I want to write a report on contemporary system administration and server maintenance practices. It should interest artist-run collectives seeking alternatives to Big Tech, communities self-hosting infrastructure and groups seasoned in software politics. The essay will engage these audiences through an active voice by making positive statements with accessible terms. Qualitative research interviews and reading will form the backbone of the text. On the one hand, I hope to hold discussions with people working at European organisations that provide digital infrastructure for others. On the other hand, I hope to speak with members of groups whose infrastructure is hosted at these places. I will seek consent from interviewees to record the discussion and to include the transcribed material in an appendix which will not be published. Interview subjects will have the option of withdrawing their consent at any time for any or no reason.

The thesis is structured around three issues facing sysadmins: documenting knowledge, knowledge exchange and distributing responsibility. Questions pertaining to these issues will inform the interviews.

Documenting knowledge

This is a pressing matter for system administrators (Hofmüller cited in Berends et al., 2022). What knowledge do system administrators need to document? Publications such as the Self-Hosting Guide admit its “Practical Guides section needs a lot of work” (Engelhardt et al. 2023). Recipes found in the Guide may be useful for people looking to self host on a Raspberry Pi. However, sysadmins need to navigate a context in which innovation implies the deprecation of tools and associated ways of doing things. Recipe-based guides are useful for a limited time and operate at a different scale to that which I am addressing.

Knowledge Exchange

Knowledge exchange can take place in workshops or discussions which leave mere traces of documentation. According to Us(c)hi Reiter “[s]haring knowledge sounds easy, but it is not” (Reiter cited in Berends et al., 2022). In many respects I think this issue is a matter of audience. On the one hand, Sysadmins share knowledge with each other through technical infrastructure such as email server blacklists and commentary in code. Sharing knowledge with others who may have less experience with Linux and the command line poses a different set of challenges.

Distributing Responsibility

Taking responsibility for other people’s infrastructure is a daily reality for sysadmins. Feminist approaches to this line of work emphasise collaboration and, by extension, the distribution of responsibility. Technically, the terminal multiplexer called tmux has been praised for its conduciveness to collaboration (Vo Ezn cited in Berends et al. 2022; Karagianni, 2022; Berends et al. cited in Strete et al., 2022). The software allows multiple people to work at the command line in shared sessions. In general, working together reduces pressure on individuals who may otherwise shoulder considerable individual responsibility.

References

Berends, M., Diakrousi, A. and Gryllaki, A. (2022) ‘Hosting With’, Debug, Linz, Varia [Online]. Available at https://varia.zone/archive/2023-03-Hosting-with-others/hosting-with-zine-booklet.pdf (Accessed 16 October 2024).

Engelhardt, L., Billie, P. and Reinthal, A. (2023) Self-Hosting Guide [Online]. Available at https://self-hosting.guide/dokuwiki/about_this_site (Accessed 16 October 2024).

Karagianni, M. (2022). Online Workshop on Digital Activism: Hello Terminal. Aarhus University. [Online] https://shape.au.dk/arrangementer/arrangement/artikel/online-workshop-on-digital-activism-hello-terminal (Accessed: September 28 2024).

Strete, A,, Cochior, C. and Mugrefya, e. (Eds.) (2022). A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers Fractalia, Bucharest.