Sysadmin Handbook

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version: "1.0.0"

name: The Book Of Secret Knowledge

description: "A collection of inspiring lists, manuals, cheatsheets, blogs, hacks, one-liners, cli/web tools and m the book of secret knowledge, python, awesome."

---

# Sysadmin Handbook

Sysadmin Handbook v2.0.0 — a thorough sysops toolkit for system administrators. Record, track, and manage all aspects of system administration from the command line. Every action is timestamped and logged locally for full auditability.

Why Sysadmin Handbook?

Getting Started

# See all available commands
sysadmin-handbook help

# Check current health status
sysadmin-handbook status

# View summary statistics
sysadmin-handbook stats

Commands

Operations Commands

Each command works in two modes: run without arguments to view recent entries, or pass input to record a new entry.

| Command | Description |

|---------|-------------|

| `sysadmin-handbook scan <input>` | Record a scan operation (port scans, vulnerability scans, network sweeps) |

| `sysadmin-handbook monitor <input>` | Log monitoring observations (service health, uptime checks, resource usage) |

| `sysadmin-handbook report <input>` | Create report entries (incident reports, audit summaries, status updates) |

| `sysadmin-handbook alert <input>` | Record alert events (threshold breaches, security warnings, service failures) |

| `sysadmin-handbook top <input>` | Log top-level metrics (CPU hogs, memory consumers, disk leaders) |

| `sysadmin-handbook usage <input>` | Track usage data (disk usage, bandwidth, API calls, license counts) |

| `sysadmin-handbook check <input>` | Record health checks (service checks, config validation, dependency tests) |

| `sysadmin-handbook fix <input>` | Document fixes applied (patches, config changes, workarounds) |

| `sysadmin-handbook cleanup <input>` | Log cleanup operations (temp files, old logs, orphaned processes) |

| `sysadmin-handbook backup <input>` | Track backup operations (full backups, incrementals, snapshots) |

| `sysadmin-handbook restore <input>` | Record restore operations (data recovery, config rollbacks) |

| `sysadmin-handbook log <input>` | General-purpose log entries (freeform notes, observations) |

| `sysadmin-handbook benchmark <input>` | Record benchmark results (performance tests, load tests, I/O benchmarks) |

| `sysadmin-handbook compare <input>` | Log comparison data (before/after, environment diffs, config comparisons) |

Utility Commands

| Command | Description |

|---------|-------------|

| `sysadmin-handbook stats` | Show summary statistics across all log categories |

| `sysadmin-handbook export <fmt>` | Export all data (formats: `json`, `csv`, `txt`) |

| `sysadmin-handbook search <term>` | Search across all entries for a keyword |

| `sysadmin-handbook recent` | Show the 20 most recent history entries |

| `sysadmin-handbook status` | Health check — version, data dir, entry count, disk usage |

| `sysadmin-handbook help` | Show the built-in help message |

| `sysadmin-handbook version` | Print version (v2.0.0) |

Data Storage

All data is stored locally in `~/.local/share/sysadmin-handbook/`. Structure:

Each entry is stored as `YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM|<input>`. Use `export` to back up your data anytime.

Requirements

When to Use

1. **Incident response tracking** — Log scan results, alerts, and fixes during an active incident so you have a complete timeline for the post-mortem

2. **Daily ops journaling** — Record monitoring observations, health checks, and cleanup tasks as you go through your sysadmin routine

3. **Backup & restore auditing** — Track every backup and restore operation with timestamps to prove compliance or diagnose failures

4. **Performance benchmarking** — Store benchmark results over time and use `compare` to track regressions or improvements across deploys

5. **Team handoff documentation** — Log everything during your shift so the next admin can run `recent` or `search` to get up to speed instantly

Examples

# Record a network scan result
sysadmin-handbook scan "192.168.1.0/24 — 14 hosts up, 3 with open SSH"

# Log a monitoring observation
sysadmin-handbook monitor "web-prod-01 CPU at 92% for 15 minutes"

# Document a fix you applied
sysadmin-handbook fix "Increased nginx worker_connections from 1024 to 4096"

# Track a backup operation
sysadmin-handbook backup "Full backup of /data completed — 48GB, 23 min"

# Export everything to JSON for archival
sysadmin-handbook export json

# Search all logs for a keyword
sysadmin-handbook search "nginx"

# View recent activity across all commands
sysadmin-handbook recent

Output

All commands output to stdout. Redirect to a file if needed:

sysadmin-handbook stats > report.txt
sysadmin-handbook export csv

Configuration

Set `SYSADMIN_HANDBOOK_DIR` environment variable to override the default data directory (`~/.local/share/sysadmin-handbook/`).

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