T1   Hot New Topics in Modern System Administration 
Trent Hein, XOR Network Engineering; Evi Nemeth, University of Colorado, Boulder

Who should attend: System and network administrators who want to learn about real-life solutions to everyday problems.

Overwhelmed by the rapid change in the system administration field? This tutorial is a potpourri of learning about hot topics that will make you more effective in your role as a system administrator. Specifically, we'll be covering the following:

wreq - Managing user requests and trouble tickets is an everyday task. We'll discuss the freely available web-based tool wreq, together with procedures that you can use to make your SA group serve the needs of its internal customers.

Y2K compliance - The year 2000 is coming, and now is the time to make sure your site is prepared. We'll talk about the Y2K issues that you need to address as an administrator in the UNIX environment, and give you some tips on creating a Y2K gameplan for the UNIX hosts at your site.

Optimizing web server performance - Learn tricks-of-the-trade to make your hot UNIX web-server even hotter. We'll cover measuring UNIX web server performance as well as tuning it for optimum throughput and response.

LPRng - Tired of those nasty printing problems? This next-generation print spooler can ease many cross-platform printing hassles as well as reduce time spent maintaining the printing system at your site.

What's hot on the UNIX security battlefront - It's been a long year in UNIX security, and now's a great time to brush up on happenings in this area. We'll talk about the most important holes that you need to address as well as suggest approaches to general UNIX security.

Modern UNIX filesharing - NFS has a bunch of new features, but do you know what they do or how to use them? Learn how to maximize the benefits of NFS 3.0 at your site.

A new world, split by OS - Are you suffering from UNIX in the machine room with PCs on the desktop? This syndrome is affecting system administrators everywhere, but there are some cures. We'll talk about strategies to handle this situation, and tools to make it seamless.  

Evi Nemeth  (M1, T1)  a faculty member in computer science at the University of Colorado, and has managed UNIX systems for the past 20 years, both from the front lines and from the ivory tower. She is co-author of the UNIX System Administration Handbook.