Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!uwvax!oddjob!hao!woods
From: woods@hao.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Forgeries: a suggestion for bringing them under control
Message-ID: <1133@hao.ucar.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 88 00:22:02 GMT
References: <1861@epimass.EPI.COM> <14276@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> <1129@hao.ucar.edu> <778@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 20

In article <778@brandx.rutgers.edu> webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) writes:
>If action X breaks the software, rather than fixing the software it is
>alot easier to announce that all users are forbidden to do action X.

  If action X happens to be important to the purpose of the machine, then this
is pretty bad system administration. On the other hand, if action X is
"playing rogue", then a system administrator, who typically is responsible
for lots of software subsystems, might be perfectly justified in saying
that "X is broken and no one has time to fix it". If attempts to do X,
due to the problems with X, interfere with other users trying to get work
done, then again I think any competent system administrator should forbid
users to do X. It's only "laziness" in the sense that the system administrator
is not willing to work a 60-hour week. You could just as easily blame this
kind of thing on management for not providing adequate support for their
machines. But most sites that I am familiar with have enough systems
administration staff for just a little more than the day-to-day activities,
if that. Sometimes practicality says that the limited amount of time
available to fix things is better spent on something other than X.

--Greg