• Everyone will turn in a separate writeup.
• State the assignment objectives.
• Provide, in a diary/journal format, the steps you took to do the assignment. Be sure to be brief in your explanation and judicious in your choice of including copy and pastes from interactive sessions.
• Mention lessons learned, especially those that come from making, finding, and correcting mistakes.
• The writeups will be graded based on the correctness of content, clean layout, and use of proper spelling and grammar. Systems Administrators need to be able to relay written information in a concise, technical and accurate fashion.
• The writeups should be no more than two pages when printed on standard 8.5 x 11 paper.

Common problems with journals:

• Solaris is not spelled "Solaries"
• Bad grammar and spelling
• Incomplete sentences
• Forgetting to put in the work percentages of all team members
• Forgetting to put in the summary (lessons learned, etc.)
• Too short

Common do's and do not's in writeups

Example #1 -- journals are too similar (not acceptable)

Person "A" Journal snippet:

   20. reboot
   21. change defaultdomainname to t8ux
   22. change nodename file to t8sun
   23. change /etc/defaultrouter to 192.168.0.100 

Problem and Solution
   1. Solaris Workstation is different from PC. In order to reboot from CD-ROM,    the procedure is quite different. 
   2. gateway address will need to manually put into a file named /et/defaultrouter    after the installation
   3. if the hostname is too long or inappropriate, we can change it after installation.

Person "B" Journal snippet:

   20. Reboot.
   21. Change defaultdomainname to t8ux.
   22. Change nodename file to t8sun.
   23. Change /etc/defaultrouter to 192.168.0.100.

   Problem and Solution

   1. Solaris Workstation is different from PC. In order 
   to reboot from CD-ROM, the procedure is quite different. 

   2. Gateway address 
   will need to manually put into a file named /et/defaultrouter after the 
   installation.

   3. If the hostname is too long or inappropriate, we can change 
   it after installation.

Example #2: Just a "laundry list" style snippet (acceptable, but see "narrative" style)

Linux:

1. CMOS protected by password, took out mother board battery and put it back

2. Restarted, changed boot sequence

3. Booted computer using Linux 7.1

4. Choosed Language, location, mouse type, typed in network information

5. Computer prompted no Redhat found

6. Booted again, the same error occurred, thought CD or CDROM are bad

7. Borrowed a Linux 7.0 CD from the other team

8. Continuing installation, choosing Linux server option

9. Enter the networking information:

   IP:  192.168.0.10

   Netmask: 255.255.255.0

   Gateway: 192.168.1.100

   DNS: 128.186.121.10

10. Setup root password

11. Select packages

12. Took long time to copy the files

13. Finished installation, rebooted

14. Login, successful, 

15. Check network connection, ping 128.186.121.41, failed

16. Changed IP address in file: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

17. Still could not ping 128.186.121.41

18. Checked the cable connection, tried to use another cable, still not work

19. Decided to reinstall to get more experience

20. This time I was suggested to choose Custom Installation

21. I chose fdisk to partition the disk

22. Set 1GB for Linux, and 100MB for Linux swap

23. Set the Linux partition as bootable, save and quit fdisk

24. Computer stalled during formatting the disk

25. Repeated above installation, computer stalled again during formatting

26. Thought it's a hardware problem, leaving to ask system group

Example #3: Suggestion: use a more "narrative" style for writeups

...OK, so we proceed. We give our machine name, choose
our password, choose to create an emergency disk, see our network adapter - Intel
82557-based 10/100 Ethernet PCI adapter (little idea what heartburns THIS was
to cause us), set the TCP/IP properties. We wonder what DHCP is.. it tells us
if we enable that, it will automatically assign an IP.. but no, we need to assign
specific IPs.. so we say No to DHCP, select our machine name, domain name (both
cannot be the same, we found out the hard way!) We assign the IP addresses for
our own machine from the range given to us, and the gateway and the name servers.
Yes, it is over. We reboot the machine, NT comes up…. One machine up! Sure
feels good!

We take stock. NT is up. Linux doesn't seem to be recognizing the CD-ROM drive.
Solaris, we need an external CD-ROM, which is with another team. We decide to
call it a day. Other work awaits us. At least, NT is up… we decide to meet
after class on Wednesday.