The Comms Room

Mark Henderson

00:56

Fuck I hate it every time I find myself in telnet. Every time I try to get out of it, it goes something like this:

Microsoft Telnet> exit
Invalid Command. type ?/help for help
Microsoft Telnet> bye
Invalid Command. type ?/help for help
Microsoft Telnet> quit

Michael Hampton

03:05

I bet Ctrl-D doesn't work either.

Mark Henderson

03:19

@MichaelHampton Nope

Microsoft Telnet> ^D
Invalid Command. type ?/help for help
Microsoft Telnet>

Michael Hampton

@MarkHenderson Oh, of course not. Windows uses Ctlr-Z for that.

And I bet THAT doesn't work either.

Mark Henderson

Microsoft Telnet> ^Z
Invalid Command. type ?/help for help
Microsoft Telnet>

Michael Hampton

@MarkHenderson Of course, the root cause of the problem is printed right there in your paste: "Microsoft".

I </3 the OOM killer.

Mark Henderson

Sigh. I have a headache, I'm not in the mood for OS bashing :p

I'm a bit of a whore. We use MS at work, I have a Mac at home we run a few Linux servers as well

I decided to take the plunge and try out EC2 the other day as well. Been quite impressed by it so far

Especially at 2c/hour for a micro instance; and a micro instance isn't really all that micro

Michael Hampton

Not to mention a free micro instance for a year (for new users, anyway).

I have an asterisk server running in a micro instance. It runs my home phone and a few other lines.

Mark Henderson

03:31

Yeah, I'm using my free instance as well, but I suspect I'll be up for bandwidth charges

But even they're pretty damn cheap

Michael Hampton

My free instance ended three months ago. I think I've been billed about 6 cents since then. (I also had a $50 credit on the account that it's slowly chewing through now...)

So I went to check out the free Windows Azure for Visual Studio MSDN subscribers, and it turns out you only get 375 instance hours per month free. Which is... half a month. Thanks a LOT.

Mark Henderson

Nice. How did you get $50 credit?

@MichaelHampton Do they expect you to stop your instance when you're not using it or something?

I think if I was to go with Amazon for personal projects I'd go for spot instances. They're stupidly cheap, and if its just personal it doesn't matter if you lose it for a little while

Michael Hampton

@MarkHenderson Hang on, I'll see if I can find it

Crap, I think they aren't offering it anymore.

@MarkHenderson I think I'd have a problem if my phone line were down for an hour or two here and there.

Mark Henderson

Eh, I have a voip home phone and I think it's rung maybe twice a year

When old people look me up in the church directory and don't want to pay for a mobile call

Michael Hampton

Mine rings about twice a week. Sometimes it's people wanting to give me money. :)

Mostly I get wrong numbers though. I keep getting calls for somebody in Homeland Security.

Mark Henderson

03:43

Haha, time to try some social engineering

Michael Hampton

I've gotten some strange ones. One guy who had questions about the California motorcycle driving test and thought he'd called the DMV. I live in New Hampshire.

Mark Henderson

If you don't enter an area code in the US, does it conenct to the number in your own area code?

Michael Hampton

Typically yes. Though some areas of the US require you to dial the area code for every call, even local calls.

Mark Henderson

I make that mistake whenever I travel into a different area code (which in Australia there are only a total of 5 area codes).

Michael Hampton

I really need to start putting my wrong number voicemails up on the Internet for people to laugh at.

Stack Exchange

04:10

'Well, no further questions. You're hired!' 'Oh, sorry! I'm no longer interested. There's a bunch of future I gotta go check out!'

Mark Henderson

@StackExchange I hate those questions

Because if I tell the truth I'll just sound like an arsehole

Michael Hampton

04:26

Like I planned my life that far in advance. Too many variables.

Mark Henderson

@MichaelHampton My answer would be "Leaving work early to pick up children up from school whilst coasting along on a minimum about of work because I have a 2 year old who is making me want to kill myself, trying not to fall asleep at work and drinking too much red bull, making me even more overweight than I am now"

Michael Hampton

How about: "Retired."

Mark Henderson

hah at this rate I will be working until I'm 70

I'll probably get serious RSI by the time I'm 40, and I know from my Dad that I will get realllly bad rheumatoid arthritis and maybe even Parkinsons. So I'd better be running the damn company by then

Michael Hampton

04:46

I can see 40 from here, and I don't have any serious RSI yet... though sometimes I can feel it.

Mark Henderson

My boss is 41 and he has 5 kids, the youngest of which is only 1. So he'll be working until he's at least 60. Which means I should at least have stable employment.

Michael Hampton

No kids. Not going there. :)

Mark Henderson

Do your parents know? I only ask cos my wifes cousins are both in their 40's and doesn't look like any kids for either of them, and I know that their parents really want grand kids

(so they borrow our kid, which is fine by me!)

Michael Hampton

I'm sure my brothers will provide them with all the grandkids they could eve rneed.

Mark Henderson

05:09

Haha well you got that sorted then

Michael Hampton

05:33

Oh god, now the people who shouldn't be allowed near computers are finding their way to SF..

1

Q: Monit restarting action

I want to execute a script when monit is restarted. For my case, this mostly applies to the restart of the whole server. How can I achieve this? Is there a way beside monit to do this? Background: The server, where I need this, is a virtual server. It seems, that firewall rules in iptables are ...

monit

Iain

06:13

G'day

Mark Henderson

Howdy

Michael Hampton

Oh look, you're just in time!

0

Q: Enable FIPS mode on CISCO Router

Can someone please tell me how to enable/disable FIPS mode on CISCO Router?

cisco

Mark Henderson

I guess the literal answer is "yes". Or maybe "no"

Knowing Cisco they probably charge extra for a FIPS compliant IOS

Michael Hampton

It took me all of 20 seconds to find the answer on Google. I should have just downvoted and moved on, but I was bored.

Mark Henderson

Chances are the question will be abandoned. Most of the anonymous-migrated questions are.

Michael Hampton

06:18

Maybe some spammer will come along and answer it.

Mark Henderson

Holy crap, this guy has 48 Stack Exchange accounts, most of them with rep:

stackexchange.com/users/2728/graviton?tab=accounts

Michael Hampton

When does he ever find time to write code?

Iain

this one has 61 stackexchange.com/users/10673/zoredache?tab=accounts

Mark Henderson

@Iain yeah but hardly any of his have any rep. Plus he's a douche.

Iain

@MarkHenderson :) I think he did it to prove a point

@MichaelHampton that's already on the first page of google for SO and SF with the phrase 'enable FIPS mode cisco router'

Michael Hampton

06:27

@Iain strangely, the answer is "fips mode enable" :)

Iain

@MichaelHampton that's why I downvoted it - insufficient research

Michael Hampton

If I had anotehr100 or so rep I'd just vote to close.

pauska

07:07

oh wow...

0

Q: What WebPlatform I should choose when getting SSL certificate?

I'm newbie in moving to production Rails project and need to choose appropriate Web Platform for generating SSL. First: I have only IP of my remoted server, so I MUST move my app to hosting WITH DOMAINNAME or NOT? Second: what web platform I should choose ? I'm running my aplication on thin, so w...

ssl webserver ruby-on-rails

Michael Hampton

There's a whole lot of "unclear on the concept" going on there.

He's got multiple questions going on, too.

0

Q: Can I generate CSR for remoted server and what server I should use(thin,mongrel)?

I am moving my app into production and need help in generating CSR. I created private key and followed all next steps: 1. created private ket 2. entered passphrase for it( openssl genrsa -des3 -out domainname.key 1024 ) 3. created CSR ( openssl req -new -key domainname.key -out domainname.csr ) 4...

ruby-on-rails ssl

Lucas Kauffman

@pauska I generate SSL with Web Platform yes? DNS ok with IP, I use IIS to generate Domain Name?

Michael Hampton

@pauska I threw a duplicate flag on that question.

Lucas Kauffman

07:26

ok...:amazon.com/dp/0867193719

Iain

^^possibly NSFW

Michael Hampton

Just possibly?

Bart De Vos

08:10

I'm a dumbass

3

Lucas Kauffman

wut u do :p?

Bart De Vos

08:39

Reinstalled my machine

didn't backup my private keyfile

Can't log in to a big part of the servers now

And I can't use the out of band interface, because I also need my private key to get to it

fun times...

"I'm not going to backup my private key files, that isn't safe" - Me, a few months ago

ugh

Lucas Kauffman

sure it's safe in an AES container?

Bart De Vos

What is an AES container?

Chopper3

09:17

Odd request from finance, can I let them know what money I'll be spending this year in USD, they're keep to hedge the FX - not the kind of thing they normally do - wonder why they think it's likely to be volatile?

Lucas Kauffman

@BartDeVos it's basically a vault folder, you put stuff in it and then close it, a bit like a RAR with AES

MeLight

how do i paste a question in to chat?

Lucas Kauffman

@MeLight just link it

MeLight

it usually just pastes a lame link

0

Q: php mail and sendmail hangs

I'm trying to send mail via PHP's mail() function, but it hangs the script. I tried using sendmail on command line (CentOS 5.8) as was suggested in many posts I've read but it also hangs. This is what im putting in: sendmail -v [email protected] < message.txt which says: [email protected]... ...

sendmail php-mail

ah, probably when I put text with it :)

thanks

Chopper3

09:39

@MeLight More to the point WHY have you posted your 10 minute old question in here? seriously - what do you hope to achieve??

pauska

does anyone here know if shrinking MS SQL log files is a resource-intensive operation?

Lucas Kauffman

@pauska It's MS, everything is resource intensive :p

Cold T

10:35

hello all :)

Chopper3

10:45

This question got me thinking; serverfault.com/q/412408/1435

MeLight

@Chopper3 have you read the Summer of Love blog post? I warmly suggest it. May the force be with you

Chopper3

A 4 disk R10 array couldn't survive the wrong two disks dying but a 4 disk R6 could handle ANY two disks failing right?

MeLight

now I'll go and reply to the comments people left me on my question

:)

Lucas Kauffman

@Chopper3 right

Chopper3

@MeLight Firstly that's about SO not SF, that said we're trying to abide by it but even so creating an account, posting a question and then IMMEDIATELY nagging on chat about it (when there was about 3 active users) is considerably ruder than me pointing it out

lsiunsuex

10:47

@MeLight phpmailer.worxware.com - by far better than php's mail feature

Chopper3

@MeLight good, go and let the system actually do its job instead of being so damn needy on here

@LucasKauffman just hadn't occurred to me, seems counter intuitive but the guy's comment got me thinking

Lucas Kauffman

@lsiunsuex This is SF, not SO, we aren't supposed to be nice to people, we are all just BOFH

pauska

@Chopper3 yep, any two

raid 60 for teh win

Lucas Kauffman

@Chopper3 I was thinking the same thing when I read his questions "Why not use R10" but I thought he probably might increase the array someday

@pauska that exists o.O?

Chopper3

I'd assumed the same Lucas, but then he said he was a bit paranoid and I get it, not what I'd do but I get it

pauska

10:50

Nested RAID levels

Levels of nested RAID, also known as hybrid RAID, combine two or more of the standard levels of RAID (redundant array of independent disks) to gain performance, additional redundancy, or both. Nesting When nesting RAID levels, a RAID type that provides redundancy is typically combined with RAID 0 to boost performance. With these configurations it is preferable to have RAID 0 on top and the redundant array at the bottom, because fewer disks need to be regenerated if a disk fails. (Thus, RAID 1+0 is preferable to RAID 0+1 but the administrative advantages of "splitting the mirror" of RA...

MeLight

@lsiunsuex checking it out, thanx

lsiunsuex

@MeLight its the only way i send email via php now - especially on a shared host - to many times the host has changed settings on me without notifying us and php mail's function stops working. but that / those scripts never stop - even work sending email via gmail which i've done in a pinch

MeLight

@Chopper3 I apologize o elder of the SF chat rooms. I assure I will do my best to not tread selfishly on the customs of the SF.

Lucas Kauffman

@lsiunsuex that thing wasnt for you but @MeLight, just clicked wrongly :p

lsiunsuex

theres a few different scripts so mind what you pick

@LucasKauffman its cool dude - probably does belong on SO but maybe here - he is having a problem with a server program (mail)... borderline

just trying to help either way - php mail can be a bitch sometimes :)

Lucas Kauffman

10:53

yea tell me about it

Chopper3

@MeLight so you're saying that in SO chat rooms it's perfectly alright to immediately post in chat your brand new questions? I'm not aware that that is welcomed there either

MeLight

@LucasKauffman thanks for the info, I'll put the attitude in perspective ;)

@Chopper3 I'm not saying anything, I'm being sarcastic. But I can apologize again if it'll lift your mood and will enable to go on with your day :)

pauska

let's just drop that ball now, both sides have made their point :)

Chopper3

@pauska What's with banning Snoop btw :)

MeLight

Anyway thanks for the help, and sorry for polluting your chat

Lucas Kauffman

10:57

@MeLight no worries ^^

Iain

@MeLight now you've been educated I'm sure we won't be seeing you in future :)

Lucas Kauffman

unless for a friendly conversation :)

ITHedgeHog

Afternoon folks

lsiunsuex

ordered pizza last night from a place i havn't ordered from in years; siri sent me through the ghetto (literally, do not be there at night time) - can you sue the map company for getting shot at by taking wrong directions?

pauska

@Chopper3 caught for drug use a bit too many times

Cold T

11:03

@lsiunsuex siri took a route that went from A to B, to the location you wanted... so technically it fulfilled it's role, so nope you can't sue

Lucas Kauffman

@lsiunsuex GPS don't know if a place is dangerous or not, was it that hard to make 180 degree turn there :p?

lsiunsuex

actually, it miss interpreted the address which is why it took me into the ghetto - thought i wanted # west st and not #west ferry st (ios 6 beta)

Lucas Kauffman

well it's beta

lsiunsuex

@LucasKauffman no - i knew how to get there, just wasn't 100% sure - plus i like to see how accurate the new map system is so i always use it when i can :)

Lucas Kauffman

where do you live anyway?

lsiunsuex

11:06

buffalo ny

Cold T

if it misinterpreted, it would be the user fault for not verifying first where it was going!

lsiunsuex

ah hah, but it found the pizzaria on the map - just not the right address for it

it is / was mob owned, so they very well could have a different address listed for it than where it actually is haha

Cold T

lol @ mob owned

lsiunsuex

it is - its known... italian mob isn't as strong as it ust to be here but they still own restaurants

id say almost none existent now adays. russians you need to be worried about now :)

Cold T

handed in my notice today, wow that was one scary meeting with my manager lol

Lucas Kauffman

11:19

was he nice and supportive?

lsiunsuex

are they letting u stay 2 weeks or did they escort you out with sub machine guns?

Cold T

11:32

thankfully i explained well enough to why i wish to leave, he didn't say too much, was more sadden that i wanted to leave

ewwhite

@ColdT Why are you leaving?

Cold T

@lsiunsuex if it was my old company, that would certainly be the case!

@ewwhite i want to be in a more specialised environment

i have a lot of skills, but i think time for me to focus on a handful of core techs

lsiunsuex

why? being spread thin across 10 technologies is soooooooo much more fun than focusing on a few core technologies :(

god forbid you actually become great at a few things and not good at a bunch of them

ewwhite

@ColdT How hardcore?

Cold T

@lsiunsuex been spread across so many techs is good fun, no doubt but when it comes down to it, long term wise, specialising will put you in a good position. The rest of the tech would be day in and day out jobs

@ewwhite aiming to go all the way to VCDX within 2-3 years, so i need the right company to support me

I've done a few migration, upgrades, consolidation, design for a few companies now, but not hardcore enough

my current company is a carrier backbone provider, they don't need much virtualisation so I'm extremely limited here

Chopper3

11:45

@ColdT VCDX is a very very tough challenge, I know a few and it's all they do, and most work for VMW, they don't build systems, don't play with many other things, it's a full-time job, VCAP is much easier :)

Cold T

@Chopper3 extremely tough no doubt, VCAP is just as fun but knowing that little bit is always a competitive edge when it comes to consultations and proving that you know what you're talking about

Chopper3

@ColdT I'm a consultant btw, so's ewwhite

Cold T

@Chopper3 consultant for vm tech or something else?

Lucas Kauffman

I know @ewwhite is a vmware expert

Chopper3

@ColdT mine's more multi-disciplinary (VM, server, storage, nw) but mostly around build out of large VoD systems

ewwhite

11:49

I'm not a VMWare expert... I've done about 100 VMWare installations, though.

But never big, BIG clusters...

Cold T

@Chopper3 nice, you get free VoD then lol

ewwhite

and rarely with big enterprise storage.

Chopper3

@ColdT it's all I've done for years, it's the least thing I get excited about to be honest, I'm almost immune to TV/film by now

Cold T

only san devices i've worked with is netapp and emc, but not big enough, so hence want to move into a service provider company

ewwhite

@ColdT Where are you located? I know a good firm. I just interviewed with a big Cloud provider.

Chopper3

11:51

@ewwhite Do you know I reckon I've never physically installed 100 hosts, I've scripted the build the build of thousands but manually I bet it's only a few dozen

ewwhite

big-ish... public and private and hybrid cloud consultancy.

Chopper3

@LucasKauffman do you know the term 'VMWare Expert' is a proper title, as in it has be earned/given?

ewwhite

@Chopper3 Lots of different environments for me... so I've had to do the manual side.

Cold T

@Chopper3 films are mainly for time pass i suppose, every now and then comes a good one

ewwhite

Yeah, I'm totally uncertified...

Lucas Kauffman

11:52

@Chopper3 I didn't, is it like CCIE?

lsiunsuex

@ewwhite when you say you interviewed with (as u usually do) do you mean you interview with x company to provide them with consulting or are you trying to leave consulting for a desk job ?

Cold T

@ewwhite I'm based in London

Chopper3

@ColdT bit time poor :(

ewwhite

@lsiunsuex I've been interviewing on and off since April. Trying to find the right thing.

lsiunsuex

so a full time job

ewwhite

11:53

@ColdT Hmm, this firm is NY-based, but has remote employees. I'd be working there from Chicago.

Chopper3

@LucasKauffman no, VMWare have a number of qualifications, for server stuff it goes VCP, VCAP, VCDX but 'VMWare Expert' is applied for by people or on behalf of people then it goes to an annual panel of judges who then give it out - but only for a year - very often you have to have VCP and/or VCAP but often it goes to bloggers who promote their products and knowledge about it.

ewwhite

Sr. Linux Engineer at Logicworks

linuxvirtualizationstoragenetworkingsysadmin

Do you enjoy engaging, important work with a wide array of technologies? Is problem solving a personal hobby and the bigger the problem, the better? We’re…

Posted on Careers 2.0 on July 18, 2012

Cold T

@ewwhite I don't mind working remotely, but unlikely they would want someone so far away

Lucas Kauffman

@Chopper3 a bit like CCA then?

ewwhite

Oh, it was mostly Linux, but they provide VMWare and other virtualization solutions to larger firms.

@lsiunsuex I guess so. I'm pretty specific since there's no time-pressure.

Cold T

11:55

vcdx is equiv to ccie, you have a similar setup and panel judges

ewwhite

@ColdT I mention it because there were a variety of technologies in use there. I wouldn't focus on being so siloed, though.

I interview a lot and have a good feeling for what's out there in the US markets. I've never been asked for cert-level knowledge.

Cold T

unfortunately, i'm not a linux person (only some exposure to backtrack, fedora and debian)

Chopper3

@ColdT yes, very similar in almost every way - I used to run a consultancy with 34 CCIEs and CCNPs and our CCIEs had to set aside around a third of their time to ensure they could renew their CCIE status every two years.

Cold T

@ewwhite it's a simliar case in the UK (well at least in London), I don't have many certs but have the experience but the companies that did turn me down was based on me not having certs

ewwhite

So what about other virtualization technologies? The last three places I talked to were running VMWare, but planning KVM and Xen deployments as well...

Cold T

12:02

@ewwhite i've done hyper-v and xen deployments but not been involved or needed kvm before

ewwhite

@ColdT Certs aren't important here, from what I can see.

Cold T

@Chopper3 my mate is currently ccip, he hopes to go for his lab exam by end of this year but because he had got previous certs, he is now in a company (network management an support services) where they will fully support him (lucky for him!)

so in a similar fashion, although i have a broad knowledge, going into a service provider based company will help me a long way

I'm gutted i had to turn down the last offer, they were moving onto blade tech and moving across 120 physical servers to it

ewwhite

The times are changin'. I think it's important to know where companies are going...

1

Q: Is it possible to recreate a raid 1+0 array without losing data

I have a HP smart array 6400 raid card and a 4 1TB raid 1+0 array, I was informed the power would fail for a shor time this afternoon. So I powered off the array and was surprised to find out that my raid array was lost when power restored. There are not any logical drives and all the 4 1TB disks...

raid array

@chopper3 - You should have caught this.

Cold T

lol 1tb scsi disk, well that would be fun if it existed!

maybe he meant 1tb sas disks?

Chopper3

@ewwhite I did ask "were you using HP disks supported by that controller?" hoping they'd spot that themselves

Cold T

12:13

ahh it does exist! @ 7200rpm, but why would someone do that?!

ewwhite

hmmm...

lsiunsuex

i've decided if my startup takes off, i'm only going to hire female system admins

cause nerdy chicks are hot

3

ewwhite

discrimination!! @ethabelle, can you chime in!?!

Chopper3

@lsiunsuex are you allowed to do that? you can't in most of europe

I've tried

tombull89

Good luck, Female sysadmins are far and few between.

lsiunsuex

12:16

joking :) will give everyone a fair chance

tombull89

Also, there's a difference between a girl with a pokemon hoodie and zelda earrings and a decent sysadmin.

Chopper3

@ColdT whereabouts are you in London? I lived there off and on for a decade or so

lsiunsuex

one of the dentists i'm working with only has female employees though - so for small non public businesses it must be "ok"

Cold T

@chopper3 next to the Olympics unfortunately, Stratford

Chopper3

@ColdT ah right, been through that part of the world quite a bit over the years, I lived near Olympia - but I'm in dorset now

pauska

12:18

@lsiunsuex do they gently press their breast against your head when working on your teeth? It makes it so much more pleasant!

Cold T

@dorset is a nice calm place, i went over to honiton last summer, drove passed it

lsiunsuex

@pauska yeah, not sure i could do that job - was at his office once and fairly well gifted women laid down in the chair with a low cut top. talk about trying to be professional in an odd situation

ewwhite

How do you guys feel about all of the empty seats at the Olympic venues?

Cold T

@ewwhite i think it was all cause they wanted to charge the ticket high as possible, thought they'd be clever!

Chopper3

@ColdT I'm very east dorset, christchurch, moved for the kids school but still have to travel a fair amount for work

Cold T

12:21

@Chopper3 out of curiosity, how long is the travel? only because i was offered a place nearly 4 hrs travelling by car each day and obviously had to turn it down

Chopper3

@ewwhite it's annoying but these big corporates spent billions and part of the deal was to get tickets, if they choose not to use them or attend then they should let the public in say 5 mins after the start for free. To be honest they shouldn't made it so you HAD to confirm say a day before or so via the web but that's by-the-by

ewwhite

@Chopper3 very sketchy.

I'd also be curious is your media covered our presidential candidate, Mitt Romney...

Chopper3

@ColdT I tend to go to either Ipswich (190m/3.5hrs), london (2hrs+taxi to wherever) or outside the UK (normally nyc, la/sf, north carolina or houston - sometimes european places but not too often these days)

lsiunsuex

i think a lot of companies are nieve like that. if i had tickets to give away that none of my employees were using, i'd find the closet corporate banner - give away some tickets and give the company some exposure - post some salesman to push product x while we're giving away the tickets.

Chopper3

@ewwhite Mitt? the world hates republicans, literally nobody but maybe the Israelis like them at all, though he's slightly less overtly-selfish/utterly-mental than the more extreme GOP'ers

ewwhite

12:24

Here, they've mentioned non-stop gaffes while he was in the UK.

pauska

@lsiunsuex his job? You said only female employees!

lsiunsuex

he owns the practice and only has female employees.

hes not an employee, hes the owner / practicioner

Chopper3

@ewwhite we don't care, we still very much worry when the GOP are in power as they're relentless self-interest goes against where the world has been for the last hundred years or so but at least he's JUST self-serving not the proper lunatics like Palin/Bachman/et al.

@ewwhite any gaffes have been ignored or barely mentioned in the press - there's a slightly-blind assumption that there's no way he could ever get in as the world thinks they're all insane but I fear that all the hate/fear-mongering and outright lies may make things a bit more interesting/scary than that

SmallClanger

Oddly, I was just reading, this: guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/30/…

ewwhite

telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/mitt-romney/9432463/…

SmallClanger

12:30

Says that Israel's technical and economic superiority over Plaestine was down to the "Hand of Providence". Tactful...

"Romneyshambles." Love it.

ewwhite

Are there any HP thin-client users here?

lsiunsuex

@ewwhite me me me!

t5740's - about 700 of them

ewwhite

@lsiunsuex Perfect.. so I have clients who use them... Just boot them up and add an RDP address.

Should they be doing more? I don't know anything about managing thin clients.

SHould the thin clients be added to the domain? Is there more prep that should take place?

lsiunsuex

thats basically it for us - we take 1 thin client, put 2 pieces of software on it (1 custom, 1 iseries access) - ghost it with the built in ghosting tool and deploy

ours aren't on the domain - we have no need to do so (they have access to nothing - no printers, no shares)

ewwhite

But there ARE more things that could be done, right? Do you add hostnames or anything?

lsiunsuex

12:37

i have a custom active desktop .html file we put on them that links them to a few internet sites, our intranet, etc... if you have enough storage their almost as good as a regular desktop pc

it took some effort fitting .net framework onto ours for the custom app, but its doable

we create a "user" account and auto log it in - disable usb, and some other security things

we've gotten ms office on to one before for a custom deploy. all depends on how much storage space you have. we love them. solid state drive; they never break, and when they do, its litterally just swap it out

monitors die before the thin client does haha

we let them get dns from sonicwall and thats all they need.

if i had to put them on the domain and give each user an acct, i may as well give them optiplex's - all users are the same without all that. come in, sit down at a desk, get to work.

ewwhite

Okay. So I'm not doing it wrong :)

I had a client ask for the thin client to retain the user's login/password... (for an RDP session)

lsiunsuex

we don't do that. we enable write protection on them. if anything happens (they delete a shortcut, whatever) reboot and everything is back to normal - ours save nothing

ewwhite

so do your users need to input the domain name upon login?

lsiunsuex

nope - thin client automatically logs them in as a basic local user - their presented with 6 shortcuts - one of them is iseries - they login to that with their own acct

Cold T

@ewwhite depending on which thinclient, you normally can configure various things including domain name as a policy and deploy these out to the thin clients

ewwhite

12:45

So some prep may be needed

lsiunsuex

we do a lot of prep on 1 of them and image them with thumb drives (PXE boot wont work for us)

ewwhite

these were purchased over a few years... so everything from t5300 to t5700

Cold T

again, how much customisation would you like on the thin client. for example the RDP session, you can pre-create this and deploy by the policy

lsiunsuex

we had 3 different kinds in the office at 1 point - some old brand - afirmative i think. then Neoware's - then HP bought out Neoware and now the entire office is 5740's - much easier to maintain now that their all the same. we spent a lot of time and money to make them all the same

Cold T

@ewwhite if i remember correctly, there should be a management based software, it would pick up these thin clients? and if so, you should be able to configure these much more easily

ewwhite

12:47

@lsiunsuex and how's speed?

Cold T

@lsiunsuex how comes pxe boot didn't work for you guys?

lsiunsuex

all our users use is iseries access 5250 session and some internet shortcuts - so their fine. the iseries is spec'd to handle our user base so everything is pretty live - no delay from the server. bootup is average 30 seconds i think? but like i said, they never get turned off

Cold T

"A formerly sceptical climate scientist says human activity is causing the Earth to warm, as a new study confirms earlier results on rising temperatures" (bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19047501) - no kidding, with the amount of gas some people release!

Journeyman Geek

@ColdT: darned politicians and hor air ;p

Arthor

@ColdT Well we are at 7.2b at the moment, and India is just about to take over China for the population cup...

lsiunsuex

12:50

@ColdT the custom app is still in testing technically (we own the company that makes it) so we have a need to selectively image certain groups to test the custom app - that, and we only have 2 hours in the morning to do imaging if we have to deploy a new version so its easier to just do it manually. takes me and a co-worker about a week doing 2 hours a morning - 30 at a time - no big deal - my exercise for the day :)

Cold T

@lsiunsuex on the HP thin clients, you can boot from lan if necessary, handy in some departments

lsiunsuex

its just about control here for us. PXE to us its a shot gun and we need a scalpal

ewwhite

@ColdT what are you booting them with?

Cold T

custom image

(@ewwhite sorry, i was thinking more of streamlining and image deployments if you couldnt deploy by policy)

lsiunsuex

we build a thin client - use the built in thin capture in control panel to make a thumb drive image - do that about 30 times (as many thumb drives as i have) - go out on the call center floor, plug it in, reboot, go get coffee and by the time we get back their imaged.

i have like 300 neoware's i've been meaning to through on ebay sitting behind my desk

and 5730's - those didnt have enough space for .net framework for the custom app which is why we bought all 5740's (1gb of storage compared to 2gb)

MDMarra

12:58

This dude is mad because I downvoted him for telling a user to set Everyone permissions where they aren't needed

-1

A: GPO push install fails with error code 1603

Please try the following: Please check that the share in which you are hosting this msi has the following share and NTFS security permissions: Group "Authenticated Users" has read rights. Double check is that the path to the MSI file in the script uses a UNC path. E.G. \\dataserver1\msis\msi_...

What a guy.

Arthor

@MDMarra Hmm, that is a but nuts to say the very least.

MDMarra

@ewwhite why are you looking for Mac management?

ewwhite

@MDMarra NYC interviews went well... One place needs Mac management.

MDMarra

Ah got ya. Yeah Casper seems to be the market leader there. Their management framework can do iPhone management too including app deployment.

ewwhite

I think their policy now is to walk to the Apple Store. Macs are mandated.

MDMarra

13:09

It does imaging, config mgmt similar to AD, software deployment, etc

I was brought into a demo of it for our EUS team at $lastjob and strongly recommended that they buy it

ewwhite

Well, we shall see. It's probably expensive.

I disagree slightly with an all-Mac environment.

Chris S

@ewwhite I'm not sure why people have jumped all over his comments as "gaffes"... The security firm hired for the Olympics has had a fair number of missteps (everything from hiring "illegal aliens" who apparently lacked proper documentation and should have been caught in the hiring process, to only delivering 6500 guards when they were supposed to deliver 10k, to hiring darn near anyone to to one of those guards).

ewwhite

I mean, Microsoft does a lot of things well...

Chris S

I'm not going to defend Romney's opinions, but the information he was regurgitating regarding the security concerns comes from authoritative sources.

ewwhite

@ChrisS It's because people want to play up the narrative of him as an awkward candidate.

0

Q: CentOS 6 vps configuration

I have a vps server with CentOS 6, I want to know how can I configure it and prepare it to add my domain and add my files. the problem is that I'm a beginner to Linux, and I want the right way to understand. Thanks in advance,

centos webserver configuration vps centos6

Chris S

13:16

@ewwhite He is though! I just don't understand why they jump all over things that aren't actual mistakes.

ewwhite

So people can say to themselves, "Yeah, that sounds about right"

SmallClanger

@ChrisS The british press/public did. We'll quite happily lay into G4S, our government, boris and anyone wlse in lambasting the myriad reasons that we weren't ready ofr the Olympics, but if an American comes over here and says exactly the same thing?...

Chris S

I generally lean right-center; but Romney is a waffling crony that got nominated because he ran against people that wanted radical course correction, or were plain dumb, or even dumber, and a couple people that were left out of the national spotlight because they refused to kiss anyone's back side.

ewwhite

@ChrisS Who would have been a better candidate on the GOP side?

Chris S

@ewwhite I voted for Ron Paul in the primary. =/

But too few people want real change.

ewwhite

13:22

I think we over-emphasize the power of the presidency.

Chris S

I heard a local person running for congress wailing on our government's attitude of "not letting anyone fail" and how it's damn expensive to do so, while people never learn from their mistakes because their being insulated by that security blanket.... He tempered that with the fact that we need socialized safety-nets, but hands-up, not handouts.

MDMarra

@ewwhite it's pretty expensive. I think retail it's upwards of $50/seat + server license.

ewwhite

@MDMarra probably worth it.

Arthor

@ChrisS Change, that is a good one. Fear holds a lot of people back. Change comes always at a cost. In one of my lines of work. I see it all day every day. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.

Basil

reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/xcwad/…

ewwhite

13:23

This isn't quite right...

Arthor

Just my 2 cents.

Chris S

@Arthor True... But it doesn't mean we don't need a huge helping of it.

Cold T

@ewwhite oh oh

ewwhite

@Basil That's a legal issue.

MDMarra

@ewwhite yeah it certainly seems like its a start-to-finish solution and it can run on Linux, so you can run it on a real server and not a Mac mini

Arthor

13:26

@ChrisS I agree. But you are talking about people that do not come together. Where segregation is more important than unity. We forget that we are all just people. The top wigs always have agendas that we can never know. Look at 1933... Unforgivable.

Basil

@ewwhite I hope so.

Cold T

@ewwhite I seen that once before, usually firmware update fixes it

ewwhite

@ColdT sending another image to it

Breaking Bad fans?

Arthor

@ChrisS Need to empty the cup before you can refill it. But Step by step, people are becoming aware.. Same mistakes, just a different year... The only thing constant is change.

Chopper3

quite enjoyed writing this - serverfault.com/a/412513/1435

Arthor

13:34

@Chopper3 +1

Chris S

@Chopper3 Ick... Good answer to a really sodden question.

Chopper3

yeah - I just fancied writing something/anything and that process isn't terribly well understood I find

ewwhite

@chopper3 - Regarding the 1TB SCSI disk... I forgot about the HP MSA20 enclosure.

Chopper3

@ewwhite they're SATA disks though

ewwhite

but connect to the external port of a parallel SCSI controller. Usually SA642 or the 6400-series.

Cold T

13:37

@Chopper3 "The Smart Array 6402/6404 offer multiple external Ultra320 SCSI channels for connectivity to the MSA20 systems..."

Chopper3

hmmm... makes sense, all disappearing into the grey of my brain I'm afraid

I'm only 43 (old for you guys but not that old) but even now I find it hard to keep in all the new stuff without some of the older things falling out of my head.

for instance I'm sat right now looking at a newly installed syslog-ng box trying to recall how to set it up - ffs!

Cold T

anyone ever setup open directory with AD? is it a pain still?

MDMarra

@ColdT I did it for 10.5

It was relatively painless

Cold T

@MDMarra any post issues? might need to do it but was thinking easier to keep it segregated

MDMarra

13:53

not really

you dont have tyo touch AD to do it

Cold T

hmm ok cool, thanks because I've heard from other people, the previous OSes been a nightmare!

Sr. Linux Engineer at Logicworks

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