The Comms Room

Rob Moir

14:00

@TomOConnor I just suspended his account for two weeks (this was just before project deadline on his course), got his teachers "on side" with telling him it was his own fault he was gonna miss his deadlines and just enjoyed the show...

Tom O'Connor

8817 rep points ^.^

Rob Moir

yeah, much more organised

Scott Pack

@RobMoir It's been a pretty...exciting transition as they move from the local segments up to a central location. Having to reverse engineer the way the licenses are actually managed, what firewall rules need configured, etc. Fun stuff.

tombull89

I bought my first 16GB in october 2009...£40 it cost me. Now, it's a fraction of that for 16GB.

Rob Moir

for sure @ScottPack - its not like they document any of this stuff because they're worried about pirates reverse engineering it

Dan

14:02

I did something similar and left it in the back of a server on my first project

Rob Moir

so what happens is you end up buying from their more trusting competitor and they go out of business. Still at least no one stole their software

Dan

In my defence I planned to go back for a last hand over week, but it was a secondment and my real job demanded me back.

Scott Pack

@RobMoir I've just learned to have no faith in vendor documentation. I always do a text search for 'firewall considerations' just in case, but typically only because that gives me 50-60% of the necessary rules.

Dan

@RobMoir The only thing piracy protection does is make life hard work for legit people

tombull89

@RobMoir Some of the more enterprising lower school students have found a version of Halo:CE Portable that can be played over LAN. The head of the ict department is happy to let them play it at break as it "keeps them busy", regardless of the fact it's a pirate copy and the fact that all are under the age limit for the game.

Block halo.exe running from usb > done.

Rob Moir

14:03

@dan agreed

too true scott

tombull, I'll keep an eye out for that when I'm back at work

Peter Grace

@Dan also the argument about gun control.

Bart De Vos

@tombull89 How would you enforce that? Netsupport?

tombull89

@BartDeVos Yeah, we have Ranger Remote Control, which is a (pretty much idential) version of NetSupport.

Dan

@PeterGrace I don't think that's a valid or equal point, to be honest

Although I'm British - so a gun control debate between us would be pretty moot

tombull89

@RobMoir I've noticed Minecraft from USB is also a popular one (can't go through the filtering to play online, but it's still present on a lot of USB's)

Rob Moir

14:07

well you're never going to stop it all. We just disable their accounts if we catch them

Bart De Vos

@tombull89 Tunnels ahoy! :)

Tom O'Connor

Block USB mass storage devices.

@RobMoir You going to BETT 2012?

Scott Pack

@TomOConnor I recommend epoxy. It's a great method of disabling usb devices.

tombull89

@TomOConnor I want to, but they do use them for "legit" purposes most of the time.

Rob Moir

probably not, Tom

Tom O'Connor

14:08

@ScottPack We use rmmod usb-mass-storage here

Rob Moir

sadly

Tom O'Connor

@RobMoir fair enough. Otherwise a pint would've been a requirement.

Rob Moir

for sure

tombull89

@RobMoir I'd love to do that, but unfortunately as soon as we do that we'd get a teacher bleating how they need the computer for learning and we don't have the backup to enforce it. Yet.

Rob Moir

I've got the week after that off and a lot of 'crunch' time for various projects so I need to spend my time at work at work

@tombull89 ah... we do have the support. Which isn't to say we don't work with teachers and aren't open to compromise, but we have senior management support for whatever we decide being the final word

Scott Pack

14:12

@RobMoir I've known too many people not in that situation. I feel sorry for those guys.

Rob Moir

true true

we're lucky in that regard

Dan

Urgh, I should've have eaten that Mince Pie

Rob Moir

i like a good mince pie

Dan

Me too - that's the problem

Rob Moir

actually, back in a bit, just remembered that sitting here chatting isn't the best way to get cards posted!

who knew?

Dan

14:14

It's not the best way to get anything done, tbh

tombull89

@RobMoir meh, if you were Chopper you'd have someone to do it for you...like a butler. or a pfy.

Scott Pack

@tombull89 Or a wife.

tombull89

has he been back since his...resignation?

Tom O'Connor

not afaik

Scott Pack

I haven't seen him either :(

Dan

14:15

Nor I

Scott Pack

Speaking of lazy bastards..@Peter. I notice you're hatless. Dude. Seriously.

tombull89

Aww. If @PeterGrace had a hat it would have been the whole first row having haturday.

Peter Grace

Hah.

This is the first I'm seeing it!

tombull89

Hint, Hint.

Scott Pack

@PeterGrace We recommend you, you know, GET YOUR HAT ON!

Peter Grace

14:18

oh boo

Is there a recommended hat graphic?

tombull89

46 secs ago, by tombull89

Hint, Hint.

</cheekygit>

Scott Pack

We need to replace the first hat with the transparent png version.

Dan

Yeah, I was a bit annoyed that I had to fire up Photoshop just to add a hat to my van

Scott Pack

Going back in the chat transcript to find it would be a freaking nightmare on the laptop I'm using now. Anyone else want to take a crack at it?

MDMarra

Apparently my highway toll transponder died in the middle of last month, but somehow the light letting you know your toll was paid kept turning green...So I have a $50 fine for each day I went to work since 11/16. On top of that, since my transponder is from out of state, there is a gigantic clusterfuck of paperwork that I need to do instead of just calling them and saying that my transponder died.

Whoever made these things without a battery life indicator should be destroyed.

Scott Pack

14:21

@MDMarra I heard from someone else that that happened to them for like 3 months before they found out.

MDMarra

Im lazy and kept my MA transponder when I moved to PA 4 years ago

Now it's fucking me...hard

Bart Silverstrim

I knew there was a reason I don't use those highway ez pass things.

How much do they say you owe, @MDMarra?

MDMarra

I have to establish a "traffic pattern" by giving them old statements to prove that they should only be deducting $1.10 a day for all of those days instead of $50

@BartSilverstrim $50/day

Bart Silverstrim

Yeah, but what total? :-p

MDMarra

Max toll + administrative fee

I dont know

She said it takes a few weeks to process

so only like half of the violations have been processed

Bart Silverstrim

14:23

They just told you you owe "$50/day" plus fee? Not even a bottom line fine??

Oh lord.

MDMarra

meaning this will probably require dozens more calls over the next month or so

@BartSilverstrim I have three individual $50.50 fines

but there are dozens more queued up in processing apparently

Bart Silverstrim

I just had erie insurance send our old account to collections without telling us for a bill we didn't owe.

MDMarra

fml

Dan

Dude :(

MDMarra

It sounds like I'll only have to pay $1.10 for each violation (which is the actual toll) it's just a fuckton of paperwork

If I had an in-state transponder (i.e. EZPass instead of Fast Lane) it could have been taken care of with a phone call

but since it's out-of-state it's a nightmare

Bart Silverstrim

14:24

I sent a loud barking bitch session on their website...twice...and their twitter account...until I went to the old agent to tell them to fix it, THEN they finally got ahold of me. Although it's still unclear if it's been fixed. Now I'm fighting with a collections company jackal along with getting erie to stop pretending it's all good.

Peter Grace

ok, ok, I'll install gimp.

Tom O'Connor

why don't they just do ANPR?

why have a transponder at all?

MDMarra

ANPR?

Tom O'Connor

automatic numberplate recognition

MDMarra

This is America.

Tom O'Connor

14:25

machine-vision reads your tag and then checks against a central database of known tags.

MDMarra

That's why.

Bart Silverstrim

@MDMarra: I think it's a system in Europe (and in the US, but not for this) that records your whereabouts like big brother.

Tom O'Connor

it's how congestion charging works in london

MDMarra

congestion charging?

Tom O'Connor

ANPR is also used in gas stations

Bart Silverstrim

14:26

London has traffic issues.

Driving in there incurs a fee.

Tom O'Connor

so that if you drive off without paying, the local law enforcement know where to find you.

tombull89

London congestion charge

The London congestion charge is a fee charged for some categories of motor vehicle to travel at certain times within the Congestion Charge Zone (CCZ), a traffic area in London. The charge aims to reduce congestion, and raise investment funds for London's transport system. The zone was introduced in central London on 17 February 2003, and extended into parts of west London on 19 February 2007. Though not the first scheme of its kind in the United Kingdom, it was the largest when introduced, and it remains one of the largest in the world. Several cities around the world have referenced Lon...

Tom O'Connor

how does HOV lane enforcement work?

Bart Silverstrim

Europe is where show writers for CSI and NCIS get their script ideas, only they pretend the technology works well :-)

Iain

yesterday, by Ben Pilbrow

MDMarra

14:27

@tombull89 Oh wow. Glad we don't have that. haha

tombull89

The standard charge is £10 for each day, for each non-exempt vehicle that travels within the zone between 07:00 and 18:00 (Monday-Friday only); a penalty of between £60 and £180 is levied for non-payment.

HUURK. I'm glad I don't live in London...

Tom O'Connor

@tombull89 i do, i just don't drive here ;)

Bart Silverstrim

@MDMarra: no, we're having a slow economic collapse. They just had a collapse of privacy.

MDMarra

@BartSilverstrim Potato, potahto

Bart Silverstrim

Anyone hear from Chopper3 lately?

Bart De Vos

14:28

@BartSilverstrim He'll be back

tombull89

@BartSilverstrim nope...not in chat at least.

Give him a break over christmas...He probably needs it.

Bart De Vos

@tombull89 He said 10 days off :)

Bart Silverstrim

:-/

tombull89

@BartDeVos [citation-needed]

Bart De Vos

@tombull89 Mail he sent me

wait

tombull89

14:30

Oh, fair enough.

Bart De Vos

"I may have a day or ten off the site anyway, then come back and have a go at answering some questions - sick of being second in the rep table anyway, not my style."

Basil

Wow! I found that incredibly small intersection of time where a question sufficiently narrow in my field has been asked, but not immediately jumped on by everyone else!

0

A: vmware esx 4.1 cant see existing SAN storage

Start off by triple checking your zoning and LUN masking. I know you did it already, but if you made a typo or something, that would do this. You need to ensure that your switch has a zone containing all the front end ports for your EVA as well as the HBA for your new VMWare server. Most FC pl...

Bart Silverstrim

I should probably go too. Wouldn't want to give more people reason to validate how worthless chat is as was indicated in the meta. Wonder if that was updated at all...I haven't looked at the question since it first started getting all rabbley rousey.

Laters.

Basil

Honestly, I only come here for the boobs and cussing.

2

Alnitak

when did the answer order change? I thought it was always "accepted" followed by "highest voted"

MDMarra

14:33

@Alnitak Sortable

Bart De Vos

@Alnitak You can choose yourself

above the first answer, to the right

Alnitak

doh

thx

MDMarra

np :)

pauska

Honestly - we "agreed" to stop the "boobs" meme as some was offended by it :)

MDMarra

Pretty much all you have left is the cussing, @Basil

tombull89

14:34

@pauska Did we? What about the sock one? That's worse that the boobs one, in my eyes.

MDMarra

The sock stays

forever.

pauska

@tombull89 I'm probably the only one (who should be) offended

tombull89

@jcolebrand that wasn't a flag that brought you in, was it?

Tom O'Connor

I just set a date in the work tech calendar for 14/12/2031. When one of our internal CA roots expires.

jcolebrand

no, I'm just getting to the office. this is one of my lurk rooms

Bart De Vos

14:35

@TomOConnor :D

jcolebrand

quit being paranoid, unless you need a ban for some reason

I'm handy with the bans, and with my back aching, I'm ready to dish them out.

tombull89

cowers in the corner

Basil

@pauska I missed the memo.

jcolebrand

lurks

pauska

have you seen this guy in /review?

serverfault.com/users/14103/martin-geisler?tab=activity

282 rep, but he does more editing than we all do combined

Tom O'Connor

14:37

@pauska Ah, the editmonster.

Yeah

Alnitak

if anyone here is from the domain names with spaces in debate from earlier, the last edit in my answer at [serverfault.com/a/342303/216] is for @Tomtom's benefit ;-)

pauska

It's good edits aswell

Bart De Vos

@pauska Jep EditMan

Basil

Oh yeah, editing.

pauska

@jcolebrand: Only hats allowed here! That goes for blue's aswell!

that goes for you aswell basil

17

Q: It's Santa Time!

Let's do this. What with the DramaLlama being out in full force, I think it's time to take a breather and bring the funny back. To wit: I propose the Santification of your gravatars till after the new year. Some of us have already gotten started. You can use the image as your baseline. or ...

Basil

14:38

hey, why can't I edit my chat about... uh... socks?

Also, what's a drama llama?

jcolebrand

@pauska 'whatever bloody nonsense you're on about, it does not bode well for you to taunt a blue who has already threatened bans for everybody.

tombull89

@Basil Can only edit/delete for two minutes after it's posted.

Basil

boo.

pauska

@jcolebrand I'm a viking, taunting people is in my DNA

Scott Pack

@Basil It's from a children's book. Llama Llama Red Pajamas.

tombull89

14:39

@Basil who SF got vistied by last week.

Tom O'Connor

@pauska Can you photoshop some horns on too?

MDMarra

@ScottPack Who let you near children?

pauska

I can't, but I bet @Iain can

Iain

@pauska he's fixing up all the Mercurial questions/answers as he's a core developer

Scott Pack

@MDMarra This is Merrka. If you make it, they don't take it away unless you use them as a stirstick in your meth lab.

pauska

14:40

ahhhh of course, why didn't I see that

Holocryptic

Hooray! @ChrisS is on board!

Scott Pack

@MDMarra In fact, I've got one siting at my feet watching Clifford right now.

Iain

@pauska I'm not that good

Holocryptic

My evil plan is wurking

2

MDMarra

@ScottPack You have a child with a TV under your desk?

Chris S

14:41

Yep... Lurking about...

Bart De Vos

/lurkmode

time to watch a movie :)

Scott Pack

@MDMarra At this point, in this google index chat session, I should probably point out that I'm working from home this morning.

4

Basil

So I'm working on writing an RFP for our next storage refresh :)

This is the first time I get to sit at the cool side of the table.

pauska

@Iain Poor guy doesnt get much upvotes either, so I gave him some.. well deserved, all his answers are great

Scott Pack

@Basil Not incredibly not exciting for you!

pauska

14:42

@Basil Did you decide on vendor yet?

I remember we talked about EMC with its fast cache etc

Basil

nope- we're letting 6 people bid

MDMarra

@ScottPack He's a storage guy. He's probably got a nerdboner about it

Basil

@MDMarra just about.

Scott Pack

@Basil I've been on the client side of bunches of RFPs, and I've never seen it as anything except a necessary evil.

Peter Grace

OK, I changed my gravatar just for you guys. Dunno how long it'll take to change in chat tho.

MDMarra

14:43

@PeterGrace 5-10 min, I've found

Peter Grace

Also, the jibjab was pretty f'n funny. Kudos.

Basil

Depends on your perspective, I guess. I have to manage whatever we buy for the next 5 years, and I enjoy being able to have an influence on what that ends up consisting of

Holocryptic

@PeterGrace you can thank @Iain for that

Basil

So far, we're evaluating EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, Netapp, and Compellent.

Scott Pack

@Basil Oh, I can definitely relate. We're about to award on our 2nd SIEM RFP, and I got tagged as the primary on a MultiFactor one. As much as I like seeing all kinds of different products, it's still not something I enjoy :)

Iain

14:45

why is the size field of an ls -l not the size of a file on disk ?

pauska

@Basil Try asking IBM for the price of SSD disks, it's actually quite entertaining

Basil

@ScottPack What's SIEM?

pauska

(unless they've stopped the "only 300GB disks" bs)

Peter Grace

@Iain I think it's the total size of the inodes consumed

MikeyB

@Iain Because the size of the file on disk is metadata that you don't really care about unless you specifically do.

Peter Grace

14:46

Or, what @MikeyB said.

Basil

@pauska They have a minimum of 16 disks, but that's how many we'd need anyways

The problem with IBM is that they don't scale up enough

Iain

@MikeyB I don't follow you

TylerShads

@Basil, where is your holiday flair, mister?

Peter Grace

They're rabid about it.

tombull89

I got an e-mail today from eBuyer offering a 3TB WD Caviar Green 3.5" 5,400RPM disk for £150...o.O

Basil

14:47

@TylerShads It's against my religion to ever edit the default avatar on the web.

MDMarra

@PeterGrace nice hat

tombull89

@MDMarra @PeterGrace, seconded.

MikeyB

michael@challenger:/tmp$ ls -al sparsefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 michael users 1048576 2011-12-19 09:47 sparsefile
michael@challenger:/tmp$ du -k sparsefile
0 sparsefile

Scott Pack

@Basil Security Information and Event Manager. Basically a big honkin log and such collector with extra bells and whistles for turning network&system data into information.

Peter Grace

Hah, did it change for you? It's still my old gravatar for me.

MDMarra

14:48

@PeterGrace have to refresh

Iain

@MikeyB ok but for non sparse files ?

Peter Grace

That photo, incidentally, is the one that's going on the about page for serverfault, once it goes through customs.

Basil

@ScottPack Thanks- I'm filing that acronym away :)

Peter Grace

sans-hat, of course.

Scott Pack

@Basil Depends on the vendor you'll see SIEM, SEIM, SIM, SEM. Cuz, you know, standardization is stupid.

Basil

14:50

Who needs it.

MikeyB

@ScottPack Also probably "SIM", "SIM ", " SIM"

pauska

@Iain occupied space on disk and actual file size is two different things

MikeyB

@Iain For non-sparse files, that's just the way it is.

michael@challenger:~$ du -k .xsession-errors.old
752	.xsession-errors.old
michael@challenger:~$ du --apparent-size -k .xsession-errors.old
739	.xsession-errors.old
michael@challenger:~$ ls -alk .xsession-errors.old
-rw------- 1 michael users 739 2011-12-17 11:58 .xsession-errors.old

pauska

@Iain: Put a 50K file on a file system with 64K blocks and you've lost 14K

Iain

@MikeyB du -b is easier

Basil

14:51

du -b step

Scott Pack

@Iain du -b --step

MikeyB

@Iain Oh! Yes, yes it is.

Scott Pack

FUCK YOU @BASIL!!

Basil

HAHAHA

@ScottPack pwned.

MikeyB

du: unrecognized option '--step'
What OS is that?
(derp derp derp)

Scott Pack

14:52

I would have had it had I not accidentally hit '1' instead of '`'

MikeyB

Oh. NVM.

2

OK, you got me.

Ima gonna go build me some servers.

Basil

Yes we did.

MDMarra

@MikeyB For your penance, you can only work with Sun hardware today.

3

Basil

lol

pauska

shopping

MikeyB

14:54

Sun ∄

pauska

0

Q: Graphical Ping utility with logging

I need to continuously test the quality of the connection between hosts, and I would like to use ping for that, in order to see WHEN the problem occurs. It should provide LOG of the pinging, with timestamps of each ping. Any suggestions for such utility? Yeah, sorry, Windows! Preferably insta...

windows ping network-monitoring

Scott Pack

@MDMarra You know the best thing about SPARC?

Bus Error, bitches!

MDMarra

@ScottPack Do tell

MikeyB

@ScottPack Yeah, the only thing that matters about connection quality is packet loss.

MDMarra

haha

Scott Pack

14:55

@MikeyB I keep forgetting how insanely useless Solaris ping is.

MDMarra

The only Sun hardware that I can get behind with my workload is a T1000.

MikeyB

@ScottPack It's ALIVE!

MDMarra

And that's strictly because of the name.

Scott Pack

@MDMarra My CS program up here was pretty much an entirely Sun shop. Having to learn to do systems programming on that shit was epic.

pauska

soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/998927/blackburn?cc=5739

".. defender Scott Dann has been ruled out of action for six weeks after he ruptured a testicle."

RUPTURED A TESTICLE

7

R U P T U R E D.....

Peter Grace

14:58

That happens somewhat often in soccer

Scott Pack

Now that's what I call a sticky situation.

Peter Grace

can you imagine a cleat to the nuts? That's gotta hurt like crazy.

Alnitak

@ScottPack I did my CS programming on Sun, but back then it was call SunOS, not Solaris...

MDMarra

There was a baseball player that took a foul ball off of the sack and ruptured a testicle a few years ago. Talk about brutal.

Turns out, there is more than one way to bust a nut.

Scott Pack

@Alnitak Then these kids nowadays do it on Intel. Phaw.

Peter Grace

14:59

And a foul ball it is.

Alnitak

kids nowadays don't do CS - they "learn" Office and HTML

Dan

@pauska Aaaaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhh

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