Hi all

So, today I open up my mailbox, this is what I see:

G'day

@BartDeVos From what I hear you're not heading towards a bright carreer as a MS SQL DBA

...

@KennyRasschaert Little hiccup :)

Was messing around with the SQL-db for an AX-installation. Turns out the AOSes don't like it when you just copy random tables from production to test.

so now I have to rebuild test :)

isitfridayyet.org

@pauska You rang? :)

@IlariKajaste because almost everyone asking a question using and using the term propagation wouldn't be asking the question if the thought about it as caching instead.

Q. How long does it take for a change to get out to the world. A. Look at your config, how long do you allow the record to be cached.

it's really an ELU question. The change propagates as the caches time out

But the change happens immediately, if people haven't asked for that record before, they get the answer immediately.

I think propagation is a perfectly acceptable word

When people you say propagation, people commonly think there is some kind of distributed replication where your record gets forwarded out to the cloud or something.

but that change spreads around the globe as the caches time out

The word doesn't imply "why, how or when", simply that "over time, this change will occur" and that accurately describes what happens

@Zoredache Well, maybe they do, but that's their own problem really. That's not what the word "propagation" means

@Dan where else in networking or computer science is that word used in that way? In most other CS/IT usages it means a change is pushed out.

sense 3 from Chambers to spread or popularize (ideas, etc) -like I said it's really a discussion for ELU

@Zoredache Yeah, but IT can't lay claim to a dictionary word

@Dan We can't? Someone should tell Eric S. Raymond, that he has to delete the jargon file from his servers.

catb.org/jargon

Almost every profession has a jargon unique to that profession, and I am arguing that in IT the word propagate is used most in once sense to mean pushed stuff, except for within DNS.

So I, and apparently others as well suggest people not use it to avoid some needless confusion.

@Zoredache Mmm, I think we'll have to agree to disagree here

On which point, can you agree that some people might be less confused if you use the term cached instead? If so, then all we are left to argue, is are enough people confused by it to make it worth avoiding the term.

@Zoredache Give me an example. "We're just waiting for our DNS changes to propagate" Vs.

I wisth the SF search worked better...

ask a question is the best search

I don't think it finds contents in comments. I am not sure anything does.

Other then Google, maybe.

Here is one example kinda. serverfault.com/questions/153690/…

Okay, actually, I take it back

I always figured it described it fine for anyone non technical, and those who were technical would know exactly what you mean

Morning all

I use propagate myself.

It's not an active a verb as it sounds, and I wouldn't consider it jargon.

The real reason why we find it frustrating...

But isn't the word cached better anyway? In our field caching is very well understood. If you tell someone it is cached they will think of their browser, their http proxy or something else, which all will map quite cleanly on what DNS is doing.

...is that it is used as an excuse by people who have broken things by not knowing what they were doing in the first place. They don't set the TTL correctly days in advance of the cutover, shut down the old server instead of leaving it in place as a forward proxy or whatever, and then they blame it all on needing to wait for propagation as if it's an unsolvable problem.

the records are cached and as they timeout the change in the information propagates ...

...but only if someone asks for it...

"Propagate" just describes the nature of the transaction incorrectly. If DNS records were pushed/advertised, it would make perfect sense, but the reality is that they are pulled/requested.

I'm talking about the propagation of the change which requires someone to ask for it

I dunno, maybe the word propagation is just messed up in my mind. Whenever someone uses that word I think of my HS biology class where the instructor was talking about rabbit procreation, seeds, DNA, and so on...

I'd talk more about my opinion on propagation, but really, you can scroll back 2 hours and witness absolutely everything that I would have said to you, plus the invention of an entirely new language that occasionally sounds like Finnish.

Yup.

propagate verb (propagated, propagating) 1 tr & intr, bot said of a plant: to multiply. 2 bot to grow (new plants), either by natural means or artificially. 3 to spread or popularize (ideas, etc). 4 physics to transmit energy, eg sound or electromagnetism, over a distance in wave form.
ETYMOLOGY: 16c: from Latin propagare, propagatum to grow plants by grafting, etc.

sense 3 is relevant

@Iain We get it. But DNS servers are reference librarians, not evangelists. They don't care whether their ideas get popularized or not.

@Iain As a matter of fact, DNS used to be a major world religion, but it was surpassed years ago by Christianity and Islam.

In the scheme of things I don't care - if someone uses propagate or cache timeout I know what they mean and the world turns

True. The world won't actually end until people start trusting cats. youtube.com/watch?v=QQGVoMRAiiA

@MilesErickson indeed, armed, dangerous and prepared to act at all times

Is it home time yet?

Anyone know if there's a UK version of the HP server configurator. I keep getting bounced to the US one.

hii

@SmallClanger ping @Chopper3

tied up on a small outage - anything quick?

Nothing urgent. I was just looking for the UK version of the configurator. HP's site seems to forget I've selected 'UK' from about two pages in.

(but going to a meeting now, so no rush :)

I'm a human hp configurator!

@Zoredache I would agree that using "caching" implies that it would work like that. But, as I understood it, it really doesn't work like that. Short example: When server X's cache expires, it'll query Y for it, and Y might still have cache left, and Y will return the same old results. Then when Y's cache runs out, and it'll query your A server it'll get the changed result... but now X has to wait again until it's cache expires to get the correct result. Right?

Add new server N to the mix, that's querying from X, we have a propagation pattern. Whether it's proper contextual jargon to call that propagation is a separate (very valid) issue, but the results do resemble propagation a lot.

The two places where the results don't resemble propagation is 1) a new DNS record, which is available immediately since there's no cache 2) a situation where the domain isn't queried for a long time, so every cache becomes expired, and thus it'll get distributed directly.

That is, if I did understand DNS correctly. Which I'm not at all sure of. :D

@Dan If I have understood the DNS distribution system, I would even argue that to the uninitiated, "propagation" does convey what happens better than "caching" - since caching does kind of imply that when the cache gets old, it will be replaced with correct information from the course.

Oh, for crying out loud, we're still talking about what to call it when cached DNS results expire more slowly than would be convenient?

ahem Excuse me. Carry on.

We can discuss this in our private language.

@IlariKajaste eeeyup.

Would anyone be able to take a look at two similar WMV files and tell me what differs about them? I'm drawing a blank but one works as it should and the other doesn't (On Citrix)

@Dan yeah, go for it. I've almost had enough from movie files after "helping" with a student media project deadline, but shoot.

@tombull89 You're a star, two ticks

alrighty, gimme a moment.

Just discovered that MS OVS agreements now include ipads and other tablets as 'qualifying devices'. So we're looking at 170 seats to serve 100 users. Fun.

@Dan Nothing obvious, sorry.

Should I start complaining about propagation or is it a dead subject?

@BartSilverstrim Get in on it, we all did

@tombull89 Thanks mate

propagation I thought meant spread...so if the changes spread, they're propagating.

Doesn't mean push, necessarily. I thought it was agnostic. In the end as long as it's spreading it's propagating.

But if people get worked up about it, then I'll start using the word "infect," like a meme or earworm. My DNS changes are taking too long to infect other DNS servers.

No, from now on we should use the phrase "viral" everywhere

VIRAL CLOUD

"Hi Dave, yeah, I'm just waiting for my DNS updates to go viral. This is going to be everywhere by teatime"

"I've updated that GPO, now it just needs to go viral"

4.5 hours ago a friend of mine here in turkey invited me for luch, after which he insisted we went to a cybercafe with gaming computers and have a quick match of counter strike.

I just got back

@SmallClanger I'm not 100% familiar with OVS, but doesn't come in 'per user' licensing too?

@ChrisS No. MS call it a 'standardisation' license, which means "We'll give you cheap subscription licenses if you sign your soul over to beelzeballmer..."

Every device that's capable of running office, even if the OS that resides on it can't and even if the device is merely capable of running a suitable OS in a virtual environment, then it qualifies and has to be counted.

Since we have a lot of macs and ipads/pods belonging to devs who also have windows machines with office, we'd have to license them twice or even three times to be compliant.

Needless to say, we're ditching it and going with something else.

Perversely, that might actually end up being Office 365, since you get to install up to 5 copies of Office Pro Plus on local devices for every licensed user.

and at £8/user/month, it's cheaper than OVS anyway.

Well...one cause of the periodic freezing on my computer is apparently VirtualBox...narrowed that one down.

@BartSilverstrim VirtualBox is barely fun to use in a classroom lab. I really wish that my students had VMware Workstation.

Time to see if a deletion of the package and reinstall will clear things up a bit.

I've never had a problem with it until now.

I'm afraid of ponying $40 then paying for updates. VBox just lets me update.

@Iain FYI: Someone has suggested an edit on one of your answers, and no one wants to touch it because it's yours.

So last night I posted Yelling Bird in the Bridge... I didn't get kicked. It was starred.

In fact, it's still there now with 4 stars.

I don't know what to think of this development

You think that the reception depends on the audience.

Same reason you can post a comment in Reddit and it will get downvoted to hell but the same thing in another subreddit will be upvoted.

I'm not sure what a yelling bird is but if it's offensive to someone, they're obviously not there at the time to get pissy and now that it's starred someone's hesitant to speak out or hasn't noticed.

@JeffFerland I was...amused. The difference between your and @Adrian's posting is that you oneboxed it, Adrain just posted the text.

I'm guessing they can't mark things offensive hours later.

^^^ Cisco friends, lend me your arms!

@JeffFerland They can - it was possible to go back and flag stuff. There was something on meta late last year about someone going through the transcripts and flagging stuff from months previous.

@PeterGrace 20 seconds between asking and posting to chat. Good, but not quite 16 seconds.

Although the sheer fact of being a SE employee guarantees an unusual number of upvotes.

@tombull89 haha.

I just sorta do it by default since I trust the people in here to have good answers

morning Faulters.

Hah.

finallyyyy fridayyyy :D

hello all!

hope everyone enjoying the weather in the uk!

I wish I could insert mp3s into the chat room and they would play on everyone's computer.

Because I'd drop Rebecca Black's "Friday".

And ruin everyones day.

lol

take it you not having a good day then!

i need a double shot of redbull though... been a long week

FRIDAY FRIDAY GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY

try this.

Yay, yesterday was 210 rep. Top 1% this month :-)

@MilesErickson seems like a good edit to me although it could easily have been it's own answer

Can I go home yet? I just tried to run shutdown /r /t 0 on a CentOS box.

@MDMarra Don't feel bad, I'm working with two files that I labelled as "Works" and "DoesntWork" earlier on

lol @md

@MDMarra I had a look at a CentOS for the first time earlier this week - I was expecting something a bit more "server-y" (like Ubuntu server).

@MDMarra The catch si that they're the wrong way round :(

..."server-y"?

@tombull89 It's very server-y if you don't install a GUI.

FULLSCREEN HTOP <-dat shit is server-y

@tombull89 Not sure what you mean. There's nothing special about Ubuntu Server other than it doesn't have a GUI by default.

@KyleSmith Nice work. Now just do it 148 more times for the legendary badge ok?

I just don't install a GUI on my CentOS servers (along with leaving off a bunch of other crap).

@KyleSmith That's it, I probably just downloaded and installed CentOS as default without taking any of the extra guff off.

@jscott That's the plan.

It's binary compatible with RHEL, so it doesn't get much more server-y than that as far as Linux goes :)

@KyleSmith You'd be SF's first. So remember me when you get there. :)

I've got a week off work next week (yay, edu) so I'm planning on dropping it on one of my MicroServers and having a play.

I almost left the "as far as Linux goes" off of that last comment. That would have brought @voretaq7 in here like a whirlwind to shit on Linux.

@jscott Oh wow. I'm sure there are many people with dozens or so days already :-)

i dont like centos -.-

@ColdT why not?

@MDMarra Pretty much...

You can't get more server-y than NETWARE. Since...that's all it could do.

Are there desktops for AIX, HP-UX and the like?

I'd love to get my hands on an AIX box to play with.

just given me more grief with compatibility then really needed

we got hp integrity servers here, sadly not desktop based

Ah, got ya

I've had this laptop for almost a year; this is the first time I've burned a CD. I know this because I didn't realize I was out of blank CDs, and blank DVDs (single layer; still have a couple dual layer)

I have a piece of software running on a CentOS VM. It's sensitive to a MAC address change. I'm moving it from a standalone ESXi server with local storage to a vSphere 5 cluster. Using vCenter converter to V2V it changes the MACs and, from what I can tell, statically setting them to the previous value is unsupported by VMWare. So, I used FastSCP to copy all of the files over and just did an "Add to Inventory", then manually upgraded VMWare Tools and the VM Hardware.

Is that really the best way to do that, in order to preserve the MAC address?

I'm probably missing a plot point here, but I don't get why you can't just set the MAC in VSphere?

(Though, personally, going ESXi -> ESXi I'd probably do things similar to your way anyhow)

There is a specific OUI for static MACs in vSphere. It's entirely different than the OUI for dynamically generated ones. Since the MAC was originally dynamically generated, setting it statically on the new host is unsupported

kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/…

@MDMarra remember to change the properties on the NIC to allow 'MAC Address changes'

I don't want to allow MAC address changes, though. I want it to stay the same

I'm being told we're going to set up a third print server. This makes me sad.

@MDMarra Oh I'm with you - didn't see it was dynamic before

oh my bad, i miss read it

Yeah

misread*

@BartSilverstrim That sucks. We fought quite hard to move from three, then two, and finally one print server.

I, honestly, don't see how copying it and doing add to inventory is any different than V2Ving it and manually setting a MAC in the wrong OUI, but I also don't know what the implications are of either

@BartSilverstrim how many printers u have on one of them?

Just curious, does WSUS provide a RSS feed so I can see when new updates are ready that have not been approved yet?

@MDMarra I'm kinda of at the same point as you there - unless there's something in the bowels of VMWare to be aware of

Well, at least it isn't something obvious.

I have plausible deniability if it explodes

@MDMarra I'm sure someone like @Chopper3 will have crazy experiences, but in my limited experience, I haven't seen any time sensitive traps with VMWare. If it works the first time, it'll almost certainly work forever. So meh, if it does the trick for you, I'd say you're okay :D

if you 'move it', it perserves the mac address, if you copy it, it creates a new one... but who knows what else the convertor does..

@Dan No crazy ones there no - just works

@ColdT It's not that there's too many, it's that it grew out of an "issue" and now another "issue" over time.

We had a printer server that was having problems due to crapware installs/settings that came with certain printer drivers.

O_o never run the executable on the server!

use 7-zip (or whatever) to rip the .exe apart on your workstation, find the .inf for it and use the print management console to remotely add the driver to the server

Then as we went to Win7 on the network, there were rumblings of certain drivers not working, and a consultant person (as I recall, I could be foggied on how the decision was made) said that part of it was a mix of 64/32 bit driver implementation and a newer server would handle the win7 clients better. Add another printer server, and if Win7 couldn't install from the one server, try the other.

@BartSilverstrim we once had a corruption on a HP driver causing havoc for other HP drivers... quickest route was indeed to build another printer server and move them over one by one rather then troubleshoot the cause

@MDMarra sounds like a better strategy at this point, but we'd need to probably build a new printer server and install from scratch to do that.

At least, cleanly.

lol that sounds like a lame roundabout excuse from the consultant

Yeah

Now we have a massive number of "ooh shiny" iPads on the network...only you can't print?

So our wireless for them is on a separate vlan...

wow talk about making it unique to iPad users

@BartSilverstrim To be fair, did he mean going from 2003 to 2008 R2 or something?

Cos print serving on 2008 is far better than 03

and to protect the network, they want a third server, essentially cloning one of the existing servers on the VMware server, running, with it's vnic on a vswitch that is directed to the vlan that is visible to wireless devices.

And it'll run a utility that enables the airprint for Windows printers.

@dan: yeah, that was the jump. But probably should have just migrated everything to it.

Now we're having willy nilly installs of printers that will be spread among three hosts... :-/

Yeah, Print Management on 2008 and 2008 R2 is slick

I especially like being able to delegate default print permissions on a server-wide level

@tombull89 What was wrong with CentOS?

@wesleydavid that blog post is hilarious...

I'm still half and half about the jailing for Twitter comments thing

but I just read them all and, jesus, he really was asking for bad news

@Dan it's bizzare case of 'racism' about a 'famous' footballer... 1000s die every day due to things that can be prevented but hey the 'famous footballer' more important

@ewwhite Nothing was wrong with it, I was expecting the default install to be a bit like ubuntu server

@ColdT I disagree quite strongly with that. For a start, much of the racism was towards other Twitter users (and their families). Plus, I always think the "other bigger crimes" argument is weak

So I posted something to the RHEL 5 mailing list today.

@Dan ? story?

when trying to update the openssh-package.

Here's a question...

There's a lot of flack over Rivera's "hoodie" comment. But why wasn't there outrage against the banning of trenchcoats in schools after Columbine?

Thinking back to my little ssh exploit yesterday, I suggested checking the binary with rpm versify and looking for immutable flags on the file via lsattr...

Dan, i haven't seen the tweets, so fair enough you probably have a point there if its directed more to other users and their family

Just a curiousity thing.

@BartSilverstrim Rapid summary - football player collapses on pitch after a heart attack, people thought he was dead. Had loads of medics etc and was, after some time, taken to hospital having not moved a muscle since his collapse

Drunken idiot in pub does the following:

@BartSilverstrim The hoodie focus is stupid... I'll say it. I think it's a proxy for a lot fo the ills of race relations here in the US.

@BartSilverstrim bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17562016 And goes to jail for the sake of it!

I think wearing a hoodie looks shady, too... but the real issue is how the weight of being a minority in the US essentially means managing and carrying the burden of other people's fears and prejudices...

Free speech = OK. Hate speech = Not OK.

Going to jail for being a dick? That's a thing in the UK?

Though, I'm not sure which category this event falls under

In the US, it would be protected free speech, unfortunately.

@MDMarra Inciting racial hatred. Bear in mind that we don't have free speech ingrained in a constitution like you guys

@ewwhite I wear hoodies all the time

I'm also super-white, though.

@ewwhite I can understand what he was (I think) driving at, although I don't agree with the point that hoodies automatically mean you're a criminal or have criminal intent. I thought the point was the image it conveys carries a meaning behind it. that I can understand, although people are quick to misinterpret that. But I don't recall this outrage when trenchcoats were banned in schools for the image they conveyed after Columbine.

@MDMarra you got one on in your profile picture

This is true

@MDMarra Free speech means allowing speech you don't like.

what's super-white ?

You can't have freedom without allowing the freedom of others to be bigots.

@BartSilverstrim Right, except for hate speech

Well, I'm just saying that people are bombarded with negative images of black men in the media... "The suspect is...", looking at the prison population, the portrayal in movies and TV...

@MDMarra hate speech = not ok, i completely agree to that but i don't see half of the BNP Party going to jail...

@MDMarra Whyzzat?

@MDMarra That line. The one between "speech" and "hate speech", it's fuzzy. To define it will produce an array of strings, which should not be pronounced, as well as some logic for parsing the context. Danger.

You know that telling people God is a made up fairy tale could be interpreted as hate speech against religious people.

@BartSilverstrim I think if we move into this debate, we'll find a lot of differences between UK and US culture. Not that I entirely agree with the sentence, but I really don't think "free speech" should be protected to n'th degree

I'd rather tolerate other people's ranting than have my own words twisted into something that lands me in jail.

@Iain Meaning that I don't think anyone would ever mistake me for anything other than a white dude

ok

@Dan Perhaps. But that is a matter of semantics at that point.

The trenchcoat thing didn't get outrage for a number of reasons... But mainly because people aren't afraid of the columbine-type kids as much as urban youth... Although, the bullying discussion in the news may bring some of that to the surface again.

@MDMarra I thought you may have been Hispanic in an older pic. The one with you holding a beer. True story.

@ewwhite As I understand it the asscrack-dragger pants look originated in jail. Don't know if it's true.

@jscott Apparently, I stand corrected

:)

@ewwhite I was told just the other day that I scared them for my "columbine" look after going into a school in my 15 year old trenchcoat.

@BartSilverstrim Some say... but I was a kid when people really started sagging their pants...

I wear it because it's loose, it has big pockets, and when the wind hits it, I feel like Batman.

@BartSilverstrim Speech isn't protected if it's directly harmful to someone else. If that speech is racist, you've got yourself a hate crime

and the style just won't die...

It looks stupid.. but maybe that's me in my old age.

@BartSilverstrim Maybe - it's very much a sense of scale. We have laws regarding religious hate, too but it's all about intent / scale

If I went out and said "everyone go kill all of the $random_racist_term" and then some people that followed me did, I'd be guilty of a hate crime

@MDMarra I guess I don't understand how someone using racial slurs means you're harming someone directly any more than calling someone a non-racial slur.

possibly.

@MDMarra you'd be inciting a riot

which is a crime on its own

Yeah

Right, interesting discussion, but I'm being kicked out!

this is true

regardless of the racial context

@MDMarra That's inciting, separate from saying "you stupid $INSERTTERM"

It's an additional charge, though, if it's racially motivated

which is asinine, IMO

And if you're just a dumbass?

Well, look at the Rutgers/Tyler Clementi issue..

Saying "Go kill steve" is different than "go kill steve, because he's a ____"

that was awful... because it wasn't a hate crime...

That twitter thing...which I only skimmed (I hate reverse chronological order in twitter...) sounds like some bigoted ass being a troll on the Internet.

just got back from one of the daughter companies sites.. the ipvpn provider called me and said that they were getting about 2 MILLION multicast packets per second into the router. I had to basically follow every network cable I could find, and along the way there was at least 10 different small (like, dlink/cnet etc) switches hooked together. 4 of them were looped.

FOUR?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahah‌​ahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahah‌​ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahah‌​ahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahah

^ That's me laughing at you

so either they have had a lousy network there for a good while

that's awesome!

or someone had a great deal of fun jerking up their network

@ewwhite I read more on that case. The kid wasn't doing jack because the roommate was gay. He did it because he was a jerk. He was on trial for being a dumbass.

(it's a school)

@pauska who built your network :p

hahaha, cackling wildly the whole time I'm sure.

like I said, daughter company that didnt have any it management until I started working

@BartSilverstrim I was just in NJ working in that area, so I had a chance to ask locals about it

@pauska poor you :(

@pauska So you had a cloverleaf network? Lucky you!

They think that it's kind of a race issue... there's animus towards the growing Indian population in that part of New Jersey.

guess who's calling electricians after the holiday to install proper patch points and managed switches on each floor..

@pauska you

@ewwhite O_0 the case with the gay kid killing himself from his roommate's spying?

Are we talking the same case?

yes

And they think it was racially motivated?