The Comms Room

voretaq7

15:05

...oh like the mods here actually moderate

MikeyB

@ColdT Agreed, but with the choice of frameworks between Native C/C++, Android, HTML5, Webworks, Cascades and [REDACTED], developers certainly have some choice.

SmallClanger

15:35

"Why do you keep on using that word. i do not think it means what you think it means..."

0

Q: Change the behaviour of WIndows 2003 DNS search

I am a dev-op (a software developer who has to do IT on the side). As a website developer, I create DNS host entries on my local Windows 2003 DNS servers - there are two DNS servers in the local domain - so that I can set up IIS7 websites on my Windows 7 development box. My method is to add t...

Justin Dearing

I am a dev-op!

Iain

I think that's my record for deleting something

SmallClanger

@Iain Spam ninja!

Iain

@SmallClanger We know what DevOPs are and suggest that you shouldn't be allowed near any OPs it's safer that way.

voretaq7

Basil

15:48

@JustinDearing I AM DEVOPS HEAR ME ROAR

voretaq7

@JustinDearing Hear me roar!

Basil

@voretaq7 haha, beat you

ewwhite

Someone just walked into wife's server room and removed a bunch of network cables from the Cisco 4507 switch.

voretaq7

In former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, Ops devs YOU!

@ewwhite ...I assume they didn't walk out (ambulance assistance was required)?

ewwhite

Security guys indiscriminately pulling cables that they thought belonged to the camera system.

Iain

15:50

@ewwhite then clearly they were authorized to do so and had the relevant change documentation

84104

@ewwhite The most secure servers are the ones that random dudes pull the network cables from.

ewwhite

iSCSI network down

Iain

@voretaq7 they are a spammer - there was a second question

Justin Dearing

@84104 no there insecure because random dudes have physical access to them.

Cold T

@ewwhite that is not good :|

Justin Dearing

15:52

Why settle for being a hacker when you can be devops!

84104

This question is... painful.

0

Q: centralized authenticaion with OpenLDAP for Red Hat Linux with slapd.conf configuration

I am currenty working on to setup a centralized authenticaion with OpenLDAP for Red Hat Linux . Objective - Setup a Centralized OpenLDAP authentication for Red Hat Linux Servers where client can connect with ssh , user administration can be done from one server. Please I am not looking for rpm ...

openldap

voretaq7

no, THIS question is painful:

0

Q: mdadm RAID 5 Failed with 2 Drives while rebuilding

I have a RAID 5 array with 3 Disks: /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd Over last weekend i was prompted that SDD had failed. so replaced the drive, added it back into the array and let it rebuild (1.5TB) It stopped at about 64% with an error, found out that /dev/sdb is failing as well. I imaged SDD o...

raid mdadm failed drives

(not for us - for us it's amusing. But the poor sap posting it is about to experience pain on the order of "Testicles in a meat grinder")

Iain

@voretaq7 there isn't a question there is there ?

84104

@voretaq7 Okay, the guy who has already shot himself is worse than the guy who is trying his hardest to do the same.

ewwhite

Who just goes and unplugs shit?

84104

15:56

@ewwhite Gremlins.

voretaq7

@ewwhite that depends -- did the client pay their bill?

84104

Also cats.

ewwhite

The security people just plugged the cables back in..

but in the wrong order.

Iain

@ewwhite ex employees

ewwhite

iSCSI, LACP, ESXi... all mixed up

voretaq7

15:57

@JustinDearing and I know the joy that comes from ripping all the cables out of the back of machines belonging to non-paying customers :-)

@ewwhite yeah... the security people are idiots.

ewwhite

although, I think port management on a device like this is a little tricky...

voretaq7

or nobody explained to them that their hands stay in their pockets when in the loud room with the blinkenlights

Justin Dearing

@voretaq7 for those I pull the power cables.

voretaq7

@JustinDearing I like to be thorough :-)

Justin Dearing

@voretaq7 hands in the pockets or bodies under the raised flooring, you decide

ewwhite

16:01

oops, it was the PC tech who did this.

MikeyB

@voretaq7 Heh, "psychically larger"

ewwhite

she's crying.

Chris S

lol SHAME ON YOU FOR MAKING A GIRL CRY!

SmallClanger

@ewwhite Put the boot in while she's down! It's the Sysadmin way!

2

voretaq7

@ewwhite WHY did the PC tech do this?

Does the tech hate America?

Iain

16:07

Is nuking a spammer preferred over suspension ?

voretaq7

@Iain I usually use the Destroy Account button for drive-by spammers

If they're a serial spammer suspension might be more effective

Chris S

@Iain Suspension takes so many clicks... Nuke is 2.

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Expand on this topic...

Iain

we could really do with a tar pit

voretaq7

@ChrisS should be one. Goddamnit when I want to launch an ICBM I don't want to be delayed by safety prompts!

@Iain Turing tar pit?

SmallClanger

16:09

Just goes to show that you can have multi-path, dual redundant, failover, high-availability everything and it lasts about 4 seconds against a case of fat fingers.

voretaq7

"What's in there?"
"Nothing good - just a copy of Brainfuck and some spammers."

WesleyDavid

@voretaq7 Launching nukes should be as easy as glancing at a litle red box superimposed over my vision ala Google Glasses.

2

"Don't make me flinch. I flinch, and you and everyone you love becomes a fine mist."

Aaron Copley

@voretaq7 "There is no backup.." -- We should lump those with the VPS questions.

Iain

@voretaq7 one close to a feather factory

Basil

So my edit to the canonical raid 5 answer seems to have survived the night.

voretaq7

16:23

oh speaking of canonical questions

7

Q: How can I calculate if a UPS is sufficient for my requirements?

I am not that of an electricity knowledgable person, so I'll try to put as much info as possible. I have a Rack Mount UPS of 1800 Watts Model: PRP 3050 RM (in total I have 2 of these - talking about one specifically) I had to change it's batteries today, and that led me to think if it can suppo...

power-supply power ups

We have that one now

(so if anyone wants to write a 12-part thesis on power calculations and save me from having to remember how to do that shit I'll add it to the canonical list)

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid @voretaq7 The PC tech was on the phone with the security camera people trying to troubleshoot 18 IP cameras that were down since the lightning strike.

The security people told her to unplug all of the cables on switch blade #1...

voretaq7

@ewwhite . . . um

ewwhite

which included some iSCSI ports, VMWare server ports and some of the LACP config for the storage unit.

voretaq7

since when does a shitty outside vendor have that kind of authority?

ewwhite

People who follow directions... without ever thinking...

Justin Dearing

16:26

@voretaq7 first you hire a Texan. Then let him you fire the electrician that brings his dog in the data center.

MikeyB

@ewwhite Oh sweet heavens… good thing you have redundancy across switch blades right?

voretaq7

@JustinDearing Hey, if said dog hadn't been responsible for a fire suppression system release...

Justin Dearing

@voretaq7 no no that was a different dog and before my time.

voretaq7

@JustinDearing all dogs are banned! :)

. . . datacenter needs more cats. And a bigger bucket in the ceiling.

(I wonder if that leak ever got fixed?)

ewwhite

@MikeyB I do, but some of the ports were moved to make room to replace one of the failed switch blades from the same lightning strike.

SmallClanger

16:29

Since it's friday, have some Yo-Yos in space: io9.com/5933505/confirmed-yo+yos-are-even-cooler-in-space

ewwhite

I mean, if 18 IP PoE cameras are down, chances are that they are DOWN... dead. Not something that unplugging and replugging will fix.

Justin Dearing

@voretaq7 ceiling cat is upset we made him take a bath. He sent his only son hover cat to be chased by data center dogs. Hover cat will return to judge all clients.

Chris Okyen

where can i ask a general question

MDMarra

'sup nerds

@ChrisOkyen If it's appropriate for the main site, on the main site

voretaq7

@ChrisOkyen you just did :)

MDMarra

16:32

If you have something subjective you can ask it here i suppose

voretaq7

what's the question you're asking about about?

MikeyB

Heh, I love being around geeks.
Me: "Hmm… the instructions on this frozen lunch are for a 1000W microwave"
Co-worker: "Well, a cup of water takes 2m20s to boil. You could work it out from there."
Me: "Hey! You're right! Assuming the water is at 10℃ when it goes in, that means the microwave is outputting… 672W of power." (Yes, it's an old 800W microwave)

Chris Okyen

about what damage occured when my super nintendo games data was deleted

When I accidently was messing with the red yelloiw and white cables while it was on

Into the tv and a multiplexer

Which I know how they somewhat work

Iain

@ChrisOkyen not SF, possibly SU

MDMarra

@MikeyB That'll get you an adjusted cooking time, but not necessarily an equivalent experience. Since the cook time is longer, you might get a crusty outside or molten-lava center depending on what you're microwaving

@Iain There's no way that a TV and game console are on topic for SU

Are you high?

MikeyB

16:35

@ChrisOkyen Evidently the damage that occurred is that your SNES game's data was deleted.

Chris Okyen

Of course @MikeyB but i wanna knwo if there was more

Iain

@MDMarra apparently

MDMarra

hahaha

Chris S

@ChrisOkyen You were messing with the video and audio cables while it was on?

Chris Okyen

I diddin't know

I thought another person turned it off

We were messing with it I was exhausted the 5 hour energy extra strength wasn't working

voretaq7

16:38

@Iain @MDMarra it's fine, most of the folks at SU are a little crispy around the edges.

Chris Okyen

:)

Chris S

I need alcohol... or something.

MDMarra

I've been doing cabling for 7 days

with no end in sight

Chris Okyen

bath salt

MDMarra

im going to kill myself

Chris Okyen

16:38

@ChrisS

voretaq7

^ Debugging Tequila ^

Chris S

@ChrisOkyen They're illegal here; and if I wanted to get high Marijuana, Shrooms, and LSD are much safer.

Chris Okyen

of course those three are about the safest

but shrooms u have to be psychologically strong or you could get psychological problems.

Chris S

@voretaq7 I saw one of those the last time I was in Mexico, but didn't think it would make it back through security.

Chris Okyen

Why would pulling a audio/video cable in and out or in the wrong input have anything to do with the games memory

Chris S

16:41

@ChrisOkyen It wouldn't.

Unless you stuck them in a wall electrical outlet... that may have an effect.

Even then you've got a 2/3 chance of picking the hole that wouldn't have any effect.

Chris Okyen

Then I wonder how it got erased..

voretaq7

@ChrisOkyen Cosmic rays.

MikeyB

@ChrisOkyen Only thing I can think of is a high potential difference in the ground connection when you were unplugging/plugging them.

Chris Okyen

hmm

Chris S

1. Defect in manufacturing 2. Cosmic rays 3. Software/firmware bug 4. Human error
In order from least likely to most likely.

Chris Okyen

16:43

doesn't the memory have a ground

Chris S

DC systems have no concept of ground.

Chris Okyen

oh shoot

well Thanks about to explore Android Dev more. Thorgi the Corgi is out.

Chris S

DC have source and sink; generally there is a common rail, which may be referenced to ground, but certainly not necessarily.

WesleyDavid

17:16

There's not enough drugs on this planet to explain some people.

Chris S

lol; I think it's just plain old youth.

WesleyDavid

I think there's an inverse relationship between how much time I put into documentation and how little people actually read and follow it. There's a force multiplier in there somewhere too.

2

I wrote it out so simple. "...but none of the information is pre-populated like you said it would be." DID YOU SEE THE INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN A SCRIPT THAT'S IN THE SAME FOLDER AS THE INSTALLER THAT SAYS IN BIG LETTERS "RIGHT CLICK THIS AND RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR"???

SmallClanger

@WesleyDavid It's true. I don't write any docs and my staff manage to figure shit out for themselves...

MikeyB

LOLZ: hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/08/10/026256/…

Basil

@MikeyB vote to close- where is the button?

Chris S

17:33

F- BOMB, every little configuration change on a Polycom phone necessitates a farking restart.

And it takes about a minute each time.

MikeyB

@ChrisS But they're worth it.

Chris S

If you say so... Right now I only know they're the same hardware (not firmware) as their Cisco counterpars, and cost 1/3 as much.

Basil

<- still uses meridian analog

MikeyB

@ChrisS We've tried a few other handsets and realized that Polycom (or Cisco, natch) is the way to go.

Chris S

Right, now if I can just get the phone to talk to the PBX we'll be in business.

@Basil Analog phones? How quaint/archaic.

ewwhite

17:40

It's fixed now.

Basil

@ChrisS That was the most surprising anachronism I found when I started here

ewwhite

Less-than-graceful recovery.... but what do you expect when the cables are unplugged?

Basil

no small number of them either- head office has 8000 or so, and we have probably 30 offices with their own system and between 10 and 200 phones

SmallClanger

@ewwhite No permanent damage?

ewwhite

@SmallClanger Naw. I never have real damage with VMware crashes...

Chris S

17:41

@Basil Yeah, the shear effort of changing would make the project "fun"... Have to have interoperability for months while everything got changed over.

ewwhite

just inconvenience and time to piece things back together.

Basil

@ChrisS it's not even on the back burner yet.

ewwhite

So what do you do to the person who unplugs things? Let them learn from the mistake? Fire them? Yell?

Joel E Salas

Would you guys take a lower-paid position if it meant less stress and less uncertainty?

MikeyB

@JoelESalas Yes, within limits.

Joel E Salas

17:47

@MikeyB What limits?

MikeyB

@JoelESalas Depends on my current situation, but yeah I'd take a pay cut. Maybe 20% or so for similar duties if it meant a far less stressful working environment.

ewwhite

@JoelESalas Maybe.. I'm about to accept something.

MikeyB

@JoelESalas All theoretical of course, given that my last move (in 2006) was from a lower paying high-stress job to a high-paying low-stress job.

ewwhite

Less upside than what I had in finance, but probably will be okay.

Chris S

I have to say, the idea of Converged Ethernet/IP services seemed a bit far fetched when I first read about the idea some years ago. But I'm wholly convinced it's the way of the future. FCoE and iSCSI for storage, IP for "normal" communications, VoIP, TVoIP... GEPON (Gigabit Ethernet Passive Optical Network) WAN/MANs. WiMax is a 802.16 protocol based on 802.1 (MAC addresses and all that familiar stuff) packet interface. LTE might have won that race, but was heavily influenced. And the next gen...

ewwhite

17:50

@ChrisS In what applications? Just converged services in general?

Chris S

Our phone system does actually have a PRI interface to backhaul phone calls, but it's just converted to VoIP again at the CPE. That 10' of PRI cabling is all the more "old style" phone we have around here.

ewwhite

@joel there's no reason you can't have a good environment and good $$$

Joel E Salas

@MikeyB That's a happy scenario :). Not there just yet

Chris S

@ewwhite Yeah; in general.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite I don't know if I'm just looking in the wrong places but I can't seem to draw the eye of the environments I want.

ewwhite

17:51

I can even point you in some decent places... in LA.

Chris S

It's not going to happen tomorrow that we all wake up with GEPON FTTP connections, but we'll get there. You'll have TV, Phone, and Internet over that eventually. All "cell" connections will eventually be IP based communication.

ewwhite

what's the skillset and wanted $$$?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite That would be a princely gift

MikeyB

@JoelESalas Willing to move to kw.on.ca? :)

@ChrisS Remember, 1AU == 1000s ping.

Chris S

@MikeyB Yeah, but there's no way around that (at least currently). SoNET and other circuit based communications take just as long.

Joel E Salas

17:53

@MikeyB I'd be lying if I said no

Basil

@ChrisS Latency on FCoE and iSCSI is still higher than a native FC switch...

Chris S

I think light in fiber is faster than electricity in wires anyway.

ewwhite

@joel $$$? Or $$ or $?

Chris S

@Basil Currently.. =]

ewwhite

@joel and have you looked on Careers.SE? It's been very good to me.

Basil

17:54

@ChrisS I can't see how it's possible to improve on it. The ASICs in a FC switch are as strong or stronger than what you have in a cisco switch, and the rest of the optimization is done at the protocol level

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Let's say $$ & $/

MikeyB

@Basil Mmmm IB

Joel E Salas

but even $$ is fine if the environment is awesome and I get to work on fun distributed things (ie. Ceph)

Chris S

@Basil Correct. Ethernet needs some changes.

ewwhite

I don't even know what Ceph is.

Basil

17:55

@MikeyB I don't think that's the direction Brocade or Cisco are taking FCoE

@ChrisS Even if they made every change possible, they'd only become as good as FC, not better

Chris S

@Basil Right, I think that's the goal though. As good. Then let economies of scale make it "as good, and cheaper"

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite "Distributed object store." Basically, a FOSS true distributed file system. Their main office is a few miles from here

ewwhite

careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/22389/…

That's big data for you

@Joel Mahalo.

Linux Systems Administrator at Mahalo.com

apachenginxmysqlhaproxysysadmin

Mahalo is looking for smart individuals that can help us build and maintain the infrastructure necessary to make this dream possible. This is for a full-time in-house position.…

Posted on Careers 2.0 on August 8, 2012

Basil

@ChrisS I suppose if we had the switches already and would save on the HBAs...

Chris S

@MikeyB If Polycom just renamed a few configuration options to names that make sense and sound like what they're doing, that'd be a REALLY nice phone.

Joel E Salas

17:58

@ewwhite I like what I see so far, hopefully they wouldn't mind my non-dedicated Linux experience (some employers have minded it thus far)

ewwhite

Why would they?

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas What is "non-dedicated linux experience"?

MikeyB

@ChrisS Hey, at least they give you a decent manual (cough Cisco cough)

Joel E Salas

@WesleyDavid "Minimum 2-3 years of experience with Linux based systems (we are NOT looking for Windows admins)"

Chris S

@Basil And flexible infrastructure... Not only do you have a switch already, you just plug that server in anywhere, few lines of config, and boom it working. =]

@MikeyB Oh, there's a manual in the box?

ewwhite

18:00

@joel there's also this...

MikeyB

@ChrisS No, but you do know about the phone admin manual, right?

ewwhite

Sr. DevOps Engineer - eHow at Demand Media

Please use the following link to apply: http://hire.jobvite.com/j/?cj=o5iEWfwH&s=StackOverflow We’re looking for ambitious, driven, self-starters who want to be on the…

Posted on Careers 2.0 on August 9, 2012

MikeyB

LOL! eHow. Get hired based on your SF rep.

ewwhite

@joel you could write ehow articles!

Basil

@ChrisS open systems, maybe. You can't have more than one hop on CKD mainframe storage, though

Chris S

18:00

@MikeyB Nope. I just logged into the phone's web interface and poked until it worked.

ewwhite

@joel, the prize find of the day, though...

DevOps Engineer at deviantART

cactisvngitmysqlpuppet

deviantART, Inc. is looking for a DevOps engineer. This is a remote position and the rest of the DevOps team is remote as well. We're an Alexa top-150 site and have an…

Posted on Careers 2.0 on July 25, 2012

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas First, I think that putting that line in to a job description is strange. If you say Linux it means Linux, to the exclusion of everything else. Second, if an employer counts experience with a specific vendor as a blackmark, then they're kinda brain damaged. Not saying that the Mahaolo people are guilty of #2, but sad that #1 made its way into the job description.

Chris S

@Basil Mainframes will continue to be an "issue" for a while to come... Cause PC Servers have been killing them off soooo quickly.

MikeyB

@ChrisS Shit, dude! Their documentation is actually good: support.polycom.com/PolycomService/support/us/support/voice/…

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Senior DevOps Agile ScrumMaster Cloud Ninja Pirate Rockstar Engineer wanted to troubleshoot Outlook, set up WiFi, and take the blame for things out of their control!

2

Chris S

18:02

@MikeyB I prefer self documenting configuration options. It really wasn't that bad, only a couple names were weird... Like the line "address" is the "phone number".

WesleyDavid

"DevOps Engineer" - We want a developer who knows how to run fsck at boot. We thought it had something to do with an f-stab, but Frank got tired of us poking him with a knife.

Basil

@ChrisS They will never disappear. There's no credible open system alternative, even if companies could swallow the idea of redoing hundreds of millions of lines of code.

MikeyB

@ChrisS Meh. Here's the config file for my phone. So complex:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!-- Per-phone Configuration File -->
<!-- $Revision: 1.1 $  $Date: 2009/10/29 16:44:50 $ -->
<sip>
   <reg reg.1.displayName="Michael Brown" reg.1.address="5106" reg.1.label="x5106" reg.1.auth.userId="5106" reg.1.lineKeys="2"/>
</sip>

ewwhite

@joel, oh, and SpaceX has a few IT jobs in CA - spacex.com/careers.php

MikeyB

I can live with a few options having odd names. And really, a phone number is just an address if you think about it ;)

Joel E Salas

18:06

@ewwhite I saw, read up on Glassdoor after what you mentioned. Don't think I'm up to the pressure

Chris S

@MikeyB Yeah, I need to setup DHCP with the relevant options and the TFTP server with the config files though... This phone I just configured manually... Something to do next week I suppose.

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite How have employers suggested to you that Windows experience has been a black mark against your consideration?

MikeyB

There's a right way to do it and a really really wrong way to do it. The right way is to download all the default config files from Polycom's site (which I just linked) and configure your phones to do configuration inheritance and only override the values that change. http://pastie.org/4451049
If you have complete config files for each phone you have a gigantic mess when you want to change settings or upgrade firmware and the defaults have changed.

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid They never have. I'm not a Windows admin, but I know enough to get by

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Oops, sorry E-man. I @'d the wrong person. =/ Let's try this again...

ewwhite

18:08

mmhmm

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas How have employers suggested to you that Windows experience has been a black mark against your consideration?

Lucas Kauffman

cookies for everyone!

Joel E Salas

@WesleyDavid Twice

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite But yeah, have you ever heard of a place saying "You've got all the *nix experience we want, but the fact that you know Windows makes us sad and we suspect that you're a kitten puncher."

@JoelESalas How did they actually bring up that topic?

MikeyB

@ChrisS Hell, Polycom even has documentation on the Right Way to do config management on the phones: polycom.com/common/documents/whitepapers/…

Joel E Salas

18:10

@WesleyDavid It's more like "We're not interested in your knowledge of standards and interoperability. We want a do-er who knows implementation details for this specific distro"

Obviously I didn't take those jobs, but that's what I heard

Chris S

@MikeyB I've only got 2 of their phones right now... So manual configuration is definitely an option. But I expect like all things half-arsed to start, it'll grow into a monster if I don't go back and Do It Right™

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas Ohhhh, so wait. It's not so much "You're familiarity with windows concerns us." but rather "You're unfamiliarity with Gentoo 2005.1-r1 using the IA-32 platform makes us think that you're a goober."

MikeyB

@ChrisS With only 1 phone I would still do it the config file way. (oops, pastie link changed: pastie.org/private/jbiezqll9opoj5mlydfjaq)

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas And if that's the case -- is everyone in LA an asshat or do you just have bad luck? =P

Joel E Salas

@WesleyDavid "Because you wasted so much time with that whole Remote Desktop Services deployment that you should have spent on Linux"

Chris S

18:12

Something to do next week as I'm OUTTA HERE!

Have a good weekend all!

WesleyDavid

That doesn't put me off quite like how I first understood it. If a place really needs someone that's familiar with a specific distro so that the person can hit the ground running, that's reasonable. Happens in the Windows world a lot too. Happens everywhere, I think.

If you've got critical systems running and you need someone fast, then it's not fun to wait for someone to come up to speed on it...

...however the fact that a place is in such a pickle that they "need" someone that has that specific experience and they "can't" wait for someone to come up to speed -- well, that's suspicious.

Okay, so... this just happened on Twitter:

With the # of bad webapps I've had to use lately, I'm considering a palette of RedBull, learning perl and python and rocking some code

Tweeted by Nonapeptide on August 10, 2012 at 6:06 PM

@Nonapeptide Drop one of those languages - don't be a polyglot asswipe. One App, One Language.

Tweeted by jwbernin on August 10, 2012 at 6:13 PM in reply to Nonapeptide

^ Not sure if troll

Iain

@WesleyDavid learnpythonthehardway.org/book

WesleyDavid

@Iain <3

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid It's usually, "Oh, good... you know WIndows too..." or it's, "We're hung up on religious issues and don't want any trace of Windows in our PURE linux environment."

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Yeah, when things get into the realm of vendor religion, that's when I check my laces, stretch the hammies, and show the place my elbows and heels.

@ewwhite "No, VMware because VMware is VMware and it's not KVM!!" =P

Joel E Salas

18:22

@ewwhite @WesleyDavid Thanks for the moral support, I'll keep the standards high :D

WesleyDavid

I suspect people like that are simply uneducated on the use of Windows, and don't want to be. So instead of simply admitting their unwillingness to learn a new platform, they pluck the low hanging strawman of "We don't want Windows because it's insecure and icky and smells like Steve Ballmers scalp sweat!"

If the tables were turned, and it was a predominantly Windows admin saying "We have a pure Windows environment and don't want to install a Linux machine," the pitchforks and hemp rope would be out before you could say "toe jam for lunch!"

And then there's the BSD fanatics...

...who must bow down with everyone else to the superiorosity that is CP/M.

ewwhite

@joel what types of companies are these?

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas And yes, keep plugging away. Don't question what you know and what you've spent time on. What's important is that your employer needed something, you implemented it and did it awesome. It doesn't matter so much what the vendor was. It matters that you saw the business need and implemented something that met that need.

Vendors come and go. Hot certifications cool down. Awesome SysAdmins weather it all and come out on top.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite I'm mainly looking at tech companies, not companies that happen to have a tech department

@WesleyDavid It would be awesome for my work to be perceived that way.

ewwhite

I dunno, man. I interview a lot and tend to tailor the presentation to the company.

WesleyDavid

18:31

@JoelESalas It's the ones that do perceive it that way that you want to work for. Sadly, those places seem to be rare.

Joel E Salas

@WesleyDavid Hence the "take a salary cut" conundrum

ewwhite

The position I just had to decline was a great match in terms of personalities and interest in the product.. But I wasn't too hot on the tech they were using...

Debian instead of RHEL/CentOS, Chef instead of Puppet, outsourced infra versus inhouse...

but I was willing to overlook my issues to work with that team.

so my interview presentation focused on solving their problems.

We need monitoring, best-practices, backups, Mac config-management...

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite And here I am considering chef more than puppet for a deployment here...

ewwhite

if you're good, you're good... or you're at least capable of adapting.

WesleyDavid

Y U MAKE ME SECOND-GUESS

=)

ewwhite

18:34

I'd have NO reason to deal with Chef on my own, unless there are a specific application for it

nor would I ever need to do much with Debian

ewwhite

18:44

@joel how much of a cut? I'd just keep looking

Joel E Salas

@WesleyDavid Puppet has more mindshare behind it, I believe. It's the DEVOPS DEVOPS DEVOPS

@ewwhite Unless I win the lottery somehow, it would be like -33%

ewwhite

that doesn't make sense... don't take the big cut unless you HAVE to.

I always ask for more at offer time anyway...

But I just sent you several ads. Those aren't fitting?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Oh they're definitely fitting, I'll reach out to them tonight for sure

ewwhite

Plenty of nice looking Linux positions on Craigslist.

losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/sad/3194352160.html

losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/sad/3192544370.html

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Craigslist has been nothing but trouble for me in the past

ewwhite

18:51

losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/sad/3192076642.html (a little low)

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite That's about half of what I'd expect for that position

Thank you for your input on this, I don't really have any more-senior admins to guide me, so your advice is invaluable to me

That goes for all of you!

:D

ewwhite

losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/sof/3190624567.html

CL isn't bad. Most people crosspost. Mahalo.com put an ad here on Careers.SE, but also on CL

losangeles.craigslist.org/lac/sof/3188695963.html

No interest in NBC?

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas That's absurd unless it's like, mega-startup culture with sweat equity being handed out. Ar eyou being given a percentage of the company? Stock options? Something?

ewwhite

+1 for ASCII art

1

Q: Configure the management interface on a Cisco ASA to allow access from an existing management LAN

I have a new Cisco ASA-5512-X firewall, which is going into an existing network stack to separate some specific client servers from the rest of our LAN (i.e. not as the edge device). The existing LAN infrastructure already has a management VLAN, to which all of my switches and the IPMI ports of ...

cisco-asa

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas I've looked at gigs and things on CL. It's usually a total circus of stupid ads wanting "I have need to recode my website to calculate the weight growth of pregnant alpacas. Also, a shipping module, CRM and space invaders." Oh, and you get paid $15 an hour.

Joel E Salas

19:01

@ewwhite I'd be very interested, but entertainment is amazingly insular. Friend of a friend is generally how it goes from what I can see

ewwhite

mmhmm

100 Megabit all the way!

Joel E Salas

Can someone way smarter than me tell me how to avoid the reboot to update udev for networking after I clone a VM

MDMarra

19:17

0

Q: Mirrored Virtual Server - Database

We're running an application (20 concurrent users during business hours) on VM Ware: Windows 2003 SQL Server 2005 The server is mirrored to another corporate office (Approx 150 miles apart). Sorry, I don't know what application is being used to replicate these sites. Is this becomming a co...

virtualization database-replication

what the shit

WesleyDavid

@MDMarra The things that irritates me the most, is that instead of hustling and getting all the information needed to make an accurate assessment, the person just asks a bad question, admitting he knows little to nothing of the situation, and then expects a productive discussion.

"I have a system. I don't know how it works. Is it best practice? Is it safe?"

MikeyB

@JoelESalas Take out the udev rules before you shut it down to clone. Or, modify the rules to be based on PCI address instead of MAC address.

Joel E Salas

@MikeyB Perfect. Thank you, I'll do that

WesleyDavid

I want a product recommendation site. =(

voretaq7

@MDMarra BANG. HEADSHOT.

WesleyDavid

19:22

@voretaq7 Poor Jeff. He won't like us anymore.

voretaq7

@WesleyDavid No and No.

@WesleyDavid I was as nice as I could be.

and at least your question was answerable ("Is not having any idea how your environment works the best current practice?" => "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" ; "Is not having any idea how your environment works safe?" => "ABSOLUTELY NOT!")

ewwhite

19:50

Signed offer letter...

GULP

Ward

Somebody vote for 2 of Bart's questions to push him over...
http://serverfault.com/users/59789/bart-de-vos

voretaq7

@ewwhite Where ya movin' to?

Jeff Ferland

@Ward Dammit I've been slacking

voretaq7

@Ward right, delete bart's highest-scored answers... got it

Basil

@Ward done

ewwhite

19:53

@voretaq7 Hmmm, Chicago.

Ward

@ewwhite Yeah, I missed a lot of your recent comments here, where you going?

ewwhite

@vore But will be in NYC every month or so.

Ward

@voretaq7 Yeah, this question could go...

59

A: Is it normal to get hundreds of break-in attempts per day?

A few 100 is just fine... Last month I found one of my servers had 40k failed attempts. I went trough the trouble of plotting them: Map Once I changed the ssh port and implemented Port Knocking, the number dropped to 0 :-)

ewwhite

@Ward Just making a transition

Basil

Anyone know AIX well enough to know why tar -cvfR BrocadeSupportSaves.tar * didn't work?

/em stares at @MikeyB

Hmm, getting rid of the R worked

Iain

20:06

@Basil it's normally expected that the f is followed by the filename

voretaq7

@Ward BALEETED! :P

(well actually locked -- I think it's pretty thoroughly answered, and probably not the most on-topic...)

Basil

@Iain fair enough, plus I didn't need the R to get all the subdirectories anyways

Iain

@Basil tar cvRf ... probably would have worked

Basil

@Iain If the default is to use my directories, though, what would that R do?

Ward

Why don't more of you review a couple close votes a day?

serverfault.com/review-beta/close/10442

Justin Dearing

20:12

And now for something completely different content.bandzoogle.com/users/brentalfloss/images/content/…

Basil

Justin Dearing

@WesleyDavid it is best ostrich practice!

Chris S

@JustinDearing Er, I'm not sure it's all that funny and you definitely have to know Star Trek to get the joke in the first place.

Michael Hampton

@ward I do.

Justin Dearing

@ChrisS point taken

Iain

20:15

@Basil I don't know AIX so I was just guessing that (as it is POSIX) it would be like Solaris. Looking at the manual for AIX tar it says -R Use recursion when directories are specified... so I don't know why it works without it

Basil

@Iain That was my thought :P

Iain

try tar -cvf test.tar some_directory and tar cvRf test.tar some_directory to see if there is a difference

WesleyDavid

"Kitty kitty doesn't like, kitty kitty doesn't like..."
Thanks @voretaq7, now that song is stuck in my head.

Justin Dearing

@WesleyDavid dichotomy kitty doesn't like that he likes the song

WesleyDavid

@JustinDearing It not hard to be unable to not find what the kitty doesn't like.

Chris S

20:19

voretaq7

@WesleyDavid Good.

@ChrisS Clearly YOU never tried to catch a train in Astoria...

Chris S

20:34

►

Way too much time on their hands...

Iain

hmm floppy drives - somewhere I have a box of Verbatim 8" hard sectored disks

voretaq7

@Iain I have an IMSAI 8" drive around somewhere which I believe can read your hard-sector disks...

and a cable to attach it to my C64.

Ward

@Iain you always beat me to the </nostalgia> comments... I only kept one 8" floppy, from an IBM DisplayWriter system.

voretaq7

Fun Fact: The Commodore 1541 had approximately the same CPU horsepower as the C64 & VIC-20.

WesleyDavid

I just stopped frobbing around with S3 long enough to make some tea and as I was tooling around in the kitchen I was whistling the melody.

I hate you, @voretaq7 t(>_<t)

voretaq7

20:43

you don't hate me.
I'm just one of the many things that the kitty doesn't like.

Iain

@voretaq7 I no longer have a drive that I can put it in we got rid of our last Schlumberger system 7700 system some years ago

SpacemanSpiff

okay, i google around a bit, hoping someone knows of these things

how do you use more than one nic with a hyper-v virtual switch?

nic teaming outside of hyper-v, then add the team?

Friday at the office

Linux Systems Administrator at Mahalo.com

Sr. DevOps Engineer - eHow at Demand Media

DevOps Engineer at deviantART

Transcript for