The Comms Room

MDMarra

15:00

heh v-tug

2

MikeyB

@MDMarra Sponsored by Gillette? Makes sense.

TheCleaner

Always be worth more than they're paying you, and don't give them a reason to cheer when you leave a company. — TheCleaner 1 min ago

cole

Saw one of the guys from my brief contract stint. Awkward

MikeyB

"We have a problem ejecting back up tape from drive. I appears to be stuck half way out - it has partially raised but will not push forward out the door.
Is there something you can do remotely?"

Let's see… a 10 years old VXA tape drive… tape is physically stuck… server is FC1… spend some money you cheap bastards.

Journeyman Geek

lol

@MikeyB: would a sniper rifle be considered doing something remotely? ;p

3

Tanner

15:08

@MikeyB Sorry, left my robe and wizard hat at home.

TheCleaner

@MikeyB something you can do remotely? Yeah...laugh.

HopelessN00b

@JourneymanGeek A good thought, but if I may... you could get much longer range out of a radio. Like the one you'd find in a remote detonator.

Journeyman Geek

True

Tom O'Connor

Hi NSA!

Journeyman Geek

;p

Nathan C

15:16

@HopelessN00b A remote control that pulls the trigger on a sniper rifle :o

TheNSA

ಠ_ಠ

8

Nathan C

!!!!!!!

Scott Pack

@Basil Well, that's exactly what it's doing. While will pull a single line (terminated on \n) and place it in $_. The loop exits on EOF.

@Basil So waht I always do for that is while(<fd>){ if(/regexmatch/){dosomething}}

TheCleaner

@NathanC I don't know what these guys are saying or if they're "friendlies" or not...but reality is scary.

►

Basil

@ScottPack Thanks Scott. It turns out that what I thought was an issue with the way I built the file descriptor was in fact an issue with my system call.

also: brb, need to pee.

4

Scott Pack

15:20

@Basil Goddammit Basil!

No worries. I should probably go pee as well.

4

Tom O'Connor

Fucking GPLv3 and Richard Fucking Stallman.

Basil

someone should change the room description... "This is NOT a place for 'Live Support'. Ask questions on the main site. Do you have to pee?"

tombull89

@Basil Now that you mention it...

Journeyman Geek

I hope we do not have people asking for Live Support while peeing. Or worse, about peeing.

TheCleaner

@Basil I think @MDMarra and a few others have the luxury of peeing while chatting here.

Journeyman Geek

15:23

thats what wifi is for

MikeyB

Has anyone here used Bacula/BareOS VirtualFull backups to do Full once, incremental forever?

Scott Pack

I chat on here while pooping sometimes.

4

Never when I'm peeing, though.

TheCleaner

MikeyB

15:38

@TheCleaner Nice :D

Tanner

User bitching about how much Gmail sucks. Remote in and he's still using Notes, but in Chrome now...

Scott Pack

@TheCleaner I don't get it. Are those baseball players or something?

TheCleaner

@ScottPack MMA fighters

HopelessN00b

@ScottPack Smart. I tried chatting on here when I was peeing once. Took me a week to clean all the urine out of my laptop.

3

Scott Pack

@HopelessN00b I'm glad I managed to properly skip desktop support. In the past our guys had to clean so many bodily fluids out of computers it was scary. Less frequently now.

HopelessN00b

15:51

@ScottPack I did not have to skip desktop support, but never had to do that. Doubt I'd be willing to. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww.

Scott Pack

@HopelessN00b No doubt. We used to provide computers and printers in the dorm rooms, that our guys supported.

Yeah...when I did desktop support it was mostly supporting our Amish dialup customers. That was a very different, and much less icky, hell.

ewwhite

16:07

Can U fix?

Windows cannot log you on because your profile cannot be loaded. Check that you are connected to the network, and that your network is functioning correctly.

 DETAIL - Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.

Scott Pack

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

ewwhite

@ScottPack YES. And that works.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Maybe it never unloaded before?

ewwhite

@MikeyB Could be. I do wonder if the users here ever log out.

Tom O'Connor

I think the early australian settlers were out to troll future lexicographers.

Mount Buggery

Mount Buggery is the name of two mountains in the Australian state of Victoria. The more well known peak lies on the end of a ridgeline known as the Crosscut Saw between Mount Speculation and Mount Howitt (). The other, smaller peak is near Abbeyard on the Buffalo River (). Sources * Further reading *The Road to Mount Buggery: A Journey through the Curiously Named Places of Australia, Mark Whittaker and Amy Willesee, ISBN 0-7329-1111-7

Scott Pack

16:10

@ewwhite Excellent to hear! Where should I send my invoice?

ewwhite

@ScottPack But rebooting every time this happens gets old.

MikeyB

@ewwhite I have a permanent solution.

ewwhite

oh?

MikeyB

@ewwhite Upgrade all the users to SSDs and configure the machines to reboot whenever they log out.

ewwhite

@MikeyB Oh, this is one Terminal Server

Scott Pack

16:13

@ewwhite That sounds like a follow-up consultation.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Oh. Shit.

@ewwhite microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6676 "The User Profile Hive Cleanup service helps to ensure user sessions are completely terminated when a user logs off."

My fee is: Two cases from your best local microbrewery.

ewwhite

I just set some idle timeout settings.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Butbut... there is a fix for this. In theory.

ewwhite

@MikeyB There are too many people on this server... at ~75 users, new people can't log on.

but there are a number of disconnected an idle sessions...

booting those allows new folks to get in

it's tacky, but this is how the client wants to live.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Isn't that an awful lot of sessions on one box for Windows?

ewwhite

16:18

@MikeyB Yes.

@MikeyB The jump to multiple servers was not possible initially because of RAM... but I'm getting a lot of conflicting information on how to accomplish that.

MikeyB

What do people use to make .msi files for use in GPOs?

jlehtinen

are most of you guys consultants?

ewwhite

@jlehtinen the good ones

Basil

@ewwhite bah

ewwhite

@Basil Except for storage gurus... since nobody normal can know that stuff.

Basil

16:26

@ewwhite there are storage consultants, but I'm not one of them. I probably could get more for my hours that way, but I am not very tolerant of risk when it comes to money.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Thankfully I'm not normal.

ewwhite

I'm reading an article on Isilon... Are there any competitors in that space?

Scale-out NAS...

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite I dunno about that. The smart ones, sure.

ewwhite

@HopelessN00b Do I know you?

:-x

HopelessN00b

@ewwhite Nah, I'm just some random n00b. Check the nick.

MikeyB

16:36

@ewwhite Yes. SONAS (overpriced), GPFS by hand, plus one more that I can't publicly disclose.

Scott Pack

@jlehtinen Yes, the good ones and also @ewwhite.

@jlehtinen I'd say most is probably a bit of a stretch.

MikeyB

@ewwhite you on XMPP?

ewwhite

@MikeyB no.

MikeyB

@ewwhite not even google talk or anything?

ewwhite

@MikeyB Only when I have to...

MikeyB

16:41

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/22/xyratex_clusterstor_gets_more/
"One of those features is the addition of a closeted, high-availability CIFS (SMB) and NFS gateway so users of those file systems can access ClusterStor (Lustre) data."

"Quiet. Elegant. Waterproof. Rechargable via USB." lovecrave.com #NSFW

jlehtinen

thats interesting. im kind of a late-bloomer in IT

did desktop/helpdesk work for ~8 years, quit and went back to school, finished a BA

now im 30 and i've been at my first "real" sysadmin job for a year now

trying to figure out how to stay sharp or keep my career rolling

i only know a few consultants in this space, and they all struggle to get their clients to pay their bills

so i'm not sure how appealing that is to me

Tom O'Connor

Under the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, where do python scripts (daemons, servers, services) live best?

HopelessN00b

@jlehtinen Not turning into an alcoholic burnout is most of the battle.

@jlehtinen The sweet spot is if you can get in with a good IT consulting firm, and let them deal with pimping you out and getting the clients to pay the bills. At least, IMO.

cole

16:57

So, only was $107 for the vet.

Tom O'Connor

@cole That cat had better catch all the mice to make up for it.

MikeyB

probably /usr/local/bin or /usr/local/sbin. Unless you've packaged them, just put them into /usr/bin or /usr/sbin. Or if they're only run "internally", /usr/lib/yourservice/ is fine.

e.g. postfix "internal" commands and files are in /usr/lib/postfix/

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@TomO'Connor /usr/bin

Tom O'Connor

not ideal.

Hm.

Gonna have to think about this.

jlehtinen

anyone know if you can deploy a "farm" installation of sharepoint 2013 on a single server for dev/lab purposes

NOT a standalone install... that has some services disabled that i need

nvm answered my own question

Tom O'Connor

17:07

:)

Tanner

Is it common for email filters to flag .tif files as potential viruses?

Basil

@MikeyB What makes a nas scale-out? I sort of understand dfs, but I can't imagine anything needing to scale more than that can handle

MikeyB

@Basil i.e. you can add more heads, unlike a NetApp

Basil

@MikeyB Since DFS handles the scale out, you are only using the underlying cifs provider for leafs

you can scale leafs by adding boxes

also, from what I heard, 8 mode allows you to scale out as many heads as you want

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@Tanner yes

MikeyB

17:13

@Basil Unfamiliar with DFS. But Xyratex for instance, you can scale the underlying storage (add disks, add SSUs (processing power + disks), or add frontends).

@Tanner What the fuck? A .tif (.tiff) is just an image. BETTER START BLOCKING .PNGs TOO!

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@MikeyB tell MSFT that.

Tanner

@MikeyB That's what I thought...

mossy

Just tried the 'grilled stuffed nacho' from Taco Bell. 3/10

Avoid if possible.

cole

@mossy girlfriend said the same.

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@Tanner forums.cnet.com/7726-6132_102-5515412.html

freiheit

17:15

@Tanner It's common for email filters to have a short whitelist of allowed extensions and overlook the more unusual extensions like .tif...

Tanner

@DennisKaarsemaker aw dammit

jlehtinen

.tif isnt unusual ._.

Basil

@MikeyB DFS is something that allows you to get away from the namespace where a file server is the root for the nas. You can have the file servers (NAS boxes, for example) operate on any part of the DFS organization, removing the need for proprietary scale-out software.

It's CIFS only afaik

freiheit

@jlehtinen it's not in the top 10 of extensions people need to email around...

Basil

I don't know if NFS even needs it

Tanner

17:17

Ok, how about this: What's worse, PDF or TIF?

cole

@TomO'Connor I'll be in the UK next month

TIF

freiheit

@Tanner PDF is probably worse, but also more common and more necessary.

jlehtinen

i've seen a ton of fax-to-email solutions that render in tif by default

Tanner

I've been recommending TIF because these people can't figure out email attachment limits and call me every time they can't send their 25mb PDF

freiheit

@jlehtinen people still use fax? WTF? Don't they know that 1995 is over? ;)

jlehtinen

17:18

tons of corporate document processing solutions also render in tif and email the file as part of the workflow process

Tanner

also we store these things in TIF anyway so... less print to PDF fuckery

jlehtinen

lol tell me about it

MikeyB

@Basil Ah, slightly familiar with DFS. Lets you scale out the namespace, but the underlying branches still only go to one place.

@Tanner PDF is way worse since it's got embedded code, etc. a TIF is just a raster image.

Basil

@MikeyB right, but it also handles migration hot, so you put your building block file servers where you want, and if you ever outgrow them, you add more.

basically eliminating the need for anything but the lowest dollar per storage/performance nas

MikeyB

@Basil so you can rebranch, say, \\dfsroot\homes\plonkers without downtime?

Basil

17:20

@MikeyB yes, and you can have replication keep two underlying devices in sync for HA

with the same tech

again, this is all paperware- I've never seen or used it. We have a file setup that dates back to banyan vines (whatever that was) and a disturbing inflexibility due to login scripts

cole

@MDMarra at it again? nydailynews.com/news/national/…

Basil

that said, if DFS is what it says on the tin, scale-out nas is already baked into windows AD and doesn't need to be done by hardware

MikeyB

@Basil Oh god... Banyan Vines... I used that.

cole

Basil

@MikeyB you're dating yourself ;)

MikeyB

17:24

@Basil I was 17 and/or 18 at the time...

Basil

@MikeyB Now that's a precise way of dating yourself!

cole

OOOOLLLDDDD

I've never worked with Banyan Vines

Basil

@cole Me either, but I have to work around the architecture that was plonked down into windows without modification from it

MikeyB

I remember when we got Internet connectivity. The Banyan winsock was... interesting. Not PAT in the traditional sense - when you bound a listening IP port, it bound that port on the server that actually *had* the IP address.

What that boiled down to was: If you configured your desktop to bind a listening server on TCP port 80 for instance, if someone hit your public IP on port 80 they would get *your computer*. As long as nobody else bound that port first. If they did, you'd get an error when you'd try to bind it.

We've come a long way. :)

Basil

I can't network.

but that sounds horrible, based on the way you said it.

MikeyB

17:31

@Basil It was pretty stanky, but it was the olden days. This was before NAT/PAT existed.

Basil

medicalxpress.com/news/2014-01-caffeine-memory.html

apparently the 6 cups of coffee a day I drink will help my memory. BRB, have to pee.

Nathan C

[17/Jan/2014 12:32:30] SMTP: User dir@*.com doesn't exist. Attempt from IP address 47.21.194.171.
[17/Jan/2014 12:32:36] Failed SMTP login from 47.21.194.171 with SASL method LOGIN.

someone's doing a bit of directory searching...

ewwhite

My disks are failing EVERYWHERE!

(halp)

freiheit

@ewwhite Replace them before RAID groups fail, too...

(or whatever the zfs equivalent of raid groups are...)

ewwhite

@freiheit These are standard hardware RAID setups.

I'm in LA right now... and have replaced 4 disks at 3 different customers in one day

and a fifth just failed... (on an out-of-warranty system)

HP post-warranty support contracts increased 300%...

so now, a lot of my customers are in the danger zone.

Oooh, an SSD failure...

not good

freiheit

17:49

Apparently your customers need to purchase 5 years of support up front, and set up their boxes with at least a couple hot spares per box...

ewwhite

This wasn't always necessary... for a 2-CPU box, say the machine was $7,000... it would have 3 years of next-business-day support. But I'd add 3 years of 24x7 4-hour support for another $900.

Now, that $900 warranty add-on is over $3500.

Post-warranty support for these systems at the end of the 3-year mark used to be $1000-$1400... Now it's $4k

So I was doing the right thing in the past... conditions have changed

freiheit

right

A small stock of the right kinds of drives on-site might not be a bad short-term plan, though.

Tanner

@ewwhite that's rough...

ewwhite

I made the mistake of selling a bunch of servers with 3.5" 300GB and 600GB 15k disks in 2009 and 2010

I didn't fully realize 2.5" disks would take over

Basil

hey, is it ok to do this in perl? if ($VSPA_decLDEV == $VSPB_decLDEV and $VSPA_decLDEV == $PHIVSP_decLDEV) I like the readability of the and, however I'm worried about precedence.

Actually, I think I'll be explicit and use parenthesis

84104

17:54

@Basil It's never okay to do anything in perl.

It's probably fine, but why not use another set of parens?

if (($VSPA_decLDEV == $VSPB_decLDEV) and ($VSPA_decLDEV == $PHIVSP_decLDEV))

Basil

@84104 yeah, that's what I'm doing. I like to try to avoid parenthesis bloat, but in this case, it really doesn't make it harder to read

pauska

@ewwhite I'm not seeing that steep increase to get 4hr pro support with Dell

ewwhite

@pauska Yeah, HP is fucking people over with this.

Clients who are using these as VMware hosts are skipping additional warranty entirely.

MDMarra

I see @MikeyB was talking about DFS. Is he trying to implement it on DEC Digital Unix or something?

Maybe 1400 nodes of it?

Basil

@MDMarra he was explaining scale out nas to me

I was trying to figure out where isilon or sonas fit when you can get the scale from dfs

MDMarra

18:08

thats a good question

whats the answer

Basil

something something nfs

MDMarra

hahahaha

Basil

I got confused and started talking about banyan vines

MDMarra

it happens

Basil

I think the part of this job I like the most is coming up with algorithms for the scripts I write

Joel E Salas

18:12

The one thing I don't like about linux on a laptop is as you do updates, the system gets fuckier and fuckier until you reboot

which technically happens on OSX too, so..

HopelessN00b

Whoa. We have some HP servers needing a warranty renewal soon. Looks like we'll probably just replace them with Dells. :o

Hmm. What's the best use for half a dozen old ML350's...?

Basil

cole

Just went and had my passport pics taken. O_O

mossy

@HopelessN00b mercedes? I'll take one

Joel E Salas

@Basil Hahahahaha

@HopelessN00b I'll give them a good home

cole

18:17

Hm, a Dell 2850 w/ Windows 2000.

Joel E Salas

@cole Incinerate

cole

@JoelESalas DO WANT

HopelessN00b

@JoelESalas Yeah, someone will. :) Maybe I can use them to create a startup and sell it to Google for a couple billion.

Tanner

@HopelessN00b Hack a blender to send data to 'em and you've got yourself a $3.2 billion dollar company!

Joel E Salas

I want them to just write that off as a loss in 5 years

fuck it's a retarded purchase

Tanner

18:31

You mean home appliances in the Cloud and $200 garbage cans aren't the future!?

Lucas Kauffman

@Tanner Google, why not the NSA?

Tanner

@LucasKauffman What difference does it make?

Lucas Kauffman

@Tanner The NSA doesn't give a damn if they are discovered

voretaq7

@DennisKaarsemaker I'm not gay enough to be a brony

@Tanner and trash cans cost WAY more than $200, Charlie Brown!

Lucas Kauffman

Fuck sake, that Obama guy is coming to our country in march

bet he's going to try to bug our prime minister's phone

HopelessN00b

18:40

@Tanner Exactly who I was thinking of. I'll use those servers to create an internet-connected trashcan. Internet of things, FTW!

Tanner

@voretaq7 That's no garbage can, that's a high-powered ash tray. Of course it costs more!

voretaq7

@Tanner It's a desktop garbage can! The fans run the wrong way for it to be an ash tray.

Tanner

Is scrolling broken for anyone else in this? apple.com/mac-pro (Chrome)

HopelessN00b

@voretaq7 All joking and crApple hatred aside, that is a high-powered, sexy-looking box. Probably the first Apple product I wouldn't be ashamed to be seen using.

Lucas Kauffman

Yea I'd love to have a Mac pro

unfortunately I don't have enough money to buy one

Nathan C

18:47

@Tanner Not broken for me, but it's slow responding

voretaq7

@HopelessN00b I'm disappointed in it

pauska

@Basil pNFS i recon

Lucas Kauffman

@voretaq7 wouldn't you want to donate one to a very lonely and poor llama :3

voretaq7

also when the fuck did you come back? :-)

@LucasKauffman No. Maybe an alpaca, but not a llama :-)

Lucas Kauffman

@voretaq7 For a mere 10.000 dollars you would make a little boy happy

voretaq7

18:48

I would have liked the Pro better if it had (primarily) passive cooling like the G4 cube.

@LucasKauffman for a mere 10,000 dollars I could make myself happy :-)

Lucas Kauffman

@voretaq7 I'm already surprised they can keep that beast cool with a fan

voretaq7

@LucasKauffman it's all fucking heatsink!

Basil

@pauska That hasn't come up around me before, but we're much more likely to need CIFS to scale out than NFS. We don't do that much with NFS that we can't use netapp 7 mode.

Nathan C

So, configuring a mac pro with everything (highest available options, all software pre-installed) along with the NAS and such ... $20,625.92

Lucas Kauffman

@NathanC but for that money you wouldn't be able to buy a decent server!

oh wait

Nathan C

18:55

:P

freiheit

@LucasKauffman You wouldn't be able to buy a decent server that looks good on your desk...

Lucas Kauffman

@freiheit very true

Dan

Would someone mind helping an idiot (me) with a rewrite condition

Lucas Kauffman

@Dan perchance

voretaq7

@Dan mod_rewrite hates you!

:)

Dan

18:59

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} mail\.mydomain\.co\.uk$ [NC]

How do I make it ONLY work if no path after the domain is specified? I.e., mail.mydomain.co.uk will redirect, but not mail.mydomain.co.uk/blah

Anonymous

mod_rewrite hates us all humans imo

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