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Preparing for the Worst in FreeBSD
LiquidPC writes "In Part I of this series,
Michael Lucas, from ONLamp.com, goes over preparing your FreeBSD computer for the worst in case of a system panic."
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Very recently the head of our IT department decided that we were going to switch every one of our networks over to Windows XP Professional.
Windows is an Operating System, not a network. Your network probably "runs" TCP/IP, Netbios, and a handful of other protocols. Windows runs on desktops, laptops, and servers.
he decided to change all of the Computer Administrator passwords on a few of the XP Professional boxes sitting around in the server room. This caused absolute havoc, as Dell had failed to send along administrator passwords for the new boxes. Our company could not make use of these computers for three days. It took Dell that long to get us the administrator passwords.
This last paragraph is a touch more concerning...first of any Windows box I've purchased from Dell, or others, have no administrator password, or are set to "admin". Why would Dell have set specific passwords for your systems? I'm just a little bit confused.
On a related point, even for those systems that come pre-installed with an OS, it's [my] standard practice to bare-iron re-install from scratch. I'm not a huge fan of MS (quite the opposite), however, in the hands of someone who has a solid understanding in operating systems, it IS possible to build a stable Windows box. I have an NT 4 server, running a database, and a mail exchange, that has an uptime of 94 days. It was rebooted for a disk addition. It was up 86 days prior to that (it's installation date.)
That said, I prefer and use Linux and Solaris much more frequently, and, unlike the windows example above, am not surprised by the continued uptime of my hosts! ;)
Now, I've gotta ask...why did you just sit at your desk waiting for the bad news?? I've (and my VP) have recieved visits from MS cronies in the past. The thing is, those people are sales/marketing weenies. Get in on the meeting, and use your own skills to ask very pointed questions. Its not very difficult to run circles around these droids. Keep it calm, polite, and just bury them in the technical truths which they simply cannot refute. If they try to call you a "Linux zealot" you know you're on the right track, and they're in the process of losing their cool. As long as you keep it together, and don't let them change the topic, I've found that its pretty easy to expose others in my company to MS's shortcomings...right in front of MS folks themselves.
If you just sit back and let non-techs make tech decisions without, at least, making them aware of the ramifications of such things, then you really can't blame them. Its kind-of what they say about voting, right? If you don't vote, you don't have the right to complain?
Now, if you work in a super huge corporation where such things are a fact of life, I'm sorry, and you probably don't have a choice. Well...other than to extract yourself from between Mr. Rock, and Mr. Hardplace.