Mailing lists for University of Toronto system administrators

Update April 24 2014: please note that the information here is now somewhat out of date, partially incorrect, and partially incomplete.

We have some mailing lists for local sysadmins. In the absence of a better resource page, I'm going to list them here:

ut-admins

This is theoretically for Unix (and general issues, sort of).

Subscription requests: ut-admins-request at the domain utcc.utoronto.ca
Mailing list: hopefully the address is obvious.

nw-admins

This is theoretically for Netware, Windows, and related issues, and has monthly in-person meetings on the main campus (they get announced on the mailing list).

Subscription requests: listserv on listserv.utoronto.ca; note that the actual mailing list is called nw-admins-l.

resadmin-l

This is the 'Residence Network Administrators List', presumably for people who are involved in doing networking for and to on-campus residences. It is another listserv mailing list, resadmin-l on listserv.utoronto.ca.

utweb-l

This is a mailing list for UofT webmasters; it seems to discuss design issues and relatively high-level technical things. It is another listserv mailing list, utweb-l on listserv.utoronto.ca.

ut-redhat-l

This is a mailing list for people running Red Hat Linux machines; I am not sure if this is Red Hat Enterprise only or if it also includes Fedora. It is another listserv mailing list, ut-redhat-l on listserv.utoronto.ca.

network-service-status

This is a mailing list for notifications about network issues. It is another listserv mailing list, so you subscribe on listserv.utoronto.ca.

ut-devel-l

This is a mailing list for (software) developers. This is a newly set up (end of November 2008) listserv mailing list, so you subscribe on listserv.utoronto.ca.

I say 'theoretically' because, as usual, topics can drift somewhat from the nominal topics, and I don't think either primary list has a strict topic.

At the moment, you don't need to be subscribed to either ut-admins or nw-admins to post to them, although this may change in the future. I don't know about the others.

As far as I know, none have publicly accessible archives. (The listserv lists may keep subscriber-only archives you can ask for messages from.)

ut-admins versus nw-admins

From my somewhat slanted perspective:

General technical issues can wind up being discussed on either or both of ut-admins and nw-admins, often crossposted to some degree. Network issues and so on are generally announced to both; to some degree, I think high-level discussions tend to happen more on ut-admins than nw-admins, and as a result ut-admins probably has somewhat more rambling conversations than nw-admins. ut-admins is usually quiet except for periodic eruptions; nw-admins gets more regular traffic.

(If a constant drip of people asking about Windows administrations issues is going to irritate you, you don't want to pipe nw-admins into your primary inbox.)

Since Linux is by now probably the majority Unix on campus, ut-admins is the de facto campus Linux sysadmins mailing list; so far the traffic volume has not been high enough to split that off into a more specialized list. Thus, discussion of things like the merits of various Linux distributions does break out on ut-admins from time to time.