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Questions tagged [documentation]

117 questions
66
votes
19 answers

How do you document a network?

I'm not sure how to ask this question, since I'm not in the field. Say you're a network admin and you leave your job. How does the new guy know where to start?
Esteban Araya
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48
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34 answers

How are you documenting your work, processes and environment?

Are you using a wiki format? If so, which product? (MediaWiki, Confluence, Sharepoint etc.) Have you create a knowledge base? (Problem/solution-oriented short documents.) What challenges do you find with creating documentation that works, so you…
user1804
27
votes
14 answers

If you got hit by a bus, would your company be in trouble?

At work, I'm the only IT guy (do it all, and do it now type guy) for the last 10 years. If I ever got hit by a bus they would be totally screwed. I've mentioned it several times to management/president type people, yet they ignore me. Too bad for…
user6848
23
votes
6 answers

Getting started with documentation

We haven't been doing any documentation at my workplace. I'm completely new to it and ask for some guidance getting started. I have a few questions: What are the essential documents that a sysadmin should write and maintain? And why are these so…
chickeninabiscuit
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17
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9 answers

Documentation As-A-Manual vs. Documentation As-A-Checklist

I've had discussions in the past with other people in my department about documentation, specifically, level-of-detail and requirements. In their view, documentation is a simple checklist of Y things to do when X things go wrong. I disagree. I…
Avery Payne
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16
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5 answers

How do I write man pages?

How do I write a man page? Where can I find a reference of all formatting codes? Are there any good tutorials on writing man pages? What is the most convenient way to write a man page? Should I enter it directly in a text editor? Are there WYSIWYG…
amarillion
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15
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4 answers

Looking for good documentation of odbc.ini and odbcinst.ini files on Linux

I saw partial information, old information, but nothing as good as the actual sample files with brief comments that I have locally. I need to understand the exact relationship between odbc.ini and odbcinst.ini. Superficially it is pretty obvious -…
Leonid
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15
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5 answers

How do you document windows server configurations?

I come from a Unix background where documenting the configuration of a service (email for example) could be as simple as grabbing a few text configuration files and a paragraph or 2 of explanatory text. Faced with documenting the configuration of a…
John
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15
votes
4 answers

IT Documentation with MediaWiki

We are looking for ways in which to further enhance our documentation and our ability to allow easy access to the information as well as editing the information. With these ideas in mind, we created an internal wiki based upon the MediaWiki…
John
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13
votes
6 answers

Where can I document useful things to know as a Mac sysadmin?

I've recently done some research on the directory service tools on the Mac (dscl, dsimport, dsexport), and would like to be able to document them somewhere for all to benefit (and perhaps where my work can be improved upon). I see no advantage to…
Clinton Blackmore
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13
votes
6 answers

free tool for datacenter documentation

Is there any free tools out there that can help to better document at datacenter, for information like servers in a rack, the group port it is connected to and etc?
Robert
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12
votes
2 answers

Anything Close to an NSA Guide for Securing RHEL 6

Some in our infrastructure group want to upgrade to start taking advantage of the new features in RHEL 6. In the past, I have relied on the NSA Guide (www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/os/redhat/rhel5-guide-i731.pdf) to secure RHEL 5 and CentOS 5…
theosophe74
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12
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7 answers

How to document linux server configuration?

I have about 20 linux servers which I need to document the configuration of. I do not mean the detailed configuration of services, but rather user accounts, databases, databases accounts, ip addresses, physical location, SSH port etc. etc. I know…
Michelle
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11
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4 answers

Industry Standards for Network Infrastructure Labeling

Are there any current industry standards IEEE, ISO, ANSI.... available that state how a buildings physical infrastructure should be labeled at the rack and jack and how the documentation should be laid out? I know there is IEEE Std 200, but that is…
Peter
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9
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5 answers

What is important to document in an active directory server?

Later this year I will be handing over support of my church’s active directory servers to someone else and would like to know what kind of information is important to document and share. Are there any good example documents that I could use?
Chad Snow
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