The Comms Room

RobM

13:00

@MDMarra you should. We found them to be very approachable. We've got an engineering VP speaking to one of our people here to develop further things we need and we're only buying about 80-100 seats of the client so its not like we're a major major customer.

@ChrisS I know what you mean, but we've honestly had no trouble with it at all.

Chris S

@RobM What happened to your picture?! You're a normal looking person?

MDMarra

@ChrisS If you want to manage your Macs, who do you trust more? Microsoft or Parallels?

Mixed bag for me on that one

Chris S

@MDMarra The electronics recycler manages my Mac hardware just fine. =]

MDMarra

Bah! It's good hardware! And it's unavoidable in education.

@RobM I wish Intune had better iOS MDM capabilities

Chris S

Parents-in-Law have a Mac Mini... I put Windows 8 on it.

MDMarra

13:02

Imagine managing iOS, Android, WP8, RT, Windows, and OS X from one console?

RobM

@chriss I kinda dread to ask what sort of person you thought I'd look like ;-)

MDMarra

Technically you can do that now, but the iOS and Android MDM stuff is basically minor extensions of what you already get through activesync. And app deployment to iOS via Intune is for custom LOB apps, you can't deploy VL app store purchases :(

RobM

@MDMarra yeah we're looking at intune

MDMarra

I've configured it if you have any questions

intune + sccm 2012 SP1

RobM

and yes, being able to retire our mac server, which is only there to run deploystudio right now, and manage everything through one console seriously simplifies both server infrastructure and deskside support.

Chris S

13:04

@RobM A Purple Pony.

2

RobM

@ChrisS you'd be surprised how often I hear that.

Cole

I don't feel like working today.

Chris S

@RobM Also, I think it's a large step in the "humanization" factor. When you're a Purple Pony on the Internet, spouting profound IT knowledge, you seem more like an Internet Deity. When I can see your picture, you seem more like a really smart person. If that makes any sense...

Cole

90% of managers are out, so.

RobM

I wanna go home. So I will in about 80 mins.

@ChrisS apart from the bit where I seem like a smart person that made sense...

Everyone else was doing pictures so I thought I would too :)

MDMarra

13:08

@ChrisS wow remember that answer you revived the other day? It's -7

RobM

@MDMarra some thoughts about sccm and macs, and a pointer to my PFY's blog where he does it more in-depth on my blog - itsalwaysmyproblem.com/2013/03/09/sccm-2012-wtf-moment

an interesting point in my blog comments about the SCCM clients for the mac

Microsoft have committed to producing a mac client for SCCM within 6 months of a new OSX release... and OSX is on a 12 to 18 month release cycle so you're losing 33 to 50% of the 'life' of an OSX version.

Parallels are talking about 30 days for their sccm client.

Chris S

@MDMarra It probably deserves it... That was some particularly misguided grade of stupid.

ewwhite

Maybe I should post a photo.

Naw, then I'd experience internet racial discrimination. My smiley face helps me keep it a secret.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

you've posted photos of yourself before

RobM

which question was this ?

Dennis Kaarsemaker

13:16

besides, in here you don't need to be black to be made fun of :)

MDMarra

@ewwhite But it's a black smiley

ewwhite

I've only posted puppy photos...

Dennis Kaarsemaker

that's definitely one you posted in here before

Josh Gitlin

Oh Comms room and your flags :-p

MDMarra

who flagged what?

ewwhite

13:22

@JoshGitlin the shame of it all

Josh Gitlin

LOL

Dennis Kaarsemaker

?

what got flagged?

RobM

seriously?

There's nothing here that pushes our normal boundaries...

Josh Gitlin

I think it was a joke :-)

RobM

right

die-markdown-die

Josh Gitlin

13:26

kinda like:

Aug 15 at 14:43, by Josh Gitlin

lmao at how someone flagged "cPanel" as offensive and not "asswagons"

2

RobM

Actually I can agree with cPanel being offensive... And 'asswagons' is rather mild for us.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

well, there's not even anything like that recently

unless someone found that puppy offensive..

Josh Gitlin

Yeah I was confused :-)

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@RobM asswagons is starworthy, not flagworthy :)

RobM

I'd agree.

Josh Gitlin

13:29

I clearly need to spend more time in this room :-)

RobM

We have our reputation as the stack exchange mos eisley cantina to maintain after all.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

the wretched hive of scum and villainy

RobM

aka sysadmins

TheCleaner

Say it ain't so Ballcrusher!

money.cnn.com/2013/08/23/technology/enterprise/… - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire

ewwhite

@DennisKaarsemaker That puppy is naked!!

Dennis Kaarsemaker

13:30

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced Friday that he will retire within the next 12 months.

Shares of Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) soared 9% in premarket trading on the news.

giggle

RobM

He's really announced it? It's a good friday then

TheCleaner

Oh...and this >> http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/opinion/granderson-criminal-kids-responsibility/index.html is straight up awesome! - Negligent parents, lawbreaking kids
"I'm tired of hearing how good the kids who commit heinous crimes are. Maybe we should start putting parents on the witness stand so they can tell us exactly what they did to raise such perfect children."

faker

"... within 12 months" :/

Dennis Kaarsemaker

So who's the next CEO going to be?

Are they going to snarf one from GOOG/AMZN?

RobM

I'm available

And I'm quite prepared to run the people who I think are idiots out of town on some kind of asswagon, should I need to.

Chris S

13:38

@DennisKaarsemaker Still up 7% during active trading.

Josh Gitlin

@RobM have a star for the visual image of loading idiots onto an asswagon. Or just for using the term asswagon again :-)

faker

@ChrisS I should go home and sell me MSFT stocks I guess :D

Chris S

They're at home? Like physical pieces of paper??

RobM

faker I'd keep them for a bit, they're finally moving upwards

faker

I need a TAN (which is at home)

Chris S

13:41

MSFT has been inching upward over the last 3 years... The XBO debacle definitely hurt the stock price, but they seem to have rebounded.

TheCleaner

@ChrisS From 1986!

Chris S

If that's the case he's stupid for not selling in 2000 when they were over $50

TheCleaner

techcrunch.com/2013/07/23/… - Who Honestly Wants Bill Gates To Come Back And Run Microsoft?

Chris S

@TheCleaner NOBODY!

Sorry, dude had/has some good ideas, but management apparently isn't one of his skills.

RobM

Microsoft need to go forwards, not backwards

and besides, I think Gates is both happy and doing a lot of good in the world where he is right now.

I could see him doing an interim stint perhaps but he's not their way forwards.

faker

13:55

maybe Marissa Mayer jumps on it

RobM

He'd be a better CEO than ballmer though, but then so would a team effort of both tomtom and @pauskasock

Chris S

Computer was infected by
(drum roll please)
JAVA
(apathetic feigned surprise!)

Journeyman Geek

@ewwhite I'm quite sure most dogs would find clothes offensive ;p

TheCleaner

@ChrisS - but at least that Ask Toolbar came in handy!

-6

Q: Two different servers, how to join them together

all can anyone help me, I have a bukkit server with 40 slots and a friend of mine has a bukkit server two with 10 slots. They are different server and we would like to join them. E.G so people join My server first and then walk though a portal and they get to his server. We have been on a few dif...

ip

Server/Server marriage is illegal in all 50 states.

Jacob

3

Q: What is the purpose of having a clock on the desktop?

It is common for a clock to be placed somewhere on the desktop - in Windows, it is on the taskbar. But why do designers do this? It makes sense on a phone, for example, but when on a computer, I believe that most people have a clock within their vision or reach already. Many people wear watches...

gui-design desktop-application

Why, just why is this even a Question?

Journeyman Geek

14:08

lol

clock? what clock? I hide my taskbar because the widescreen conspiracy keeps stealing my precious ~~bodily fluids~~ precious vertical space

the most upvoted answer is sheer genius

ewwhite

@JourneymanGeek I don't think so... My puppy wears jeans.

TheCleaner

I didn't know SE/SF automatically translated languages...

Journeyman Geek

@TheCleaner: it dosen't.

TheCleaner

@JourneymanGeek - maybe the user changed it real quick?

ah...yeah that must have been it...freaked me out...

Here's the comment:

we are working to solve the problem. Meanwhile servers need to know that we are getting this error because errors are random and occur every few days and only on some servers and not others — Pablo 5 mins ago

and here's the notification I got:

Journeyman Geek

yeah, that was edited

see the little pen below

TheCleaner

14:14

yeah, saw it after I started down this road. The notification made me do a double take

RobM

plus.google.com/116960357493251979546/posts/RZpndv4BCCD

interesting ^

Chris S

2

ewwhite

All the servers are down!!!

Can I get all sysadmin philosophical for a moment?

I hate outages... downtime... BUGS...

jscott

@ewwhite Please do...

@ewwhite Only thing worse than outage is [preventable] data loss.

ewwhite

but I think I've evolved as an admin to either not make mistakes, or to be really good at recovering from them.

Yesterday, I overwrote the partition table of a mounted filesystem containing 300GB of data...

I fixed it.

jscott

14:26

Go you!

ewwhite

but that was a low-impact, low-visibility item...

MikeyB

@ewwhite Oh, no, we all saw it.

2

ewwhite

we just lost a storage array serving some internal and client-facing virtual machines...

MDMarra

Yo @JoelESalas, just saw a HL commercial on TV. You should consider killing yourself for working there.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Ouch. Well, shit happens. Which array?

ewwhite

14:28

We lost the array to a double-disk failure...

@MikeyB Um... A QuantaStor array

MikeyB

@ewwhite u no like raidz2?

ewwhite

Which is the free version... Running Ubuntu 11-something

QuantaStor is just XFS

but this happened 6 months ago

well, an iSCSI stack bug

MikeyB

@ewwhite Oh, the very first thing I saw was: "QUANTASTOR3 WITH ZFS"

ewwhite

@MikeyB oooh, that's interesting. That's a new thing

but I think this is the difference between good and bad admins.

MikeyB

@ewwhite disk mirroring is passé.

ewwhite

14:30

the ability to gracefully get out of bad situations

and to prevent the majority of them in the first place.

If I had my way, our company's internal ESXi and vSphere would be as robust as anything I'd deploy for a client.

MDMarra

@ewwhite why aren't you in consulting again?

ewwhite

one of our DNS servers is down as a result of this.

MDMarra

Then you don't have to worry about dumb shit like maintaining a bunch of legacy BS

Or worry what clients do to your nice pretty solution

ewwhite

@MDMarra It's actually not my responsibility. I'm not on the hook for this.

MDMarra

I mean in general though

ewwhite

14:32

I was asked to get involved somewhere near hour #2 of downtime

MikeyB

@ewwhite Oh - I see what that is. Yeah, this is essentially what I was talking about yesterday, except instead of using traditional mirroring and a single host, use GPFS (data block replication, not disk replication) which gives you multi-attach backend disks if you want, data mirroring (can choose the level of replication by file), LOTS of awesome stuff.

ewwhite

@MDMarra because I need a W2 full-time job to do shit like buying a house.

You know I don't need to work.

MDMarra

I'm full-time W2 and a consultant

Cole

How is it only 10:30 arg

ewwhite

@MDMarra Oh, I can't go back to consulting at a practice... I can get the same billing rates without having a boss.

but this is to expand horizons a bit... I like the clients we host... mmm, pr0n

MDMarra

14:35

you can say the same about what you're doing now though

ewwhite

@MDMarra nah, we're not billable resources here.

MDMarra

right but you make more on the side, right?

ewwhite

@MDMarra about 3x as much

But that side work can't last.

and it's not good for technical growth.

MDMarra

If you must have a W2 gig, you wouldn't rather have a W2 consulting gig?

I don't think I could ever go back to a non-consulting role now, unless it was as a director-level position

ewwhite

@MDMarra there isn't that much good Linux consulting around the way.

MDMarra

14:37

I have too much independence and 100% control of all of my designs

ewwhite

For what YOU do, there's a great need.

MDMarra

ah, I see

Cole

Not sure how I'd do in consulting.

Maybe once I have a beard, I could do consulting.

5

Ryan Ries

@Cole I think it definitely helps.

Cole

I look too young, no one really takes me seriously.

ewwhite

14:38

With half of the Linux world being come DevOps us and the rest being support legacy cruft... there aren't many good opportunities for me.

MDMarra

Learn Ruby, bro

Ry Jones

please don't

ewwhite

@MDMarra and do what?

Ry Jones

the world doesn't need more RoR bros

Cole

RORBROS

ewwhite

14:40

automate the deployment of some web application for some company?

Ry Jones

also, I'm very happy SteveB is out.

@ewwhite you could write the n+1 photosharing application in just a few gems!

ewwhite

2 hours ago, by ewwhite

Our applications heavily utilize Amazon Web Services (services in use include EC2, ELB, SQS, Route 53, S3, EBS, CloudFront, CloudFormation) as well as memcached, RabbitMQ, Chef, Puppet, LAMP (Ubuntu), MySQL clustering, Splunk, New Relic, GitHub, and more. We code in a variety of languages with an emphasis on AngularJS, Ruby and Clojure.

Basil

hey @MikeyB, do you do much operational stuff with netapp?

ewwhite

I think I hate all of those things.

And WTF is AngularJS?!?

MDMarra

@ewwhite And devops!

Ry Jones

14:43

@ewwhite it's the hot new thing! It's better than Node.js

MDMarra

Or come work for me in a Jr windows role! :D

jscott

@ewwhite Jeff's new site, Discourse uses Angular.

MikeyB

@Basil Less than I appear to :D

ewwhite

@jscott ah.

MDMarra

@jscott Does it? I thought they built on ember.js

Ry Jones

14:43

@MDMarra I know the Chef guys. they're nice guys

good beer selection

jscott

@MDMarra Ah is that the one? :)

ewwhite

see, a place with the description I posted would not get me wet...

MikeyB

@jscott Mmmmm no I don't think so

jscott

eviltrout.com/2013/02/10/why-discourse-uses-emberjs.html

I stand correct, my apologies...

MDMarra

APOLOGY DENIED

jscott

14:44

:(

MikeyB

@ewwhite "WE USE EVERYTHING".

@RyJones VMware built VMware View on top of node.js. Poorly. :(

Basil

@MikeyB I have an empty unmounted volume, but when I check my snap deltas, it's got a pretty constant daily change rate of 240 megs

MikeyB

@Basil snapshots still running on it? could be snapshot overhead.

Basil

Yep, they always run

but still, a GB every 4 days of overhead? Is that possible?

I suppose Im only noticing because it's a relatively large volume. I'd bet the daily overhead is a lot smaller on other volumes

faker

@ewwhite reminds me of this: twitter.com/codinghorror/status/347070841059692545/photo/1/…

Cole

14:58

Tried to use PowerShell Plus instead of PowerGUI - way too slow

Do you guys put your printers in DNS?

ewwhite

What the hell have you built. http://t.co/Tq7ktgDWzD

Tweeted by codinghorror on June 18, 2013 at 7:18 PM

Michael Hampton

Good morning.

MikeyB

@Basil hmmm disable and see if it changes?

Basil

@MikeyB Doesn't bother me enough, was just curious

ewwhite

15:14

What's the name of the fancy new Windows SQL clustering?

Always On?

MikeyB

@ewwhite ClusterNoFuck

ewwhite

Does it work?

Should a SQL Server DBA know scripting well?

MikeyB

@ewwhite Should ANY SORT OF SYSADMIN ANYWHERE know scripting well? Yes.

3

ewwhite

I'm interviewing a SQL Server DBA now.

Cole

@MikeyB tell that to the other 4 guys on my team....well the Unix admin knows scripting enough - but doesn't automate half the shit he could.

ewwhite

15:20

Any ideas for questions?

as I'm mid-interview.

Cole

Hmm my 401K is at almost $7200 since January - that's not bad, right?

I need to learn more about this crap, and get my finances in order.

Ryan Ries

@ewwhite Ask him what he would do if the monitoring system alerted him to a disk space condition on his SQL server, and when he logged in, he noticed that one of the disks with SQL data on it was filling up at an alarming rate and would be completely full within 15 minutes if he didn't do something right now... The answer is it's TempDB... It's always fucking TempDB. >:(

A bad DBA will restart SQL. A better DBA will surgically locate the process responsible and kill it

ewwhite

@RyanRies good

Dennis Kaarsemaker

15:38

looks like an awesome stack...

Michael Hampton

@DennisKaarsemaker That's not a stack, that's... a cloud!

Dennis Kaarsemaker

it's several clouds. and stacks.

Michael Hampton

A cloud of stacks!

Cole

CLOUDS ON CLOUDS, STACKS ON STACKS.

Ryan Ries

Shit, cloudstack.com is already taken

Dennis Kaarsemaker

15:43

stackcloud.com too

Cole

mfinni

@Cole HOP ON POP

Dennis Kaarsemaker

hardcore cloud on stack action

Cole

has anyone ever paid off a butt-load of debt?

Dennis Kaarsemaker

depends on the definition of buttload

15k student loans

felt good, man

Cole

15:44

Yeah more like $50K+

mfinni

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is an American television crime drama series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. Set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at the beginning of the series. He turns to a life of crime, producing and selling methamphetamine with a former student, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). White's primary goal, when he begins manufacturing the methamphetamine, is securing his family's financial future before he dies. Premiering on January ...

Cole

Free Workaholics Season 1 on XBL/Zune/Win8: slickdeals.net/permadeal/101264/…

Dennis Kaarsemaker

Drinking game for web devs: (1) Think of a noun (2) Google "<noun>.js" (3) If a library with that name exists - drink

Tweeted by ironshay on August 22, 2013 at 12:40 PM

3

stangely, there seems to be no such thing as dick.js

mfinni

@Cole What's the actual question? Of course, "anyone" has done it. Doctors and lawyers and veterinarians, for examples.

@DennisKaarsemaker Take a consolation shot.

Michael Hampton

There is a horse.js and a fuckit.js.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

15:47

also:

Whoa. Ballmer is leaving? Huge news. I think @scottgu should be the next Microsoft CEO, but I’m worried it’ll be Ben Affleck.

Tweeted by eric_sink on August 23, 2013 at 1:30 PM

oh, and there is of course a batman.js

Michael Hampton

@DennisKaarsemaker Yeah, and MS stock recovered on the announcement too.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@MichaelHampton yeah, that made me giggle

Michael Hampton

Cole

@mfinni I meant here, in this room - right now.

Michael Hampton

Woah, shit, I'm rep capped. Finally broke the month long dry spell!

ewwhite

15:53

@MichaelHampton yeah, I get to 197 and then everything dries up.

Michael Hampton

That silly iptables answer just exploded.

mfinni

@Cole Not me. I dropped out of WPI long before I had amassed that much debt.

Michael Hampton

13

A: What is the difference between these 2 iptables rules?

Both of those sets of rules have problems, and I wouldn't use either of them as-is. In the first set, the first rule allows new incoming traffic to destination port 22 from anywhere. This isn't a problem. The first problem is that the second rule allows new incoming traffic to destination por...

ewwhite

16:12

@MichaelHampton should I learn iptables?

Dennis Kaarsemaker

yes

unless are your customers have an ASA anyway...

MDMarra

@DennisKaarsemaker You don't use host firewalls if you have an edge firewall?

ewwhite

All of my clients use ASA, except for those who are cursed with Sonicwall.

But at work, we use home-brew Linux-based firewalls.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@MDMarra I only use host firewalls where network firewalls don't scale

MDMarra

Hm

ewwhite

16:17

With Quagga, IPtables, AngularJS, Corosync, Keepalived...

one of these is not like the other...

Michael Hampton

@ewwhite If you have to maintain them, then yes. Otherwise keep on using your nice ASAs...

ewwhite

I don't really maintain them, but my boss wants me to be able to.

freiheit

@DennisKaarsemaker No defense in depth for you, eh?

@ewwhite Yes, learn iptables, but resist the urge to do crazy interesting things with it, even though it's perfectly capable of many crazy interesting things.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@freiheit well, as it turns out: it's our prodcution network where network firewalls are merely bottlenecks. So defense in depth anyway :)

Michael Hampton

@ewwhite Well, you were trying to get yourself fired, weren't you?

ewwhite

16:24

@MichaelHampton nah...

Michael Hampton

iptables is easy enough, it's just that it's completely different from the way everyone else does it.

MikeyB

@freiheit BEST ADVICE EVAR

MDMarra

Bros, I don't think this is a dupe of the software licensing question

-1

Q: Why would anyone purchase Windows Server directly from Microsoft?

I was looking on ebay and I realized that there are (presumably resellers) selling copies of Windows Server 2012 Datacenter for way cheaper than retail. I assume that they are just reselling volume licenses or something. Is it legal to purchase a license from one of these resellers? Why would ...

windows windows-server-2008 windows-server-2012

He's not asking about license terms, he's asking about the possible pitfalls of purchasing license from black market channels

Which, I think, is probably legitimate.

jscott

I went "opinion based".

And it looks like that was the close that won.

I also did not -1 them.

MDMarra

It's not opinion based though. When you buy from CDW you have a legitimate audit shield that you don't have from eBay purchases if MS tries to tell you that you're improperly licensed.

I can see it going either way though

jscott

16:31

Fair enough. :)

MikeyB

@MDMarra In TOTALLY UNRELATED news, we have a bunch of counterfeit Cisco 10GbE SFP+ modules that would up in our hands. I've repurposed them:

MDMarra

DUDE

Did I tell you about my 8 counterfeit Cisco copper GBICs in my WLCs a few jobs ago?

MikeyB

TOTALLY LEGIT.

Matt Bear

@MikeyB do they work?

MikeyB

@MattBear Yep, just fine.

jscott

16:35

service unsupported-transceiver
no errdisable detect cause gbic-invalid

MDMarra

@MikeyB At least yours don't look like the real ones

Matt Bear

@MikeyB how much did they cost?

MDMarra

I couldn't tell my counterfeits apart except by serial number

MikeyB

@jscott Well yeah, but when the customer pays for the legit version, that's not what you tell them.

MDMarra

@MikeyB mine didn't work fine. Be careful with yours

MikeyB

16:36

@MDMarra I should clarify. That's AFTER I got to them and relabelled them.

MDMarra

oh haha

jscott

@MikeyB Ah, it wasn't intentional, I see.

MDMarra

@MikeyB I had APs disconnecting and not able to maintain their DTLS tunnels properly with those GBICs mixed in the same LAG as legitimate GBICs

MikeyB

I discovered quite a few things about the Nexus 4001I switch when working with these transceivers: Ports 15 and 16 don't detect these invalid transceivers. If the switch reboots, the transceivers in other ports sometimes come up as legit.

jscott

He's back!

-2

Q: ((((((((((((( __ READ __ BEFORE ___ DELETED ___ BY ___ MODS ___ ))))))))))))))

You are about to be provided with information to start your own Google. Some people posted comments and said this can not be done because google has 1 million servers and we do not. The truth is, google has those many servers for trolling purposes (e.g. google +, google finance, youtube the ban...

apache2 mysql active-directory debian email

@MikeyB Uh, what?

MikeyB

16:38

Turns out they were grey market from the Cisco factory (Finisar whatever) but not Cisco "certified" so they weren't quite right.

jscott

Is the switch from the same vendor as the SFPs?

MikeyB

Oh, and Cisco says they're counterfeit but refused to give us a certified document stating as such. Assholes.

Because they "don't have the records from that manufacturing location".

MDMarra

@MikeyB With ours, they overnighted us 8 replacements at no cost. No questions asked

All we had to do was rat out who sold them to us :)

ewwhite

Help me choose... I'm editing photos and need to know which one is better to use...

or

jscott

@ewwhite Face is better in this one.

ewwhite

16:44

K. I'll work with that.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Even though the eyes are closed, I like this one better.

@MDMarra Yeah… this was more like 400 or so.

ewwhite

Oh, now I'm torn again.

MDMarra

@MikeyB ...oh

ewwhite

@jscott @MikeyB And here's the result...

jscott

Dude looks whooped.

Certainly seems more tired in that version.

ewwhite

16:57

And there's a dude with tattoos... lookin' crazy

Transcript for