Administering systems

What is system administration?

Every system should have at least one person in charge of system maintenance and operation. Such a person is called a ``system administrator''. It is the responsibility of system administrators to ensure the smooth operation of the system and to perform a wide variety of tasks that require special privileges.

Among other things, a system administrator is responsible for:

Bringing the system up and down for maintenance.
Making certain that adequate backups (regular copies of files on the system) are made and stored for future use.
Handling problems related to use of limited computer resources (disk space, number of processes, and so on).
Alleviating system communication (network) stoppages due to failed connections.
Applying operating system updates and maintenance fixes.
Providing general support to users.

NOTE: This is only a representative set of tasks; refer to ``Summary of system administration tasks'' for a complete list that includes cross-references to the appropriate documentation.

Depending on the size of the system and the number of users on it, system administration can be anything from a once-a-day task to a full-time job. Even if the system is small, the system administrator should consistently perform each required maintenance task, because sloppy maintenance can adversely affect system performance.

You can choose to have a single system administrator or designate one or more users as ``system owners'' that can run any SCOadmin application. You can even restrict administrators to one area of system operation. See ``Assigning authorizations'' for more information.