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There’s a saying when it comes to Linux, that “Linux IS user friendly. It’s just very particular who its friends are.”

More seriously the part about mistakes is one of the real biggies. Many years ago, I worked as a networking instructor (I was a Novell Master CNI) and one of the required classes as called “Service and Support,” and for many students, it was their first time actually working on hardware. During the class we did talk about the possibility of making mistakes, and the sort of problems it can cause, from trivial, to taking down the entire network for an extended period.

Having worked as a field engineer designing, installing and troubleshooting networks for more than 5 years before I began training as an instructor, I had seen my fair share of mistakes and made a fair number myself.

The most important thing was trying to get users to realize that being human means making mistakes, what you need to do is try to minimize them.

I even gave examples of mistakes that I’d not only seen, but made myself, culminating with accepting a phone call from a panicing customer while finishing up working on a system at another site. As I was plugging in the connectors (back in the days of keyboard connectors using a 5 pin DIN plug, as I was talking, when I plugged in the keyboard, I heard a “pop” and smelled smoke. While I wasn’t paying close attention plugging in the cables, a so-called “safe” operation, I accidentally plugged a Stat-Mux (a communication device) power supply cable into the keyboard port on a Unix server, destroying the main system board. I was able to get another system board for their system, and get them up and running, but it took their system down for nearly 7 hours to get the parts, install them, load and configure Unix, then restore their data.

Also, the only “stupid question” is the one never asked.

Mark