Networking Blues

So far my life in Japan has been pritty good, I've been kept quite busy from Monday to Saturday most weeks, but since I like what I do and attend, it's not overbearing. Some changes will come about though, and a very big one for me.

First of all, I should give some background of our lab here. Our lab is new, just set up last year, which has it's pluses and minuses. My profressor is highly experiance in his field, and before coming to join the university he worked in a leading electronics company doing exactly what he is researching about now. Having a new lab has it's pluses, we have brand new equipment, software, and I rather like the idea of being involved with starting something, contributing to it, and seeing it grow, rather than just come to follow the "implied system" that others have set up. It also has some minuses though. One is that we don't really have a network administrator for our lab. The lab was set up by a senior post-graduate student of another lab, and since all of us can be considered new as this lab no more than 1 year experiance, no one has a very good knowledge about networks of the lab. Since we use software with shared licence on a linux server, we really need an administrator.

Now here comes the problem. Last week my profressor pulled me over to have a chat. Since the lab has bought a new program, he naturally wants someone to make the initiative to use it. Now, everyone is actually helping learning how to use the part of some of the new software, but there was one particularly special part which is very new and has just been bought as an extra to the original software package. This particular part has to be installed separately, and made to interact with the rest of the main package. Now, although this is a very good engineering program, it's rather difficult to use as it's made for engineers in mind with it's very large package and software range, and quite complex licensing sharing, and management systems. You can tell at a glance that it is a software made by engineers since it has excellent complex computational, simulation, and technical properties, but serverely lacks a good user interface. To say the truth, if I hadn't used this same software in Sweden for almost 7 months I would have been quite lost just trying to use it. During that 7 months, I've only gotten to use maybe 15% of the software's capabilities or less. Now don't get me wrong here, it's a very good program, and I feel priviledged to get to use it since many universities would not be able to spend so much on such a software, and it's become somewhat of an industrial standard software, giving the person who has experiance using it, a big edge over those who haven't.

Now the problem comes that this newly recieved package has just been installed, and is still not working very well, and continuously sends out criptic messages. What's more, the software must be installed into another linux server very soon. The problem is that the guy who has installed this package has to leave by the end of next week to go back to his company due to sudden circumstances in the company as I was told (he is a lab researcher who came from a company to do research and increse his knowledge). Naturally he needs help, and my advisor asked me to help him learn how to use this software. Ofcause I found out later from this researcher that I'm also supposed to install a new copy of this software, and become like the network administrator! Well this all makes sense and all, since I'm my profressor's soon to be first PhD student. However my knowledge of linux is only that of a basic user who merely use it to access programs, and kill some processes from time to time. Now it seems to imply that I must become a linux network administrator in 1 week's time, install this new program and fix the bug in the already installed one, possibly write configuration files (I don't know how in linux), learn to use the software and keep it free from bugs, learn to know the server system, and keep it running smoothly with just about no software support since I probably won't be able to communicate well enough with the software support in Japanese! Add that with the fact that I take Japanese classes 5 days a week for 3-4 1/2 hours a day, and have another project with another lab mate where I have to decipher Japanese technical articals before I can even start work with him, take 2, 2hrs seminar learning a book where each person rotates to teach the book, and find my PhD topic. Okay! Now I've got some serious problems!

I expect that next week will be close to hell for me, and I will have to spend some (if not all) nights over at the lab learning as much as I can sleeping in the lab, then coming home for a shower in the worse (but likely case), from the researcher before he leaves. It will be very difficult in deed. In some respect, I am happy to gain new knowledge in a new field, however, the time limit is too critical for a linux/unix beginner like me. I have recruited the help of a close Indonesian friend that I studied with in Sweden, and has come to join the same university at a lab near by to help me since he's a network expert, but I'm still quite stressed about this new sudden deadline. Now I really need one of those "Become a Linux Administrator in 24 hrs" Book! Yeah, not that they would really help.

Any suggestions for some good linux administrator network books?