direction for training

Matthew D. Fuller fullermd at over-yonder.net
Sun Jul 4 15:03:01 PDT 2004


On Sun, Jul 04, 2004 at 04:35:08PM +0100 I heard the voice of
Matthew Seaman, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> Consider, for example vinum(8).  To use vinum, you should understand
> concepts like "what is RAID 1", "hardware vs software raid" and
> "what are the pros- and cons- of using volumne management", none of
> which are FreeBSD specific.  Background knowledge should include
> what alternative RAID systems are available on various different
> OSes -- to just list a few of the software RAID systems: Solaris
> ODS, Vertias VxVM, vinum(8), RaidFrame, LVM, even if it doesn't go
> much beyond a one-liner describing each of them.
> 
> Such is the basic theory that anyone working on any sort of system
> would have to learn about first.  *BSD specific material then
> follows in, say, the practical details of using vinum -- how to
> build a RAID filesystem, installing the system using a mirrored
> root, recovery from a failed hard drive, interaction with GEOM under
> 5.x, etc.  That's not to mention related things like ccd(4) or
> atacontrol(8).

And, coincidentally (or not), these details are precisely the sort of
thing most of us would never bother to store in our heads, since it's
right there in the manpages or the handbooks or the websites and can
be pulled out in moments when we need it.  It's the background
knowledge and the context we need to "know", so we'll know where to
look and know how to understand the details of setting up one
implementation.


> Going beyond mere regurgitation of facts and starting to do useful
> problem solving requires integration of knowledge from many such
> modules.

And is terribly difficult to test on a small scale, in much the same
way that a map containing all the detail is the same size as the
territory.  This is why experience must, practically (wet dreams of
Personnel personnel to the contrary), always trump examination or
training or certification.  And, of course, if you COULD make the test
sufficiently hard and sufficiently realistic to substitute for
experience, you'd need the experience to pass the test, making it
useless for what seems to be the purpose of certifications as
alternatives to experience.

You might say there's a little problem there    8-}



-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd at over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/

"The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I
      haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"


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