The Comms Room

Jeff Ferland

7:00 PM

EBay + "Cisco" in search field.

Probably cost you less than a new DLink

Chris S

@JeffFerland eBay + ProCurve =]

Adrian

@ChrisS Pretty much. And their "High-End" "Managed" "Enterprise" stuff is the worst of both worlds.

Jeff Ferland

@ChrisS Good call

Adrian

Sadly, I'm not allowed to buy used stuff off Ebay. Boss decided that after I advocated for the ASA5501 firewall. =/

Chris S

I get my home gear of eBay somewhat frequently; but work stuff tends to get purchased new.

Zoredache

7:01 PM

@ChrisS speaking of HP switches, is it possible to get the CLI to be less stupid about the logout?

Adrian

"We don't need any features like that." "We've always done fine without." Wouldn't be quite as sad if he weren't younger than I am.

Chris S

In the case of ProCurve gear, it's got a transferable lifetime warranty, only restriction is that it can't go through a non-authorized equipment refurbisher or something like that, but end-user to end-user is 100% approved.

voretaq7

@Adrian ohhhhh, your boss is an IDIOT :-)

Chris S

@Zoredache What do you mean exactly?

Zoredache

BB-2910-01# exit
BB-2910-01> exit
Do you want to log out [y/n]? Yes gawd dammit I typed exit twice now you piece of crap!!!!

tombull89

7:03 PM

@JeffFerland I've got a Linksys at home - sort of a poor mans' Cisco, right?

Chris S

@Zoredache Just close the connection... that's what I do. Yeah, "stupid" is a good description.

Jeff Ferland

@tombull89 Kind of like a slingshot is a poor man's assault rifle

Linksys:Cisco::Slingshot:.50 cal

TylerShads

Pop back into chat to see speed test and sarah palin...must've been a good convo

voretaq7

@TylerShads Sarah Palin is Fast, Loose and Easy?

Zoredache

@ChrisS is there an interrupt key for ssh, like you used to have for telnet? I think there is, but I can never remember it.

voretaq7

7:04 PM

@Zoredache I think there is

Adrian

Escape-dot ?

TylerShads

@voretaq7 instantrimshot.com

Adrian

Hell, I think I got this link from in here:

lonesysadmin.net/2011/11/08/…

voretaq7

@Zoredache Tilde.

[mgraziano@monitor ~]$ ~?
Supported escape sequences:
  ~.  - terminate connection (and any multiplexed sessions)
  ~B  - send a BREAK to the remote system
  ~C  - open a command line
  ~R  - Request rekey (SSH protocol 2 only)
  ~^Z - suspend ssh
  ~#  - list forwarded connections
  ~&  - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate)
  ~?  - this message
  ~~  - send the escape character by typing it twice
(Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)

Zoredache

@voretaq7 well that works, but that is less helpful... it kills the top ssh session. To get to the switches I have to ssh to a box, and then ssh from there...

voretaq7

7:08 PM

@Zoredache ~~ - pass the escape character through to the NEXT ssh daemon

Relevant: poppyfields.net/filks/00222.html

...have I destroyed the universe by linking to that site?
Oh god, they're not all trying to sing it for n=20 are they?

MikeyB

7:26 PM

Well then! My Cisco 2K FEX problem is a new one for Cisco. Yay.

pauska

yeah ok, windows8 doesnt bring anything to the table at all if you don't have a tablet

or, maybe the app store, but I really don't care about it

TylerShads

was it here that someone got a 30-yr ban or am i delusional?

Jeff Ferland

So the debian installer from goodbye-microsoft.com sucks...

Iain

@TylerShads could easily have been

Jeff Ferland

I didn't feel like bootdisking, so I was happy to do it from within, then reboot....

Damn thing gets near the end, says, "Only other OS appears to be Windows on /whatever/partition, so it should be safe to install Grub" Great! Must be Grub 2 and have config for booting Windows. WRONG

So I have to bootdisk from my Windows CD. Windows CD doesn't recognize the Windows partition and won't install the right MBR.

Such a pain in the ass

Zoredache

7:35 PM

Didn't the goodbye-microsoft name give you a hint that you would no longer be seeing it? :p

Joel

I'm having some DNS fun with my workstation. It's become a game of "find the configuration directive"

voretaq7

@TylerShads sounds vaguely familiar

TylerShads

@voretaq7 I thought it might have been our friend Evan, but I was wrong. But do remember someone getting a 30 year ban

is there a way to sort users by ban? haha

voretaq7

@TylerShads heh there should be

Lucas Kauffman

30 year ban?

what did he do?

voretaq7

7:42 PM

you can sort them by when they were banned (seems to be the default)

TylerShads

@LucasKauffman probably insulted Chopper, or asked how to shop for a server

voretaq7

wait thats sorting annotations... "users in timed suspension" seems to be the ticket

and it's a short list

Evan is the record holder - looks like a 2 year ban.

unless "'13" means "9913"

TylerShads

@voretaq7 1year, it just happened

voretaq7

DO NOT BE AMBIGUOUS IN TIMESTAMPS

pauska

Evan who?

voretaq7

7:45 PM

@TylerShads ah you're right, there's no year in the start date

@pauska The dude who has been having meltdowns on mSO

Lucas Kauffman

@voretaq7 link?

TylerShads

@voretaq7 how were you searching for that, google?

voretaq7

@TylerShads no it's on the first tab of mod tools - IDK if that's a complete list but it seems like it is

TylerShads

@voretaq7 ooooo, cheater

tombull89

StackExchange CDN is unser a DOS attack - things were getting real ugly man, real ugly.

voretaq7

7:47 PM

@LucasKauffman don't have one handy but here's his mSO profile: meta.stackoverflow.com/users/157251/evan-carroll

there was a shouting match there a while back -- someone probably cleaned up the comments.

pauska

I discovered two great tools today: The Microsoft Win7 dvd tool and inSSIDer

voretaq7

@TylerShads when in doubt: CHEAT.

pauska

both made my life considerably easier :)

Lucas Kauffman

I know the picture

TylerShads

@voretaq7 odd, don't have that link on the movies tools

though, i do have this

returns a couple of false positives, though

voretaq7

7:50 PM

@TylerShads I'm sorry, I misspoke - it's on the "Users" tab - alllll the way at the bottom. (The crack I smoke from is the finest Colombian!)

Lucas Kauffman

-38

Q: Badge suggestion: HATER, LOVER, and FAIR AND BALANCED

I wanted to suggest three new badges: HATER: If you've downvoted any one person more than 20 times. LOVER: If you've upvoted any one person more than 20 times. FAIR AND BALANCED: If you've upvoted AND downvoted one person more 20 times UP and DOWN. What do you think? Then we would finally kno...

that's quite ironical

TylerShads

@voretaq7 oh, i was looking at the 'tools' link

voretaq7

@TylerShads yeah it's not on that one

though I kinda think there should be a public Wall-O-Shame for people who have earned bans.

wfaulk

@LucasKauffman I was just looking at that. Asinine request. Just because I consistently downvote the same person because they consistently have shit answers, I should be penalized for that?

voretaq7

@wfaulk no, you should be rewarded. With a bronze badge, cuz its easy to find people posting shit answers :)

2

wfaulk

7:56 PM

exactly. Not that I suspect that anyone was taking that request seriously.

that dude is just strange

Lucas Kauffman

@wfaulk what do you expect in this business :p

wfaulk

strange even for this business

jscott

Is there a rep cap on how much you can lose in a day?

pauska

@jscott that is a weird question.. are you going after someone with sticks and flames?

jscott

@pauska No, not at all, I'm not vengeful or anything like that. Just wonder as I was looking at rep graphs.

Zoredache

8:09 PM

@jscott I don't think so. If a single person tried to downvote lots of answers/questions the serial down-voting thing would trip.

Iain

if you account is suspended you loose all of your rep till the suspension ends

jscott

@Zoredache What I mean is, can you receive enough -1s on your answer/question that you reach a negative repcap for the day.

Zoredache

@jscott I doubt anything like that is in place. If a question or answer was that bad, it would probably get deleted.

Iain

they get hidden at -5 ?

jscott

5

Q: Does the daily rep cap also work for rep loss?

Since there is a max rep cap, is there also a cap for how much can be lost in a day?

discussion reputation

Unaccepted though.

Oh wow, -100 for spam/offense flag. Guess someone (not me!) could hit -200 real quickly.

Adrian

8:15 PM

@Joel Rockin' the PRTG so far. Will see if the boss likes it tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.

voretaq7

@jscott BRB, marking 1450 of your posts as spam/offensive :-)

jscott

But I've only 187 to pick from! Halp!

Zypher

@jscott 7.75 flags per post for you!

2

Lucas Kauffman

flag all the things?

voretaq7

@LucasKauffman post all the flags?

MikeyB

8:30 PM

Battery status: Battery full charging
Location: Controller A
Age: 0 days
Days until replacement: 3,690 days

3690 days? Seems a little optimistic to me.

Kyle Smith

10 years? Yeah right.

I'm replacing PERC 5/e batteries like crazy.

voretaq7

@MikeyB Battery technology has improved... but not THAT much!

5 would be the limit.

MikeyB

Holy shit Lucas - like the tag wikis do you? :p

Jeff Ferland

Battery for what? Some of them, if you keep a really good cycle and maintenance, can last even longer, but that is on the edge

MikeyB

@voretaq7 I replaced them today at… uh... 1,960 days old.

Lucas Kauffman

8:38 PM

@MikeyB yes, I've waited the last two days for one dev to finish his code so I can finally add it to my program, I got a bit excited when I could start editing tag wiki's I guess :3

MikeyB

@JeffFerland DS4700 storage subsystem

voretaq7

@MikeyB yup. 'bout 5 years :-)

MikeyB

@LucasKauffman: tag wiki:
FTPS is an extension of the FTP protocol that makes use of Transfer Layer Security. It encrypts all packets, including authentication, when one uses the ftp protocol.

Do not confuse FTPS with SFTP.

tag wiki excerpt:
FTP protocol over SSL

… so which is it? FTP over SSL or FTP with TLS?

voretaq7

@MikeyB both, technically

Lucas Kauffman

@MikeyB ah shit it needed to state both, FTP secure is TLS and FTP SSL with SSL

voretaq7

8:44 PM

"The mechanism for negotiating authentication and security with FTP was added under RFC 2228, which included the new FTP command AUTH. While this RFC does not explicitly define any required security mechanisms, e.g. SSL or TLS, it does require the FTPS client to challenge the FTPS server with a mutually known mechanism."

ewwhite

SNMP question. Do Dell's expose the server's SNMP data through DRAC?

voretaq7

. . . OS SNMP data? I don't think so.
They can expose the DRAC/SMI data through SNMP if you install the OpenManage agent(s) though.

MikeyB

@LucasKauffman: imagemagick: instead of 'bitmap' images, it should refer to them as 'raster' images

ewwhite

One thing I'd like to see on HP ILO would be the ability to expose hardware status via SNMP.

Lucas Kauffman

@MikeyB that's straight from their manpage :p

Chopper3

8:45 PM

@ewwhite probably not through DRACm through an OS-specific SNMP agent I'd imagine

ewwhite

Let's say I'm running an OS that doesn't support HP management agents.

voretaq7

@ewwhite you can write your own management agent using ipmitool / dmidecode or equivalent commands...

MikeyB

@LucasKauffman Well the manpage is wrong :p

voretaq7

(been there, done that, printed a box of T-Shirts)

ewwhite

@voretaq7 more painful :)

Lucas Kauffman

8:47 PM

@MikeyB I'm going to file a bug report!

voretaq7

@ewwhite not really that painful actually

ewwhite

Just thinking...

Kyle Smith

0

Q: What storage hardware do you use for databases?

What storage hardware are people using to run databases on top of? We are currently using Dell PowerVault 200s but have had issues of drives "going bad" during a reboot and having to be forced online so I'm not sure we want to continue with Dell. I was looking at other storage vendors but not a...

sql-server storage san nas database-performance

One more!

Lucas Kauffman

248 more tag wiki's and I've got myself a badge

Chopper3

@KyleSmith we should just all respond with "Definitely floppy-RAID"

Lucas Kauffman

8:57 PM

aaw already closed

MikeyB

@KyleSmith Solid-state storage. USB flash drives are cheap nowadays but you should definitely use RAID10 on top of them.

Iain

@LucasKauffman which one ?

Lucas Kauffman

@Iain storage hw

Iain

@LucasKauffman is that a badge ?

Lucas Kauffman

@Iain which one? the tags? it's 500 edits

Iain

9:11 PM

@LucasKauffman 50

Lucas Kauffman

@Iain yea but there's also a gold one :o

Iain

is there

Lucas Kauffman

500 edits

tags account to that too

Iain

ahhh
>248 more tag wiki's and I've got myself a badge

Lucas Kauffman

@Iain oops, I meant edits

Iain

9:15 PM

@LucasKauffman the best thing there is to use /review on the new questions so you gte pips towards the reviewer badge too

Lucas Kauffman

@Iain I already do that, but I was out of questions/answers/late answers :(

Iain

:)

84104

9:34 PM

Wtf is up with people 4XXing mail to noreply addresses. Accept it and file it into /dev/null. Filling my maillogs with stupid.

Bart Silverstrim

How's this in a job description:

You find Linux based kiosks exciting.

O_0

don't apply if: You would balk at helping to move a kiosk into the building.

84104

I don't get it.

Mark Henderson

Who finds kiosks exciting?

Iain

@BartSilverstrim so telecommuting is out then

G'day @MarkHenderson

Bart Silverstrim

Linux Systems Engineer at Pay-Ease

linuxpuppetsysadmin

Linux Systems Engineer We are seeking a talented Linux Engineer to join the team here at Pay-Ease. You will work with the team to manage a nation wide installation of Linux based…

Posted on Careers 2.0 on March 13, 2012

Mark Henderson

9:39 PM

Hey @Iain

@BartSilverstrim Sounds like ATMs

Bart Silverstrim

@Iain I guess so. Maybe I could apply and say that I find remote linux kiosks sexy.

Joel

9:52 PM

@Adrian That's awesome. Do you like the web GUI

Adrian

@Joel Oh yeah. It's a bit slow, but the laptop it's running on was something we were quite literally going to throw out until I co-opted it.

Joel

@Adrian Did you follow the performance recommendations?

Adrian

@Joel Haven't even gone there yet. Going to set up some pretty lights and geegaws for the other folks to play with and then dig into all that stuff.

Joel

@Adrian Performance is a feature

Adrian

Frankly though, it's running tolerably well on that little laptop on a 100Mb link.

Joel

10:01 PM

@Adrian How many sensors?

Adrian

317 and trending downward. whittling down all the HP, DLink, and Cisco stuff it auto-created. I'm not going to monitor all our workstations since they're just dumb terminals, so it may end up at about 200.

Joel

@Adrian I have like 100 for our DB server alone

Or had, I should say. Graduating to nagios

Adrian

@Joel We may end up there. Even the basic ones are going to take time to settle into folks' heads. I'm not too worried. And Nagios is technically also on the evaluation list along with Zabbix and Observium.

ewwhite

Observium, eh?

:)

Joel

@ewwhite Go on

ewwhite

10:06 PM

@BartSilverstrim Yeah, they're here in Chicago.

@Joel I use it... kinda

for graphs.

very pretty graphs

Joel

@ewwhite What do you use for the data part? Collection, aggregation, trend prediction, etc

ewwhite

but I use OpenNMS to do the hard work

Adrian

Management likes graphs. Management signs my paychecks. I don't see a problem here.

ewwhite

OpenNMS for interface status, asset management, inventory, thresholds, alerts, maintenance schedules...

reports

But Observium for pretty graphs.

pauska

it makes you wonder though.. how there are ~3 different major browsers owning the market, and 315357513756 different network/app monitoring software

ewwhite

10:09 PM

No monitoring solution does it all.

Joel

@pauska Each has a different philosophy

ewwhite

I still use Monit on top of all of that.

Adrian

@pauska elementary. Geeks like choices, Consumers don't really.

ewwhite

for example...

today, I got a Monit alert...

pauska

choices? I love it when software doesnt give me alot of choices, it just works like it should

that of course implies that the software can offer what I want.. :)

ewwhite

10:10 PM

PID changed Service ssh

Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:26:22 -0700
Action: alert
Host: blah. Description: process PID changed from 11039 to 27661

pauska

yeah I saw your little rootkit fest

good monitoring there man, I would never ever catch something like that

ewwhite

followed by Description: process is not running

Execution failed Service ssh

Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:01:35 -0700
Action: alert
Host: blah Description: failed to start

different times, since it happened a couple times...

pauska

I kind of liked solarwinds npm, but it gets redicilously expensive for us as we have ~80 remote locations

ewwhite

but then opennms had a "The SSH service poll on interface blah (174.x.x.163)"

and I don't think nagios alone would have picked up on an ssh PID/binary change

pauska

unless you script it to do so

Joel

10:12 PM

@ewwhite Do monit and openNMS monitor each other?

pauska

which is kind of the whole deal about nagios, I imagine it being great if you put in 1000 hours of work

ewwhite

Monit is run on each host.

OpenNMS from a central location

so I use Monit to do things like make sure ssh, cron, ntp and any essential services are running

pauska

I'm being nagged on from all corners at work to get the complete system center suite, so I guess we're going to use MOM for server/app monitoring

ewwhite

if they are down or fail, MOnit will restart

you can add snmpd to that as well.

pauska

I just wish I could find a free and good network graph/alert system.. Cacti is too simple

ewwhite

10:14 PM

OpenNMS is the outside view of the hosts.

which services are up/down...

Observium is for really, REALLY pretty graphs

it seems to be geared towards ISPs and networking environments.

pauska

done any big screen work with it?

even solarwinds npm lacks a "noc view", which I find quite disturbing

Mark Henderson

@pauska I saw a blog post from the SO team about the board software they use, and you can plug virtually anything into it via an API

ewwhite

Observium has a widescreen link on the page.

pauska

I mean who doesnt want to put it up on a big screen

@MarkHenderson they use solarwinds for networking afaik

Mark Henderson

Geckoboard

geckoboard.com

We looked at it seriously for our office, but decided our current solution works fine

ewwhite

10:17 PM

interesting

pauska

thats a bit more suited for sites that are used worldwide

Mark Henderson

pauska

we just need proactive alerts about our network and the hypervisors

Mark Henderson

Thats what our 42" TV shows at the moment, it was fine for our needs

pauska

like ram usage on switch bleh went over 70%, or multicast/broadcast storm happened x minutes ago

Joel

10:19 PM

@MarkHenderson I found Zabbix so god damn annoying to set up.

ewwhite

OpenNMS is a bit tough, too

and it's dashboard is bleh...

Mark Henderson

@Joel Its approximately one BILLION times less annoying than Nagios

ewwhite

not good for the bigboard...

Mark Henderson

Especially once you've read the manual

pauska

@ewwhite do you know if you can make alerts in Observium blink (or even better, blink and beep speaker) until someone acknowledges an alert?

ewwhite

10:20 PM

No. Observium does NOT alert.

at the minimum, it will send up/down and reboot alerts to the SNMP contact defined on the device

no thresholds or anything

Mark Henderson

What is frustrating about zabbix:

1. No SNMP trap support out of the box (and its a pain int he arse to get working even afterwards)
2. No ability to do a bar graph of latest data (only historical). I wanted a bar graph showing the % of free disk space on all our servers. It can't do it.

pauska

someone else here talked about a monitoring system (Dan perhaps?) that looked pretty sweet

its just that they required a INSANE amount of money for a paid version with snmp traps

and sms gateway

Mark Henderson

Splunk?

Joel

@MarkHenderson I may have some odd brain wrinkle. I liked nagios MORE than zabbix.

pauska

no, not splunk

Joel

10:23 PM

Maybe because zabbix subscribes to the "I HEARD YOU LIKE TABS SO I TABBED YOUR DOZEN TABS" school of UI design

Mark Henderson

Everyone always raved at me how good Nagios was, so I didn't even bother looking into alternatives. A week later when I still couldn't get anything useful out of it I got the shits and deleted my VM and looked around. Zabbix took about 2 hours to install and configure (including the time to build an ubuntu VM) and then about 2-3 days to get every server configured and create reporting templates etc

ewwhite

pandorafms.org

Joel

Fucking Management System

ewwhite

pandorafms.org/index.php?lng=en&sec=project&sec2=home

Mark Henderson

We mostly run Windows so I was able to deploy Zabbix agents and configs via GPO once I had that set up and until recently I've never looked back

(until I wanted to start doing more detailed reporting, then Zabbix starts to show its lack of features)

pauska

10:25 PM

ah, found it. Opsview

Joel

@MarkHenderson Where did Zabbix fall apart?

Mark Henderson

@Joel Its lack of flexibility in reporting. E.g. it can't send daily reports via email. It can't report on the latest data, only historical data.

So if i want to see free disk space on a server over the last 12 months, go right ahead. But want to see free disk space on each server, comparitive to eachother? forget about it

Joel

@MarkHenderson How'd you end up getting that kind of informatic?

Mark Henderson

@Joel Haven't yet. Ultimately we get alerts when things go bad so it's on the low end of the priority list

ewwhite

How do I get moar people to try OpenNMS?

Joel

10:27 PM

@ewwhite I'll do it right now

ewwhite

Oh, any my old firm had a nice product called Zyrion Traverse.

Expensive, but did everything...

zyrion.com/products

Zoredache

@ewwhite make it not be based on java?

ewwhite

Java and performance haven't been an issue.

It's extremely scalable, and the polling is the best feature.

my only gripe is that the graphs are ugly

Joel

I sacrificed an external to the CEO ;_;

It had all my Dell firmware updates and shit

pauska

the dashboard in opennms sucked.. way too verbose

Zoredache

10:39 PM

Is there any monitoring system that doesn't suck?

5

pauska

well opsview looks and feels really great

it just that they charge so much for snmp trap/sms alerting

Aaron

@Zoredache Netcool!

Adrian

@Aaron Ha! I was just going to ask if anyone was using that. I used to support the Wireless (Carrier) Perf. Mgmt. side of that product.

TNPMW

Aaron

I remember back when we were first starting with netcool, and the Cisco people (they were re-branding it at the time) were saying 'Yeah, so your fiber carrier uses it too, so they can set it up so that their alerts go right into your system and you'll know when the span goes down'

I was like 'I think you drastically overestimate the competence and willingness of said fiber carrier

Joel

@Aaron Are you kidding? Verizon has a white-gloved courier show up on a litter carried by four bronze-skinned men with a little piece of paper saying "We're having routing issues"

Adrian

10:48 PM

@Aaron Heh. An old friend of mine works for One Comm. back East has to deal with Verizon long lines every day. Her blood pressure is worse than mine.

Bart Silverstrim

11:14 PM

@ewwhite You know them?

While I'm swearing at this #$^$*()^ postgres database...take a quick break...

How the heck?

I created a nearly matching environment, got it configured to allow me to list databases using my own login and psql -h host -U user -l, but on the production system, it doesn't work...what the heck?!

Joel

11:31 PM

@BartSilverstrim K-K-KERBEROS

Bart Silverstrim

Don't think so.

At least, not that I know of.

Joel

@BartSilverstrim I come from MySQL land, where user authentication is the homely-cousin afterthought

I have to deal with Kayako's bullshit LoginShare "API"

which is more like saying "We couldn't figure out how to get PHP to talk to Active Directory, so figure it out yourselves and let us know when you get it right"

It fails on exactly every other authentication attempt from a given user.

pauska

oh yeah, user management in mysql is so extremely nice..

Bart Silverstrim

Yeah, but this is postgresql.

0

Q: psql won't list databases

I have a situation that I'm scratching my head over, but I'm new to postgresql, so I may be overlooking something obvious. I set up a testbed server and set access in pg_hba.conf: local all postgres peer local all all ...