problem, send the administrator email describing exactly what you did — what you were trying to do, what happened instead, and the results of your investigations before you gave up. Spending an extra minute or two describing the problem in detail will pay off in a faster response from your administrator. Don’t be shy about telling your administrator about guesses that were incorrect, or clues that led nowhere. Any information is better than no information at all.

What can be fixed

	When there is something wrong on UNIX, you don’t always know. You can go a heck of a long time not knowing that this annoying thing you put up with every day can actually be fixed.
	--Linda Lamb

If it’s something you need fixed immediately, you can contact your administrator in person as well. But many administrators insist on email regardless. With email, administrators have a record of the complaint and any extra information that you may have passed on.

Users’ perspectives: Having a problem fixed or fixing it yourself

	When someone tries to fix a problem for me, I usually want to understand it. I don’t like it when someone just whizzes by with a bunch of commands and everything’s magic. I’d rather know how to fix it myself next time. The exception is when I’m on a deadline—the couple of days before a deadline, I don’t care about anything except getting it fixed.
	--Ellen Siever

	I’ve had a recurring problem with my X terminal. The first time it happened, I called Glenn frantically. “Glenn! I’m dead!” Glenn traced the whole connection into the phone room and found that a wire had become unplugged. He plugged it back in. The second time, a day or two later, I also called the sysadmin immediately. “Glenn, I’m dead again.” Glenn found the problem more quickly this time and fixed the wire again. The third time, I followed along when Glenn went into the phone room and watched as he jiggled and pushed at the wire. Now I’m familiar with that old wire. If I lose my connection, I jog right into the phone room and push in number 33. If a problem is consistent, I prefer to learn to fix it myself. It’s easier. It saves me time. I don’t have to hassle my sysadmin. That way, I save my requests for when it really counts.
	--Rebecca Kondos

	When I have a problem, the first thing I do is look back in my history and see what I did, since most of the time it was something I did myself. I’d make sure I was in the right directory. I’d look in some books a little. And then if I haven’t figured it out by myself, I’ll ask someone. Usually, when I ask, I preface it with “I’m pretty sure this isn’t something I can take care of myself, so can you take a look?” I like to see how someone else fixes the problem. And I like it when they explain how things work. If I understand how something works underneath, then the stuff on top makes more sense. It used to be when I first started that most of the time it was something that was my fault, but lately my percentage has been going up. Now 80% of the time it’s someone else’s problem and 20% of the time it was something I did. When I first started, it was more like the other way around. It makes me sort of sickly happy when it isn’t something I did myself.
	--Nicole Gipson