== 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somewhat out of date, partially incorrect, and partially incomplete.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.