The Comms Room

Joel E Salas

00:07

@MilesErickson I can't really take a vacation?

:(

Adrian

00:24

@MDMarra Nice. That, right there, is how it's done.

Matt Bear

heh I just switched my displays around, now everythings all screwed up!

left is right, up is down!

instead of 1-2-3-4 it now goes 2-4-3-1

Michael Hampton

01:17

nbcnews.com/id/51886388/ns/local_news-boston_ma/#.UZMgtEkbjYU

Matt Bear

@MichaelHampton used to do that myself at school

Michael Hampton

@MattBear What, feed meters, or get sued for it?

Matt Bear

they gave me a BS parking ticket, when I paid them, I straight up told them that the ticket was going to cost them 20 times what it cost me

@MichaelHampton yeah fed meters

Michael Hampton

@MattBear haha, don't do it in Keene or you'll get sued for "harassing" the meter maids!

Matt Bear

@MichaelHampton nooope, they can try to sue but there is precedent

I made sure I was untouchable before I did it

Michael Hampton

01:24

Hehe, so that is why I had to spend all day on an emergency project.

Matt Bear

I got a ticket for unloading school equipment for the school out of my personal vehicle in an unloading zone

because I "Left the truck unattended"

Joel E Salas

I have to reverse-engineer this busted Jenkins/Ant install

Michael Hampton

@MattBear Doh!

Joel E Salas

f my l, I don't know how I'm going to do this

Michael Hampton

@JoelESalas rm -rf /

Joel E Salas

01:25

@MichaelHampton Do you support a CI infrastructure?

Matt Bear

oh yeah, fucker was watching, waited for me to go inside

Michael Hampton

@JoelESalas God, no. I keep the devs on their side of the fence.

I only let them use capistrano to deploy since I wouldn't have to actually do anything.

Joel E Salas

rofl

THAT'S NOT CI AND YOU KNOW IT

Michael Hampton

Yeah, I know it. I'm just saying.

The main thing, though, is if the devs break something, I don't get blamed. So I don't care much :)

Though I'm also fortunate to be working with devs who aren't complete morons.

Joel E Salas

Ugh, I want more CI resources.

Seems like most CI people are developers with above-average bash skills

Necessarily they think like developers, and CI is a bit more than just that

Matt Bear

01:35

@MichaelHampton just watched some of the videos from them, yeah thats harrassment

Andrew

@JoelESalas define CI?

continuous integration?

Michael Hampton

My primary problem with Jenkins is that this is a Java-free shop, as far as I can make it so.

TheCleaner

01:58

0

Q: How to process incoming email sent to a catchall address (and a few valid email addresses)

I need to build a web application where people can send an email to custom email addresses (like - [email protected], or [email protected]) and the email address '1week' and '2days' is used to perform certain actions on that email. I looked at this Postfix - How to process inbound emails?, parti...

What say ye? Belongs as new question or simply comments on the original answer of the other question?

Adrian

Woah. That would be cool.

BlueOrigin.com has SysAdmin opening at the local office.

THAT would be a hell of a lot more fun than working for Amazon...

MDMarra

02:25

@Adrian if memory serves, @ewwhite interviewed at SpaceX

Joel E Salas

@MDMarra SpaceX is a shitty place to work

MDMarra

Why do you hate progress?

ewwhite

02:55

Sitting alone in a NY pizza joint... Wondering where I went wrong in life...

2

MDMarra

I'm configuring SCSM at 11pm in my lab for a demo tomorrow

ewwhite

I just talked to a group of girls here who were bitching about Birchbox, the job I didn't take here in NY.

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite Bullet dodged?

I was in a cafe once and the two gents behind me were from a company who we were considering going into a partnership with us. Overheard their conversation by pure chance, and based on what they were saying to eachother, decided to politely decline the deal.

ewwhite

A little. The team was a superstar team.

Yeah, that's happened a lot. I used to eat lunch in places where trading interviews took place.

Superstar team, but not enough infra to get me wet.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Where where!

Mark Henderson

03:05

@JoelESalas Whore

ewwhite

A place in NY @joel

Ward

03:40

@Adrian I wouldn't consider moving to the US, but that job would certainly tempt me to...

Joel E Salas

►

Andrew

04:03

thehawkeyeinitiative.com‎

allegedly SFW but I wouldn't bet on it

0

Q: How to configure 6 network cards in Debian 7

I am new in Debian and I have machine with 6 (six) network cards. It's gona be a cheap router, but Linux makes ethX devices only for 4 network cards (eth0...eth3): root@dc-02:~# dmesg | grep eth [ 1.474080] 8139too 0000:00:0c.0: eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xd400, 00:50:ba:ca:90:87, IRQ 19 [ ...

linux-networking debian-wheezy

Ward

Just thought of this video again, it's still amazing ...

►

Andrew

So the main question we have about Scope is how to define "professional" and I think Iain nailed it: we're professionals for professionals, not professionals for amateurs (that's The IT Crowd), not amateurs for amateurs (that's Yahoo Answers).

Where is everyone? did the sysdamin rapture occur?

2

Jacob

04:27

@Andrew nope

Andrew

05:32

"The last message was posted 1 hour ago."

Mark Henderson

06:23

@ewwhite - did you ever end up replacing your 5510 in your new DC?

Jenny D

07:04

Morning

Iain

G'day

Delightful cats left a mouse running round the house this morning

Jenny D

@Iain I'm sure they'll rectify the "running" part at some point

Iain

I caught it and put it outside

Jenny D

One of mine brought in a live bird once. A thrush or something. I managed to catch it and put it back out, and it flew off after a while. Took ages getting all the feathers and blood cleaned up.

Iain

@JennyD we get 2 or 3 small birds - usually greenfinches a year brought in and a couple of mice but frogs are the worst as they scream

Jenny D

07:30

@Iain So far only one of mine has hunted, though I think the MC is trying to. But I'm doing my best to teach them that if they bring live toys home the toy will be taken away from them.

The Birma used to bring home tennis balls from the nearby public court.

Dan

08:34

My cat just eats flies and the like :(

Jenny D

@Dan Are you sure it's a cat and not a spider?

Dan

@JennyD Definitely, because she eats spiders too. :(

To be fair, I think it's primarily because she sucks at hunting.

Iain

we had one cat that loved to catch flies and carry them round in her mouth

we think she liked the buzzing

Dan

Haha, that's awful

tombull89

encoding a video on my desktop...hnng.

Cold T

09:05

oooh goody i get to interview people today

morning all!

Dan

I hate interviewing folk

Cold T

how comes

i've never interviewed before, i was always on the receiving end!

Dan

Just one of those things, not my cup of tea

RobM

its surprisingly hard work

When you've never interviewed people before and you're being interviewed you think "it's alright for them". Then one day you become an interviewer and discover its a bother from both sides of the table...

Dan

@RobM That too, if you have a day of interviews you're going to be knackered come the end

RobM

09:12

yep, had that yesterday

Dan

@RobM Anyone good?

RobM

Yeah a couple of possibles

Dan

Excellent

RobM

So assuming one of them accepts the offer it was time well spent.

But yeah between that yesterday and Exchange DR city at the start of the week i feel knackered now!

Dan

What's the role again?

RobM

09:13

experienced technician role.

Dan

Ah. 2nd line sort of thing?

RobM

no no, 1st line that can be trusted to be left by themselves and coached into a 2nd line role and maybe be given a few "operator" level tasks

Dan

Ah!

RobM

I'd love to get another "2nd line" kinda person too but i'll take whatever I can get

Dan

Hehe

RobM

09:15

Even though I'm supposed to be a senior sysadmin, fairly hands on, I'm spending more and more time planning and less time on the tools

I'm actually quite pleased to be sitting here testing Microsoft DPM

Jenny D

I just got this as a reopen test question:

8

Q: Do I need to restart server after a linux kernel update?

I am using webmin (which uses yum) to install updates on my server, and it somestimes updates kernel as well including kernel-firmware and kernel-headers. Do I need to restart the server after a kernel update?

linux yum

This is the kind of question I don't think belongs here, but the site says "There are no major problems with this question".

Seriously. Not knowing how to handle a kernel update, is not a major problem?

RobM

I really don't know what to say about that. It's a beginner question for sure. The whole debate about whether or not questions like that belong here and at what level is endless

I don't mind beginner questions when I can see a bit more evidence than shown in that question that they've tried to figure it out and just need a little push to grasp the idea they're struggling with.

There's a strong argument for saying "not professional, move to U&L" for sure.

Dan

It's always going to be tough

Jenny D

Getting "no major problems" on a question like that, which to me clearly falls outside of the scope of the site, puts a real damper on the desire to help out on the site.

Dan

Who said no major problems?

Jenny D

09:24

I should maybe take that to meta, though. There's a bigger issue which is what questions get used as test questions.

Dan

Oh, sorry, reopen test

I'm miles away

tombull89

I had my first (that I remember) failed audit earlier. I am dissapoint.

Jenny D

I am dissapoint that several people voted up that question...

ewwhite

@MarkHenderson At my new DC, I upgraded my 5510 to security plus

tombull89

09:51

Network Engineering SE is now is public beta.

Dan

Good questions, to be fair, I'm still a little sad we couldn't integrate though

RobM

me too Dan. They were so hung up on the name they were not even willing to discuss the idea any further.

Dan

Yeah, it was all very childish IMHO

SmallClanger

@tombull89 Cool, let's spam it with "Halp, my AOL are borekd!" questions. Drag them down to our level.

4

Cold T

@Dan me three, a little sad it wasn't placed here

ewwhite

09:55

@RobM I'll look.

RobM

I still like Serverfault and I actually get a lot of value out of the chat as well as a chance to talk to some nice people and post random disturbing pictures, but I do think its going down hill a little.

Dan

@RobM Yeah, I love chat. My only thought is that I think it's natural to think things are getting worse

RobM

@dan you may have a point

Dan

Join any club, forum, workplace, social group etc and the oldies will nearly always tell you how things are getting worse

ewwhite

I can ask all of those funky financial trading networking questions and see if I can suss out the hardcore engineers...

RobM

09:57

lol true

tombull89

6

A: What should be in the FAQ?

Other topics we need to blacklist from the start: Certifications and exam study Home/SOHO networking ("My Linksys don't work!") How to illegally obtain software/publications Anything server-related (should be referred to Server Fault)

NAO SOHO stuff for you

Dan

3

Q: Drumming up site traffic from other SE sites?

Note: SE has asked that we NOT do this. See the accepted answer below. I've been keeping an eye on the questions feed from Server Fault. When I see juicy questions that should be here on NE, I've been commenting and mentioning this NE beta. I've had a couple authors who've then asked for an in...

discussion evangelism

Brilliant

ewwhite

@Dan you think? I thought it was offensive

Tom O'Connor

I love how you get an instant 100 Rep for associating an account.

Dan

@ewwhite You guys really don't get sarcasm, do you? :D

ewwhite

09:59

There is a Network Engineering SE site in private beta area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/52519/network-engineering if you would like an invite to the private beta (there are 500+ net eng users there already) send me an email (I need your email address to invite you) craig at constantine dot name (yes, dot name) — Craig Constantine May 10 at 17:49

tombull89

@ewwhite That's really petty considering it was in Private Beta when he posted it.

ewwhite

@Dan sarchasm

Dan

@ewwhite Hehe. Seriously though, we should try and remain not bitter and support them - but it's well out of order if they start trying to poach after everything they said about SF not serving the Network Engineering community

ewwhite

@tombull89 But @pauska came to the rescue!! And helped me find that almost all of the Cisco 2960's I know of have the same issue

tombull89

@ewwhite I know, that's the sort of questions I'd like to see more of on SF.

Actually yours are always well-written and have pictures and diagrams so while a lot of it may be well above my head I get a better idea of what's out there in "The Real World" (rather than education)

ewwhite

10:05

But I read this and think.... maybe I don't know anything.

6

Q: Can I use a Catalyst 2960-S for iSCSI?

I need to set up a modest iSCSI SAN with a few ESX hosts and one storage array. Can I get by using a Catalyst 2960-S or do I need to upgrade? Are there any special tweaks I need to make to the switch in order to handle iSCSI? The switch will be dedicated to the SAN; no other traffic except manage...

cisco-catalyst iscsi san

For my clients, getting a Cisco 2960 is a UPGRADE

Cold T

@ewwhite I'd say that is a very broad question and if it was on SF, I'd flag that up

ewwhite

@ColdT but the consensus there is NO.

Tom O'Connor

Well, i've answered my first question there .

Cold T

it's almost like a shopping question "I'm buying x, will it do the job for y"

ewwhite

@ColdT well, I never liked the approach of real network admins when it came to equipment. The typical SMB won't shell out $9k per Cisco 3750... when the local electronics store has Linksys or Netgear.

Or they buy a Cisco 2960 because that's the $2k switch offering....

and then find that it's unsuitable for basic iSCSI...

Dan

10:10

Problem here, is that this the argument we have on SF all of the time

Cold T

i suppose they learn the hard way

ewwhite

I feel like proper network engineers don't live in the world of realistic budget constraints.

either that, or Cisco is outrageously-priced...

Dan

@ewwhite And I reckon a lot of people think that about SysAdmins on this site!

But yeah, few people get to put in DC class switches just because they want to run some shared storage

ewwhite

Well, I've had to cater to cheap-ass customers, truly small sites where I made compromises because it made business sense... and then the unlimited budgets of the finance industry.

tombull89

If a place has a number of network engineers they probably don't have to want to worry about budgets.

Cold T

10:13

@tombull89 have to agree with you on this, a network consultancy and management company has surplus of high-end kit (brocade, juniper, cisco etc)

tombull89

Where as I'm in a school and us network admins have to do everything, with a slightly more limited budget.

Cold T

@tombull89 i think all schools, FE & HE has limited budget (currently FE sector is getting cut approx 300k per year for next 3 years)

tombull89

We've also got a limited budget, but it's not up to us where it's spent. Okay, if we need toners or parts then they get bought, but new projects aren't going to happen unless the higher-ups see "OOH SHINY ME WANTY" and that gets bought without a thought of how it's going to be used (See: Kindle Fire)

ewwhite

So that's a ~$70k switch that I needed to deploy at about 15 data centers...

and it was just what it was...

Sure... Cisco 4900M, a bunch of Xenpaks... 10GbE, 20-port copper module...

and the nuances were lost on me... we ended up discarding them for even lower-latency Arista switches.

(and no, I couldn't be bothered to rackmount it)

Stack Exchange

10:28

Standalone Sysadmin: Busy, Busy, Busy

posted on May 16, 2013 by Matt Simmons

I might not notice it at the time, but I can always tell how busy I am by how many blog posts I manage to get live. By my count, I've been doing about one every eight days so far this month (if you count this one). So I'm behind :-) So what's been going [...]

RobM

what @tombull89 said. It's much better for me at a college than it is for people at schools but education really doesn't understand the need to invest in infrastructure. It's fairly common for people to buy equipment without the "back end" to support it then get angry when they're told it won't work. I know that happens in business some of the time too of course, but education here in the UK seems to take pride in doing that kind of fuckup over and over and refusing point-blank to learn from it.

Dan

@tombull89 That's a turnaround:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/406275/ea-to-scrap-online-pass-program/

ewwhite

@RobM but sometimes the gear is overkill...

Oh, and this...

►

tombull89

@Dan Interesting. But now there's nothing to stop microtransaction hell. Faster reload? £3. New Gun? £2. Night vision scope? £4. Carry more ammo? £6.

RobM

oh yes

tombull89

10:40

@ewwhite I was surprised how calm the driver was, he slowed to a half instead of jamming on the brakes.

ewwhite

Right?

crazy. I'd be swerving all over the road!

tombull89

It's also remarkable how unharmed the deer is, it just pushed the window in.

RobM

That poor thing looks scared to death

Dan

@ewwhite Yeah, it seemed to take a LONG time to stop

I'd shit myself if I was suddenly sharing my vehicle with large wildlife

@tombull89 Good point, hope not. Hate pay to play / win etc

RobM

I was expecting the deer to do that

Dan

10:51

Hehe, it's lucky it didn't manage to get back out of the window

RobM

true enough

Dan

I have learnt from that video that deer move in a very strange way

It might be just me, but it looks like an old video game where the collision detection isn't quite right. It's doesn't seem to be interacting correctly with the environment :D

Iain

@tombull89 you about ?

tombull89

@Iain Yes, sorry. Was out on a job.

Iain

@tombull89 eh no worries - can you still flag stuff NC ?

tombull89

11:05

NC? Not a real question?

Oh, not constructive, yes.

Iain

@tombull89 can you flag this as NC please serverfault.com/questions/402159/…

tombull89

@Iain Done

Iain

thanks

RobM

@iain that DHCP post from the other day that got closed - the bloke seems to want to argue the whys when someone did give him an explanation so I'm starting a vote to delete

Iain

@RobM I've walked away from that - he really does need to ask the IETF about the why.

RobM

11:17

yeah, quite. If the hints in the answer + comments aren't enough then he needs to either ask the IETF or get a sodding life.

faker

11:28

my first day of on-call next week after a year break of doing it is a bank holiday. What could possibly go wrong? sigh

Dan

@RobM link?

RobM

-2

Q: What's the design rationale behind DHCP requiring two phase exchange, DHCPDISCOVER then DHCPREQUEST

RFC2131 section 3.1 describe the DHCP working flow as follows: Server Client Server (not selected) (selected) v v v | | | | Begins initi...

dhcp

Nathan C

Mornin'

Dan

@RobM urgh

RobM

yup

Iain

11:43

@Dan yeah - what was i the minds of the IETF members who deigned this protocol ... ?

Tom O'Connor

"Who can integrate Wordpress?"

.@harrysx @PatrickSocha ∫(wordpress) = wordpress²/2 #integratedwordpress

Tweeted by devopstom on May 16, 2013 at 11:45 AM in reply to harrysx

bwahahaha

tombull89

integrated...wordpress? does not compute.

Dan

@Iain The fools

Tom O'Connor

@RobM Belongs on Network Engineering. Legit.

Dan

@TomO'Connor Oh god, flashbacks to A Level maths

RobM

11:49

@TomO'Connor maybe we need a SE for "guess what was in the mind of x when they invented y" eh?

Tom O'Connor

No, i meant, Migrate it to NetworkEngineering, and leggit.

tombull89

Don't think questions could be migrated to beta sites...

How long before they start a petition to remove NE from SF's migration list? :P:

RobM

ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Iain

@tombull89 I see they consider (some) iptables questions to be on topic

syneticon-dj

It's in Beta already?

Iain

11:52

@TomO'Connor looks legit to me ;)

RobM

I'm knackered, can't wait for the weekend to be here. And I get new glasses. They should have finished sawing the bottoms off the two glass coke bottles by saturday

syneticon-dj

@RobM this sound appealing - looking at well-shaped bottoms all day long

from the nearmost distance possible

tombull89

@syneticon-dj yes, 1 day open beta

RobM

good point!

@syneticon-dj

and yeah I was shocked how quick it went into open beta

Dan

@RobM Well, I suppose it's only natural for Network Engineering to want to connect with the world, right?

syneticon-dj

11:58

Well, maybe there are more than three people to discuss MPLS or cellular networks. We'll see.

RobM

yup yup

Dan

@syneticon-dj I misread that as MPLS for cellular networks, and now I want

Asks Questions

tombull89

\o/

syneticon-dj

:)

RobM

Maybe we should make an effort to go tro ^h^h^h join their chat and build bridges with what should be a closely related site

4

tombull89

11:58

RobM

I'm sure network engineers enjoy disturbing my little pony gifs and cat movies as much as the rest of us

tombull89

@RobM We don't need to. Just wait until Evan C. gets wind of another site and he'll be over there like a shot.

3

Dan

Their chat is pretty dead

RobM

good points, both

he takes the same attitude to site bans that kids do to pokemon: gotta catch them all.

Dan

@RobM And Ariel Castro to women

RobM

12:03

heh....

Dan

Sorry, was reading an article earlier about him pleading not guilty. He really has utterly mental

tombull89

WTF EE. You want me to pay how much for a phone? Xperia Z, on EE £31/month, £209 up-front for the phone, 500MB of data and unlimited calls and texts. Compare that to 3: £33/month and £29 up front, unlimited data, 5000 texts and 500 minutes of calls.

RobM

Yeah, he's a total mentalist.

EE are also crazy.

tombull89

All very well saying "PHONE ONLY £29" but when they want a whopping £76/month...nah. Just...nah.

Tom O'Connor

@Dan not guilty to what?

RobM

12:08

EE do seem to have a bit of a bad rep. I'm not sure who my next iphone contract will be with

Dan

@TomO'Connor Kidnapping, raping and torturing those three girls?

tombull89

@RobM It's insanely expensive. Yes, 4G may be fast but no way in hell is it worth that much.

Iain

UK guys - opinions on Broadband suppliers - want to move away from O2/SKY

tombull89

We're with TalkTalk ADSL rolls eyes but that's so unreliable I got a 3 MiFi thing with 15GB allowance for £20/month.

Iain

@tombull89 thanks but I wouldn't entertain TT

tombull89

12:13

@Iain don't blame you. I've been pushing for Virgin for ages but parents "don't see an issue" with TalkTalk, ignoring the fact it drops out daily and, for me, makes gaming hard work.

gWaldo

Cross-topic chats in the same stream can be funny... Mobile providers discuission with "Kidnapping, raping, and torturing", and sadly that's not the most hyperbole I'm likely to hear today...

2

RobM

I'm still happy with Virgin. They're a long way from perfect in terms of customer service and so-on but overall the service availability is pretty good, decent bandwidth, etc. Their router/modem thing appears to have been assembled and coded by blind carpenters after a whole bottle of vodka each, but it still works well enough at the end of the day

Dan

@RobM Agreed, and once I switched to 5.0Ghz I was happy enough with their router. YouTube feels slow, though

Iain

@RobM we've been happy with O2 but since they sold their BB to Sky we decided to move on rather than support Mudockery

Dan

Their TiVo box is tragic, though, I may drop my TV subscription right down next time

RobM

12:15

@iain don't blame you.

user

@RobM that's the most precise description of Virgin that I've ever read.

Iain

With virgin does your IP address remain the same for long periods of time ?

RobM

@dan I have the Tivo - never owned any of the previous boxes from them or sky so I don't know how bad it is in comparison. But its still obvious how much more it could be than it is.

user

@Iain it depends if you are on cable,dsl,etc. I am on dsl and it changes ~once a week

RobM

@iain I don't think the cable one changes very often. It might depend on contention in your area of course

user

12:17

A friend in London has their cable service and it changes very rarely ~once a month perhaps

Iain

@user thanks - I don't have cable and with O2 my IP address is the same for years at a time so I can easily run a SixXS tunnel

Dan

@RobM I thought the old one was terrible, before I downgraded to Tivo...

syneticon-dj

@gWaldo ... because you are going to the Network Engineering chat?

RobM

yikes

gWaldo

@syneticon-dj lol, no.

Iain

12:18

Anyone with BT ?

Dan

No sorry

user

12:35

@Iain aaah niice!

Tom O'Connor

12:51

@Dan Who are we talking about now?

OHH.

Dan

Ding!

Tom O'Connor

@Dan I thought you were talking about EC.

At which point i was like. WTF?

tombull89

Heh, I thought that would be a bit much, even for him.

Dan

Yeah, and I think accusing him would probably be a little far even for us!

Transcript for