Æleen Frisch has been a system administrator for over 15 years, tending a plethora of VMS, UNIX, and Windows NT systems. Currently, she looks after a very heterogeneous network of UNIX and Windows NT systems. In 1991 she wrote Essential System Administration, a book that has become the bible for UNIX system administrators. In January of this year O'Reilly published her second and third administration books, Essential Windows NT System Administration and Windows NT Desktop Reference. O'Reilly web site editor Allen Noren asked AEleen how she became a system administrator.
Frisch: Initially, I traded computer time for administrative duties on a VAX in college. In my first paid job, I administered four VMS VAXs supporting Intergraph CAD-CAM work stations. That's also how I became a system administrator.
Since that time I’ve learned various operating systems because some job or client needed me to. Several of my clients are software developers and they tend to be one-of-everything computer shops, which is why I became interested in the differences between UNIX versions. Eventually those clients got interested in NT in terms of their software products, and I needed to learn NT because they were going to have NT machines.
Noren: So your interest in NT came out of necessity?
Frisch: Yes. I’ve always worked places where they had both Windows and UNIX and other systems, so when NT first came out in 1993, I was curious. I looked at it for about fifteen minutes. I absolutely hated it and ran screaming from the room.
Noren: Why?
Frisch: It was terrible. It was so unreliable and things were poorly implemented. You couldn’t get anything done. So I didn’t look at NT again for about two and a half years, until the second half of 1995, before version 4. Version 4 was what got a lot of my clients to port to NT. So we started talking about NT when we heard version 4 was coming out. We got the machines in-house and integrated them into the existing networks.
Noren: I hear people in the UNIX community disparage NT out-of-hand. What do you say to those people?
Frisch: First, I say, "People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones". Beyond that, sure, there’s a lot of stuff to criticize about NT, and there is a lot to criticize about UNIX as well. I suppose I'd say, "Yes, of course, you're right", and at the same time I also say, "You don’t have to like it but you may have to work with it. So, hold your nose and make the best of it.
Noren: What are the differences between the two operating systems?
Frisch: There are huge philosophical differences driving the development of NT and UNIX. These are deeply held, (and not necessarily articulated) core assumptions about who a user is likely to be, what a user is capable of doing, how much help a user needs, how much freedom a user ought to have, what sort of architecture the system is going to be running on, what kinds of applications are likely to be used; whether or not the operating system should be extensible, and on and on. All those assumptions and beliefs affect technical decisions and the design of things from utilities down to the kernel.
With NT, the designers tend to think: we know how you want to do X, and here’s the tool to do it. If that is in fact what you want to do, NT works great. But if you want to do something slightly different, it can be very hard or impossible because not much flexibility is built into the tools. Take adding users: The NT tools are not designed to add ten thousand users.
UNIX tends to be more flexible in many cases. People know that a tool can be used differently than its designer envisioned, and there are often several ways to get a job done.
Noren: How do you add ten thousand users in NT?
Frisch: There are several solutions: You use the Resource Kit tool, you get a third-party tool, or you use a Perl script.
Noren: So Perl is becoming important with NT?
Frisch: It is to me and the people I know. I use a combination of Perl, commercial products, and freeware. There are a lot of things I need to do differently or more efficiently than with NT's standard tools, and Perl lets me do that.
Noren: And how would you add thousands of users on UNIX?
Frisch: There are tools provided with some UNIX systems that can handle it. Things also tend to be more scriptable in UNIX than they are in NT. But it's true that there is no one solution that allows you to add ten thousand users to any UNIX system. There are some products that will work on most systems, but not all. We need to keep in mind that "UNIX" is a plural thing.
Noren: What were some pleasant surprises when you first began working with NT?
Frisch: The first time, nothing. But more recently, several things. Network configuration is easier; it’s nice having a graphical interface to DHCP, DNS, and all those layers of network configuration files. I also think resource sharing, especially among NT systems, works pretty well. File level security is a lot better on NT because NT has access control which a lot of UNIX variants still don’t.
Noren: What are the big problems people face when moving to NT?
Frisch: First of all, it is a new operating system. Even if you’re a crack UNIX system administrator, you’re suddenly a beginner again with NT. It’s frustrating and annoying. It doesn’t take long to get up-to-speed, but it takes a little while. There are those philosophical differences I mentioned, so it takes a while to figure out how to ask the question that you need the answer to, in a language that NT understands. The answer may not be in the place in the manual that would be obvious to you. For example, it takes a while to figure out that NT has a completely different view of what a multi-user operating system is than UNIX does. But it’s relatively unusual for people to talk about those differences.
Noren: What usually happens once the crack UNIX system administrator is into NT?
Frisch: The next thing that happens is you get frustrated when you can’t do things you’re used to doing easily in UNIX. You start looking for solutions, and those are usually third-party solutions. There is an amazing amount of NT freeware available. Pretty much anything you’re used to using in UNIX has an NT version.
Noren: What is the importance of free software to the NT market?
Frisch: It’s how you get NT to do the stuff it won’t do by default.
Noren: Robert Denn, one of O’Reilly’s NT Editors, said that he expects to see Microsoft continue to make headway in the "enterprise" market, in large part at the expense of legacy mainframe systems. Do you agree?
Frisch: It depends what he means by "legacy mainframe systems". Let’s keep in mind what percentage of computers are already Windows systems. It’s an enormous percentage, and Microsoft is going to build on that. But if he’s talking true supercomputer level applications, than there is not much to worry about with NT at this point. Systems that run NT may be fast and multi-headed, but they’re seldom true supercomputers, and NT is missing some features that supercomputer applications use. On the other hand, if you have a big UNIX box just for supporting lots of interactive users, then yes, that is a very vulnerable market.
Noren: What do you think Microsoft will have to do to achieve the success they envision for NT? Do you think they'll pull it off?
Frisch: I’m nervous about predicting the future. That question really has two aspects: Is it possible for Microsoft to do it? Absolutely. Will they do it? That depends on what they do and what other companies do, and that’s much harder to predict. And we need to keep in mind success is not always about quality. The best operating system doesn’t always win.
Noren: What are the biggest needs users will have for information about NT over the next couple of years?
Frisch: There are two classes of NT users. There are migrating users who are experienced computer users. They are going to need information that tells them how to do things that they are used to doing--how do I do it under NT or how do I make NT do it if it’s not something that’s done by default. It’s technical information about how to do common tasks in the NT environment.
Then there is the other class of people who are coming up from Windows who, if Microsoft is going to have true success, will eventually have to go to NT. They need basic education about what an operating system is, and why things they could ignore under Windows are important under NT, etc.
Noren: What is your favorite operating system?
Frisch: It depends on what I’m doing. There are things that UNIX does better than anything else and there are things that NT does better. And there are things that VMS does better than either of those. But the reason that we are using UNIX instead of VMS is based on some business decisions that Digital Equipment made. Frankly, intangibles like these are often more important than anything else in determining market success.
Noren: If you could only have one operating system, what would it be?
Frisch: If I only had one system I’d be very unhappy. I do a lot of desktop publishing and I do that with NT. I just finished production for a book in Japanese, and you can only do that on a Mac. And then I’d be very, very sad if I couldn’t have a LINUX machine. They’re a lot of fun. And when I want to run some large computational chemistry simulation, I want the fastest box I can get my hands on, whatever it happens to be running.
Noren: Last question, what books are you working on next?
Frisch: I have a novel in progress. I have about thirty pages so far. I also want to write a beginning programming book for kids, about 10-12 year olds. These are both things that I’ve had in the pipe forever and now may actually have time to do.
