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From: jane@tolerant.UUCP (Jane Medefesser)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Administering a News system part time
Message-ID: <774@tolerant.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Oct-87 13:11:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: tolerant.774
Posted: Tue Oct 20 13:11:49 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Oct-87 23:28:35 EDT
References: <273@arnold.UUCP>
Organization: Slobbering Systems, Inc.
Lines: 37
Keywords: administrate questions hours

In article <273@arnold.UUCP>, dave@arnold.UUCP (Dave Arnold) writes:
> I recognize the following duties:
> 
> 1.	Create shell accounts as needed.
> 2.	Provide Netnews user documentation as needed.
> 3.	Provide technical support (Hey Dave, how do I send mail to somebody
> 	on DEC's Easynet?).
> 4.	Monitor nightly newsfeeds, make sure everything ran smoothly, enough
> 	disk space, etc.
> 5.	Fix problems with network/terminal servers to News system.
> 6.	Review UUNET bill.
> 
> That's about all I can think of.  I have no idea how much time all of this
> is going to take, but I'll take a stab at about 2 hours a day?

I administer the news at Tolerant part-time. Your guess is essentially
correct. 2 hours a day should take care of everything you listed above.
Actually, that's a pretty generous stab.  The routine administration
generally takes me about a half hour every morning. (monitoring disk usage,
ensuring all the cron jobs ran exit 0, etc.)   The nice thing about
administering the news part-time, is that if you get really swamped at the
office, you can set yourself up with a terminal & modem at home and do some
of the nit-picky stuff from home.

I think our installation is about average. We have 2 full feeds, one of
which runs ihave/sendme. We have 1 full downstream site.  We have local
exchanges with about 4 other sites. Assuming that everything is installed
correctly (THAT may take you some time...), once it gets running, it isn't
terribly time consuming at all. (just news, that is!! Full time
administration is another story!!!).

FYI- my *real* job here is Software QA. QA is not terribly demanding - it's
very flexible. I usually am able to drop whatever I'm doing to stomp out
fires, then pick up where I left off. And, I am able to do A LOT from home
when the need arrises. The two jobs compliment each other rather nicely.


(*real* jobs are what you get paid for!!)