Sysadmin Handbook#

Sysadmin Handbook v2.0.0 — a thorough sysops toolkit for system administrators. Record, track, and manage all aspects of system administration from the command line. Every action is timestamped and logged locally for full auditability.

Why Sysadmin Handbook?#

• Works entirely offline — your data never leaves your machine
• Simple command-line interface, no GUI needed
• Timestamped logging for every operation
• Export to JSON, CSV, or plain text anytime
• Automatic history and activity tracking
• Searchable records across all operation types

Getting Started#

bash

# See all available commands
sysadmin-handbook help

# Check current health status
sysadmin-handbook status

# View summary statistics
sysadmin-handbook stats

Commands#

Operations Commands#

Each command works in two modes: run without arguments to view recent entries, or pass input to record a new entry.

CommandDescriptionsysadmin-handbook scan <input>Record a scan operation (port scans, vulnerability scans, network sweeps)sysadmin-handbook monitor <input>Log monitoring observations (service health, uptime checks, resource usage)sysadmin-handbook report <input>Create report entries (incident reports, audit summaries, status updates)sysadmin-handbook alert <input>Record alert events (threshold breaches, security warnings, service failures)sysadmin-handbook top <input>Log top-level metrics (CPU hogs, memory consumers, disk leaders)sysadmin-handbook usage <input>Track usage data (disk usage, bandwidth, API calls, license counts)sysadmin-handbook check <input>Record health checks (service checks, config validation, dependency tests)sysadmin-handbook fix <input>Document fixes applied (patches, config changes, workarounds)sysadmin-handbook cleanup <input>Log cleanup operations (temp files, old logs, orphaned processes)sysadmin-handbook backup <input>Track backup operations (full backups, incrementals, snapshots)sysadmin-handbook restore <input>Record restore operations (data recovery, config rollbacks)sysadmin-handbook log <input>General-purpose log entries (freeform notes, observations)sysadmin-handbook benchmark <input>Record benchmark results (performance tests, load tests, I/O benchmarks)sysadmin-handbook compare <input>Log comparison data (before/after, environment diffs, config comparisons)

Utility Commands#

CommandDescriptionsysadmin-handbook statsShow summary statistics across all log categoriessysadmin-handbook export <fmt>Export all data (formats: json, csv, txt)sysadmin-handbook search <term>Search across all entries for a keywordsysadmin-handbook recentShow the 20 most recent history entriessysadmin-handbook statusHealth check — version, data dir, entry count, disk usagesysadmin-handbook helpShow the built-in help messagesysadmin-handbook versionPrint version (v2.0.0)

Data Storage#

All data is stored locally in ~/.local/share/sysadmin-handbook/. Structure:

• scan.log, monitor.log, report.log, etc. — one log file per command, pipe-delimited ( timestamp|value)
• history.log — unified activity log across all commands
• export.json / export.csv / export.txt — generated export files

Each entry is stored as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM|<input>. Use export to back up your data anytime.

Requirements#

• Bash 4+ (uses set -euo pipefail)
• Standard Unix utilities ( date, wc, du, tail, grep, sed, cat)
• No external dependencies or internet access needed

When to Use#

1. Incident response tracking — Log scan results, alerts, and fixes during an active incident so you have a complete timeline for the post-mortem
2. Daily ops journaling — Record monitoring observations, health checks, and cleanup tasks as you go through your sysadmin routine
3. Backup & restore auditing — Track every backup and restore operation with timestamps to prove compliance or diagnose failures
4. Performance benchmarking — Store benchmark results over time and use compare to track regressions or improvements across deploys
5. Team handoff documentation — Log everything during your shift so the next admin can run recent or search to get up to speed instantly

Examples#

bash

# Record a network scan result
sysadmin-handbook scan "192.168.1.0/24 — 14 hosts up, 3 with open SSH"

# Log a monitoring observation
sysadmin-handbook monitor "web-prod-01 CPU at 92% for 15 minutes"

# Document a fix you applied
sysadmin-handbook fix "Increased nginx worker_connections from 1024 to 4096"

# Track a backup operation
sysadmin-handbook backup "Full backup of /data completed — 48GB, 23 min"

# Export everything to JSON for archival
sysadmin-handbook export json

# Search all logs for a keyword
sysadmin-handbook search "nginx"

# View recent activity across all commands
sysadmin-handbook recent

Output#

All commands output to stdout. Redirect to a file if needed:

bash

sysadmin-handbook stats > report.txt
sysadmin-handbook export csv

Configuration#

Set SYSADMIN_HANDBOOK_DIR environment variable to override the default data directory ( ~/.local/share/sysadmin-handbook/).

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