what did you learn today?

chalex · Oct 23, 2008

Here are two things I learned today:<BR><BR>1) tips for mixing SAS and SATA in one enclosure:<BR>http://storageadvisors.adaptec...in%E2%80%99t-so-joe/<BR>2) Getting "kernel: Machine check events logged" in your /var/log/messages on your x86_64 machine? Use 'mcelog' to get more info:<BR>http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel.../x86_64/machinecheck

BajanDude · Oct 23, 2008

Exchange can do 'Send As' as well as 'Send on behalf of', with the former leaving no obvious trace in the standard mail view.

Barmaglot · Oct 23, 2008

mRemote is awesome. Especially in a workgroup environment because it can store its data on an SQL server to be accessed by multiple users concurrently.

ghub005 · Oct 23, 2008

I learned that contrary to popular opinion, most SAS RAID controllers are crippled pieces of crap.<BR><BR>As an example - Adaptec currently ship 12 SAS RAID controllers of which only 3 have firmware that supports more than 8 drives (these are hard limits, drive multiplexers aren't supported by those cards either).

zero · Oct 23, 2008

My internet-facing hosts are more secure than I thought http://nmap.org/download.html

Whittey · Oct 23, 2008

That Jimmy Johns is freaky fast only when ordering for a family. An office-sized order is not freaky fast. It was still freaky good.<BR><BR>McAfee Agent 4 is significantly more reliable than 3.6, but still isn't even close to "good enough."<BR><BR>Setting permissions on cifs shares on an openfiler box with a good sized AD is a 30minute process. Which sucks.<BR><BR><BR>-=Whittey=-

K0DE · Oct 23, 2008

I am tired of IBM's shitty support. I think we may move to Dell (600k/year at least, just for server/storage).<BR><BR>I used to work there, their stuff was good. Now its like they intentionally make it hard for you to get what you need.

SideAngleSide · Oct 23, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by chalex:<BR>2) Getting "kernel: Machine check events logged" in your /var/log/messages on your x86_64 machine? Use 'mcelog' to get more info:<BR>http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel.../x86_64/machinecheck </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>mcelog + kdump = Everything I need to know when hardware fails.<BR><BR>Today, I learned that NFSv4 is much easier to support than NFSv3 (so long portmapper). I can now very easily tunnel NFS connections over SSH for systems that don't support SSHFS.

Barmaglot · Oct 23, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by ghub005:<BR>As an example - Adaptec currently ship 12 SAS RAID controllers of which only 3 have firmware that supports more than 8 drives (these are hard limits, drive multiplexers aren't supported by those cards either). </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Their website says otherwise. Pretty much every controller they currently ship (which is way more than 12) supports either 128 (for series 2 and 3) or 256 (for series 5) devices. The only ones that don't support expanders are RAID 4000 and series 1 controllers (the latter are based on SiI chips, I think).

ghub005 · Oct 23, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Barmaglot:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by ghub005:<BR>As an example - Adaptec currently ship 12 SAS RAID controllers of which only 3 have firmware that supports more than 8 drives (these are hard limits, drive multiplexers aren't supported by those cards either). </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Their website says otherwise. Pretty much every controller they currently ship (which is way more than 12) supports either 128 (for series 2 and 3) or 256 (for series 5) devices. The only ones that don't support expanders are RAID 4000 and series 1 controllers (the latter are based on SiI chips, I think). </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Brain fart! I meant to write LSI not Adaptec.

Brimstar · Oct 23, 2008

I learned that for some reason our Switchvox with Aastra phones setup will use BLF buttons, but only if the configuration is pushed from the TFTP server and not if you configure them by hand using the web interface. I also learned that attempting to do testing on our Aastra phones using the web configuration option is probably a bad idea.

Barmaglot · Oct 23, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by ghub005:<BR>Brain fart! I meant to write LSI not Adaptec. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Ah, LSI is another story, I'm not familiar with them at all as they aren't sold in Israel except as Dell and Intel rebrands, and Dell PERC5/PERC6 do support expanders.

thecyborg · Oct 23, 2008

Bags of Crap (Woot) are nearly impossible to successfully order.

bombcar · Oct 23, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Barmaglot:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by ghub005:<BR>Brain fart! I meant to write LSI not Adaptec. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Ah, LSI is another story, I'm not familiar with them at all as they aren't sold in Israel except as Dell and Intel rebrands, and Dell PERC5/PERC6 do support expanders. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>We had an Adaptec SAS card that would support 24 drives but could only build 12 drive RAID packs.<BR><BR>I also learned that next day HP support is <I>next day</I>, is in, it arrived before I did.

pokrface · Oct 23, 2008

I learned that IBM's XIV arrays are actually kind of awesome. It's very rare to see something stomp a Symmetrix DMX-4.

Megalodon · Oct 23, 2008

I learned how to do large IP lists in OpenBSD. If you're running 64-bit you can do entire RBLs.

BitPoet · Oct 24, 2008

more about Lustre, more about figuring out which locks are getting hogged.<BR><BR>still loving the new job learning curve.

Paul M · Oct 24, 2008

I learned that Hyper-V is a lot of fun on a fast box with 16GB of RAM.

Capnhowdy24 · Oct 24, 2008

I learned that HP DL380 G4 + brand spankin new ubuntu server setup + lots of walkthrus for ebox + ispconfig are plenty of fun to kick through on a friday.

Bastard · Oct 24, 2008

Sharepoint in combination with Exchange 2007 and OCS 2007 is pretty cool.

goForth · Oct 24, 2008

The day before vacation everybody finds some bullshit piece of work or server request or database voodoo or software install or stupid question or piece of code that has to be done right now! And I know that when I get back, none of the stuff will have been used by them yet... -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif --

scorp508 · Oct 24, 2008

No matter how well informed you keep your organization and do your job during these crazy patch events, those in charge of sending out end-user notifications will fuck it up and make you look like an idiot by sending out incorrect information.

Tornadus · Oct 24, 2008

When working with multiple tables and potentially hundreds of records, it's best to use multiple statements instead of trying to force everything in one.<br><br>Pardon my french, but it was a total cluster-fuck.<br><br> -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_mad.gif --

jdsmith575 · Oct 24, 2008

We've done a poor job of training the new folks.<BR><BR>Lots of people are lazy/stupid, and I want my job title changed to "Fucking Persistent".

Rick25 · Oct 25, 2008

That applying a deadline to a WSUS update that requires a reboot does not give the user a option to delay the reboot even if their GPO settings normally would

montegard · Oct 25, 2008

I learned that sending people who just don't "get it" to training usually just means you've spent some money and they still don't "get it".

jshiplett · Oct 25, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by montegard:<BR>I learned that sending people who just don't "get it" to training usually just means you've spent some money and they still don't "get it". </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I can confirm this.

scorp508 · Oct 26, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by euri:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by montegard:<BR>I learned that sending people who just don't "get it" to training usually just means you've spent some money and they still don't "get it". </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I can confirm this. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>++ and the extortionist unions will still prevent you from firing them.

Rick25 · Oct 26, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by scorp508:<BR>++ and the extortionist unions will still prevent you from firing them. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>+++

sjg · Oct 26, 2008

That VMware Converter is awesomely awesome.<BR><BR>Used it a couple of times before on healthy, non-critical stuff. Client had a very sick win2k/ex5.5 server with all sorts of config oddities (was effectively a one-node cluster, for one thing). It had corrupted it's information store and had real problems with it's logfile and DB arrays - just copying a few small files about would take forever, sometimes hanging it either temporarily or permanently. IS far too big to be fixed with eseutil or isinteg, and restoring it from tape would fail after a couple of hours at horribly slow speeds.<BR><BR>They'd had some disk failures in the past but the controller was quite happy with the state of things, and no relevant events to say something was amiss. No spare controllers to try either.<BR><BR>Fortunately they had an ESXi box which we'd prepared for another project. Put on Converter, set the ESXi box as the target, a little over an hour later it's virtualized self was running perfectly. Restore worked great, IS came up fine, the world is saved.

Dilbert · Oct 27, 2008

Today I've learned that the purpose of a raised floor in a wiring closet is to grow and cultivate a zip-tie garden. Just like mushrooms after the rain: bits and pieces of zip ties, and sometimes complete zip ties, springing up from the floor, and when you ask no one seems to know how they got there. -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif --

GeekusMaximus · Oct 28, 2008

Keeping a Cisco AP with autonomous firmware laying around is a good idea when the rest of your AP's have the lwapp firmware.<BR><BR>It's a lot quicker than breaking out the TFTP server if you need to one off something in a hurry.

duffbeer703 · Oct 28, 2008

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by montegard:<BR>I learned that sending people who just don't "get it" to training usually just means you've spent some money and they still don't "get it". </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I've observed five strategies that are used to isolate the inept from the productive where firing isn't an option.<BR><BR> <UL TYPE=SQUARE><BR> <LI>Develop tedious, repetitive tasks for them to perform. They'll either do them and leave you alone or find alternate employment.<BR> <LI>Create an "Island of Misfit Toys". Concentrate the inept together, away from productive people.<BR> <LI>Give them nominal responsibilities with no impact. "Customer Liason", "Junior Project Manager", "Senior Statistician", etc<BR> <LI>Put them in charge of service requests.<BR> </UL>

scorp508 · Oct 28, 2008

<blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by duffbeer703:<br>I've observed five strategies that are used to isolate the inept from the productive where firing isn't an option.<br><br> <ul type="SQUARE">
<br> <li>Develop tedious, repetitive tasks for them to perform. They'll either do them and leave you alone or find alternate employment.<br> </li>
<li>Create an "Island of Misfit Toys". Concentrate the inept together, away from productive people.<br> </li>
<li>Give them nominal responsibilities with no impact. "Customer Liason", "Junior Project Manager", "Senior Statistician", etc<br> </li>
<li>Put them in charge of service requests.<br> </li>
</ul> </div>
</blockquote>
<br><br>1. Then the union steps in and says you're penalizing them.<br><br>2. We have one and its fun to watch, but unfortunately they run a system that the rest of us depend on and it ends up affecting us.<br><br>3. Ugh.... position bloat.<br><br>4. Then they can't handle the SRs and the productive ops people step in to do the work anyways.<br><br>I really wish firing was easier. -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif --

Zaphod · Oct 28, 2008

<blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by scorp508:<br><blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by duffbeer703:<br>I've observed <b>five</b> strategies that are used to isolate the inept from the productive where firing isn't an option.<br><br> <ul type="SQUARE">
<br> <li>Develop tedious, repetitive tasks for them to perform. They'll either do them and leave you alone or find alternate employment.<br> </li>
<li>Create an "Island of Misfit Toys". Concentrate the inept together, away from productive people.<br> </li>
<li>Give them nominal responsibilities with no impact. "Customer Liason", "Junior Project Manager", "Senior Statistician", etc<br> </li>
<li>Put them in charge of service requests.<br> </li>
</ul> </div>
</blockquote>
<br><br>1. Then the union steps in and says you're penalizing them.<br><br>2. We have one and its fun to watch, but unfortunately they run a system that the rest of us depend on and it ends up affecting us.<br><br>3. Ugh.... position bloat.<br><br>4. Then they can't handle the SRs and the productive ops people step in to do the work anyways.<br><br>I really wish firing was easier. -- View image here: http://episteme.meincmagazine.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif -- </div>
</blockquote>
<br> <br> <br>I take it that the fifth way is to have them assassinated by ninjas.

telecommando · Oct 30, 2008

A small South American man can be a bad ass at running Cat 6 up 5 floors.<BR>You have to be painstakingly explicit when you give interns instructions.<BR>ie: "Put 2 monitors on each desk, plug the monitors into power, plug the monitors into the computers, turn the computers on, turn the monitors on ..."

irish · Oct 31, 2008

Both IBM and VMWare reps that those respective companies send out to client sites really don't know their product all that well, but are great at wasting contracting hours/dollars.

tinyMan · Oct 31, 2008

ZFS is as cool as it is made out to be.<BR><BR>We have a host that has 4x 2gb FC connections to a disk array. When reading or scrubbing that array we see damn near line-speed:<BR><BR><pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">
zpool iostat 10
capacity operations bandwidth
pool used avail read write read write
------------ ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
disk_storage 19.6T 39.2T 6.09K 0 779M 0
disk_storage 19.6T 39.2T 6.12K 0 783M 0
disk_storage 19.6T 39.2T 6.15K 0 786M 0
disk_storage 19.6T 39.2T 6.11K 0 782M 0

</pre><BR><BR>Just reading from the array (a dd to /dev/null) nets 780 MB/s, just 20 MB/s under the speed we achieved when directly accessing the underlying block devices directly. And very, very close to the theoretical max speed you can get using 4x 2gbs fiber paths.<BR><BR><pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">
zpool status
pool: disk_storage
state: ONLINE
scrub: scrub in progress, 0.25% done, 8h2m to go

zpool iostat 10
capacity operations bandwidth
pool used avail read write read write
------------ ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
disk_storage 19.6T 39.2T 5.47K 0 691M 0
disk_storage 19.6T 39.2T 5.31K 0 671M 0
disk_storage 19.6T 39.2T 5.46K 0 690M 0
</pre><BR><BR>The scrub, which is actually doing some processing on the data is proceeding at ~690 MB/s, which is way above what I expected out of the anemic CPUs in the T2000 we are using for the testing.<BR><BR>The best part (so far) is that it whipped up a ~60TB filesystem on a bunch of devices in 5 seconds.<BR><BR><pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">
zpool list
NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT
disk_storage 58.8T 19.6T 39.2T 33% ONLINE -
</pre>

Zhengyi · Oct 31, 2008

I learned that when you move an entire Helpdesk & IT Ops group downstairs, away from every other person in the company, two things happen:<BR><BR>1) There's a hell of a lot fewer walkups and interruptions, so suddenly there's a lot more work getting done, and<BR><BR>2) There's a hell of a lot more people filing tickets instead of just walking up and asking for something, so suddenly upper management is a bit more receptive to pleas for additional hands.<BR><BR>Oh yeah, and sometimes a complete reset of your desk environment is just the ticket to finally getting it properly (re)organized.

silconous · Nov 3, 2008

pattern matching when seating up vxfs file systems. When adding 31 100 GB luns this is a blessing.

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