Depending on the CCIE's competency, for example voice networks, ISP networks, storage area networks, security issues, etc.

try ls -lo filename

@WesleyDavid Ok can you give any example of what could be an issue

in such large network

Well, that's just it. I'm not a CCIE, or even a CCNP, or even a CCNA so I have no idea what kind of scenario to present. You could look for some CCIE practice questions to see the kind of tasks they have to deal with. Let me see if I can find one...

Yes, that's it. someone else just answered, put put that up and i'll give you your upvote

@WesleyDavid ok

in all my reading about file locking, i'm surprised that that did not come up.

Check out some of these case studies of individual people who have gotten the CCIE and what it did for them: cisco.com/web/learning/le3/ccie/case_studies/index.html

Here's a CCIE candidate's thoughts on the routing and switching exam and what kinds of open-ended questions could be asked: blog.ine.com/2009/01/14/ccie-rs-lab-sample-oral-exam-questions

That reminds me I need to schedule a MS test and get that out of the way so I can get working on Cisco certs...

@WesleyDavid thanks for the links

That means that without being a CCIE I can't solve complex network problems?

Sometimes I wonder about my boss' sanity

@voretaq7 Cigars in the DC again?

Cigars in the DC?

@Jacob Ignore a study with 1200 data points in favor of one with 120 that has slightly more favorable numbers for use in marketing materials...

@Zypher I told the story a day or so ago :-)

@coredump I am so screwed on so many levels, then.

(different boss)

@voretaq7 storing or smoking?

@Zypher Smoking.

Datacenters make LOUSY humidors unless you have bigger problems to deal with :-)

@Holocryptic I will stick to the simple problems

@coredump heh, I just stick to whatever doesn't get me fired.

@Zypher Does StackExchange possibly need a remote admin? :)

@Holocryptic Good policy. :-)

@voretaq7 indeed. It usually involves a lot of kissing ass.

which is why I always have some chapstick on me

work related question: anyone used MSFT Multipoint yet?

@Holocryptic For me it involves letting people have their way on bad ideas in areas that shouldn't have been my job anyway.

@voretaq7 that sounds like a good policy in it's own right.

@Holocryptic yes, except then when it all goes to shit they whine at me about it

it makes me wonder why I bother to do the additional work sometimes, but my problem has always been I'm too damn nice.

@voretaq7 Of course because your the only one who knows what to do :)

@voretaq7 yep. Too nice for my own good. It's a failing of mine.

@Jacob You can take it as an axiom that if you listen to your engineers and do what they say things will rarely turn to shit. The corollary is that once it's all gone to bits it costs more in terms of time and money to fix the mess than it would have to just listen and do it right :-)

sooo, no one's used MSFT Multipoint Server? Just curious...

@Holocryptic Microsoft is a Dirty Word.

heh

I guess that just makes me a dirty boy.

couldn't find it on YouTube. grumble

What @Holocryptic needs is a nice stuffy bureaucrat...

@voretaq7 I'll have to watch it when I get home in 8-9 hours (web filter)

@Holocryptic BAH! Filters!

indeed

after I get off work tonight, I have to go back to work at another site to finish an Exchange migration. Long day....

Tomorrow I have to deploy Forefront TMG

@ITHedgeHog Forefront Antivirus is my next project

My former employer is embarking on a magnificent journey to deploy Altiris. Anyone want to convince them it's a Bad Idea? :-)

former employer ... meh

@voretaq7 We don't have to real with the consequences... =D

oooo, I got the Outspoken badge. I'm on fire!

Well that's messed up. Full restore of my web hosting account back to a day that I'm certain the site was functioning properly. Total refresh. Still not working, so now I've got to fight with the web host to convince them it's something on their end.

I think I'll rebuild it on another hosting account to prove them wrong.

Nothing motivates hard and careful work on a weekend like the possibility of being able to say "I told you so!"

@WesleyDavid I like that idea

Because I just paid $40 for a restore to a known good day and it's still hosed.

@ChrisS I even offered to come back cheap as a 1099 contractor to help them figure out if it was a good idea (I know it's not! They have a bunch of unix systems and Altiris isn't great at that...)

@WesleyDavid This is why I do my own backups ;)

I am totally loving VMware ESXi. Why in the hell was I ever running VMware Server 2? OMG WTF BBQ!!!111!1!1!!

Vmware needs to just put vmware server out or its misery

hear, hear!

MY SAN HAS BIT ME IN THE ASS AGAIN

While migrating data off it to our new machine, the SAN died again just like last week, and this time caused a kernel panic taking the whole machine down also

I am not a happy camper right now

Who's the manufacturer?

LiquidWeb

Do not use their SAN. It is not ready for production. Hell it's not ready for anything

I am so glad I am migrating away from it

Ohhh, liquidweb again.

Yes

The new 32-core server is awesome

But I was copying data off the old one, specifically off the SAN, and that killed it 9again)

My dog and I are having a woofing contest :)

@Jacob LOL. This makes me feel marginally better :-)

I'm winning woot

@Jacob s/woot/woof/g

WOOOOOOT!

@Josh s/grrrr/woof/grrr/woof

Bark. Bark bark growl.

@Josh thats about it

This is, in my opinion, the wort part of the system admin role. Waiting for a server to come back online, knowing you can't do anything to make it go faster, fighting to control your frustration and agitation as users and management breathe down your neck asking when the server will be back...

Wait... I wrote that wrong.

@WesleyDavid try adding: --exclude $(date +%a-%d-%b-%Y).homedir.tar.gz

Just to be safe

First I got tar's syntax wrong. Rewriting it now...

tar cfz /home/user/homedirbackups/$(date +%a-%d-%b-%Y).homedir.tar.gz --exclude /home/user/homedirbackups/ /home/user/

There, how's that?

Exclude the name of the tar file you're creating

So it won't be included in itself

Yeah, but there could be multiple backup files in there. Should I had a star?

oh, nevermind

No, sorry, you're right

You shouldn't be asking my advice, there's your problem, LOL

hehe

At least not at this moment, LOL

That should work fine

Yeah, I can imagine you're adrenaline is pumping out your nostrils right now.

that shouldn't really be a problem as it should create a file list before it opens the file to write to

"should" being the key word ;-)

@Iain I was wondering about that. The trouble is that multiple backup files could accrue in that folder, so I think i'll just exclude the whole thing

But I think @WesleyDavid 's new --exclude clause is great because this way it won't backup old backups

@WesleyDavid backup to a dirererent directory

@WesleyDavid yeah, wight, what you said... I'm going to shut up now and stare at my nagios page, filled with glaring red indicators

@Iain Yeah, I would, but it's a simple shared web host. I have no access to anything other than my home directory... which is what I want to back up;.

I don't even have shell access. Only cron jobs, so I'm making some crazy crons with all sorts of ;'s and &&'s

HAHAHA that's awesome

I'm trying to see if I can make a cron job line about as long as a Shakespearian sonnet.

@WesleyDavid stop stealing my precious stars ;-)

...must...resist...urge...to...starrrrrrr....

@Josh too late

Moving right along...

@Josh check IM if you get a chance

Hoo ya. Just escalated the ticket to a supervisor. In the process of rebuilding on a new hosting account now. sigh fun.

@WesleyDavid you're stealing my bit

@Holocryptic Seven more thefts and I'll have a byte.

@WesleyDavid I see what you did there.

anyhoo, I'm off to do an Exchange migration. I'll catch you guys tomorrow.

@Holocryptic later!

If I wasn't on my phone I'd star that

@coredump Are you there? I'm looking at club uptime. Does their OpenVZ accounts offer support for multiple domains per VPS?

@WesleyDavid well, what do you mean by multiple domains? I configured 4 domains on mine (apache + named)

Okay, yeah. I've got like 6 separate websites I want to host on it, and some VPS companies will say that more than one domain per VPS costs extra. Rare, but happens.

I was about to go with MyHosting.com's custom VPS, but I get more for less at clubuptime

I lose flexibility, but oh well.

@WesleyDavid also remember that the cheaper ones are unmanaged

that means you are responsible for all the shizzle

Yeah, I'm a nublet so I'm looking at these: clubuptime.com/vps/vz_managed

@WesleyDavid agh cpanel

Laugh me to scorn. Maybe next year I'll be more of an unmanaged kinda guy.

oh fsck please please please hurry!

@Josh That's what... no, I won't go there.

I'd hope to avoid cPanel wherever possible. I mean, I've still got SSH access and would hope to do most of my stuff via that. I'm still in larval stage.

So is the ire against cPanel simply because it dumbs things down or are their fundamental flaws with how it effects a web server?

I run cPanel/WHM

If you want to do things differently from how cPanel does things, you run into major issues

@WesleyDavid I don't like it because it hides all the cool stuff :)

If you install cPanel and only use cPanel, it works well

Also what @Josh, the deflorer of trolls, said

Wesley i'd help you manage it....

@Josh... ohhh... so if I get cPanel, but try to do work via SSH... there could be conflicts?

What we're doing... actually, what I was doing right before the kernel panic, is setting up a cPanel server which will handle email/ftp, but set up our own webserver VMs outside cPanel to actually server content

@WesleyDavid what do you want to do via SSH?

What I want to do via SSH... Have fun, of course.

@josh I'm thinking apache stuffs mostly. Perhaps email as well.

@WesleyDavid listen to Jacob. He knows his stuff from what I can tell! :-)

heh

@WesleyDavid well for Apache, you have to do it the cpanel way

damn, really? So messing with Apache in bash one day and cPanel the next will hose things? >:-(

one sec, looking fro question

Why don't you get the Clubuptime vps, play with it, break it, fix it, and then reinstall it to move your stuff. That way you can get more experience.

Huh, I can't find my question

Wesley I have a test vps you. Can blow up

@WesleyDavid if you want to change apache configs, you need to use specific include files

@coredump That's what I was thinking. I just don't know about the learning curve with so many things backing up on me. I'm going from bed, to desk and back to bed after 16 hours now

If you want to add/change apache modules, you must use cPanel's easyapache script to recompile the whole server

if the compile fails, apache goes down or has errors

that part sucks

I'll send the details over gtalk if you want em

Okay, so... maybe just a regular VPS then and see what I can do.

@WesleyDavid are your users going to need a control panel?

@Josh I'm the only user. It's going to host three of my LLC's domains, my personal blog, a friend's company website and maybe one other.

No "users". I'm the luser in this case.

@Jacob I think I'll just be getting a VPS. I need to kick this off. Like... in an hour. ;)

@WesleyDavid I'd refer you to LiquidWeb's VPS service but they're on my shitlist right now ;-)

@Josh Yeah, I considered them until I saw their prices.

@WesleyDavid for their VPSes or for Storm?

In honesty, if you'd asked me two weeks ago about them I would have said they're fantastic

and my new server is freaking awesome. It's just this damn SAN. And specifically iSCSI. The SAN's not down, just something messed up with iSCSI drivers

achem, excuse me

No, their VPSs. Basic Linux VPS for $60 a month? The hell?

I hope you didn't see that @Jacob -- I forgot there were young ears in here ;-)

Oh, and CentOS 4?!

@WesleyDavid stormondemand.com

note it will still be ~45/mo

at least, with bandwidth

Pondering, pondering.

If I go cPanel with some management, I can get these things up and done in a short amount of time. If I go unmanaged I'm working through the weekend and probably all of next week on a huge learning curve doing things I've never done before for production websites that customers will be on.

I like the learning new things part. I don't like the rocket launcher style learning curve with customers in the balance.

For what you're trying to do cPanel is probably fine

the biggest issue I have with cPanel is when a customer says, "Please add xyz PHP module" and I have to recompile all of apache, and it breaks

When it breaks, what's the remedy? You said, total apache recompile? Can that be done via cPanel?

Yup. The issue is, to upgrade Apache / PHP / apache modules, you have to recompile

and it installs immedietly after it finishes

so if you need to fix things you have to recompile again, which could take 2 hours

but if you get Apache the way you want it first, before you move live sites there, you're golden

I know I asked a question on this, but it seems to be gone now

@wesley does that mean I can help manage?

Okay, so I think I'm going to wimp out because of the time sensitive nature of things, and go for a cPanel VPS. Still, it's got learning potential for me, just not the K2 level of vertical movement. Which makes me a bit sad, but... customers and all.

and @Josh, I'm looking at those Storm servers and still not sure about the price. If I had a bit more room in my bank account and I knew their support was awesome, I might spring for it.

Okay @coredump, we'll be VPS neighbors. I'm going for a managed VPS at club uptime.

@WesleyDavid I have not used their storm servers, only their dedicated servers. I know that tech support for dedicated servers has been awesome. My issue with the SAN last week was they sent that over to system restore and migrations who were signifigantly less awesome

whips out Credit Card

@WesleyDavid weee. Tell me if you need a slave dns

@coredump TY. Some day I'll be cool like you and get an unmanaged one. That's the goal, anyway.

If you have cPanel questions @WesleyDavid let me know, I have been using it for almost 8 years

I am not cool

Aww, I'm getting all warm and fuzzy. Wait... that's my cat rubbing on my legs.

LOL

He seems to have bug-eyes, too

wow

my ICQ number that I haven't used in 11 years just popped into my head

It's official, I'm a Club Uptime member with a shiny new OpenVZ managed VPS. Yay me.