Your System Administration Journals

Reasons for administration journaling
- See Some General SysAdmin Principles - Documentation.
What goes in the journal?
- The code of useful aliases, shell functions or scripts that you've written to manage your systems.
- Project task descriptions
  - Include relevant portions of system config files or entire config file, e.g., /etc/sudoers.
    - Acts as a backup of important config files.
  - Your aim in documenting completed complex admin tasks is repeatability.
    - Write the documentation so that you and others will be able to replicate the task.
- Something new you learned from completing a project or from just experimenting on your machine(s)
- Pitfalls you encountered that you found a solution for (even if you just Googled for it).
  - Include helpful URLs found through Googling.
- Let's pretend that I'm your boss and that I read your journal periodically to assess your performance.
  - Might want to spellcheck it once in a while.
    - Use aspell or ispell.
What doesn't go in the journal?
- Class notes (unless they pertain to what you're journaling about)
- Passwords