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What is s l a m ?

s l a m is a repository of practices, software tools, and eventually services for helping system administrators achieve a smoother, cleaner, more transparent operation of centralised IT resources.

The focus here is on reliability.

Why s l a m ?

Because it's time.

There's been a lot of hype about computer security since the end of last year.

If I've learned anything from my rather lengthy exposition to data processing techniques, it's that there's a lot more to reliable computer operation than defending against crackers or other well publicised no-goodniks.

Given the current state of the art in computer technology, there is no way to offer a fully reliable operating system on market agreeable terms. Industrialized mass production delivers cheap computer hardware, Moore's law predicts ever expanding processing power, but software design is still a craft, not an industry, even for software behemothes in Redmond, WA. Craftmanshift requires skills, above all time, and encapsulates human failings. It's also fun.

Until the -boring- time when software design can be entrusted to computer systems themselves, corporations and organisations of all kind will have to depend on unreliable, if relatively inexpensive, centralized information systems.

The best currently available way of coping with built-in unreliability is through careful system administration. Unfortunately, system administration is an advanced skill, which means competent system administrators are hard to find and greatly impact the overall cost of centralized computer operation.

Basically, if you're a small operation, you probably have no proper system administration, and will suffer the consequences, if you haven't already. If you're a large operation, you probably have a sysadmin crew on call, but chances are they have too many systems under their care to be 100% efficient, not to mention having to face the bane of all IT professionals: computer users.

How does s l a m help ?

s l a m stands for site logging and monitoring.

All modern operating systems and network appliances can produce a wealth of information in the form of log files.

Similarly, all customized application programs or scripts running unattended on servers should log their activities.

Harvesting this information manually is way too time consuming. Yet, a large part of potentially costly incidents can be avoided if the relevant data can be directed in time to the attention of knowledgeable professionals.

s l a m will explore different ways of sifting the mass of available log data, focusing the limited and costly attention of system administrators on the important issues. s l a m 's ambitious goal is to turn the latest in groupware communication and programming techniques into content providing engines for both system administrators and cost/reliability conscious executives.

I'm no sysadmin, I'm not a 'suit' either, why should I keep reading ?

Well, you may have noticed that for the time being, most of s l a m 's content is about groupware, and specifically Radio UserLand.

That's because this site is not 'officially' launched yet, and probably won't be for another two months.

Until then, I practise my newly acquired skills at weblogging and contents managemement by writing about the way I customize my publication tools. It appears to have come to the attention of a certain groupware guru and self-styled journalist who's at least partly responsible for the great software and standards that make my current project so fun. He is also responsible for making me stay up late to whip up this short introduction, so that visitors may have a sense of what I'm on to.

© copyright 2004
by Marc Barrot.