[olug] Logging

[William E. Kempf]

CM Miller said:
>
>
> Have you ever read an e-mail on the olug list,
> disregared it, then a week later something calls you
> attention back to it, and you have to go back to the
> archives to read it again?
>
> This happened to me when I was talking to a co-worker,
> who does alot of admin. work on Oracle servers.  This
> guy, a person who has been in the computer field along
> time, logs everything, any reboot or upgrade in a
> notebook.
>
> The reason I bring this up cause I remember Mozilla
> Yet No Java thread,
> http://lists.olug.org/pipermail/olug/2003-February/001886.html,
> and fellow OLUGER, Robert A. Jacobs replied and said
> he logged his attempt of installing a java plugin for
> Mozilla.  I never though of doing this until I saw the
> co-worker and Robert's reply.
>
> My question is, how many on the list go thru this much
> detail of logging by hand into a file or notebook,
> when they install a new or remove a package,
> application crash, or anything else?

I don't do it "by hand", but I do use my own version of the "hack" script
to automate this.  The "hack" script is basically a replacement command
for your editor, which not only starts your preferred editor to modify a
file, but also copies said file in some sort of archival way so that you
can review the history of things you've done.  My version of "hack" uses a
local CVS repository, so I've got a complete history of changes.  In
addition, I use the "script" command to log most of the other steps I do. 
These two tools take care of 90% (or so) of my logging needs with out me
having to do hardly anything more than I'd do for general maintenance any
way.  If there's something above and beyond that's needed, I try to do
that by hand, but I'm not always as diligent about that :(.

> I can see this as be a great practice and gives you a
> trail to follow if you need to troublshoot, but part
> of me thinks this is way to anal and is it worth the
> trouble?

When it's automated, it's no extra effort, and can definately save you
hours of work if you ever have to reproduce something again.

-- 
William E. Kempf