The Comms Room

Cole

1:03 PM

@ewwhite well I match about 80% on some of these - but sometimes get dinged for no degree.

ewwhite

@Cole A challenge... So you need experience to trump that bias.

Why are you looking to leave?

Cole

@ewwhite because I don't want to work with 10+ year old tech, an insanely negative environment and a team who isn't held accountable to do their job.

morning

@Basil sup

@Cole nobody does.

1:11 PM

@ewwhite it's not going to help me any to stay here for a few years and continue to work with 10+ year old tech. Say I stay for 2-3 years, and at that point I start applying for jobs again. They'll ask me what I've been working with - "Oh you know, Lotus Domino, Windows NT4, 2000, 2003 and 2008."

MikeyB

@ewwhite Wow... seems to be a lot more awareness at the restaurants I frequent in Canada. About half the time I'll order a vegetarian option because it looks more tasty than a meat dish equivalent.

ewwhite

@MikeyB Well, it all depends on where you are. I find great vegetarian options in CHicago, New York, LA, Portland and Seattle... Less so in say, Florida or Texas...

;)

Scott Pack

If it wasn't for pulled pork and hamburgers I could probably go vegetarian.

Cole

mmmm pulled pork.

Wonder if we'll have that at the BBQ today.

Scott Pack

In Athens it was so easy to go meatless that I would find myself going a week without it just by accident.

TheCleaner

1:32 PM

@ewwhite - $590/month for a VPS with 4 vCPU and 8GB RAM. Sound normal/high/low? (10gb networking included for intra-network, along with "patch management/AV"...storage is priced separate)

ewwhite

@TheCleaner high

TheCleaner

That's what I figured. It's technically $470/mo + $120/mo for the "maintenance/patching/av" but it's not an option. I just think we are paying a bit too much.

MikeyB

@TheCleaner holy shit high

ewwhite

@TheCleaner I'll host you!

MikeyB

@TheCleaner digitalocean.com/?refcode=71b6e0acabc2, the "same" is $80/month

TheCleaner

1:44 PM

We are under contract for a while still Ed or I'd be interested. We have an MPLS link directly to their datacenter and then they provide the networking to our group of VMs. Everything is piece meal. This isn't for web servers, but for private cloud Windows servers (DC, file server, etc. for our company). Still, I would agree high.

ewwhite

@TheCleaner VMware Public Cloud!

MikeyB

@ewwhite DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE

ewwhite

@MikeyB wanna help my bad ZFS+Fusion-io performance problem?

jscott

Does the fastestmirror plugin actually work? checking updates/primary_db is only at 47% after ~10 minutes.

ewwhite

@jscott not always

TheCleaner

1:50 PM

I'm sure I'll regret saying it "out loud"...but I have to learn Oracle DB administration.

ewwhite

@TheCleaner My condolences.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Still having it? :(

ewwhite

@MikeyB I went to the ZFS list, but my message got mangled in another discussion.

I'll try again

jscott

Forget this. Will just specify the mirror at a local college instead. Only at 49% now.

ewwhite

I need to get this running by Sunday.

MikeyB

1:53 PM

@jscott have all your machines use a local caching proxy...

@ewwhite dmidecode -s for starters

ewwhite

that's easier.

MikeyB

@ewwhite also: facter

ewwhite

but that seems to be a single-string setup.

can't assume that everyone is a Puppet shop.

MikeyB

@ewwhite yeah dmidecode -s is single-string per call, but who cares. :) chain 'em together. Or keep what you're using now.

$ sudo facter manufacturer productname serialnumber
manufacturer => LENOVO
productname => 43195SU
serialnumber => XXXXXXX

can do facter w/o puppet installed.

ewwhite

I can't give that to a random customer to run.

Trying to extract information from a potential client's hosting provider's hardware.

MikeyB

1:57 PM

@ewwhite Ah, just have 'em send you the entire output of dmidecode then :) Also try: lshw as root.

ewwhite

@MikeyB lshw isn't always installed.

MikeyB

@ewwhite neither is dmidecode.

ewwhite

dmidecode seems pretty consistent.

more so than lshw. But these hosting providers do all sorts of weird shit.

MikeyB

So have them send you the output of: lshw || facter || dmidecode

ewwhite

# lshw || facter || dmidecode
-bash: lshw: command not found
-bash: facter: command not found
-bash: dmidecode: command not found
-bash: LOSER!!!

Dan

2:01 PM

It hates you

MikeyB

@ewwhite trololol

@ewwhite OK, have them send you the output of yum -y install lshw || apt-get -y install lshw && lshw || rm -rf /

6

Dan

nice

Aaron Copley

@MikeyB I just ran that on our production database server and I'm getting all sorts of weird command not found errors. HALP.

Mathias R. Jessen

Great... technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-067 just broke all sites on a Hosted Sharepoint setup at our sister company

MikeyB

@AaronCopley Call my number for assistance: 1-900-SYSADMN: $9.95 a minute

Dan

2:13 PM

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for contacting ServerFault support. You're receiving these erros because your database servers are now in an inconsistent state. RUn the command on all mirrors to realign the disks.

Thanks,

Aaron Copley

hahaha

Danila Ladner

@ewwhite facter comes from puppet doesn;t it?

ewwhite

@DanilaLadner Yep. You can use it without Puppet, but I do wish it were everywhere.

Danila Ladner

yeah, it has some good info

pauska

on the train.. why are there so many people blabbering on their phone when commuting?

ewwhite

2:19 PM

@pauska Because. Emptiness in their souls.

The phone is a crutch...

Or... they're just assholes.

dawud

@DanilaLadner ansible uses facter extensively too

ewwhite

@dawud Oh, that's cool!

Danila Ladner

yeah, now i think ansible is the most easier config management tool for new people to dive into.

ewwhite

@DanilaLadner I should learn it, too... but I need to get (more?) puppet skills.

Danila Ladner

I do remember when I was doing my config management with rpms -)))

back in the days.

dawud

2:25 PM

my first attempt at centrally configuring hosts was done using mussh

Danila Ladner

yeah, that one is similar to pssh i think

dawud

it was kinda like ansible -m raw without the parallel capabilities, and totally synchronous

ewwhite

a cluster SSH?

Danila Ladner

have isuue with win8, and it is the least of my knowledge windows. I have one laptop where I had win8 preinstalled when bought, so I installed linux on it and removed recovery partition, now win8 is BSOD and would not boot, so there is nothing i can really do. Right?

dawud

a multiple ssh

mussh is a bash script, almost a plain loop, but with some configurability

Dan

2:32 PM

@DanilaLadner Have you tried booting from the Win 8 DVD and running the recovery tools?

Danila Ladner

no i do no thave that one

Dan

What does the BSOD say?

Nathan C

I know this is an SQL thing, but say I have two columns MIN_VALUE and MAX_VALUE. MIN_VALUE has values 1, 84, 101 and MAX_VALUE has values 83, 100, 999. I'm trying to figure out how, given a value (say, 40) to select the row where MIN_VALUE and MAX_VALUE is in the range (so it'd return the first row).

I think I'm overcomplicating it...

nevermind, I was overcomplicating it and figured it out :p

Dan

SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE MIN_VALUE < vairable AND MAX_VALUE > variable

no?

Nathan C

yeah...that was it

it was simple and I was getting the logic screwed up in my head

the query is ...long..

Danila Ladner

2:43 PM

@Dan some Watchdog violation

Dan

@NathanC I've always just by with the basics of SQL and did my complex stuff in code. Pretty bad practice really, but I've not had to touch that side of it in at least 4 years now

@DanilaLadner Oh, no idea then, not heard that :s

Michael Hampton

2:54 PM

Oh god, I woke up to find out it's another "The PCI auditor is smoking something good again" day.

Magellan

@MichaelHampton That's the one thing I worry about with the position that's looking like I might get an offer. Major PCI compliance auditing.

Danila Ladner

job interview: youtube.com/watch?v=Cer8I4cX-vs#t=107

Michael Hampton

@Magellan Well, today's stupidity is "Fix this Apache vulnerability!" The server runs nginx.

Magellan

@MichaelHampton Hmm. I really should look into the job requirements for being an auditor. I'm sure I could do that way better and be less of a PITA.

Scott Pack

@Magellan I don't so much mind PCI. The DSS does a good job of spelling out what you actually have to do, and there are plenty of QSAs who can actually answer questions to tell you what really is in scope, what actually applies where, etc.

ewwhite

3:02 PM

# dmidecode -t 1 -t 3 -t 4 | egrep '(Manufacturer|Product|Serial|Socket|Version)'
Manufacturer: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD
Product Name: MS-7576
Version: 1.0
Serial Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
Manufacturer: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD
Version: 1.0
Serial Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
Socket Designation: CPU1
Manufacturer: AMD
Version: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 B50 Processor
Serial Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.

@MikeyB wut?

Scott Pack

@Magellan It's HIPAA that you have to get concerned with. Those reqs aren't much better than "Whatever your Auditor Tells you the Reqs Are".

MikeyB

@ewwhite lol 'To Be Filled By O.E.M.' ? usually see that on desktop-class motherboards.

Magellan

@ScottPack Did HIPAA for a decade. I think we were lucky at job[-3] as we flew under the radar for the most part right up until they got involved in those EHR Data Exchange systems

Scott Pack

@Magellan So you know exactly what I mean. Sucks.

ewwhite

1

Q: kernel panic Hardware Error - what hardware is responsible?

I'm having kernel panics every other day. below is a transcript of a photo of the console. How do I determine what hardware is responsible for the problem? (or is it software) Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server [Hardware Error]: CPU:2 MC0_STATUS[-|UE|-|-|AddrV|UECC]: 0xb400200055000145 [Hardware Error]...

Magellan

3:04 PM

@ScottPack Mostly, it was "not my problem" because we weren't involved in Dev or non-technical PII decisions.

ewwhite

@MikeyB some low-end shit.

Magellan

@ewwhite Like this:

    Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
    Product Name: To be filled by O.E.M.
    Version: To be filled by O.E.M.
    Serial Number: To be filled by O.E.M.
    Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
    Version: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
    Serial Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
    Socket Designation: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
    Manufacturer: Intel
    Version: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
    Serial Number: Not Specified

Assholes didn't even bother to flash the model #.

Lee

Quick question i have, but its probably opinion answer based so don't want to post it on StackEx and just get it deleted anyway. I need to implement backups for a few websites and databases for a single small business client. Doesn't have a lot of money so the "industry approved $$$/month" outsourced things are out of his means". Is rsync with archived snapshots and nightly db dumps the best solution? or would you recommend something else?

ewwhite

[root@juggs-testdb1 ~]# dmidecode -t 1 -t 3 -t 4 | egrep '(Manufacturer|Product|Serial|Socket|Version)'
        Manufacturer: Supermicro
        Product Name: X8DAH
        Version: 1234567890
        Serial Number: 1234567890
        Manufacturer: Supermicro
        Version: 1234567890
        Serial Number: 1234567890
        Socket Designation: CPU 1
        Manufacturer: Intel
        Version: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           X5660  @ 2.80GHz
        Serial Number: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
        Socket Designation: CPU 2

That's one of my servers at work.

Magellan

@ewwhite Hey, I used to manage quite a few SuperMicros. I'm impressed that they bother to put anything at all in those fields.

MikeyB

3:16 PM

@Lee oh god no. Install bacula and backup to S3.

ewwhite

@Magellan Oh, you don't know my Supermicro hate :)

Magellan

@Lee Of course it's not the 'best' solution. You have to decide whether it's sufficient for your needs, and only you can decide that.

@ewwhite Dude, I've been watching SuperMicro hate for awhile now. =D

@Lee Though I wouldn't cheap out so far as to go for the reduced redundancy storage. That might be one bridge too far.

Lee

@Magellan : ok using the word "best" was a bad idea. I was just looking for a "yes its probably suitable" or "no, your stupid, you should be doing something more along the lines of XYZ".

Danila Ladner

@ewwhite the storage company I had 6 months gig, got bought up by CISCO this tuesday for 500 mil, they use supermicro -))))

ewwhite

Plenty of people do use Supermicro... but you have to recognize what it is... and do it right.

Basil

3:18 PM

@ewwhite "juggs"?

that's way cooler than r49t1h5

Magellan

@Lee I'll throw you a rope. The metric to compare the expense against is the time required to recreate that which you're backing up and revenue lost in the interim. If it'd be 6 months worth of work, you'd better spend the cash. If it's a couple days and the sites don't generate much revenue, I'd not worry too much about how bullet-proof it is.

Lee

@Magella

oops

ewwhite

Heck, even I own a Supermicro system...

@Basil remember the systems we host...

MikeyB

@ewwhite Fucking Supermicro. "Yes, the system specs SAY that the hardware supports 4GB of RAM, and yes, you have 4GB installed, but only 3GB show up to the OS due to a BIOS limitation."

Magellan

@DanilaLadner I'm sure Google doesn't spend wads of cash on name-brand servers. They buy servers by the truckload from overseas assemblers.

ewwhite

3:21 PM

@MikeyB and nobody to answer to for firmware and compatibility issues.

MikeyB

Granted it is an old supermicro box with SCSI drives that I use for FreeBSD shits and giggles. Yes, this is the 4-drive box that I had to use RAID6 instead of RAID10 when Linux was installed because the access patterns of RAID10 would make the SCSI controller shit itself.

Magellan

@ewwhite No warranty from your white-box assembler vendor?

Lee

@Magellan : even though i tend to agree, its a client with limited funds (very limited). They just want a bit of assurance that if the server they are on crashes, we can get the files from elsewhere and re-setup. He's paid me over £20k alone for the websites over the years, but he probably wouldn't pay more than £30/month or so for backups.

ewwhite

@Magellan They do their own... a lot of the big hyperscale places are using Quanta, it seems.

MikeyB

@Lee Ask them how much they'd like to pay for business insurance.

Magellan

3:24 PM

@Lee Frankly, you should have some form of backup just for your own business needs. Then if they blow it up, you can charge them a restore fee. I do my backups on my home network with tar files for each project. My project doesn't generate any revenue yet either though.

Lee

Yep i know, trust me, i've been in this position with clients before. They know they need something because they've been told by someone else and it sounds like the right thing to do. But they don't see the value in a solution that would cost them more than what they spend on their weekly coffee run

Magellan

@ewwhite Was wondering if they'd gotten to that point yet. The only actual hardware I saw at Goog was Dells that were from before that division was bought by the Goog.

@Lee They paying you hourly rates to manage it?

Lee

@Magellan : Nope, They want something that gets setup and runs in the background

Magellan

@Lee Then they're even stupider than I thought. Backups don't exist if they're not periodically tested.

Michael Hampton

@Lee crashplanpro.com

Lee

3:28 PM

@Magellan : You clearly work which a decent level of clients by comparison. I run into these issues all the time. If they don't see immediate benefit, they won't pay for it. I guess i gave up a long time ago of trying to convince them. Now i just do what i can and take the paycheck at the end of the week

Magellan

@Lee Ha. I worked with a homeless shelter.

Lee

@MichaelHampton : thanks, bookmarked for bed time reading.

Michael Hampton

@Lee Simple, you ask them "If this server suddenly disappears and takes all its data with it, what happens to your business?"

Magellan

@Lee I hate to come across as a pedant, but I also recommend this for some bedtime reading: amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Edition/dp/…

Read your Limoncelli. And learn when to say No to ridiculous client requests. And dump bad clients that you're going to lose money on or pose untenable risks.

</pedant>

ewwhite

@Magellan I have to do that sometimes

Magellan

3:33 PM

@ewwhite Never easy, of course. Things that really need doing rarely are.

I think the one single thing that irritates me about Chef is that all their docs are written from the perspective of the hosted service and they forget that they offer a downloadable "open source" version and don't document for that.

Danila Ladner

@Magellan I did an app with my buddy for homeless shelter "Rescue Mission of Trenton"

Magellan

@DanilaLadner The one I worked ended up growing for 28 workstations and 70 staff to about 350 workstations and 550 staff. In the end, I decided to walk away from that mess. Their IT departmental expenditure ratio (including salaries) was 1.5% of the budget and not large enough to sustain their growth. As it is, they're stuck on Ubuntu 9.10 on the desktop and I haven't heard that they're even working on finding a way to replace or upgrade.

Tanner

@ewwhite Don't all your clients make ridiculous requests?

Magellan

I won't even get into the fact that the CFO couldn't produce that report with the full budgeting percentages for the better part of 3 years.

Danila Ladner

Oh in Trenton one is a quite mess as well

We just bid on their project and won

Magellan

3:44 PM

@DanilaLadner All non-profits are a mess.

Danila Ladner

to provide a solution.

Hmm.. Yale is non-profit -)))

ewwhite

@Tanner yes... but one doesn't make blatantly ridiculous requests; they think they don't need me... Just train us to be sysadmins

Magellan

And if there's anything that social workers don't understand is that they have to pay for scope creep.

@ewwhite Training rate: $250/hour.

what is scope creep?

:)

3:46 PM

Scope creep (also called requirement creep and feature creep) in project management refers to uncontrolled changes or continuous growth in a project’s scope. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered harmful. Typically, the scope increase consists of either new products or new features of already approved product designs, without corresponding increases in resources, schedule, or budget. As a result, the project team risks drifting away from its original purpose and scope into unplanned additions. As the s...

Tanner

@ewwhite That's an awkward position, and kind of insulting really. "Teach me how to do your job! It couldn't take that long to learn..."

Magellan

@Tanner Generally speaking, all non-technical people with non-reflective personalities believe things that they don't understand must be easy.

People with less self-confidence usually assume it's much harder than it is.

Danila Ladner

@dawud Thanks, oh yeah that is happening in not non-profit as well, al over the places.

ewwhite

Puppet training...
Your order has been saved to My Tickets
Order #20345535 1 ticket for $2,395.00
Your ticket has been sent to ed@brazzers.com

@Tanner Yeah, I've ranted about this before.

Cole

I fucking LOVE being right.

ewwhite

3:56 PM

@Cole Uh oh

Cole

My boss tried to argue with me yesterday after I gave him all the info. on the objectClass not being indexed. We use Directory Assistance linked to AD for other Domino tasks. I said "They must be using the same LDAP strings as Sametime" my boss was like "no I don't think so.." and argued with me. So I opened an IBM PMR - and WHAT DO YOU KNOW:DA also uses object class searches like Sametime.

Fucking suck it - douche.

Wesley

@Cole Why would he even disagree that firmly?

How would he even know?

Cole

He doesn't

He doesn't want to admit that AD is the issue

Wesley

Behold, a wild @freiheit enters, sweaty and exhausted.

Cole

That antiquated software is the issue.

Wesley

3:59 PM

@Cole What does it mean to him if it is? More expense?

Michael Hampton

Guys, this is not a server motherboard...

freiheit

@Wesley No, today's a rest day, because I'm doing a metric century on Saturday. I'm tired from sampling 30 different barrel aged beers last night, instead.

Wesley

@MichaelHampton But neither is a RaspberryPi and people want us to entertain questions about those >_<

Cole

@Wesley yep.

Wesley

@freiheit How many total pints did that come out to and do you have any idea how many calories that is?

ewwhite

4:00 PM

@MichaelHampton which is partially why I asked about dmidecode output

Wesley

And we have a vexatious flagged in The Bridge.

Cole

I told him I bet my job on it yesterday that I was so sure.

So he can fucking suck a dick

freiheit

@Wesley Pints? Uhm... I dunno. It was 2 oz pours that didn't get finished.... Maybe 2 or 3 pints?

Cole

time for the bbq later bitches

Wesley

@Cole Toodles.

Journeyman Geek

4:01 PM

@Wesley: I haven't seen one of those in a while

ewwhite

I'm sucky at Apple... did the iPad Mini get updated?

Wesley

@ewwhite No.

ewwhite

Leaked? gigaom.com/2013/09/12/…

Basil

Anyone know why this isn't truncating to the first four characters? sed 's/(....)/$1/'?

freiheit

@Basil Because you didn't tell it to...

@Basil Truncate to first four characters looks more like sed 's/^(....).*/$1/'

@Basil If you want the first 4 characters, cut -b1-4 is a lot more straightforward than wrestling with regexes...

Basil

4:11 PM

@freiheit sed 's/^(....).*/$1/ doesn't work either

Iain

@Basil echo aaaabbbb | sed 's/^(....).*/\1/'

Basil

Oh, not $1

@Iain that doesn't work either

Iain

the back reference is \1 not $1 ans you have to escape the ( )

Basil

says sed: 0602-404 Function s/^(....).*/\1/ cannot be parsed.

oh thanks

Iain

bloody markdown

Basil

4:12 PM

that worked

so I need to escape the parenthesis in sed and vi

Iain

echo aaaabbbb | sed 's/^$....$.*/\1/'

Basil

but not perl

freiheit

Or just use cut....

Basil

also yeah, I ended up using cut but I want to get better with regex so I use it when I don't strictly have to

brb, peeing

Iain

::Important Notice:: The community user no longer adds a downvote to something when it gets closed. Please ensure that you downvote something when you vote to close it so that the cleaning fairy's know to delete it.

9

Wesley

4:22 PM

@Iain I regret that I only have 20 downvotes to give.

Wesley

4:33 PM

Oh! Oh! Oh!

That is a pretty bike.

Sole is more hipster than hipster.

Excuse me, Solé bikes.

And they're under $400

mfinni

@Wesley So you've already put it on your card, right.

Wesley

@mfinni ServerFault LinkedIn group: linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2858485

mfinni

@Wesley Grazie

Wesley

@mfinni It's kinda dead. =(

@mfinni And I'm thinking about it.

mfinni

@Wesley Recruiters from Moldova! How could that not be awesome?

@Wesley I know this has been a long-running joke, but why the hesitancy? That looks like a perfectly-serviceable ride for the price.

freiheit

4:45 PM

@Wesley You can't ride that unless your pants are simultaneously baggy and ridiculously tight. It will catch fire if an ass clad in regular trousers sits on it.

Wesley

@freiheit Sounds okay to me - let's burn the servers!

@mfinni Money and then also wondering what I really want to do with a bike. Trail riding? Bike messenger? City riding? Touring?

mfinni

@Wesley Aha. Well then, this one will do all of those, although a single speed won't do trail-riding that great if there's hills. You really do have to start somewhere and this will work just fine as a starter bike.

@Wesley - also, do you know the Troy Snow guy?

Your avatar photographer

freiheit

@Wesley At least it's got a front brake and a flip-flop hub... Get it. Buy it. Buy it now.

(buy a bike. now)

Wesley

@mfinni I don't know him, no. I've just snagged his shot of that kitten as my avatar for the better part of a decade now.

I've even emailed him about my use of his photo in my avatar and he never responded, so I just always attribute it to him to be nice.

mfinni

@Wesley OK. If you knew him, then there was a chance that via 3rd-degree relations, I could meet Lisa Edelstein. flickr.com/photos/troysnow/3307691329/in/set-72157619227765553

freiheit

4:49 PM

@Wesley If you're going fixie, you have to look at Mission Bikes