Scott M. Mcdermott

UNIX Systems & Network Administrator
available for contract or salaried positions

Documentation Samples

Here are some samples of my technical writings. It's not very complete but should at least give some glimpse. Documentation, by definition, is quite private to particular companies and I had a hard time locating things generic enough to include on my own site.


  • dit-rules

    Desribes rules for accessing and modifying LDAP schema. The rules were part planning and part implementation. They are designed to be read by anyone implementing programmatic access to the LDAP DIT and/or trying to understand how mail is routed.

  • slot-admin

    How to administer an instance of 3-tier webapp. Instructions on how Presales or Professional Services teams can interface with an application "slot" that has been set up for them (i.e. an instantiation). This is a full instance of a 3-tier web application set up for administration via SSH.

  • tech-quandary

    Thoughts on the ethical obligations of IT to the company at large. IT enjoys a unique position of responsibility within a company. Here were some back-of-napkin musings on this subject matter one day when I was pondering this. This is a "non technical" work that demonstrates some aspects of my writing style.

  • amanda-jbod

    Simple justification for adding backup capacity using JBOD. AMANDA tape backup software is greatly enhanced and several things gained very cheaply by doing this. This is a snippet from a larger document.

  • hosted-roles

    Role split for a hypothetical hosted application scenario. Used during an exploration of options for providing application service to customers. This was one of several options examined, and the document formed the basis for conference calls with a hosting provider.

  • cms-intro

    Notes for a presentation on Plone. This was given to users introducing them to a new CMS tool. Specifically, the tool was a highly customized Plone instance with a custom workflow. These notes formed the basis of my oral presentation.

  • secaudit-toc

    Table of Contents from the security section of an internal audit. This hints at what kind of things are important and what kind of things are done to secure a typical company network. It's actually quite old but still surprisingly relevant today.