Operations System Administration Network » First Do No Harm http://www.opssa.net OpsSA.net - SA wisdom and philosophy Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:46:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 SA Tenets – First, Do No Harm http://www.opssa.net/2009/04/sa-tenets-first-do-no-harm/ http://www.opssa.net/2009/04/sa-tenets-first-do-no-harm/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:00:04 +0000 Jim Sheafer http://www.opssa.net/?p=263 This is a continuation of the “SA Tenets” series of posts in which I discuss my beliefs about System Administration and work in general

First, Do No Harm

Yes, stolen from the popular misquote of the Hippocratic Oath. It’s important for SAs to remember, too.

In the heat of fixing the latest production issue, it is important to keep in mind that it is possible to make things even worse. So take a moment to decide the best action, consider what you may be forgetting under the pressure, and slowly and methodically fix the problem.

I once was reprimanded for not having a backup of our most important server. It ran NIS, DNS, pretty much everything for our local LAN. So I mounted a second drive and started a “dd” from the blank disk, over top of the only copy of the very important data… I wasn’t fired, but I did learn an important lesson.

The full list of my tenets can be found at the top of the site.

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