My work PC, Home PC, and laptop all have different keyboards. I find my hands wanting to do the wrong thing all the time. Also I have to log into multiple servers with different versions of vi, vim, emacs, bash, ksh, I do not have the luxury of staying in one IDE or environment. vi appears to me to be the best editor of choice given the diversity of what I work with but I find vimmisms creeping into my habits. I can solve some of these using file shares but some systems are not allowed to access our test mounts. What habits keep you effective?
+3
A:
For the keyboard problem, I just pretty much gave up on desktops and use a laptop almost exclusively. The current place of work prefers we use a company-supplied desktop (I have NFI why), so I've got a Thinkpad USB keyboard hooked up to the desktop (which matches, in key layout and mouse positioning/usage, my laptop keyboard).
As far as the server environment thing goes, I've never solved that problem satisfactorily. Using the lowest-common-denominator everywhere doesn't suck too badly, but for the most part I just use automation to do all admin tasks, which means I rarely (never, if I'm doing my job right) log in to a machine to do ad-hoc administration anyway.
womble
2009-03-24 00:05:55
+5
A:
This is why sys admins often prefer vi over anything else. It's essentially the same everywhere, and it is everywhere UNIX. You can either take tools with you, or reduce yourself to the lowest common denominator:
- Settle on vi everywhere, so your fingers don't do the wrong thing.
- Buy a USB keyboard and take it with you, if possible.
- Put some binaries on a USB stick, if possible
dwc
2009-03-24 00:07:17
Vi is also everywhere non-Unix as well. But good luck trying to convince management to let you bring in a (virus-ridden, in their opinion) flash stick full of binaries - that's probably an actionable offence in most companies.
paxdiablo
2009-03-24 00:31:13
A USB stick is probably worse than any other item to try and smuggle into my building.
ojblass
2009-03-24 00:48:50
@ojblass - burn a disc with your fav tools, take it to the admin, let him do whatever he wants with it for a couple of days (in terms of scanning, ...), and then let him give you his blessing.
ldigas
2009-03-24 19:54:38
They won't. PCI/SOX says they won't and won't. They should not and they won't. Have I said they won't?
ojblass
2009-03-26 05:54:38
settling seems to be the answer... very sad but true.
ojblass
2009-03-28 03:04:37
A:
At my last job, I set up my laptop and work with the same version of gvim, eclipse, etc. I brought in my own keyboard and mouse to work, and at times I would just bring in my laptop and rsync between work and it and do the work on it.
Paul Tomblin
2009-03-24 00:12:14