my rejected sysadmin toolbox
A list I wrote for Linux.com's Sysadmin Toolbox column was politely rejected for not being related to Linux enough. I think it's a good list regardless, and decided to post it here.
12" Powerbook G4
It's small and versatile and can slip right into my backpack. At home I use it with a larger monitor but I can still curl up with it in the corner of some server room.
Excel and vi. Dreamweaver and nmap. With a beautiful GUI and tons of programs to work with, this is the ultimate SysAdmin machine.
Quicksilver
Quicksilver is hard to describe. One of the tag lines on the website is "Wei Wu Wei - Act Without Doing" -- and that's exactly what this program allows you to do. With no mouse movement and almost no effort, I can move a file, email an attachment, upload something, or simply launch a program. I never use icons to start programs anymore; nowadays I type "command-command TERM" to open the Terminal or "command-command STI" to open Stickies.
RDC Menu
One of the quirks with Microsoft's official Remote Desktop program for OS X is that you can only have one instance running. RDC Menu fixes this by allowing as many as you want and giving you a nice little icon at the top of the screen to launch more.
Terminal
I've tried iTerm but still prefer the standard OS X Terminal. command-n spawns a new shell while command-` cycles through the open ones. With the white-on-black color theme and a partial transparency, I'm good to go.
UltraVNC
Anyone with enough Windows Administration under their belt has run into at least one program that must run in the foreground of the console. Although Remote Desktop is much nicer to work with, it can be really flakey when accessing the console. VNC is the best solution here and UltraVNC is the most modern package (in my opinion, of course).
FastPush
It's annoying enough to have to install another remote access program on top of Remote Desktop, but to actually sit through an installation wizard? That's just crazy talk. FastPush is a set of scripts that will push a VNC installation out to a remote server via a DOS prompt. I've seen other programs that do this same thing, but FastPush was the first one I used and I've stuck with it since.
Robocopy
Yeah, that's right: robo copy. Goofy name but a great utility. It's an official Microsoft program you can find on any Server Resource Kit and works wonders for network copying. Something as simple as this:
robocopy \\server\share d:\backup /MIR
will recursively mirror (including permissions) everything on the specified share to the destination folder.
Active Directory Janitor
Sometimes I forget to move newly-added computers from the Active Directory Computers folder to their specified OU. This builds up over time and eventually I'm stuck with a long list of computers and have no clue where they go. Active Directory Janitor will scan all Windows Computers in your domain and return a lot of useful information. Just print the results, hand them to an Intern, and have them hunt the computers down.
It's pretty expensive, but I think it's well worth the price -- after all, cleanliness is next to godliness.
Scripting
Scripting is a very important topic for System Administrators. I think an Administrator should know at least one scripting language fluently. Hours of searching for a program or utility to accomplish a simple task can be saved by spending 15 minutes writing a quick script (or vice versa -- how does that saying go? Laziness is spending three hours writing a script for a three minute job?).
I use three languages: Perl for quick duct taping, Python for when I'm trying to be clean and elegant, and VBScript for Windows. I've written scripts to add email addresses, make backups, replicate backups, mapping drives and printers, and tons more.
Nothing beats that feeling when you realize you don't have to do some annoying task anymore because you automated it.
daapd
Work without music? Never! daapd scans a directory of music files and allows DAAP-enabled programs (like iTunes) to play them remotely. Anywhere I go, as long as I'm connected wirelessly, I can listen to my whole music collection stored on my fileserver.
