The Comms Room

Holocryptic

00:00

@MarkHenderson Serious

Although not that high

Journeyman Geek

@RobMoir: Well, those were more innocent times, when all viruses did was destroy your hardware and laugh at your dispair

Tom O'Connor

Good Night!

pauska

@TomOConnor what, you thought I was playing on your team? :)

Rob Moir

I'd imagine he's serious all recent things considered. They give you some pretty good meds if you have a bad old case

night tom

Simon Sheehan

One moment, modifying my avatar..

AdrianK

00:00

@TomOConnor merry xmas!

Holocryptic

@SimonSheehan good man. You'll need two hats

Tom O'Connor

@pauska Yeah.. o.O

Mark Henderson

Yes, you must have a hat to chat

3

Journeyman Geek

lol. I dread to think what would happen if i was on the good stuff

84104

@SimonSheehan One of us. One of us!

Tom O'Connor

00:01

@pauska I think most people are until proven otherwise.

AdrianK

@Holocryptic 2/3rd inch kidneystone, right?

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek - that goes for you too

Holocryptic

@AdrianK Something like that. I'm no good at conversions

pauska

@TomOConnor that goes both ways!

Tom O'Connor

@pauska Depends on your perspective.

AdrianK

00:02

@Holocryptic Yeah, I'm old enough that I can't think in metric unless it's bolt sizes on my motorcycles.

Mark Henderson

@Holocryptic 2/3 of an inch is about 20mm I think

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: I don't celebrate chrismas ;p Also, it is impossible to get a spottiswoode terrier to wear a hat

Simon Sheehan

uploading now!

Holocryptic

@MarkHenderson close enough. its 17mm

Tom O'Connor

google.co.uk/…

Simon Sheehan

00:02

@JourneymanGeek Hahah, I think you could try ;)

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Hmmm.... ok I'll issue you a pass then

Tom O'Connor

seriously. bedtime! Goodnight! :D

Mark Henderson

@TomOConnor Cya

Holocryptic

@TomOConnor night Tom

Tom O'Connor

yawns

Journeyman Geek

00:03

@SimonSheehan: Its scientifically proven the only thing a spottiswoode terrier will wear is a collar. Primarily to keep its designated walker within an acceptable distance ;p

Simon Sheehan

Avatar should be updated!

Soon anyway

Once gravatar kicks itself together ;)

Holocryptic

takes a couple minutes

Rob Moir

cool

pauska

@TomOConnor gnight

Journeyman Geek

I think you need to re-load to get it to update

pauska

00:04

@JourneymanGeek no, it happens after a few minutes

Simon Sheehan

Nah, just gotta wait for it to populate to all the caches

Holocryptic

I've seen it do it automatically, but you can make it go faster if you hard refresh

Mark Henderson

People already in chat need to ctrl+f5 to get your new avatar though

Simon Sheehan

Ah okay.

Mark Henderson

@voretaq7 changed his hours ago and he's still got no hat on mine

Simon Sheehan

00:05

Wait, since when is it ctrl + f5? @MarkHenderson

Ah okay.

AdrianK

And as expected, I got approved to immediately start working on a configuration management system as soon as I get the other 12 things done first.

Simon Sheehan

Refreshing my profile every few seconds :p

84104

@AdrianK Hurry up and wait!

pauska

aaah just one more beer until bedtime

2

Mark Henderson

Lunch time for me, bbl

AdrianK

00:07

@84104 The biggest problem is that I'm the only one around with the skills to understand and deploy this stuff, so I don't have much help.

Holocryptic

@pauska I like how you think. Counting time with beer.

pauska

@Holocryptic I work with a guy who counts his paycheck in number of beers

He's a hero in that sense

I just CANT RESIST, this will be the last one

Holocryptic

That's one way to look at it

Journeyman Geek

@AdrianK: erg. Being the only guy sucks

pauska

Imagine having a wristwatch where it said "12 mins past boobs" or "15 mins past beer" ?

Journeyman Geek

00:08

notes i will probably be dismantling most of my little office set up next month due to downsizing :/

Holocryptic

lawls

Simon Sheehan

I hear you there @JourneymanGeek and @AdrianK, only kid in my classes with a clue on how to even use a computer :/

Holocryptic

@JourneymanGeek sux...

Simon Sheehan

Also, avatar has been updated.. it'll show up on your screens eventually ;)

Holocryptic

@SimonSheehan You're good to go. Update my meta post

Simon Sheehan

00:09

@Holocryptic Sure will!

Holocryptic

That's a brilliant gravatar, by the by

Journeyman Geek

@Holocryptic: Unpaid tech support. And i have 6 obsolete systems, and only two monitors

AdrianK

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, it's nothing new. For awhile I was the only guy in the AMER region that knew the performance management data remediation product used by the US's largest wireless company

Journeyman Geek

@AdrianK: thats bad practice

Holocryptic

@AdrianK 0_o

Simon Sheehan

00:10

@Holocryptic Meta post updated!

Journeyman Geek

Granted, i was actually trying to get someone to be able to cover the basics (that is to say 99% of what i do) and no one was interested

AdrianK

@JourneymanGeek Tell me about it. The dev that was supposed to get trained up was hired 5 weeks before the training was due to start and he had his wedding scheduled in India during that timeframe.

Simon Sheehan

Gonna get a full size one of it

pauska

@JourneymanGeek im also losing my office next months, moving into open landscape together with the developers and a new sysadmin

Holocryptic

@SimonSheehan hoorah. Welcome

Simon Sheehan

00:11

Haha, thanks :p

Journeyman Geek

@pauska: we're 4 people + me + a dog. We're downsizing to 2 people and the dog, probably dumping the office space, though i have no idea how we're going to dispose of the room full of spares.

pauska

@JourneymanGeek "My dog ate my coworkers"?

3

Holocryptic

shit. Dinner was ready an hour ago... back in a bit.

Journeyman Geek

On the bright side, i can stop fretting over what happened if one of the computers goes down

pauska

We're probably going to dedicate one office for workbench/lab stuff/private phone calls etc

Journeyman Geek

00:13

@pauska: bad self marketing + bad economic climate

And we tend to get largish contracts, rarely, so cash flow is a bitch

pauska

@JourneymanGeek yeah I guessed that, just a bad sense of humor sometimes. Sorry.

Journeyman Geek

If we for the one thats pending, we'd be able to keep the two people we have to let go longer

(though, i really wish we could upgrade our systems. Not asking for AD here, just stuff i can get spares for without raiding a scrapyard ;p)

Simon Sheehan

@Holocryptic Whipped it together in photoshop in a higher resolution now ;) my wallpaper is set for the next 2 weeks or so

Loving how chat looks now :p

Would anyone here happen to know anything about networking a couple of computers together for file sharing?

I have heard you need either a router or switch... but honestly don't know the difference

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan I bet that people on the main site would if you hit the "ask a question" button :p

Ohhh, maybe not

You want a switch

What they call a "router" these days for 99.999% of the devices is an incorrect label

Networking 101:

- A switch allows your computers to talk to eacother
- A hub is a really crappy switch
- A router allows your network to talk to other networks

What they sell as a router these days is really a modem + router + switch

Journeyman Geek

lol

Simon Sheehan

00:24

@MarkHenderson Ah.. I've got all my terms confused probably :p. What I'm looking for doesn't need to connect to other networks, just to allow a few computers to talk to each other

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: actually, they also have plain old router/switches

AdrianK

@SimonSheehan That's miniaturization for ya. It's just as easy to shove all that stuff onto a handful of chips nowadays, and cheaper.

Journeyman Geek

also, hubs are primarily useful these days for snooping around

@SimonSheehan: how many?

84104

@JourneymanGeek If you're too lazy to setup SPAN or whatever it's called.

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan Do these computers need to have shared internet access?

And yes, how many computers are we talking about?

Simon Sheehan

00:26

@MarkHenderson Well their all iMac's and Mac Mini's, about 6 of them, which all use WiFi connections right now strictly for internet access, but we'd like to start sharing files between them, ultimately using the Mini's just to house files

Journeyman Geek

@84104: mostly running non SF grade hardware so.. that would be a yes. Also, my hub is somewhat legacy gear - its probably older than @SimonSheehan ;p

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan If they are all sharing internet access via the same wifi connection, you have everything you need already

Simon Sheehan

Haha. Once again im the kid around here

Mark Henderson

File sharing will be slow, but it will work

Simon Sheehan

@MarkHenderson It's on this crappy "guest" network my school runs.

84104

00:27

@JourneymanGeek That was an assessment not a disparagement. I've got a 10Mb hub that I still use from time to time.

Simon Sheehan

To which it's internet connection is shared by about 400 machines.

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan Oh, right. Ok, well in that case you need a switch with at least 6 ports

But if these are machines on a school network, there's no guarantee that you will be able to make it work because the school may have locked them down

Journeyman Geek

@84104: I just don't see any other practical use for a hub in any context

Simon Sheehan

@MarkHenderson They aren't locked at all - I set them up myself :p

84104

@JourneymanGeek That's because there isn't one? (rhetorical)

Mark Henderson

00:28

@SimonSheehan Ok cool. So you need a switch with at least 6 ports. Now I don't know much about OSX so you might need to set up their IP addresses manually so they can talk to eachtoher, or maybe they will auto-configure

Journeyman Geek

Yup ;p. Lazy sniffing is the only one i can think of

Mark Henderson

Your best bet is to hop on over to Ask Different, explain what you've got, and what you want to do, and they will be able to walk you through it

Simon Sheehan

@MarkHenderson That part I can handle probably, I think they auto-configure mostly though. I wonder if I can use 2 connections though, and keep WiFi going.

It's not so much the system I'm worried about - its getting the right hardware and such.

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan Yes, just as long as they are on two different subnets, so if your wifi network is 192.168.0.1 then make your wired network 192.168.1.0 or something different

That's called Multi-Homing and is very common

Simon Sheehan

Oh neat, that's awesome.

I recalled a few years ago I tried that on Windows XP and failed horrendously... probably was just too young to figure it out :p

Mark Henderson

00:31

I gotta warn you though, server fault doesn't really accept questions about file sharing on OSX so if you run into trouble, ask different is your best bet

Simon Sheehan

@MarkHenderson I figured as much - I can probably figure that one out. I just needed to know the networking aspect of it

Which I thought you guys might know

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan Yep, easy. You need a switch with at least 6 ports, and 6 cables to connect them. Done.

Simon Sheehan

@MarkHenderson Pretty straight forward then, dandy!

Luckily for me I run all the Mac's, so I can easily modify it to work

84104

@MarkHenderson Almost. What about addressing? Static or dhcp or dhcp-local failure?

Mark Henderson

@84104 Covered that, apparently osx can auto-configure

Simon Sheehan

00:33

I was using a crossover cable today and it seemed to auto-configure just fine

84104

@MarkHenderson You mean 169.254.X.Y or L2 only?

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan Lucky you. When I started it was coax networks where htey were all strung together in a long line, and you had to manually set jumpers on the network cards for each computer to get the right IRQ/DMA and then fuck around getting the drivers installed into Windows 3.11 and DHCP wasn't in wide use, and NAT didn't exist, so then you had to get a SOCKS proxy and my god Im going all funny just thinking about it

@84104 No idea, don't use osx

84104

@MarkHenderson Same. Was curious. Auto-magic is auto-magical.

Simon Sheehan

@MarkHenderson I don't think I was alive during that time :P

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan that was 1995, and I was (counts backwards...) 11

But I had a Dad who was really really into networking and technology

And he wanted us to fuck off out of his office when we wanted to use the internet (good old 14.4kbps dial up)

Simon Sheehan

00:35

@MarkHenderson I was born in 1995.

84104

Vampire tap

A vampire tap (also called a piercing tap) is a device for physically connecting a station (i.e. a PC, a printer, or another device) to a network that uses 10BASE5 cabling. This device clamps onto and "bites" into the cable (hence the vampire name), forcing a spike through a hole drilled through the outer shielding to contact the inner conductor while other spikes bite into the outer conductor. From the vampire tap, a short cable called an AUI (Attachment Unit Interface) is connected directly from the tap to the network card in the PC. Vampire taps allow new connections to be made on a...

AdrianK

@SimonSheehan I'm just going to pretend I didn't read that, and I'll be just fine.

Mark Henderson

@84104 hahahah the NE2000 had an AUI port, never knew what it was for

Simon Sheehan

Hahaha :p

AdrianK

@84104 vampire taps rocked. Thicknet was pretty neat stuff.

84104

00:37

@AdrianK I still find them in the ceiling from time to time.

AdrianK

@SimonSheehan yeah, that's the year I was able to start drinking legally.

Mark Henderson

I also remember when we got our first hard drive that was over 1Gb, a 1.2Gb WD (I still have it!) and my friend Bobby was so jelous he kicked me in the nuts

AdrianK

@84104 That's pretty cool. Probably has about 10" of dust on them.

Mark Henderson

@AdrianK is that 18 or 21?

Jacob

@SimonSheehan HOLD THE PHONE BUDDY, ONLY ONE SF USER CAN BE BORN IN 1995....

AdrianK

00:38

@MarkHenderson 21

Simon Sheehan

@Jacob Uh oh...

Mark Henderson

@Jacob Apart from my boss and the sales guy, every single person in our office was born in 1985

Journeyman Geek

lol. my first > 1gb hard drive was 4.3, since we're horrible at upgrading home equipment

Jacob

@MarkHenderson Well it means I might lose my title as youngest SF member.

Simon Sheehan

@Jacob What month are you born in?

Mark Henderson

00:40

@JourneymanGeek Aah, 4.3Gb the size of my first SCSI disk. It was double height, fucking loud, LVD 80-pin and compared to todays disks incredibly slow

AdrianK

@MarkHenderson the first one I bought was 85MB. But I frequently used an XT with a 20MB as I was the student sysop for the school's BBS system in the late 80s & early 90s.

Jacob

@SimonSheehan December

Mark Henderson

@AdrianK I think our first drive was 150Mb in a 486 SX 25 (without the math co-processor)

Simon Sheehan

@Jacob You still win! January here ;)

Journeyman Geek

I went from an Xt -> 486 -> PII -> pIV -> core2duo. I basically skip a generation or two

XT was for dad's masters primarily, and we're not a very geek household :/

AdrianK

00:41

Yeah, I lost track in the early 90s. I don't do hardware.

Simon Sheehan

I went 800mhz Athlon > core 2 quad.

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek I went through a stage about 6-7 years ago where I built dual-socket workstations for myself, so I had two Athlon MP systems and then a dual Opteron system, and then by that stage quad-core processors were the norm and I was no longer special :(

Jacob

@MarkHenderson Dual quad?

Mark Henderson

I remember the first time I got the hallowed 2 graphs in the task manager (windows 2000) and I felt so special

Now thinking back to it, I feel like a loser

@Jacob Nah too expensive and useless for what I do. Our servers have 8 and 10 cores each, that's enough

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: I'm at the point where i want to build a new system, but its nearly impossible. Once i get my darned delayed degree, and a job, i probably will have to blow a few paychecks on something ever so slightly insane ;p

Mark Henderson

00:43

@JourneymanGeek It's totally worth it. For the 6 months while your machine is kickarse anyway, and then when everyone else catches up it's just a sigh

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: well, thats the thing, its not really the power of the machine, its the fact that i get to build it. And being elbow deep in a system is so damned relaxing

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek Until it doesn't boot

Journeyman Geek

And i'm the sort of person who'd quite happily get a box of random crappy systems, and throw it together into something that works.

oh, that is fun. And i've gotten very good at troubleshooting that

Mark Henderson

I once got incredibly pissed off because I literally broke a $900 Tyan dual-socket motherboard prising the heat-sink off because I stuck it on backwards

Journeyman Geek

has had... oh 4-5 PSU failures this year ;p

Mark Henderson

00:46

(I sent it back as DOA, and they replaced it!)

AdrianK

gnite gents

Simon Sheehan

Cya later @AdrianK

Mark Henderson

@AdrianK Cya

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: I'm mainly a hardware guy. I'm good at desktop stuff cause its what i mainly deal with, and a serverish guy cause its more challenging that desktops. Only so much i can learn on random re-purposed hardware. So... computers not booting is fun to me, as long as its not a critical system of some sort

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek I totally get that. I've just become... disenchanted with desktop hardware these days, mainly because of the sheer number of troubles I have with them. It seems that if you have 500 servers and 100 desktops, you'll have 10x fewer problems with the servers than the desktops

Journeyman Geek

00:53

@MarkHenderson: better hardware, better OSes. I suppose you do deploy software centrally so, thats one less headache

Simon Sheehan

I like hardware, mostly because my own hardware is usually decades behind and sucks :P

Journeyman Geek

I'd happily build a personal system around server hardware if i had the need/funds. My own systems tend to last for at least 8 or so years before something beautifully catastrophic happens

Simon Sheehan

Server stuff interests me for its complexity, but I don't get many chances to mess around

Mark Henderson

Actually I let the people here install their own software. We have a NAS loaded with the install files and they just ask me for a key when they need it. But we've only got 6 or so people in the office

@SimonSheehan I love looking at the inside of something like a Dell M910 blade. Four sockets, I think 32 DIMMs and two disks inside something the size of a laptop

Simon Sheehan

@MarkHenderson Having smaller numbers probably makes it a LOT easier, I'd imagine.

@MarkHenderson Well, my friend got his hands on two HP server one day, and THAT was exciting

Sockets, DIMMS, many disk trays, and lots to mess with

Mark Henderson

00:56

@SimonSheehan It does. We're a very small team, 6 of us, but the systems we support and deploy have hundreds, if not thousands of users (SaaS), but supporting those users is not my problem ;)

Simon Sheehan

There's a picture of the server we had, x2

Mark Henderson

@SimonSheehan Ah, I know that server quite well. We had a few of them as ESX boxes

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: in that case, its quite similar to mine. No real servers, and very old hardware. Last hardware failure i had, other than the monitors was... the PA dropping her system off the desk, and telling me, months later the PSU failed ;p

pauska

huh.. the lenovo x220 retails for about $1000 in the us, and $3000 in norway..

Mark Henderson

@pauska It's a joke, hey

Simon Sheehan

00:57

@MarkHenderson Oh really? It's quite old, but seems to run very well. Has no idea with ESX is

Mark Henderson

iTunes are also just as bad. They charged more than 3x the price for The Beatles complete set in Australia than they did in the US (and the $AU was higher than $US) and could offer no explanation other than they think we're stupid

@SimonSheehan ESX is what we used to use for virtualising. Now we use ESXi

Jacob

@SimonSheehan Its a hardware level hypervisor

Mark Henderson

Those servers are a few yeqars old, but I thnik you can chock them up with 32Gb of RAM

You just need to remember that RAM for servers is usually different from the RAM for your desktop

Jacob

@SimonSheehan Are you looking for servers?

Simon Sheehan

Oh okay, neat. I only really know about software level virtualization. (Hence why im at Super user mostly)

@Jacob Nope.

@MarkHenderson We only had 1.5GB of RAM between the two machines... pretty meager.

pauska

00:59

@SimonSheehan You're in so many chat rooms that my 12" laptop filled the screen to show it.. I had to close the chat and re-open it because of you. I hate you.

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