The Comms Room

voretaq7

15:00

@ewwhite Q&A is hard, and Barbie is a hottie even when she's having a bad hair day.

Chopper3

@ewwhite maybe it's good sign for the world economy!

ewwhite

well, in the absence of a professional admin, it seems like there are an increasing number of people out there missing the basics.

Basil

@MikeyB Seems reasonable to me too, but my boss is "90% sure" that WAFL is implemented per volume.

MikeyB

@Basil Isn't it by qtree? So you should be able to flexclone to a different vol in the same qtree.

Basil

@MikeyB qtrees live inside volumes, afaik

and they're optional now

But flexclone creates a new volume (and a new snapshot)

on the same aggregate

Chris S

15:04

@ewwhite I think it's interesting how the topics of the questions seem to trend over time. Right now we've got an uptick in shopping questions. Just earlier I noted an uptick in clueless users wanting full disk encryption.

MikeyB

@Basil Errr yeah, I meant aggregate... been a while.

Chopper3

Just watching the olympics, how does china, with only a sixth of the world's population and unlimited resources manage to do so well? it's a mystery

Arthor

@ewwhite I think we are learning. Even as a pro admin, everyday you learn and at one point you were the same. I think we all were.

ewwhite

@ChrisS It's definitely interesting. I wonder what's fueling it.

voretaq7

@ChrisS that probably correlates to DEFCON

not sure what the shopping stuff correlates to though...

Basil

15:05

@MikeyB Yeah, that's the case then- you clone a volume, and the cloned volume is created on the same aggregate

ewwhite

@Arthor Well, I'm wondering if this is more of a result of DevOps shops that are forgoing the traditional systems administrator...

Chris S

@voretaq7 Interesting theory. It could be an influence.

@ewwhite I'm not convinced there's any appreciable increase in the number of DevOps out there... Plenty of businesses have always wanted to be cheap and dual/triple purpose IT people.

voretaq7

@ChrisS I know DEFCON gets some mainstream press, so...

@Arthor First thing I learned as a pro admin was "GOOGLE MOTHERFUCKER -- DO YOU USE IT?!?"

Chopper3

Regarding small company sysadmins I really think Apple are missing a trick, they could launch a different brand "ApplePro' or similar, like Infinit/Lexus etc. and make a fairly cheap server with the option for a second PSU, say 3/4 3.5" SATA/SAS slots, maybe a single i7 and say 16/32GB memory - do a bit of mild rework on OSX server to iron out the IO bumps and I reckon they'd decimate people like Dell's low-end market

ewwhite

@ChrisS I'm totally convinced there are... In Chicago and NY, I've talked to a good number of companies that don't have much physical hardware.

Arthor

15:08

@ewwhite It could be the case, However I have been on good course and bad course. I think if you a privileged with knowledge. Do not give the answer, just the direction...

Chris S

@voretaq7 Yeah, that['s what I figured you mean. Not the people at DEFCON, but the coverage surrounding it, media talking about the biggest problems and newest threats.

voretaq7

@ewwhite Going "into the cloud" and being all Dev/Ops-y aren't conjoined concepts

Chris S

@ewwhite Speaking of hardware, I'm still looking for a quote whenever you've got time. (chris [at] stoneyforest [dot] net)

Arthor

@voretaq7 Have some valor son. No need to be so arrogant. Does not do you justice.

voretaq7

I could move our stuff into the cloud (if we didn't have a healthy paranoia about keeping our IP within our network)

ewwhite

15:10

@ChrisS I'm at a Panera Bread... can't call out, but my vendor is online...

let me check...

Arthor

@voretaq7 And yes I do. Thanks for asking...

Chris S

@ewwhite No rush, I just like to pester potential suppliers. =]

voretaq7

@Arthor I'm not being arrogant, I'm being pragmatic -- Every single shopping question asked on this site could get a better, faster answer by typing it into Google

ewwhite

@ChrisS this was in SF history, right?

Lucas Kauffman

hur hur

ewwhite

15:11

@voretaq7 Every firm I talked to in NY is like 2-3 in-house servers... and everything else on AWS or rackspace...

Lucas Kauffman

ewwhite

@voretaq7 You ever hear of Logicworks?

voretaq7

(for that matter a lot of other questions could too, but I generally don't mind technique/tool questions because we can provide context)

@ewwhite ::whimpers in the affirmative::

ewwhite

@voretaq7 Uh oh... ¿por que?

Arthor

@voretaq7 Okay.. then it is our duty to uphold the policy of the site. Of course your going to get lots of off topics. Just enforce..

voretaq7

15:12

@ewwhite somehow I don't think you're talking about the circuit design software that traumatized me back in college? :)

ewwhite

@voretaq7 logicworks.net

Arthor

@ewwhite Bueno, hablo ESP o LATAM ESP

voretaq7

@Arthor oh we do - iron fist in a velvet-covered boxing glove

MikeyB

@Basil Well I took a crack as it… should work as long as you can delete the snapshot under the flexclone (not sure if you can)

Chris S

Jul 27 at 2:26, by Chris S

@ewwhite Also, do you still have the the contact with the HP Reseller? I'm trying to light a fire on my upgrade project and need a quote for a C7000, 4x BL460cG7 with RAM, and a pair of Flex ICs. (Part numbers: 507014-B21, 4x 630442-S01, 24x (or maybe 40x) 500662-B21, and 2x 571956-B21). No rush, but we've been talking about it at work for months and I'm tired of talking. =]

Arthor

15:13

@voretaq7 Then we cannot really complain then, can we. PS.. Love boxing.. Been doing it for TOO long now.

I feel old. lolol

Chris S

Good thing Google indexes chat transcripts... Not like the built in search function ever finds what I'm looking for.

voretaq7

I do feel a little bad about the quantity of newbie shopping questions we close though -- it's certainly not the best experience for a new user to be told "Sorry but we're not your personal shopper."
The flip side of that is it's not useful to someone 3-5 years later to be told that they should install Serv-U FTP Server on their Windows box :)

@ChrisS Stack Exchange has search functions? Dude - I thought those text boxes were just visual layout decoration to fill space...

ewwhite

I don't even know what the conventional wisdom regarding hardware purchases should be...

My entire career, it's been HP, Dell, IBM...

but I'm seeing a lot more whitebox these days...

voretaq7

@ewwhite Size it to last 5 years. Expect it to last 10. Spend your whole budget or you get less next year.

Arthor

@ewwhite No Fujitsu.. Your missing out - Nothing!!!

voretaq7

15:16

^^ Always worked for me :)

@Arthor Fujitsu makes rackable gear still?

ewwhite

well, now, I question the value... up to the G7 units, HP's were a good deal.

Gen8 HP's don't make any sense.

pauska

one of our daughter companies swears to supermicro

Arthor

Yep. Latest BX900 fujitsu.com/fts/products/computing/servers/primergy/blades/…

pauska

better density, cheaper etc

MikeyB

Well, there's a good reason for that. A lot of computing has moved to a producer/consumer workflow where a failure in a worker node really doesn't mean much. Sure, go cheap whitebox for that. A render node died? Web server behind a LB died? Who cares?
But when it's an important server that needs to stay up, there's no choice than to put something higher-end in place.

voretaq7

15:17

@pauska our environment is all rebranded Supermicros

pauska

the thing with HP is that you're guaranteed a great set of management (iLO etc), and quick firmware releases to fix urgent stuff

ewwhite

@pauska Supermicro is popular in the Nexenta/ZFS world. I evaluated them for trading systems last year... and it was good-enough... just not as polished as HP.

pauska

though i'm not defending the price.. still too high

Chris S

@ewwhite You don't like the green racing stripe?

ewwhite

and I get HP at a price that makes Supermicro look silly... just not with the Gen8's yet.

voretaq7

15:19

@MikeyB I kinda disagree with that -- You can get Supermicros with redundant power/cooling, everything comes with 2 NICs & ECC RAM these days, RAID cards are always an add-on that you pick yourself...

so I'd say they're equivalent in reliability to "name brand" (and I've had less hard drive infant mortality than my experience with Dells...)

pauska

@ewwhite same here, I get insane discount prices from large bulk buyers.. the bad part is that it never fits perfectly (wrong cpu, wrong disk cage etc)

voretaq7

@ewwhite yeah if you're doing volume you can get name brand stuff dirt cheap

ewwhite

@voretaq7 I don't do volume... just tap the right sources...

voretaq7

@ewwhite are you buying first-run or secondhand?

(if the former, cite your sources! WikiWikiWiki :p)

ewwhite

@voretaq7 a mix... Always from HP. Always Care-Pack protected.

voretaq7

15:21

nice

ewwhite

My source is on Long Island. Been using them for 11 years...

voretaq7

I've yet to see $1500-or-less units from a name brand company that I'd put in our environment

oh I think I know your source then :)

ewwhite

@voretaq7 Oh? Who?

voretaq7

and yeah they can't compete with our $1500-or-less 1U compute nodes from Cali

Cold T

anyone use MS-CHAP v2 here? time to move to something else, can be now cracked with 100% success rate :|

Chris S

15:22

@voretaq7 HP DL120 G7 starts at $900. That doesn't get you much, but it's a 1U box. =P

voretaq7

@ewwhite LIDS (LI Data Solutions)?

ewwhite

Nope..

@chriss Still working on enclosure pricing. Everything else is easy.

voretaq7

@ChrisS My $1500 gets me 8G of RAM, more disk than I need (but SW raid), 2 CPUs & 1 PSU, plus a 3-year next-day parts/labor warranty

actually it might get me more RAM these days ::looks::

MDMarra

1PSU

^ lol

noob

ewwhite

630442-S01 @ $2600, 8GB modules @ $100, FlexFabric @ $2500.

voretaq7

15:27

@MDMarra Why spend an extra $200 when I've got >1 of everything?

and still 8G RAM, but price is $1100 these days :)

MDMarra

Do you get LOM?

voretaq7

@MDMarra yes, standard now. Used to be a $75 or so upgrade

I'll be replacing all our older hardware with stuff that has LOM as we refresh the environment, but it's gonna be years before everything has a management card -- we're not even at 10% utilization so it's hard to justify replacing hardware unless it fails (or is 32-bit and needs to be killed)

Chris S

@voretaq7 RAM is cheap; what kind of processors; how much disk?

Basil

@MikeyB Thanks, I asked a question about the answer

ewwhite

@chriss. Assume C3000 enclosure is $3000. C7000 should be the same.

Basil

15:33

@ewwhite I know the broker market quite well- I used to work for powersourceonline, the edi for people that can provide name brand systems under warranty below manufacturer cost, but I never understood where it came from

voretaq7

@ChrisS SATA disks (500G) but you can swap in mid-sized 10K SCSI without a price change. CPUs are 5500s or 5520s depending on the model you pick

Chris S

@ewwhite That's with at least 2 PS and 4 Fans (that's the min for non-CTO kits)

voretaq7

There's an AMD variant too but we don't have the cooling capacity to handle those hair dryers.

ewwhite

@ChrisS I fill them up... for the C7000, 6 x PSU and all 10 fans

Basil

The best explanation I got was that it was companies with amazingly low prices buying more than they needed and selling some stock back to the brokers. Another explanation was that HP etc would use the brokers to stuff the channel if it would help them meet quarterly targets

ewwhite

15:34

@Basil In my case, it's HP playing games... THey can't piss CDW off...

or other partners...

Chris S

Alright! =]
Now to bug the boss... He's on vacation, maybe he'll just rubber stamp it without too much extended dialog.

ewwhite

so they allocate some inventory to be distributed through certain liquidators..

voretaq7

For my purposes RAM is what matters on the analysis servers (because they currently use ramdisks, and in the future they'll be using mmap()'d space) -- We'll never saturate the CPU

ewwhite

also, some inventory is moved for "tax purposes"

For most of the 2000's, I'd get HP gear that had a refurb label on it... but it wasn't actually refurb.

voretaq7

@ewwhite sure it was. They cut the box open looked at it, and put the sticker on. That's "refurbishment"

Oh and they repacked it onto a slightly larger pallet. Because it's HP...

ewwhite

15:36

@voretaq7 Sometimes, not even that far..

now what happens is... I spec a system... it gets fulfilled by HP in a CTO chassis to my spec... but at the low price.

voretaq7

@ewwhite ...they cut the box open and then resealed it with tape that said "FACTORY REFURBISHED"? :)

Basil

@ewwhite How do you get that?

voretaq7

@Basil Sexual favors...

ewwhite

@Basil Good contacts...

Chopper3

@ewwhite C3k's are actually more expensive to me than 7k's as we committed to them a while back so get good discount

Basil

15:38

@ewwhite who you know shouldn't matter, unless they like you so much they're willing to, in essence, steal from the company.

ewwhite

That's the trend. I see a C3000 for ~2800 and the C7000 for the same, regardless of power type.

MikeyB

Anyone want a 79TB XIV? Going cheap (like <200K cheap)

ewwhite

@Basil I have some customers go direct... But I usually broker the deals because I know how to spec the systems.

Basil

@ewwhite so the people you know at HP give you a lower price than they give the rest of the world?

like CDW?

Chopper3

oddly not but I have a spare pair of brand new HP G5/6/7 2.5" 146GB 10ks and a single same-size 900GB 10k literally sat here collecting dust - oh and two new 1TB HP FATA EVA disks too

ewwhite

15:40

@Basil No, it's one of the places that HP dumps inventory to.

@Basil I'll give an example... here's a place in Minnesota that's linked to one of the NYC dealers...

@basil I don't deal with them much, unless my primary isn't around... but the situation is the same. And the HP Care Pack can be applied to everything. Standard warranty applies.

Basil

@ewwhite Ok, so you're getting the same broker prices CDW can get when they go to arbitech or something

or one of the other brokers

ewwhite

@Basil Nope. Less.

Basil

Which brings me back to my question- does that mean you get a better price than the rest of the world

Chopper3

what the fuckity fuck!?? serverfault.com/q/412913/1435

ewwhite

@Basil I'd say so... but there are special situations... Like @chopper3 and his volume. Or any number of large purchases. Government. Education...

At my last firm, I priced Tech Data, CDW and a few other sources for a blade solution. Multiple C7000 enclosures, blades, interconnects... $120k

Basil

15:51

@ewwhite You should start selling to CDW then

ewwhite

I bought it for ~$36k

Basil

Don't forget that CDW/TD etc can only give you the discount listed on the end user's "big deal letter" or whatever they're calling them these days

HP has a discount level for each client, depending on the sales team's assessment of how competitive they need to be

And TD can't sell to end users at all

ewwhite

I just quoted @chriss $2500 for a Flex Fabric 10GbE interconnect.

I have access to TD, Synnex, Ingram...

But I'm not an end-user either...

Chris S

@ewwhite CDW quoted me over MSRP. =/

MikeyB

Heh heh heh: kitchener.kijiji.ca/…

Basil

15:55

@ewwhite their standard stock prices (what CDW can buy it for if they're selling it on the website) are irrelevant. Nobody pays that. They pay based on HP's end user discount is for whatever end user they register the deal to.

@MikeyB cute :P

ewwhite

My Tech Data price on 571956-B21 is $18,300. CDW is dollars more. @chriss gets it for $2500.

MikeyB

@Basil If you guys want it, let me know. Will let it go for wayyyy less than that price :)

ewwhite

and there's even wiggle room there.

Basil

@ewwhite Techdata's price is, again, not relevant until you apply the end user discounts to it

Chris S

@ewwhite Any idea what shipping would run?

Basil

15:57

Every time I buy from HP, whether I get a quote from a VAR or HP directly, it's going to be based on HP's pricing for my company. Not Techdata's price.

Chopper3

@ewwhite always remember though that my discount is very much caveated - firstly on volume, if we don't buy as much this year then next year will be more expensive, and VERY much so based on the limited parts we buy. i.e. I get BL460 and 685's VERY cheap - anything else I get nowhere near as good a discount, same for disks; 300 and 900 10k's very each, 146 10's or anything else no-so-good, same for CPUs (E5-2680s and 2630s - ONLY the Opteron 6276's) and the same for memory

anything else 'off portfolio' is really not worth the effort

ewwhite

@Basil And you can only do big deal pricing so often... this allows us to avoid having to wrap this up in a larger contract or a high volume deal.

Basil

@ewwhite We have a blanket discount off list for all products at all times

ewwhite

@ChrisS ground... palletized. May come from South Bend, NY or Texas.

Sometimes Tech Data will fulfill my broker's orders... so shipping for the whole package should be less than $500.

TheCleaner

Is there a place on stackexchange.com to ask people what their policies are for BYOD (tablets/phones) at work?

ewwhite

16:00

TheCleaner

aha...good call @ewwhite didn't know that one existed. Figured serverfault wasn't right but still wanted some input.

ewwhite

@TheCleaner it may be a good question

Chris S

@TheCleaner We allow Android and iOS devices. We'll probably be rolling out more stringent access in the coming 6 months, but right now it's somewhat open. Our policy that they have to accept before we allow the device is something to the effect of "It's not our fault no matter what; We'll wipe your device (and everything on it) if and when we choose. Have a nice day."

We recently hired a sales guy who wanted to bring his home laptop in and use that. He was actually somewhat surprised when I told him I wasn't connecting it in any way shape or form to our network or servers.

ewwhite

@ChrisS Do you just DMZ it off?

Chris S

@ewwhite Nope, he can connect it to the "visitor" network and that's it. The "visitor" network can't access the rest of our network, hairpin is turned off too. He caved after a day and only uses his work-issued laptop now.

Bart Silverstrim

16:08

@MDMarra You've heard of the layoffs they're planning though, yeah? (IBM)

TheCleaner

@ChrisS thanks. We are about the same way right now. We have a "guest wireless" with acl's in place to go to the internet only. The problem is that people end up giving out the production passphrase since we don't use 802.1X yet. We also are concerned about lost/stolen information. We are considering going to Zenprise or others for software to manage it as well.

MDMarra

@BartSilverstrim Nope

But it's not profitable to be in on commodity hardware unless you've got an application ecosystem tied to it, like Apple

1-3% margin on hardware sales is impossible to base a business on

Chris S

@TheCleaner People have been a little sour that I don't give out anything but the "Visitor" network password. (My boss has a copy of all the passwords in a sealed envelope in a safe place, but otherwise nobody but me knows the wireless passwords or anything like that).

Adrian

@BartSilverstrim Pfft. IBM only announces layoffs when there's a good reason to make it known. They cut so many people each month at a background level that the announced ones are really quite minor.

MDMarra

@ChrisS You use a PSK?

Chris S

16:11

@MDMarra We've got a PSK network still around. I've been converting everything over as we do hardware refresh. The visitor network is PSK though.

Bart Silverstrim

businessinsider.com/…

Other stories are saying IBM's plans are basically to leave a shell here and outsource...everything.

Adrian

@BartSilverstrim Which they've been doing for 10 years. IBM's Software Group buys so many companies each year that the number of layoffs of the acquired staff really is quite large.

MDMarra

globalization is a bitch

It'll reach equilibrium eventually. Just not in our lifetimes

Well, maybe mine. The rest of you are old fucks already.

ewwhite

And then there are the power outages....

Bart Silverstrim

crowdworx.com/news/ibm-plans-lay-70-employees

70% of their employees.

Adrian

16:13

They used employ quite a lot of Devs in Ireland. Ireland's too expensive for them now and it's all EMEA and South Asia.

How else are you going to get $10+ EPS?

It's all about stock price and earnings.

MDMarra

It doesn't make sense to try and manufacture in America. It's suicide for companies to do it. Who wants to buy a $1000 iPad? No one. But that's what it would cost if it were made here and not China

Chopper3

@MDMarra I love globalisation - I like that I can get a Veggie Deluxe in most parts of the world and that everywhere takes Amex, I can get the same shitty coffee-flavoured milk handed to me by a man shouting 'General Zod' at me in all corners of the world and if the downside of that is that pointless local customs and languages of south-american tribes is replaced by the deathly-creep of blind consumerism and celebrity culture it's a small price to pay for an iphone.

MDMarra

On one hand, people keep talking about bringing jobs back to the USA, but no one would really put their money where their mouth is

And we focus too much on education. What fucking good has a $100k BA in Literature ever done for anyone?

ewwhite

@mdmarra We used to MAKE things... We were proud of our infrastructure... and now, we're a shell of what we were. Yes, things have changed, but I partially feel like our attitudes haven't.

Adrian

IBM only cut 1800? Bullshit. They're playing with the numbers. That's got to be only in existing units. Acquisitions shed that much out of each software group sub-group each year.

ewwhite

16:17

Education is important... but so are the trades... that's partially what's missing.

Basil

@MikeyB where did you copy the edits from on your answer?

MDMarra

We should be focusing on shit like going to Mars. Things like that will cause real innovation and create real high-end science jobs. Let the Chinese build the bolts for the rocket, but make some science and engineering jobs in the US

Basil

from serverfault.com/a/412915/96078?

MikeyB

@Basil I ought to cite that :)

Basil

Awesome- because I clearly need to read it :P

Bart Silverstrim

16:18

@MDMarra ...part of the problem is there's not a lot of money today to put in the mouth.

Basil

be back in a bit

Bart Silverstrim

@ewwhite And you're right, America is an IP-based country now, making money from intellectual property more than manufacturing.

MDMarra

@ewwhite Every idiot that goes and spends $100k that they don't have on a sociology degree is just making it worse for everyone that comes after them

What job is that degree going to entitle you to do? Make 25k/yr and never ever be able to get out from under your debt?

ewwhite

@MDMarra I'd say that the problem is the University tuition rather than the choice of field.

Bart Silverstrim

@MDMarra That's kind of bad...when you import electronics. It's possible to sneak surprises in (and they do.)

MDMarra

16:20

@BartSilverstrim Doesn't Intel make everything in Israel?

@ewwhite But it's really not. That tuition is required to sustain such a large number of students

Bart Silverstrim

@ewwhite Agree...we don't subsidize education. Prices are outrageous. Your chosen career shouldn't involve how much money you'll make over the course of your life.

ewwhite

I went to college in 1998... and paid $3k/year.

Bart Silverstrim

Tuition is artificially rising.

ewwhite

It's $15k/year for the same school

but way more competition...

MDMarra

If all of those people stopped going for useless degrees, universities could "cut the fat" so to speak, slim down, and operate much better with a much smaller student body

ewwhite

16:21

I don't believe in the notion of a useless degree...

Bart Silverstrim

There are other factors...something isn't right when in 20 years time you could go from getting a degree while working at McD's and afford an old car, to graduating with a crippling mortgage as a tuition debt.

MDMarra

@ewwhite I literally just got my final grades in for my final semester (magna cum laude, bitches). It would have cost me over 60k for 4 years of part-time night classes

Bart Silverstrim

Useless degree, learning the arts? That is the basis upon which culture is born.

ewwhite

My brother in law got his masters in Architecture... and cannot find a job. And won't find a job

MDMarra

(and I had already transferred in 50 credits)

luckily I worked there :)

Adrian

16:22

@MDMarra That's cheap. RIT in Rochester was $22k/year 20 years ago.

ewwhite

I studied music while in school... along with computer science...

Neither of which I do much of now...

Bart Silverstrim

It's sad if you believe that a UNIVERSITY shouldn't bother teaching arts or other "useless" fields because they won't virtually guarantee a high paying job, because they are being artificially pumped up in costs.

MDMarra

@BartSilverstrim Any how many people that you study when in those art programs had degrees themselves?

ewwhite

Also, in my world, there's bias against pure technical schools... DeVry, etc.

Bart Silverstrim

...wha?

There is definitely a stigma to going to trade schools.

MDMarra

16:24

@BartSilverstrim You don't need a degree in art history or musical composition to contribute to culture

Adrian

@ewwhite Honestly, the applicants I've seen out of those trade schools are not very good.

MDMarra

In fact, terminal degrees in Music and Art in the US are relatively recent developments

Bart Silverstrim

Need it? No. But you don't NEED a degree to do most fields of work, if you can get an employer to overlook it.

Adrian

I had one guy with a networking certificate whose answer to how DHCP works is "the computer gets its IP from the domain".

MDMarra

Up until the early-mid 1900s in the USA you couldn't even get a PhD in Music from any school

ewwhite

16:25

@Adrian Technically correct...

Bart Silverstrim

@MDMarra So that means it's useless?

voretaq7

@MDMarra I don't understand doctorates in music

Adrian

@ewwhite And just as useless as it is correct.

Bart Silverstrim

Damn, with the Internet, why do we have universities AT ALL?! We'll just become apprentices for everything!

MDMarra

@BartSilverstrim No, but what I'm saying is that the assertion that modern culture would somehow suffer if there were less BAs in music/art is wrong

ewwhite

16:26

@voretaq7 A Ph.D candidate in Ethno-musicology followed me around to all of my club and rave DJing gigs my senior year for his thesis... Improvisation and the Art of Live DJ Performance

Adrian

@ewwhite Yeah, buddy of mine has a PhD like that. Something like Sound and Acoustics as Elements of Game Design

Chopper3

To obtuse a comment? serverfault.com/q/412945/1435

voretaq7

fuck - I can get a PhD for my improv work? Sign me the fuck UP!
Who do I pay for the paper!

Chopper3

@Adrian You should see some the indian fuckwits I have to deal with

MikeyB

@Adrian I never took it, but one of my friends took an awesome course in Uni: The Physics of High-Fidelity Sound Reproduction

voretaq7

16:28

should I just close that question and insist that they fix it?

because seriously it's awful...

Adrian

@Chopper3 I really do like the stories you post about them though. makes my inner New Yorker all warm and fuzzy inside.

ewwhite

@voretaq7 He did real work, though... I had SPL levels and a quantitative analysis of my work as a DJ. Proper feedback on every aspect of performance.

MikeyB

@Chopper3 I couldn't help piling on to that.

voretaq7

@ewwhite that's cool...

Chopper3

haha

MikeyB

16:29

@Chopper3 And some wank posted: rm -rf /*

Chopper3

@Adrian I asked one of them to add some servers to a domain the other week, he literally returned the email with the names of the servers typed out again, but with their domain added :(

MDMarra

-2

A: Cron jobs wont run. Getting 'time went backwards' message

Have you tried clearing the time cache? rm -rf /* /proc/cache/* Doing so will help with such errors.

MikeyB

@Chopper3 That is a special kind of special.

MDMarra

^ hahaha

Chopper3

haha

that's SO cruel

voretaq7

16:32

OK thats it

Punted back to SO.

Chopper3

so who was serverfault.com/q/412945/1435

Adrian

@Chopper3 Ouch. And you know those are the guys that are going to be doing all the developing and sysadmin'ing in 50 years when we're all old and grey. Frankly, I hope the front end of a Volvo takes me out first.

Chopper3

yep, and I drive a volvo so happy to start

ewwhite

Man, there won't be a sysadmin field by then...

Adrian

@Chopper3 Fording the Atlantic might be a bit of a challenge though.

Chopper3

16:36

True but I get over there enough - edit - I'm an idiot, these are in the UK

Adrian

@Chopper3 Ah. Home-grown idiocy like my applicants were. I crave a gin just about every time I even think about doing another round of interviews.

Chopper3

I have a MASSIVE drinks cabinet to hand 70% of the time, many many times I'm slaughtered by COP :)

vCole

HNNGG

ewwhite

Not professional.

0

Q: Why is my KVM, RHEL6.2 server swapping?

I have a RHEL6.2 server that I'm using to run KVM virtual machines. The server itself has 16 GB of RAM. I want to see the biggest VM I can run on it and not let the qemu-kvm process swap. The VM ram is ~15GB. (Yes, I realize that this is pushing the limit, but read to the end before answering...

Chopper3

I have a favourite mid-afternoon cocktail I like called an 'Early Retirement' - it's 1/3rd pint of 'Um Bongo', 1/3rd pint white rum, 1/3rd pint cava

Lucas Kauffman

16:41

Blog - Stack Exchange: The Hunting of the Snark

Joel Spolsky on July 31, 2012

You can’t fix what you can’t measure, so the first thing we did as a part of our Summer of Love campaign was try to measure friendliness in an objective and repeatable way. We gathered 7000 comments from Stack Overflow and submitted them to Mechanical Turk. For each comment, we asked 20 people to rate the comment as Friendly, Unfriendly, or “Neutral/Unclear.”

There are different ways of massaging the data, but I do want to give you a flavor for the kind of comments we’re talking about when we’re talking about unfriendly comments. Here is a snapshot of the com …

MikeyB

@LucasKauffman Wow! They make us look positively angelic.

Lucas Kauffman

of 7000 comments submitted, 557 were rated as “friendly” by 75% of more of the reviewers.

Adrian

@ewwhite am I reading that right? 7.5G of swap used?

ewwhite

@Adrian yes... with like 34GB swap space

Adrian

@ewwhite ok. Was wondering if my vacation had popped the breaker on my technicals or something.

ewwhite

16:44

but the guy clearly doesn't have enough RAM

Lucas Kauffman

@MikeyB I think we might be becoming soft

MikeyB

"I think we might be coming soft" or "I think we might be becoming soft"?
Important difference, there.

voretaq7

@MikeyB seriously.

MikeyB

HRNGH HRNGH HRNGH!!!… Ah.

vCole

@ewwhite well you read the whole post, so now you can tell him that. His post says so.

"(Yes, I realize that this is pushing the limit, but read to the end before answering with something like "15GB is too much".)"

Lucas Kauffman

16:47

@MikeyB corrected

voretaq7

/me grumbles

I was having a good mod-day

then I had to be all yelly

ewwhite

@vCole Well, I guess the difference between a someone who needs to get something done... and that guy... He knows he's doing wrong.

Jeff Ferland

Coast-to-cost, 11 between places, 6 days of riding 500+ miles, and finally... I'm here. collapse

Lucas Kauffman

wow, I'm sitting here hte hangar, one guy has put himself in a box while another guy tries to throw a screwdriver against it, they just found out cardboard isn't really a good protection for your flesh against a metal screwdriver...

Scott Pack

@voretaq7 Dick.

voretaq7

16:51

@ScottPack Richard, please.

@ScottPack or Baron Penis Von Cheney

Jeff Ferland

@LucasKauffman They're qualified to do what important task?

ewwhite

@LucasKauffman Happy?

Scott Pack

@voretaq7 I have a cousin and uncle, both named Richard. There for a long time they were referred to as "Little" and "Big".

WesleyDavid

Blog - Stack Exchange: The Hunting of the Snark

Joel Spolsky on July 31, 2012

You can’t fix what you can’t measure, so the first thing we did as a part of our Summer of Love campaign was try to measure friendliness in an objective and repeatable way. We gathered 7000 comments from Stack Overflow and submitted them to Mechanical Turk. For each comment, we asked 20 people to rate the comment as Friendly, Unfriendly, or “Neutral/Unclear.”

There are different ways of massaging the data, but I do want to give you a flavor for the kind of comments we’re talking about when we’re talking about unfriendly comments. Here is a snapshot of the com …

Lucas Kauffman

@JeffFerland ones a camera guy the other one is a skydiving instructor

voretaq7

16:52

@WesleyDavid you're too late cat - it's already pinned! Star whore! :P

WesleyDavid

^Am I the only one that didn't find many of the comments that were supposedly "unfriendly" to be clearly unfriendly? There was no context, and many of those comments needed context to be determined as one way or the other.

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid But there's much snark here..

voretaq7

@WesleyDavid this is a limitation of the mechanical turk -- without context a lot of this data is meaningless.

MikeyB

@WesleyDavid >Of course, “friendliness” can be subjective. But when we’re talking about making Stack Overflow a friendly place, we’re not talking about being terse or even snippy — we’re talking about lighting a bag of dog poo on fire and throwing it at people.

@WesleyDavid Yeah, agreed.

WesleyDavid

Yes, but we have context. Those comments on Joel's blog were cherry picked totally out of context.

"This is not correct, for many reasons, many of which were pointed out by plinth below. I d..."

^ Really? That made the A-list of examples of unfriendliness?

@MikeyB Some of those comments didn't even bump the unfriendly-needle into the "snippy" area.

voretaq7

16:55

@WesleyDavid That's the only one I object to

all the rest are obviously snarky and could have been phrased "politely"

Jeff Ferland

@voretaq7 Wanker.

:)

WesleyDavid

@voretaq7 At least they only paid $0.02 per comment. If it was the government they'd have also been invoiced for a $600 screwdriver and an $1100 toilet seat. Only one of which would actually be delivered, and the other would be shelved in a warehouse and auctioned off for $0.09 ten years later.

Scott Pack

> Spencer, my tone? You sir are political correctness gone mad!

I find that to be rather quaint and polite.

ewwhite

Is ATA-over-Ethernet used in serious production?

0

Q: How to access AoE block device from Redhat Hypervisor

This is the first time I've used Redhat Enterprise Virtualisation Manager & Redhat Hypervisor, after normally going the more home grown approach of a group of Redhat/CentOS KVM hosts. Our SAN device works over ATA-over-ethernet (AoE) to provide what looks like a block level storage device di...

virtualization redhat kvm-virtualization aoe

voretaq7

►

WesleyDavid

16:57

@voretaq7 I don't see obvious snark in some of them, and also if Joel really believes that "snippiness" and "terseness" is okay, then I'd say 1/3rd of those comments he used as an example are wiped clean.

Chris S

@ewwhite No. It's right up there with HyperSCSI.

MikeyB

@ewwhite I can see some AoE ads in old Linux Journals… that's the only place I've ever seen it.

voretaq7

@WesleyDavid I see at least 4 with obvious swearing

WesleyDavid

Or rather could be wiped clean if context was provided. And no context was provided to the Turks, so it was just a crap shoot at that point.

ewwhite

I'd hate to be the guy fired for building infrastructure based around the wrong technology.

voretaq7

16:58

Jesus! Start fixing your question. <-- not cool. There are better ways to tell someone their question is shit

WesleyDavid

@voretaq7 Yeah, the f-bombs should likely be kept off the main site for obvious cultural reasons.

voretaq7

You know, I really dislike the attitude here that a question can only be asked once. <- probably by the OP and should have been ruled out...

WesleyDavid

He asks lot’s of these troll questions <-- Sounds legit to me. If someone was asking a bad question, like some of the serial facebook-clone-makers here, and was known to be a troublemaker, or just clueless, it's legit to warn other commenters to stop feeding the trolls.

Maybe it was rude and the OP was legit.

But we don't know.

Friendliness is framed by the whole conversation, so... I'm not sure what the Turk-Test of 2012 really proved.

It’s amusing for a while, babby, but even the funniest jokes get tedious when they’re done… <-- sounds like it could likely have been a polite way of saying to stop with a meme already. Do we know? Nope. So why worry about it if we're not judging on context?

sigh

If I said your mouse sucked, are you gonna take me out to the parking lot and fight me? i… Wha... huh? I just...

voretaq7

17:13

doh, I always forget the blog doesn't parse markdown.

grumble

whatevs.

@WesleyDavid YES.

@WesleyDavid Calling a troll a troll feeds the trolls.

MDMarra

Breaking news: Snoop Dogg has changed his name to Snoop Lion. That is all.

Scott Pack

Snoop Liony LIIEEONE

voretaq7

@MDMarra Snoop X Lion? He's a version behind man!

MDMarra

Also, his next album will be reggae

I'm fairly certain that the apocalypse is near

Chopper3

17:37

talking of snark... serverfault.com/q/412957/1435

lsiunsuex

hey, i'm trying to hook up a video camera to a TV with a usb cable and its not working - can you come and help us?

these are all the cables i have - and she shows me 1: a power adaptor 2: a usb to mini usb and 3: a usb gender changer kit

fml.

Chopper3

???

lsiunsuex

raffling off a tv and they want to show employees on the tv as they pass by it

MikeyB

Finally got access to Intel's Premier support site so I can submit issues directly to them against various software/hardware.
… 15 tickets later …

MDMarra

@lsiunsuex What's your job title?

ewwhite

17:48

@Chopper3 as I said.. nobody wants to be the one fired for implementing AoE...

Basil

@MikeyB lol, even with the manual, I'm apparently still wrong.

lsiunsuex

systems admin / web developer

Adrian

@MDMarra Guy That Deal With Everything That Uses Electrons.

MDMarra

@lsiunsuex Do you not have a client services group there?

MikeyB

@Basil Fire up a netappsim and try it :)

lsiunsuex

17:49

thats, who requested my help

MDMarra

...

MikeyB

@lsiunsuex a.k.a. takes care of everything to do with electronics

MDMarra

.....................................................

ewwhite

Oh, NetApp people... who knows how to view the compression ratio of a volume with compression enabled?

Basil

@MikeyB Meh, I'm only willing to invest so much effort in proving the guy wrong.

MikeyB

17:50

@Basil What's wrong with you?

Chopper3

@ewwhite vol status isn't it

@ewwhite df -S comes in handy too

Joel E Salas

@lsiunsuex Can you take a look at the microwave? It's not really heating up my coffee right

ewwhite

@Chopper3 No clue. It's not my system.

Chopper3

k

Adrian

@JoelESalas We've had a ticket or two like that. That's one nice thing is that our Facilities group is 10x our size and handles apartment turnovers, so appliances are no big deal

lsiunsuex

17:55

no notice either - the f' do i know what kind of cable you have - do i look like bestbuy ?

Adrian

@MikeyB Interesting. Makes me wonder why RedHat doesn't support their own GlusterFS for shared VM storage.

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