Demand for programmers who know system admin stuff

[techlists at phpcoderusa.com]

On 2022-01-07 17:57, Michael Butash via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> With the whole transition to libera.chat for irc and taking some time
> off from work, I've taken to hanging out there a bit, and this is a
> common thing I'm seeing in the #networking chat.  I'm seeing a lot of
> devs showing up in #networking asking for hosting/sysadmin stuff lots,
> ala "how to make apache do x", or "how do I automate my servers",

Seems asking "how to make apache do x" is more of an Apache config 
question. Not a straight up  programming skill per se.... and not 
programming either?

what kind of "how do I automate my servers" are you seeing.  I am a PHP 
developer so hosting automation is of interest to me.  I assume Pleask 
and ISPConfig fall into the server automation group as I would think 
cPanel does as well?


> which I find weird as that's sysadmin stuff normally (to me).  Oddly
> enough it's a pretty diverse crowd of folks that are kinda hybrids,
> done networking, done sysadmin, some are php/web devs, etc, but lots
> of system-centric stuff so it tends to work out for info seekers.  I
> suspect if I went into #sysadmin or like, they'd know nothing of
> networking, but #networking tends to come from diverse enough roots
> they do this stuff too, or did at one point at least.
> 
I'm wondering if the self-taught group may spend less time learning 
about networking.  I've been interested in Linux since around 1997 / 
RedHat 4.2 or was it 5.2.  And networking was of interest to me 
especially in the 80's as it was emerging.



> Moral is, there's a lot of crossover these days, and folks need to
> know some dev, some sysadmin, and some networking.  The line blurs,
> but people can't just be like "well, I only do mssql or active
> directory" anymore, they're replaceable with shell scripts.  I've done
> unix/linux, some dev, some dba, some windoze, everything between along
> with a strong focus and experience in networking, and it's paid
> dividends as I figure out what others don't as a result.
> 
> Comparing to the OSI model of networking, I work mostly layer 1-7 up,
> but most dev/app/sysadmins work layer 7 down, and really have no idea
> below around layer 5 or so, much to their detriment.  Best these days
> to be well versed across the board to some extent.  Take a ccna class
> online, even if you don't get the cert, you'll probably understand
> things a lot more to make your life easier.

I'm curious about what a developer might want to automate on a LAMP 
hosting server?

I've use command line PHP to create a script to backup my hosting 
website and data ... AWS S3.  I think I might have added something to 
cron... maybe it was that backup script.

What else might I want to automate?


> 
> -mb
> 
> On Fri, Jan 7, 2022 at 5:11 PM Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
> <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I've watched more than a few of NetworkChuck's videos.  Here he is
>> on a
>> programmer's channel talking about programmers learning networking.
>> 
>> I've always thought all web programmers have some Linux skills, and
>> maybe that is not what he is talking about.
>> 
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlN-vMF13QY&t=0s
>> 
>> How does this work for hosting admin?  Is there the same demand in
>> the
>> hosting admin niche?  If so what exactly should one know and what
>> types
>> of jobs can they get?
>> 
>> He mentions Python - is that the programming language to know for
>> server
>> automation?  He also mentioned Perl.  I thought Perl was/is dead?
>> 
>> I'm a PHP developer and find a lot of hosting tools such as Plesk
>> and
>> ISPConfig are written in PHP and use MySQL.
>> 
>> Your Thoughts?
>> 
>> Thanks!!
>> 
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