From: jsin@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Jonghoon Sin)
Subject: Confessions of a sysadmin (Was: Re: server instalation)
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 22:25:27 GMT

jch+@cs.cmu.edu (Jonathan Hardwick) writes:
>owen@jupiter.cse.utoledo.edu writes
>>   Just attempting a stealth installation of Netrek on a local server
>> here... is it at all possible if you DON'T have root priviledges?

As far as I know, you don't need root privileges to install a server,
but read on for this sysadmin's view.

>Don't do it.  Any competent sysadmin will notice the server and
>traffic within 24 hours of your starting it up.  He/she will then be
>pissed at you for trying to do it stealthily.  You'll get your
>knuckles rapped, the server will go away, and netrek will get a bad
>rep at your site. 

I may not qualify as a "competent" sysadmin, since I probably won't notice
it within 24 hours, but I do know that if the machine you're using is a
general use machine, all of the above bad things will indeed happen to you.

My current site might be unique in that I administer research computers 
which are "assigned" to a person on need-to-use basis.  He/She can do
whatever he/she wants to do as long as the research is done. I suspect
that most of today's netrek servers run on this kind of machines?  I don't
go around checking to see who is running what where; such things are left
up to the "owner" who will eventually notice any CPU intensive processes that
do not belong to them.  I act only when I'm told of such indiscretions.

But I used to work for much larger, school-wide, computing center where 
demands for resources greatly exceed the available computing resources. They
kept very close eye on what machines are used for what purpose.  They had
load-balancing mechanisms.  They run cron jobs every 15 minutes to see if 
any process has been running for more than a few minutes.  They have disk
quotas.  They have access groups for who logs in what machines.

If you're at such a site, you do not want to do anything stealth.  Such
sites are usually managed by a group of people, and at least one person in
that group is "competent" enough to find out in a jiffy, unless you are
really lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it).

They also have authority to report you to the Dean and recommend that bad
things be done to you.  At best, computer staff will be less than agreeable
if you ever want them to do something for you in the future.

>Better by far to be completely open with the sysadmin about it.  If
>you're trying to do it "stealthily" because your site has a no-games
>policy, question the no-games policy rather than blatantly breaking
>it.  

Good advice.  But cross your fingers and hope that your site admin is a
reasonable person.  I know of at least one admin who will not allow games
on public machines on philosophical (?) grounds.  (Although his viewpoints
have never been seriously challenged before, to my knowledge)

>If you get your sysadmin hooked on netrek *first*, of course,
>they'll probably set up a server for you...

Ahh, well. No, repeat after me, I'm not hooked on netrek. I'm not hooked 
on netrek. I'm not hooked on netrek. I'm not hooked on netrek...

I will, however, admit that I'm guilty of getting several grad students 
hooked on netrek.  I had a netrek server running on one of our fileservers 
for a short time, before calvin.usc.edu; then I shutdown my server and
told students to go play on calvin.  Most of them quit playing, realizing 
what time-sink netrek can be.  We're all adults here, right?  Three people
continued to play on calvin, and they all made admirals within few weeks.  
Of course, I myself didn't make admiral since I, unlike those three people, 
have a life and am definitely not hooked on netrek.   Gotta keep bread on
the table for the wife and three kids.

I would set up a server for you, but the machine that was "assigned" to me
is a lowly IBM RT, which doesn't have the horsepower to run a single client,
let alone a server.  Too bad, eh?

>All bets are off for incompetent sysadmins.  Your milage may vary.

Call me incompetent, but it was a blast watching LAR play the TWNN.  Several
students came over to see what was up, since the players were shouting like 
mad in the work area and generally proved disruptive to the community; when 
they saw *me* watching and appear to be involved in the game, they didn't 
complained about the noise level. It helped that it was very late friday
night, I suppose.  But I'm not hooked on netrek.

After the LAR/OTR match, I got an email from one of the professors who asked
what were all these people doing on her machine.  I told her about netrek
and offered to show her how to play; although she didn't get hooked on the 
game herself, she didn't particularly mind that I let others use her
machine.  Honesty is still the best policy.

So Owen, listen to Jonathan -- he speaks the truth!

(Rear) Sys Adm.
-- 
John Sin       <jsin@janet.ucla.edu>  ...!uunet,ucbvax)!seas.ucla.edu!jsin
UCLA EE Dept.  53-109 Engineering IV, Los Angeles, CA 90024  (213)206-7983