The Comms Room

Adrian

00:10

And NBC will be irrelevant in 10 years.

Mark Henderson

@Adrian I'm sure they will find a way to shoehorn their way into your life through stupid legal injunctions

theoatmeal.com/comics/music_industry - for reference

Adrian

How far are viewerships down right now? They're holding on for dear life.

Mark Henderson

Our internet in this country is so rubbish that we don't have any viable alternatives to watching live TV, unless you're willing to wait 24 hours for it to download

But once the government finishes their fiber-to-the-premises project, I suspect things might change

Adrian

Next time I bump into Chopper, I'll have to ask him his opinion.

I probably have a skewed view since I haven't watched television in about 4 years, but it looks like a bunch of artless grasping dreck.

Mark Henderson

I like TV on demand. A few stations here offer it. Government-owned ABC (our equivalent of the BBC)'s is a very good system, but they have a very narrow selection of genres and shows

MDMarra

00:34

Lots of free Windows eBooks legit from MS: blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2012/07/27/…

Mark Henderson

00:44

What You Can Do Before You Call Tech Support (Windows 7)

Haven't read it yet, but I suspect I might want to plaster it on the bathroom stall doors

MDMarra

Hahahaha yup

Some of the Introducing _____ 2012 ones look useful. Some of it is dumpster worthy

Mark Henderson

@MDMarra Download it just so you can delete it

Joel E Salas

01:46

@MarkHenderson more like dd if=/dev/urandom of=/home/joel/Downloads/Microsoft_Press_eBook_Introducing_Microsoft_SQL_Server_2‌012_PDF.pdf bs=10M

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas Not a fan of SQL Server?

HopelessN00b

Hey, if you don't like MSSQL2012, I could help you get some perspective... I'm doing a couple upgrades to MSSQL 2000 SP4 as we speak. Woohoo! Upgrades!

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Hah, we got rid of our final remaining SQL 2005 servers two years ago

Yay, intellitype in SSMS

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson Actually I'm cool with SQL Server, it was the only filename I had (because I actually downloaded the PDF)

HopelessN00b

Yeah, our crappy time-keeping software (or teh crappy version of it we run) doesn't even support past 2005. Very icky.

Joel E Salas

01:56

@HopelessN00b At least you didn't write your own

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas I imagine that that experiment was a raging success?

HopelessN00b

@JoelESalas If you'll pardon m arrogance, I don't see that as consolation. If I'd written my own it would work better, and I'd be several million dollars richer, at least.

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson I jest. Sort of. At one of my previous employers, they wrote their own everything.

HopelessN00b

(The markup on these things is obscene! Almost as bad as security products, for a small amount of code and an MSSQL db.)

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson eheh. My lecturer favours that for assignments since its a heck of a lot smaller than the latest

@MDMarra: plus.google.com/112313173544747389010/posts/gVA6XkDFBrD this may be of interest. SU blog is likely to have a review in future

Mark Henderson

02:01

UNBOXING!

WHY?!

Who the fuck cares that you're unpacking something from a box

Tell me what you have and how well it works and what features it has. I don't give two shits what its box has in it. In fact, if I had my way, I'd request no box (assuming I could still get the product in safe working order)

The next thing I hate is the little card that comes with products "Congratulations on your purchase!" - fuck off. I know I just bought it, and I bought it because I like it. You're basically saying "Hey! You just helped my stock price! Thanks!", which is unnessesary.

I also don't like how Apple fucking talk to you in their packaging. Unboxing our imac the other day, and the fucking thing said "hello" when I opened the box

And printed user manuals that only have 4 pages in them, but are printed in 45 different languages so they're as big as a dictionary. Seriously, waste of paper. Who ever reads them?

I'll get it off the internet if I need it

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: skip a few pages, and there's a picture of it. Also the manual is only in korean from what i hear ;p

Mark Henderson

And chinese products who ship their drivers on those tiny little CDs. Guess what - they don't work in a slot loaded drive. So now I have to navigate your shitty goddamn website that's all in chinese and translates into "my cow is good shit yes?" to find your crappy drivers that probably won't work anyway

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: does anyone outside apple use slot loaders? ;p

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Manual. for a monitor. All you need to know is how to turn it on. Bam, no manual needed.

Journeyman Geek

(that said, I think drivers should be on USB keys - with a little app to download the latest as well)

Mark Henderson

02:08

@JourneymanGeek Not sure. I had a 24x slot-loading CD-ROM when I was a kid

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: not everyone can handle stuff without a manual.

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek If you're brave enough to be buying a monitor from Korea on Jeff Atwoods say-so, you're brave enough to attempt shit without reading the instructions

HopelessN00b

nods

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: true, but those monitors are meant for the korean market ;p

Mark Henderson

In fact, as a man, I insist on attempting things without reading the instructions. Its my god-given duty.

@JourneymanGeek Step 1. Plug it in

Step 2: There is none!

Journeyman Geek

02:10

and as i said, skip a few images - screen is REALLY nice, its wobbly (If i ever get one, i'll just screw it onto a board to fix that) and its huge.

HopelessN00b

What's allegedly so great about those specific monitors, anyhow?

Mark Henderson

Shit a brick, I should be a technical writer. I'd make documentation worth reading

@HopelessN00b To be fair, IPS is a much superior technology than TN in most applications

They have a higher latency than a TN monitor, but their colour reproduction is fantastic

Journeyman Geek

@HopelessN00b: Massively large screen, massively high res, rather reasonably priced - less than half of what an equivilent screen costs i believe

Mark Henderson

And they don't come in low resolutions

HopelessN00b

Hmm, cool. thanks.

Mark Henderson

02:11

Apple have been using IPS monitors for years, it's why they've always been light years ahead in monitors than any PC

HopelessN00b

I already have 4 28" WS monitors... I think buying another big one would scream "geeeek!" just a little too loudly, otherwise I'd lok into those. :D

Journeyman Geek

You basically get a panel apple rejected for maybe 300 USD (which is a steal). No warranty (thats 50 bucks extra), no frills (the base model works with NOTHING but DVI dual link ), and it still apparently beats the shit out of most other monitors

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Warranty sounds like a waste of money. Who is going to ship that fucker back to Korea just to have your claim rejected?

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: precisely. Worth mentioning though ;)

Oh, 300 bucks INCLUDES shipping BTW

HopelessN00b

Oh, they do look very purty, though. And I already know I'm a gee anyway.... dammit.

Journeyman Geek

02:14

lol

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b I dropped from two 1680x1050 monitors down to one 2560x1440 - I'd take the one ultra-res monitor any day

HopelessN00b

Yeah, mine are stuck at the 1920x1280 I've been at for like 5 years, and I'm starting to feel the limitations.

I could use twice as many pixels, I think. :)

Journeyman Geek

another one bites the dust ;p

HopelessN00b

Oh well. $300... not like I was planning to pay taxes this year anyway. XD

Journeyman Geek

... damn ...

just realised if my dad's company was still up, i could have gotten one of them, and gotten dad to file it as a business expense, which would have saved me sales tax

;p

Mark Henderson

02:27

Man, my Dad was always super super strict on tax filings etc

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: Basically we effectively ran a home office, and a lot of stuff was dual purpose

Mark Henderson

When I was little he got spot-checked by the tax department. He passed fine, no issues, but ever since that day, he even used to depreciate his computer based on how much time we spent on it playing video games (which was why we were allowed 5 minutes a week)

Journeyman Geek

but dad's retiring, so most of that will get written off, anything usable will be shifted home, and such

o0

local tax department is very hands off, thankfully

Mark Henderson

Retirement... that'll be the day. At this rate we'll be working till we're 65

Journeyman Geek

I do believe my monitor is owned by the company ;p

@MarkHenderson: my dad's around that age. He is switching from doing, well everything, to pure consulting/training

He's getting too old to trapse around god forsaken, soon to be war ridden hellholes ;p

Mark Henderson

02:30

I think my Dad is going to drive my Mum insane when he retires

Journeyman Geek

(Dad's company was subcontracting in the middle east, we left libya shortly before shit happened)

Mark Henderson

He'll need to look for things around the house to "fix"

Journeyman Geek

lol, thats a granted

oh, if only

mine watches too much crappy TV

Joel E Salas

Oh how I miss PRTG

HopelessN00b

Kill it, kill it now!

-3

Q: External Harddisk fiiles missing

I have all my data in my seagate external hard disk in the folder Balamurugan(please see the image for folder structure). Suddenly I am not able to open. If i Click the folder balamurugan. It is showing as Restore Options. How can I get all my files back.

Mark Henderson

02:41

HopelessN00b

Yes, very much that!

Mark Henderson

Burn mother fucker burn

HopelessN00b

Unless... you could work in a way to do that from orbit... that's the only way I see to improve your plan.

Mark Henderson

It looks like he is trying to browse a Windows Backup he took...

I'm also putting him in the sin-bin as he keeps asking similar questions on here

I haven't sinbinned anyone in a looooong time

You guys are just too well behaved

HopelessN00b

We has a sinbin? What's it do, other than binning sinners?

Journeyman Geek

02:45

... shame on you...

You do not burn things from orbit

you nuke things from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.

HopelessN00b

Nuclear fire burns too. :p

Oh, the down to 1 rep ban thing. I've heard of that... don't think I'd like it much.

Shane Madden

@HopelessN00b The rep loss is only temporary, for the length of the ban

Mark Henderson

Its only cos you can't have 0 rep

HopelessN00b

Yeah, still don't think I'd like it much. :)

@MarkHenderson for as hard as some people seem to try to get there, maybe we should consider letting them.

Joel E Salas

Does anyone else's dad still use mapquest

ewwhite

02:50

@JoelESalas Along with AOL keywords and Infoseek?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite and a belt clip for his phone

HopelessN00b

Not dad, but other old or non tech people I know, yeah.

ewwhite

It's easier to say, "let me Mapquest that," versus "Let me Google Maps the directions..."

Journeyman Geek

lol

Shane Madden

@ewwhite I don't think "Mapquest" has achieved verb status.

Journeyman Geek

02:53

for many years our local map-site was streedirectory.com ;p

ewwhite

oh, it did

Mark Henderson

We never had Mapquest here, we had WhereIs, which was statically generated JPGs that you had to painfully click arrow buttons and wait for the page to re-load over dialup

Journeyman Geek

eww

Mark Henderson

Google Maps still has a Static API. In fact we use it here

It has its uses, but not for live navigation

^ Thats a jpg from the Google Maps Static API

HopelessN00b

Ah, I see. So there's a couple upsidedown chairs near the corner of South and Pleasant. I can see where that might come in handy.

2

Journeyman Geek

02:59

lol

Mark Henderson

Hah, its actually for our work order management system, so that when they take a photo of their asset we know exactly where that asset is

HopelessN00b

That does sound handy... so the upsidedown picture is a result of... a user not knowing how to use a camera, I assume? Just can't lower that bar low enough, can we?

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Well, its cos it was taken on an iPhone, and the iPhone always stores the photos based on their orientation from "right way up". In the EXIF data in the photo has an Orientation int which indicates that when viewing it should be rotated 90,180 or 270 deg to get it "correct". We just.. haven't implemented that feature yet

So that one has an orientation int of 3 which indicates 180

HopelessN00b

Oh, very cool... or will be once you implement that, anyway. :)

Making me jealous/depressed about our ticket "management" "system."

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Yeah, although to be honest its pretty low on our todo list, most people hold the iPhone right-way up when taking photos

@HopelessN00b This software is a result of 4 years of non-stop development and input from dozens of clients. I think it's pretty fucking good. But can be pricy.

Anywhere from about $13k to upwards of $300k depending on your users and features required

HopelessN00b

03:10

Nothing wrong with charging a lot for a good product... and it does look pretty slick.

Joel E Salas

@HopelessN00b We use Trac. It's worth every penny

Mark Henderson

It's got a lot of neat stuff. It's a full HTML5-based system designed modern HTML5-capable tablets and phones, so that service technicians can do everything in the field

HopelessN00b

@JoelESalas Yeah. We use something that's free. It's also "worth every penny," though in kind of a different way than you meant it.

Mark Henderson

You can even sketch a floor plan (or upload one from the office) of the premises you're visiting and then drop the locations of things on the map. Like termite baits, rodent traps, etc.

Scan their serial numbers, do inventory management, show the history and trending of the data points, etc

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Oh, wow. That's really cool. I can see it getting me into trouble, though. Punching those kinds of details in with my Droid. "Error code ID-10T at [location], server ruined by coffee spill at [other location], etc." :D

Journeyman Geek

03:14

lol

@HopelessN00b: I'm a firm believer in documenting things like a forensic examiner. "System appears to have a brown residue on top of it, which has seeped in. There appears to be damage to electronic components. My professional opinion is that coffee has entered the system due to misuse of the system as a coffee table" ;p

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek I would just amend that a bit:

"System appears to have a brown residue on top of it, which has seeped in. There appears to be damage to electronic components. My professional opinion is that coffee has entered the system due to the user being a fuckwit"

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: Oh, that comes under recommendations.

Mark Henderson

"That the user be given a lesson in the LART tool"

Sounds innocent, but isn't

HopelessN00b

@JourneymanGeek I seriously used to do that... but it took too much time. Now I try to be as concise and brutally honest as possible... and as my reward, they try to keep the users away from me. :D

Seriously, I'll document with things like "[person's name] seemed to be unaware that water and electricity are a dangerous combination. Server mainboard destroyed by user who should never be allowed near one again."

Journeyman Geek

"Percussive cranial attitude adjustment, through use of the LART tool may be necessary in order to rehabilitate user from being a fuckwit, and hopefully avoid future issues"

@HopelessN00b: oh, thats me being sarcastic. My usual documentation is excessively terse ;p

(I'm a computer forensics student - Invariably every report i write starts with a description of the machine, in the same standard form... ;p)

HopelessN00b

03:21

Ah. Not that I object to dancing around the word "idiot" in documentation - it all pays the same - I just can't seem to find the time, with employers wanting me to focus on fixing their technologies, rather than coddling their stupid.

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Better get used to writing "Signs of excessive semen on keyboard and mouse"

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: suspicious organic substance

HopelessN00b

Unless he's going into business forensic computing, chasing crooked accountants and hackers and the like, rather than criminal computer forensics.

Journeyman Geek

recommendations - "latex gloves when working with systems in this environment are mandatory"

@HopelessN00b: criminal forensics needs a strong gut ;p

Murdoch's classes are more the former than the latter tho

HopelessN00b

Alright, well, on that happy thought, I think I'll wish you all a good evening. I've got a long, glorious day of wondering what else can possibly break to look forward to tomorrow. :)

Mark Henderson

03:26

Cya

Iain

05:43

G'day

Mark Henderson

You're early!

I've still got 45 minutes to go

Iain

I was knackered yesterday so went to bed early

It feels so autumnal here this morning :(

Mark Henderson

06:01

Fuckin cold here

Winter has finally kicked in

Iain

the temperature here is about the same as in Sydney atm

Mark Henderson

Well then I guess that just shows the difference in perception ;)

Last night was bad. Hit -1 or -2

There was ice on the car in the morning

0

Q: Malicious script in webroot folder

Possible Duplicate: My server's been hacked EMERGENCY My web server just recently got attacked. Basically someone managed to put a php script in the root folder and execute that to add stuff into the index.php The problem has been mitigated by not allowing the script to execute us...

php web-security

You beat me to it

Lucas Kauffman

06:54

@MarkHenderson sounds like a very mild winter here

Ladadadada

07:24

It is funny hearing all my Australian friends complaining about how cold it is at the moment in Australia when I'm sitting around in a t-shirt and shorts in the same temperature in London.

Although it is a little depressing that this is as good as our Summer is going to get.

Chopper3

08:00

slept badly :(

wrong site? serverfault.com/q/413538/1435

Dan

08:12

0

Q: Checking a Local PC ip address through cmd?

How can I check an ip address of a computer through CMD which is on the same LAN as I am without any third party software?

windows-7 cmd

Really?

Journeyman Geek

use ping! ;p

unless he means somehow resolving the host name

DJ Pon3

then, er, still ping

C:\Users\rim>ping dc01.internal.lutonsfc.ac.uk

Pinging dc01.internal.lutonsfc.ac.uk [10.10.1.12] with 32 bytes of data:

Dan

Already answered because I was feeling particularly generous this morning

Journeyman Geek

hah!

darn. I should have suggested writing a gui with VB then

2

SmallClanger

Morning.

DJ Pon3

08:23

morning

Dan

Can anyone answer his comment - I know workgroups will handle name resolution to a degree but it's been 6 years since I saw a workgroup :D

@DJPon3 Hah, we all know where you work now

Iain

@DJPon3 did you see that the guy from Oracle dropped by by mSO question about blogs... He clarified the situation which is as we suspected. I don't know what it is about the folks on mSO they seem to take a contrary position just for the hell of it :(

DJ Pon3

I thought I said before where I work :)

@Iain, no I missed that. I'll go look.

I find that expecting the worse from Oracle means they rarely surprise me

@dan we're having a good summer. Finally got rid of all the CC3 junk this place had, upgraded servers to windows 2008r2 and workstations to windows 7.

Just in time for the server 2012 and win 8 releases ;-)

Dan

08:41

@DJPon3 Good times, and Wnidows 8 ain't where you want to be :D

I'm looking forward to2012, though

SmallClanger

Anyone know if there's a release notes for mountain lion that's less "Look at the new shiny!" and more "Here are some of the god-awful bugs we've fixed."?

Dan

(And I so feel your CC3 pain!)

DJ Pon3

My current release notes based on the install of mountain lion on my MBP:

"It's like an operating system, but slower"

Does that help?

Yeah @Dan I'm looking forward to server 2012.

And there was a fight to be the one who nuked the last RM DC ;-)

SmallClanger

@DJPon3 Oh dear. I had this laughable notion that this release would streamline and stabilise Lion to some extent.

DJ Pon3

I think it will after a few bugfixes. But when have you ever known the ".0" release of an OS that didn't swap the rusty old problems you were bored with for some nice shiny new problems you hadn't seen before.

SmallClanger

08:46

You'd think that after 15 years in IT, I'd have rid myself of such naive optimism.

DJ Pon3

oh and one of my guys mentioned that if you use RSS in mail.app then the upgrade process to the new mail.app that doesn't do RSS will nuke your feeds without so much as a "screw you" as a warning.

SmallClanger

Lovely.

DJ Pon3

which was a right pain in the hoop for him as he lives in his RSS feeds.

so when I say he "mentioned" it, I mean he swore about it for about 45 minutes without repeating himself even once, which is quite impressive.

Journeyman Geek

lol

in how many languages?

Dan

@DJPon3 Haha, I can't lie though I've not ruled out working for them again ever. Be some time, though!

DJ Pon3

09:02

Well there's lots of places that I ideally wouldn't want to work for. But bills don't pay themselves so you take what you can get right?

Dan

@DJPon3 Absolutely. To be honest, while I fully understand your reasons for running (And I do mean, fully understand :D) they were a good company, they looked after me (10k's worth of pay rises and a company car within 5 years..) and I had a lot of fun. I was very much ready to leave when I did, though. They were also some major changes happening from the top and, IMHO, were losing the plot and become far too 'evil corporate'.

I really liked the old CEO that was there when I started, he had a bit of Bill Gates about him and the companies heart was definitely in the right place, if nothing else. Then it changed and became just another IT PLC

DJ Pon3

I'd agree with pretty much all of that

LSFC worked quite closely with those guys over the years

Dan

I do wonder if they'll recover - I'm not sure they really have a place in the market as it stands. I suppose I don't really have the inside knowledge I did so maybe they're adapting, but the last major project I did for them was a BSF and to be honest, I'm not convinced we upgraded that school at all.

DJ Pon3

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/shortcuts/2012/aug/01/how-to-say-hashtag-fingers

Anyone who says "spoken hashtag" let alone signs it needs to be hurt

I know one place we spoke to where the IT manager broke down and all but cried when we asked him about CC4.

I don't see the value of them for any place large enough to hire full time IT people.

Dan

I think this is the crux - skills and money to get those skills are consistently increasing and being made available to more and more establishments. Primary schools still aren't particularly close, though I'm seen more and more deals between Secondaries and their Feeder Schools to supply the IT and even sometimes share infrastructure. And that market *surely* can't be big enough to sustain a player like them.

Problem is, their key selling point over others is their management software and CC4 etc which is also their biggest handicap. As soon as they start to do loads of vanilla installs i…

I'll stop talking now, I spend too much time with big education suppliers :D I could chat all day

DJ Pon3

09:18

stopping now or not, you're still right

another problem with CC4 - and CC3 to a degree - is the old "one size fits all... badly" thing. It was still too complex for small sites and didn't really scale well to larger ones

And... well... we're saving £90k startup costs and about £20k a year by going vanilla

and that's with me spending several thousands of pounds on tools to make life easier

Dan

Oh yeah, it's definitely a win-win for you

Cold T

morning strangers :)

DJ Pon3

hi

Dan

The only thing I'd say to anyone listening is that having worked with most of the major players, while I actually think they do a decent job of supplying to the customer, it'll be a cold dark day in hell before I was employed directly by them

Iain

@DJPon3 people are still upvoting the we should complain to Oracle answer ... as if that ever did anything ...

DJ Pon3

09:24

Like Oracle care

SmallClanger

I'm going to buy the .sys and .dll TLDs and clean up on advertising revenue, purely from all the mail clients that erroneously parse filenames into hyperlinks.

4

DJ Pon3

Larry Ellison won't hear anyone complaining over the sound of how awesome he thinks he is

Chopper3

He is getting a pair of civilian F-35's however

Cold T

@Chopper3 maybe to use against/ intimidate the competitors lol

Chopper3

He's already got a pair of F-15's

tombull89

09:32

@DJPon3 When I started at my current place I asked what the network infrastructure was. I thought it would be CC3/CC4 but it was vanilla XP and Server 2003 thoughout. I never asked him about it but I had a feeling he's had issues with RM and CC3/4 in the past.

SmallClanger

@Chopper3 Can he actually fly them?

tombull89

When I did my apprenticeship the school was on CC3 moving to 4. It seems okay however I think you really needed a decent network backend.

Chopper3

@SmallClanger yeah, he and his son are qualified and have had them de-militarised but fitted with lasers and detectors - they're allowed to carry out scheduled dog-fights over specific bits of the pacific

Cold T

RM IS the worst piece of software in history! even beats win 3.1!

SmallClanger

@Chopper3 Good way to spend it, if you've got it, I suppose.

DJ Pon3

09:38

@tombull89 i think most people who have used CC3 and CC4 have had issues with it

Journeyman Geek

>_>

What's CC?

tombull89

@DJPon3 I didn't really have much experience with it but it seemed okay.

@JourneymanGeek CC3/4 is Community Connect 3/4, provided by a UK company called RM, designed to run on top of a school network to made administration a bit easier than if you were using a vanilla network.

DJ Pon3

@JourneymanGeek Community Connect - a middleware layer used in UK schools to try and simplify and deskill day to day sysadmin tasks

Chopper3

10:03

@tombull89 I used to deal with RM, they had some good guys

DJ Pon3

They did indeed

though i think some of their 1st line phone support staff lived in terror of a phone call from this place

Dan

That reminds me - offshoring, another bad idea

Journeyman Geek

lol

@Dan: Unless you're more worried about costs than quality

Lucas Kauffman

@Dan what do you mean?

Dan

@LucasKauffman Moving shit to India

Lucas Kauffman

10:16

aah, I don't mind anything in the EU/ North American region

since belgium is too expensive to get any bandwitdh

Dan

To be honest, I'm not totally against it in principle and actually there were some great guys over there. But to say there were some cultural issues....

The biggest one being "If I don't understand part of some instructions, I'll just move on"

(as in, just skip that section)

Lucas Kauffman

yea heard that before, "you have to tell an Indian EXACTLY what you want and make sure he understands it"

Journeyman Geek

And the ones you get are bottom of the barrel ones ;p

Dan

We used to set them tasks to run on our servers overnight (Their working day). One was a fairly sizeable upgrade to 30 servers. For whatever reason, the first key install failed - instead of stopping there, they just carried out the rest of the instructions :D That was messy

Lucas Kauffman

still some american companies only allow americans to fix their shit, friend of mine worked for IBM as a security analyst, they found a breach on a few American servers with a short SLA, the fix was just updating a program, but he couldn't touch the server because he didn't hold an American citizenship. They had to ring a guy out of bed at 3 in the morning, drive to work for 10 mins work

Dan

10:29

Wow, I'm not even sure that'd be legal over here

lsiunsuex

not a fan of outsource to india myself. when i was at a bank, they began to move shit there; i left before i was effected. even now, my designer for my side work sends some shit to india instead of me - caused me to lower my prices for him sometimes

Chopper3

@Dan 90% of my staff are indians, maybe 10-15% of them have some degree of common sense, the rest would just carry on in that situation

Dan

@Chopper3 Is this at home or at work ;)

Chopper3

haha

I have a Chai-wallah (actually normally he makes my coffee, tea) and the first time he ran out of milk he just brought it without rather than going to the shops to get more

Lucas Kauffman

10:48

@Chopper3 you did bollock him for doing that right?

bringing you tea without milk, the ignorance!

Chopper3

paddington-stare usually gets the job done

it wasn't even for me

Lucas Kauffman

@Chopper3 but you really have a guy there who's only job is to bring you tea?

Chopper3

To be fair it's an Indian thing, they have them in every Indian office, and we have a lot of Indians in our office - hence....

Lucas Kauffman

are they nice lads to each other?

lsiunsuex

gizmodo.com/5931159/… - another one. how about you fire these people?

Chopper3

10:53

difficult to say, they tend to stick to groups, I've been working with them for about 6 years now and I'm only scratching the surface

Dan

@Chopper3 Thanks to copy and pasting chai-wallah to google it, I've just accidentally named a VM Chai-wallah01

2

Chopper3

obviously I know a lot more about the ones I've become closest too - who are typically the most western in their approach - but even then some things are a total mystery

:)

Lucas Kauffman

do they do that thing where they shake their head or is that a myth?

lsiunsuex

if i ever have an office, it will be the responsibility of my secretary or i'll just hire a person to find me new music on a regular basis. listening to good music while i work is worth that much to me.

Chopper3

@LucasKauffman it's like an indicator for how long they've been in the west, most do it for a month or so but just stop

the one that has actually changed ME is that although they'll happily fart and 'hawk-up' (is that a UK term) in an open office they really hate people (even us) blowing their noses in public, I've stopped now

@lsiunsuex but finding it yourself is the best bit - do you like Fuck Buttons?

lsiunsuex

10:58

wtf is a fuck button?

Chopper3

google them

lsiunsuex

sorry, this isn't the pentagon here. :)

Lucas Kauffman

@Chopper3 yea we had that in Turkey too, people see it as extremely disgusting, very nice when you have a cold

Dan

@LucasKauffman Are people pretty anxous about Syria right now?

Lucas Kauffman

@Dan I left there before all the hassle started, but I think they're ok where I was. You mustn't forget they see shit every day with Iraq and the PKK

Dan

11:06

@LucasKauffman Very true

Lucas Kauffman

One thing I know for sure, you don't want to mess with them, they have the second biggest army of all NATO members

Dan

On a very different track - is Wireshark my best bet for watching for DHCP requests

Lucas Kauffman

I always use wireshark/tshark for troubleshooting

Dan

Been a while since I've had to dig this deep!

Cold T

11:22

hahah our network tech, thought he could assign himself a static ip address, unplug the Ethernet cable and still expect it to ping back on the static ip!

Dan

Net...work...tech thought that :s

Or did he mean from the local machine, cos I'd expect that too not that I've tried

Cold T

yes... now i'm concerned!

Dan

Did he mean locally, or remotely?

Cold T

from local machine, he assigned himself a static ip, he unplugged cable and still thought he could ping back on that particular ip

locally

Dan

To be fair, I can see that

Cold T

11:24

you can only ping back locally if your ether card is up

but hes a cisco guy, he should know better

Dan

He should, but it's not that bad. For example, it would work if he plugged it into an empty hub

Cold T

yes plugged in into anything would pretty much work, but he just completely unplugged it... was not just expecting it from a network guy, considering i'm in IT division and hes in IP team

took me by surprise!

lsiunsuex

a loopback cable would probably do it too, no ?

Cold T

loopback cable would work I'd assume, as the nic status would technically be 'up'

Dan

@lsiunsuex I thought that, but I'm not sure if anything would break. I've never heard of an ethernet loopback cable

On linux I bet you could force it to show up, too

Cold T

11:29

dan, we use it here for testing purposes

Dan

@ColdT Cool - do you make them, or buy them?

Cold T

we make these

well i dont, the other guys do

Dan

Worth knowing

Cold T

IP team need them to test new kit and cross country connectivity

but they screwed up once, they plugged it into a port with no spanning tree enabled.... and wow chaos was like ww3

lsiunsuex

we had a storm once before we enabled spanning tree. what a bitch. took an hour to find it

Cold T

11:33

not the easiest thing to find that is for sure!

try between a few 80+ points of presence across the globe, could have been anyone of the site engineers!

Lucas Kauffman

11:52

I solved 50 percent of one user's questions <o/

lsiunsuex

i'm turning into a miserable fuck. cant wait for vacation.

maybe i should learn how to meditate.

Dan

Right, time to take myself to the server room and figure out why DHCP is being intermittent

Cold T

...waits for @Dan to find a rogue DHCP server o.O

Dan

@ColdT Well, that's the rare thing - this is actually a 'private' VLAN with no default gateway

Cold T

hmm nice, never dealt with one without default gateway before

Dan

11:59

So it couldn't be simpler really - I have a horrible feeling it's an issue between the chassis and the core switch which I'm sure will get complex dead quick

It's purely for streaming virtual machines, so there's meant to be no comms on this LAN.

MDMarra

12:23

The question of the day: Is it considered professional to install an unsupported OS on company workstations?

@MDMarra being 'professional' has nothing to do with adherence to Apple's TOS, especially since last I remember the phrasing was "Apple-branded"; acting in a professional capacity merely means you are being paid for your work. What you are saying is tantamount to childishly calling someone immature simply because you disagree with them. — Hawken 6 hours ago

Dan

Okay then smart arses - what does it mean when wireshark shows the DHCP offer before the request...

lsiunsuex

a time warp caused by a black hole ?

Iain

@MDMarra I just deleted it - it's ToS violation and we don't need that here

Dan

Haha, it's very random. When DHCP works everything shows as you'd expect, but on the times that it fails that happens

lsiunsuex

@Dan the ip is already taken ? minix3.org/manpages/html8/dhcpd.html

"If at any point a DHCP NAK is received we start over completely. After a DHCP OFFER an ARP request is transmitted just before the DHCP REQUEST to check if the address offered is already in use. If an ARP reply is received before the DHCP ACK then after the ACK we send a DHCP DECLINE to the server to tell that the address isn't what we want and again we start over. "

Dan

12:31

I'm filtering on all DHCP traffic I don't see any of those, no ACKs no declines

lsiunsuex

can you clear the arp table?

Dan

on the server?

lsiunsuex

yeah

Dan

Done, though I

I'm thinking edging towards a network issue

Dan

12:46

Asked the network company to disable spanning tree, see if that makes any difference. Doesn't really make sense in my head, but running out of options now and it's got that timing issue feel about it

MDMarra

@Iain aw maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan

There goes my rep :p

Journeyman Geek

superuser.com/questions/456716/… you guys want this?

@MDMarra I consider it a good reason to accidentally cut off the rogue system randomly for security reasons? ;p

MDMarra

@JourneymanGeek nope

not that I'm a mod or anything :p

Journeyman Geek

lol

MDMarra

but as far as i can tell, it's pretty subjective

Journeyman Geek

12:50

Its a bit of a red headed stepchild question. I don't care either way ;p

MDMarra

Voted to close it ;P

Sometimes I forget I'm 10k on SU

Journeyman Geek

Well, its quite obvious the coder in question needs to get hit over the head with a very large book ;p

SmallClanger

Good sysadmin drunk test: Run grep -ri string and press enter. See how long they'll stare at the terminal, waiting for the results.

Apparently, I'm very drunk.

Dan

Is it safe to have DHCP listening on multiple NICs that are connected to the same switch / network? I'm assuming it'll sort itself out

MDMarra

@Dan I don't see why not

Cold T

12:55

should be fine, wouldn't really be a problem unless you got different scopes and statically assigned different range

MDMarra

I've never done it, but fuck it - I'll recommend it

Dan

That's good - clutching at straws and realised I'd never done it before (We normally team NICs), but can't see any issues with it

@ColdT Nope, properly straightforward - one scope, 3 NICs all within the same subnet

Cold T

that wouldn't cause an issue in that case

Basil

morning

Cold T

all i can do is lol @ this theregister.co.uk/2012/08/02/prime_hosting_backup

"The problems were caused by the failure of three hard drives in a RAID6 array, therefore losing parity."

Chris S

12:58

@Dan Dare I ask why you've got 3 NICs all in the same subnet??

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