Adaptive aiding for human/computer control
Human Factors
Field studies of computer system administrators: analysis of system management tools and practices
CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Work practices of system administrators: implications for tool design
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology
Sysadmins and the need for verification information
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology
System administrators as broker technicians
Proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Human Interaction for the Management of Information Technology
A survey of system configuration tools
LISA'10 Proceedings of the 24th international conference on Large installation system administration
Provenance for system troubleshooting
LISA'11 Proceedings of the 25th international conference on Large Installation System Administration
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Little empirical research has been conducted on the mental models and situation awareness of system administrators. To begin addressing this deficiency, a short survey was prepared and broadcast to system administrators via Internet newsgroups. Fifty-four sysadmins responded. These respondents indicated that there is much about the systems they oversee that they don't understand, and the more they do not understand about their systems, the more likely they are to attribute this ignorance to hardware, and not software, unknowns. The respondents attribute little of the expertise they do possess to formal education or training. Further, when faced with a novel situation, the respondents were more likely to rely on themselves and their personal contacts than on the system's manufacturers, or on third party support. However, the more the sysadmins attributed their ignorance of their systems to hardware unknowns, the more likely they were to rely on manufacturer and third party support. Compared to Microsoft oriented sysadmins, Unix oriented sysadmins were more likely to attribute their expertise to working with others, and were more likely to attribute their ignorance to hardware unknowns. Finally, respondents who felt that their organizational superiors understood what is involved in system administration were more likely to perceive these superiors as providing the sysadmins with adequate support.