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                   The Sys Admin Newsletter
                          News for the
              April 2003 issue of Sys Admin Magazine

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                            CONTENTS

1. Note from the Editor
2. Highlights of the April issue 
3. Call for Papers
4. Subscription Information
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NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

The need for a thorough, up-to-date, enforceable security policy 
within every organization can hardly be overstated, and there are 
many resources to help systems administrators facilitate development 
of such policies. SANS (www.sans.org) maintains a security policy 
resource page that provides general guidelines, links, and templates, 
along with a security policy primer describing how to build a security 
policy from the ground up. SAGE (The System Administrators Guild, 
www.sage.org) offers a more general "Guide to Developing Computing 
Policy Documents", which encompasses security policies. This booklet 
explains why every site needs a policy, what it should contain, who 
should draft it, and to whom it should apply. I encourage you to check 
out these and other resources and review your organization's security 
policies on a regular basis.

Sincerely,
Amber Ankerholz
Editor in Chief

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	The April 2003 issue contains:

Coordinating Multi-Host Backups Using Perl Sockets 
by A. Clay Stephenson  
http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaU7ZaaWC6ja2sokSb/
To solve a sticky backup problem, Stephenson fashioned a sockets-based 
client-server pair to essentially create a set of semaphores accessible 
by multiple hosts.

Logrotate - A Backup Solution by  Sean D. Conway 
Using a Linux program called logrotate, Conway created a backup 
solution to consolidate and automate the backup process.

Backup Scripts from UnixReview.com: Part II
Edited by Ed Schaefer 
Schaefer presents three previously unpublished backup scripts that 
were submitted to the Shell Corner column on UnixReview.com.

NetWorker Savegroup Summarizer - A Legato NetWorker Reporting Tool  
by John Stoffel 
Legato NetWorker is a powerful tool to manage backups, but it has 
some limitations when it comes to reporting useful statistics from 
a completed backup, so Stoffel developed his own reporting code as 
presented in this article.

An SQL Archive for Email and MIME Attachments by Robert Bond  
Bond describes how to build an email archive, using Perl and MySQL, 
that can properly decode and extract attachments from even the most 
complex MIME messages.

Amanda Backup Enhanced with Solaris Snapshots by Julian Briggs  
Briggs discusses the development of a reliable backup system, using 
Amanda backup software and Solaris filesystem snapshots.

Writing an SNMP Agent by Damir Delija 
Delija shares some of the considerations that went into the building 
of his custom SNMP agent.
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	COLUMNS

Questions and Answers by Amy Rich  
http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaU7ZaaWC6la2sokSb/

Benchmarking Systems by Henry Newman  
http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaU7ZaaWC6ma2sokSb/

Solaris Resource Management by Peter Baer Galvin  
http://click.sysadmin.email-publisher.com/maaaU7ZaaWC6na2sokSb/

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and use priority code SA.
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     CALL FOR PAPERS  

Storage - August 2003

Proposals Due: April 1, 2003
Manuscripts Due: May 1, 2003 

Advanced Tricks for Serving Up Samba 
Approximating a SAN with Open Source Tools 
Innovative Scripts for Managing Data Storage 
Unsung Techniques for Securing Archived Data 
How I Solved a Complex Remote Storage Problem Inexpensively 

Security - September 2003

Proposals Due: May 1, 2003
Manuscripts Due: June 2, 2003

Detecting and Dealing with New Rootkits
Securing BIND 
Free UNIX Forensics Tools
Advanced Firewall Management Tips
Effective Use of Honeypots
Mobile Security

Server Management - October 2003

Proposals Due: June 2, 2003
Manuscripts Due: July 1, 2003

Remote Management Solutions
Open Source Tools for Enterprise Server Management
War Stories in Web-based System Management
Advanced Linux Server Management Techniques
High Availability Cluster Configuration

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     Newsletter Subscription Information

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Email comments to: aankerholz@cmp.com