The Oft Frustrating Job of a Sysadmin

I_Love_Pocky! writes "Sysadmin Co. is a hilarious site built by some sysadmins at an ISP to help them vent their frustrations with dealing with non-tech types. This site is gives a hilarious picture of the daily frustrations of dealing with the inept. I am interested to see if these stories strike a chord with other admins out there."

Comments

My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[Tangential]

I'll never forget, he said "There was no way to know that the backups were failing without looking at the log file." This statement was made 17 months after the backups stopped working....

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[sharkey]

"There was no way to know that the backups were failing without looking at the log file."

From my efforts to get FreeS/WAN talking to a Cicso VPN concentrator:

Tech at other end: "Well, I'd have to copy and paste that section of log to send it to you."
--Trying to explain why it was so hard to send me the bit of his log that would tell me what was fucked up on his end.--

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[Junta]

My favorite conversation I had as a sysadmin highly frustrated years ago. We had some old SunOS systems and newer, but still old HP-UX systems that came in and was trying to get things to work at least relatively seamlessly, and for some reason or another something wasn't working right (was many years ago, have no idea, probably an nfs issue/nis configuration). Anyway, so one non-technical user was there as I was trying to get some basic, critical functionality restored. She was curious and asked:
'What's wrong with it, what are you trying to fix?'
My response: 'You see, our old network smokes crack, and these new systems.... well they smoke crack too, but it's different crack and they don't seem to be capatible crack'
She gota tad angry and obviously felt insulted by my talking down (probably thought I was talking that way because she was a girl) and said 'I can handle a more technical explanation than that!'
My honest response: "Well *I* can't"
At which point she understood and laughed rather than be angry.

Another one of my past stories, I was working with this contractor once and he was charged with the task of configuring a new HP-UX server that had been ordered. He hooks it up to the network alongside the main nfs/nis HP-UX server of the company, and strolls back to his desk and telnets into the IP he thought he was assigning. Suddenly he thinks 'hmmm.... the hostname of this new box happens to be the same as our main server... better change that.... wow, the IP it will enact in a minute too, that is *really* weird, well, better change, reboot and.....' Suddenly, across the company systems hung as the NIS/NFS server moved. The contractor had no idea what was happening until someone else took a look...

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[Brandybuck]

I have no idea what the technical problem was, but I heard this snippet of conversation as I was leaving work today...

"So the IT guy says he can't backup my work. But he can replace the filesystem with one that can be backed up in the future..."

Sometimes I think sysadmins can be as stupid as users.

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this one: The people that I was councelling regarding a new installation said that they could save a lot of money by installing each XP CD on two computers. When I asked why they thought they could do this, they stated that the CD said that it could be done. After much gentle prodding, they gave the reason for this, the package said, "for 1-2 CPUs". I explained that this meant motherboards that supported up to two CPUs. They looked at me like I was from mars.

These strange discussions went on and on with various subjects. I mean, they really didn't have a clue and would not accept any other view. In the end they chose not to work with me and choose someone who shared their level of "understanding".
(i.e their server has no firewall, backups aren't verified, no intrusion detection, no documentation, etc..)

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[Junta]

Story from my previous doomed job:

After I had been working there a while and mentioned time and time again their infrastructure *needed* a more controlled storage strategy (as it was, critical data was spread across many non-redundant systems (whichever happened to have free space at the time), and added drives ad-hoc to whatever was there. When time was up on the current storage and they were just about to order an extra 40 GB disk to slap in an Ultra 10 to bolster things, one drive crashed hard and took out critically important data. So I'm finally asked to, on a shoestring budget, give them a decent file server with some redundancy. I price out a PC system to put linux on and 6 cheap IDE disks and three IDE controllers, all new, warrantied parts that would interoperate in a standard way such that any one component failure would leave an easily recoverable situation, even if not necessarily highly available (even if totally destroyed, a tape unit would at least finally be effective being attached to more than 1% of the companies date).

After viewing this, the guy actually making the purchase says 'IDE is not enterprise quality! You can get SCSI storage on a shoestring budget!' and proceeds to acquire a rack-mountable, 14-or-so hotswap SCSI enclosure with 18 GB discs...from some random eBayer, no warranty, no service, no promises, and blows more than the entire budget I was told to go with on *just* a hardware RAID controller. After a week of them using it strongly against my warnings, the whole thing goes down unrecoverably bad... turns out the SCSI enclosure had a malfunctioning backplane and had been corrupting data all the while....

It turned out that before I was around they had a Maxtor IDE-based NAS with two drives per chain and running Windows 2000. One drive went bad and the system went down hard as the other drive on the chain was unreachable. Though all data was recovered when Maxtor sent a drive 2 days later (they didn't want to run non-redundant or with unsupported IDE disks for fear of losing something without recourse.. understandable at least) and so the business guy had learned IDE==bad, lose data.
I told him that in this case, it would be one drive per channel, and in the event of failure any ol drive from the local Best Buy would do and he wouldn't have to wait days for a replacement, but that whole job was an exercise of great accountibilty with zero authority to do anything about anything...

Almost every job before and the job I have held since has been infinitely better.

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[SlamMan]

You also have to remember, that their interpretation of what the IT guy said.

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[fanatic]

Why did a *contractor* have root on your *main* nfs server? Sounds like somebody besides the ocntractor (you, maybe?) screwed up, big-time.

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[christophersaul]

Because he needed root access to do the work for which he was hired?

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[johannesg]

Ah yes, "policy through phantom problem". Someone experienced a problem in the past, more often than not through his own incompetence, and has now made it into a hard policy that said technology/solution is off limits for everyone for all eternity, usually without any understanding what caused the problem in the first place.

In one case I had a program printing a rather large amount of data to a lineprinter. Since the buffer on such a printer is not that large it would hang while waiting for the printer to do its thing. Users complained (and rightly so), and I put in a thread to make the printing fully asynchronous. Next I was told by my boss that threads were unacceptable, since "they cause crashes".

Well, I can imagine how a highly complex multithreaded application can run into problems, but a simple worker thread, with a simple interface to the rest of the application, well-protected by a mutex, is perfectly safe. But no; in some unspecified project in a long-forgotten past there had been a Problem (the details of which were of course, long lost) and as a result I was not to use threads since that ancient project, written by someone else in another part of the world, might somehow contaminate my program and cause the same problem here. Yeah, right.

In the end I was saved by the bell - by the time my manager found out the project was already into acceptance testing (and doing just fine), and removing the thread would obviously be A Change, which would necessitate a new expensive acceptance test cycle. Since it never caused problems, the offending thread was allowed to live.

Of course at this time (five years later or so) everybody remembers that there was a responsiveness problem in a _PRE-RELEASE_ version of the software. That problem was fixed BEFORE RELEASE, and has never resurfaced. But with each new release we are still diligenty checking for "recurrence of responsiveness problem", because, hey, you cannot really trust those programming types right?

Don't misunderstand me here: actually I don't mind we are checking for a known old problem. What gets me is that nobody remembers what that problem actually was, or that we solved it about an hour after it was detected. What is the value of doing such a test if you do not know what you are testing for?

And of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have, at times, been forbidden to use threads, exceptions, templates, multiple inheritance, sockets (!?), and various other C++ features on account of all of these "causing crashes". One boss made me promise never to reuse code because that way I would also "reuse all the bugs".

It has became something of a hobby of mine to track policies to their initial event, and more often than not you find some minor problem (that could easily be solved, and more often than not _was_) has been blown out of all proportion, becoming a guiding principle for entire departments or even companies. And if nothing else, that's pretty sad...

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[Junta]

Well, that was another beef I had, the President of the company fought all my attempts at trying to enhance security. His belief was that it just 'got in the way', and that 'he trusts the employees, it's a small company'. Any suggestion that incompetence was a large concern, well, that also got met with 'well, we'd just fire anyone who made a significant mistake. The contractor was sent packing in a few weeks after this incident.

The guy refused to even let me enable WEP on their access point, saying 'that would be too hard to deal with'. All this accountability without power to do anything about it makes me glad I'm at a new job, where pointing out problems that others want to gloss over and fighting over it as needed is encouraged and rewarded ;)

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[Ratbert42]

After waiting a week for a restore: "The good news is that we're getting a new backup system. ... The bad news is that your files are on gig 5 of a 4 gig tape."

Re:My favorite statement came from a 'sysadmin'

[mt-biker]

"So the IT guy says he can't backup my work. But he can replace the filesystem with one that can be backed up in the future..."

Sometimes I think sysadmins can be as stupid as users.

Let's take a look at that from my (sysadmin) perspective.

I have plenty of workstations with scratch filesystems which are not backed up, and were a user to ask me about backups, I would probably help him move his work to another filesystem where it will "be backed up in the future...".

The icing on the cake is, of course, that the users "think I'm stupid", when the reality is that they don't know the background behind IT policies (e.g. cost of disks vs. backups).

Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[RLiegh]

Then again, I have found that treating my userbase as people, and not as trained monkeys, tends to have better results than trying to be mister 31337 BOFH.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[zaxus]

That's just crazy talk. You mean they're people?

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[gid13]

Sigh... Yeah I guess those dreams of trained monkeys really were a pie-in-the-sky fantasy. :)

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[FyRE666]

Well hello, Dr Doolittle!

All I can say is, you've been damned lucky with your users... I'd welcome trained monkeys over some of them...

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Bobdoer]

Yes, it may help relations somewhat, but acting like the BOFH will often cure the problem of ignorance quickly and posthumously.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[ender81b]

Agreed. I'm sitting at work right now doing tech support... on the line with some guy who has problems figuring out what exactly a "browser" is.

People? Meatbags. Meatbags I say.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[sharkey]

I have found that treating my userbase as people, and not as trained monkeys

Exactly. The trained monkeys would have done as their training dictated, rather than the 34 things that their training specifically told them would NOT work, and that they were NOT TO DO.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Ieshan]

Many sys-admins don't realize that the people they work for often have technical skills in other areas and simply don't have time to deal with computers.

It's sort of like being a mechanic. People do all sorts of stupid shit with their cars, but that doesn't make them stupid people. It just means they have little technical expertise dealing with cars.

That said, I *do* tend to have little patience for people who won't read a manual. I tend to take a very DIY attitude towards things - that's the most frustrating part of trying to explain computers to others. If people would read the document that read 'README' or read the error message instead of panicking when one occured, 95% of all computer problems would be fixed instantly.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[hdparm]

Another bad computer --> car analogy.

People who don't know how to repair cars, usualy don't. Computer users ditto. Problem here is that people are just too lazy to learn few simple instructions and they will ring as many times as they repeat same, stupid mistake. That's why they are treated badly in most cases.

I'll take trained monkeys over people any time.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[drinkypoo]

When you walk a user through a process for the third time and they take notes, and another tech is able to use their notes to reproduce the process, but the user cannot, they are stupid. I don't care what kind of technical skills they have.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[dspeyer]

Some are, some aren't. If you need to check, carry a gom jabbar.

Seriously, though, there's an immense difference depending on who you work with. I have two system administration jobs, one with an astrophysics project and one with our campus "student union", which means the people who organize clubs and activities. The astrophysicists I tell the whole truth, and they can apply what I've told them. The buerocrats and student organizers are hopeless: I fix their computers and try to block them technologically from doing stupid things.

So I guess the message is don't assume all users are the same -- take a minute to categorize them (it doesn't take two).

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true 10 dollar an hour pile of steaming support shit.

See, what dumb fucks like you don't realize is that you earn money by providing either a service or a product to other people.

As an IT worker (I hesitate to call you a pro), you produce nothing valuable. Your function is back office - that means you support the front office, or revenue generating functions.

Now, it appears that it is fashionable to bash marketing folks, accountants, lawyers, executives, line workers, or whatever else you consider "lusers". But what your dumb fuck self does not realize is that money does not grow on trees, nor does it magically appear in the ether that you "support". I quote the word support because you have no understanding of the network beyond the BOFH "excuse of the day" or the LART that you read and chuckle about.

Let me explain something to you. IT is valuable not because of some intrinsic quality that makes it an automatic cash cow, but because it speeds and assists the duties of the functional teams that actually are the cash cows - that is the real engineers, the finance types that create price points, the marketing types that create demand, the accounting types that ensure your check clears, etc. Your company is not successful because of you - based on your attitude, it is successful in spite of you.

Now, let us look at the situation. You are paid to perform a service to your organization. The money in your check comes from those who get others to pay for your company's product or service. You treat those other poorly (maybe because you were beat up in high school or something, but it has to be some deeply ingrained inferiority complex). Then you bitch because those cash flow generators decide to replace you.

For all your vaunted intelligence, you think you might understand who is the true "luser".

Sincerely,

The same fortune 50 IT executive from "Yes, This is a joke" lower in the thread.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[hackstraw]

Many sys-admins don't realize that the people they work for often have technical skills in other areas and simply don't have time to deal with computers.

I had a user mail me at 10pm on a Sunday night saying that she was going to fill up the shared harddisk for all users, and a few hours later she did.

Sysadmins are concerned about _everybody's_ usage of a system, users are concerned about _their own_.

It's sort of like being a mechanic. People do all sorts of stupid shit with their cars, but that doesn't make them stupid people. It just means they have little technical expertise dealing with cars.

See above. A mechanic would think your pretty stupid to go on an across country trip with a 1/4 tank of gas, knowing the gas was at 1/4 tank, telling you it was at 1/4 tank, and wondering why the car does not go. ...read the error message instead of panicking when one occured

Do you know how many creative interpretations of "No such file or directory" I have heard? I have to curb myself from saying "What part of no such file or direcory do you not understand!?!?!?".

Yes, I am a sysadmin, obviously you are not.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[asan102]

I agree. Most of the stories I've read on the site so far are more of a case of admin's being asses rather than other people doing stupid things. Not to mention that most are really not at al funny. "HAHALOL my boss kept putting the wrong domain name in his email client!!!!1111 Here's a transcript of our ten-minute conversation on it!!!!!!!"

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[fishbonez]

I have found that treating my userbase as people, and not as trained monkeys, tends to have better results than trying to be mister 31337 BOFH.

Really?! I bet that explains the negative response I get every time I email this to one of the simians howling about some computer problem I'm supposed to fix for them.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[krusadr]

Many sys-admins don't realize that the people they work for often have technical skills in other areas and simply don't have time to deal with computers.

Possibly. My experience is that any existing stupidity comes right out when a computer is present. These are the people who try to click on pictures or repeatedly open attachments on spam, or who get suckered in to handing out their e-mail address on websites etc etc.

Intelligence is the ability to learn fast. Usually people who are generally smart and together seem to not behave like total morons with a computer.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[ITgrrrl]

Right on, no one is born knowing any of this tech stuff, was wondering when someone would mention the BOFH.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

They may have another skill set, but when the corporation puts a computer on their desk, that corporation is saying, We got you this whizbang gizmo, now earn your pay.

Not as a sysadmin but I show people the ropes, enough to get around and not lose stuff, and I admire people that were willing to learn. There are *thousands* of books that can help them learn more if they are so inclined, I tell them, just focus on the ones that help you get the job done.

You still come across people who have yet to get with the program though, for whom the computer is such a burden, and I have no sympathy for them. It's simply not the right tool for his job, and that same computer would get more mileage from a poor 13-year old's hands if it were donated to charity.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Clover_Kicker]

>fortune 50 IT executive

Yeah, right. Don't you have anything better to do then read /.?

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[ZigMonty]

Congratulations, you've just taught a tech how to do something. You honestly can't see the difference between doing that and teaching the user? You can't see that an explanation that makes sense to you and the tech, that the user copied down faithfully but blindly, might not make as much sense to someone less technically inclined? Wow.

One can take notes without understanding what's being taught.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I'm sitting at work right now doing tech support... on the line with some guy who has problems figuring out what exactly a "browser" is.

People? Meatbags. Meatbags I say.


Don't worry - it's only short term. Your job will probably be done from India real soon & then you
can move on to your dream job.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[dmaxwell]

There's any number of things that most people who aren't mechanics know better than to do their cars. Don't turn without looking both ways. Don't speed through residential streets. Don't drive with the pedal floored all the time. This is just common sense. I've seen any number of otherwise intelligent human beings lose all common sense the instant the hand touches the mouse. It boggles the mind.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[MrLint]

oh i have one better, i had a user that used lotus notes every day for 2 years. not only she she tell me she *didnt* use lotus notes, but she deosnt even know which password to type into the computer she needed to login to LN everyday.

Yes virginia, stupidity exists.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[barc0001]

Oh, I'd say there are lots of people who wouldn't dare mess with their cars, but will click things at random and screw everything up on their boxes because "they were trying to fix it themselves". I have lots of experience cleaning up their messes.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[k_head]

You need a license to operate a car. You need to take a written and driving test too. You also need to register your car and keep the registration updated. If you drive too fast or under the influence you can get a ticket. If you kill somebody while driving you can go to jail.

Oh how I wish all of the above was true for computers.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[rhaig]

Shouldn't this be moded funny?

I mean... some of them aren't monkeys, some are smart, but that's maybe one in 10. I have two users who aren't lusers, and when we told them we were taking root away on their linux boxen they said, "Fine, I don't need it anyway".
That's 2 out of about 40 developers. yes, they're people, and we'll give them local space they can use, but they're lusers (the l is silent) don't ever forget that.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[rhaig]

while this troll speaks some truth:

• you support the front office, or revenue generating functions

Said troll is also hooking several of you I'm sure.

Remember... in IT, we don't make money for you, we keep you from losing money. All we want is a percentage to spend on cool shit.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[theobscurest]

I think you have to take in several things into account when dealing with users. There are so many different scenarios and so many different types of users. When I first arrived at this position, I was coming from the perspective that an earlier comment talked about, about keeping things as locked down and tight as possible. No one should have admin access, because if they did, they would inevitably download a virus that would wipe out their machine, and then it would be my ass on the line because (1) we weren't doing windows client backups, and (2) 5 hours of my time is essentially wasted on the menial task of reinstalling the said user's machine.

Before I continue, I must state that I'm primarily talking about windows admin access. UNIX and MAC OS's deal much better with privilege situations and is much easier to deal with on the sysadmin's part.

One of the problems that comes up if you were to enforce that no one has admin access is that it is imperative you have a publicly available written policy stating the in's and out's of giving or not giving users admin access.

My previous place of employment, which was particularly tight on this issue, had a policy that stated we would not provide support to users who wanted admin access to their machine. Perhaps this works for them, but in my department I could never enforce something like this. Several of my users must have administrative access to run certain programs that do not correctly work when run by a non-admin user. These people are also largely non-technical. If that person does something stupid and wipes out their machine, I can't just be BOFH and give them the reinstall disk. This is especially true when dealing with office politics. If Mr. Executive Director comes to me after having wiped out his machine because I was forced to give him admin access, I pretty much have to drop what I'm doing and fix the problem. I think this is just part of being an SA.

Then there's the scenario where Joe Blo is fairly technically adept and wants to have more control over his system so he can install programs, etc.. It's more beneficial for the SA to give him elevated privileges than for him to come to the SA three times a week to perform some task that keeps the SA from doing the really cool and interesting stuff that got him interested in being an SA in the first place.

While being an SA is great for those reasons, I don't know of any SA who is an SA solely because they like dealing with users. Dealing with users is just part of the job (unless you're in charge of a team and can just assign someone under you to do it). I believe it is imperative that you treat users on an individual basis and that you treat them with respect. Yeah, they may be the stupidest computer users from hell, but you need to figure out how to deal with that in the most efficient way possible. The goal of a good SA is equally 50% user satisfaction and 50% SA effectiveness and efficiency.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[shadowbearer]

Some are, some aren't. If you need to check, carry a gom jabbar

Heh.

You made my friends list for that one. That's at least a double pun, on 2-3 levels of truth, even if it's not a physical gom jabbar :)

Proces verbal.... :)

Hell, I'm just a hardware monkey, amateur astro...but it's pretty clear ;)

Danke! :)

SB

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[immovable_object]

Spoken like a Fortune 50 IT executive.

Think of techies just like Doctors. They troubleshoot and tell you what is wrong with your system. If your system (or body) is sick, you *must* go to the Doctor, or you will not survive.

You can talk about marketing, engineering, finance, etc. all you want. When you've *lost* your business data, your business teeters at the point of ruin.

Lose a marketing person and see if your business folds.

But, I don't expect you to understand. You're a Top 50 IT Executive ... idiot. It's people like you that think that outsourcing (key competencies) is a good thing.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Ara]

Just imagine how much more efficiently you could go about 'generating revenue' if you'd focus on that instead of trying to do IT's job for them.

Damn, I'm only a Fortune 500 sysadmin...

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[idiot900]

As an IT worker (I hesitate to call you a pro), you produce nothing valuable.

OK, fair enough. Anyone who is full of himself to the point of getting in the way of others doesn't deserve his job. Treating your customers like crap (in IT support, the rest of the company is your customer) should be worth an immediate pink slip.

But I think you are undervaluing your IT staff. Your company would not be able turn a profit without its IT infrastructure any more than it can turn a profit without an engineers, marketing, or accountants.

A company can exist for a couple weeks without R&D, launching new marketing initiatives, or probably even doing their books. But try giving your IT staff a week's vacation and then tell us how your company is doing. Have fun fixing your borked Exchange server and your worm-infested network.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[petecarlson]

Agreed. I'm sitting at work right now doing tech support... on the line with some guy who has problems figuring out what exactly a "browser" is.

Oh, that was you...

Tech.. "What Browser are you running?

Me.. "The problem is on your side, It doesn't matter what I'm running"

Tech.. "Try rebooting"

Me.. "The problem is with your line, not my network"

Tech.. "Your line is saturated, you need to run a virus scan"

Me.. "Theres nothing hooked up but the DSL router"

Tech.. "Are you sure, what do the wires look like?"

Me....Thinking out loud "I wonder if Cat5 is strong enough to hang someone with"

Tech: "Thanks for calling Covad, Have a great day."

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[tricops]

Well, how about this...

I work for a small company and we recently got VoIP phone setup because a number of us telecommute and we're spread out across the country.

Anyway, our users are really nice, but mostly aren't too technically savvy. We sent a phone and router to one of the more technically challenged ones, and I was walking her through setting up the equipment and trying to get it all working through her PPPoE dsl. In the process of getting the equipment unpacked from the boxes and hooked up, she floored me when she needed me to explain to her what a power adapter was and which end of it plugged into the router and which end plugged into the wall....

I mean.... maybe she was having a blonde moment, I don't know, but... I'm just glad I don't have to do fulltime tech support. :)

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[mkro]

Your example isn't really valid. You can give step-by-step instructions with words that are familiar to another techie, but not to the end user.
For example:
1. Open Device Manager
2. Go into the properties of your secondary IDE controller, if it says "PIO", change it to "DMA".

A techie would get these instructions at once, but an end-user would have problems just FINDING the device manager. Of course, if he opens some Windows help file, he might be able to search for it, but how can we expect him to know where to LOOK for those help functions in the first place?

Even if you break it down for the user ("Click Start in the bottom left corner, select Control Panel, select System.."), it is always something you can miss. If the Control Panel of XP is en "Category view" (default), he has to click "Switch to classic view" to find the System icon - if he by accident clicks outside the window he should do the next step in, the Window might be sent to back - being hidden by another window.

Bottom line: Notes written by a techie might be patronizing for another techie, but for someone with no experience at all, there is ALWAYS something you overlooked.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[the_duke_of_hazzard]

I think we techies need to get over even this complaint. If you're trying to do your job under pressure, you don't want to have to read a manual (which isn't usually transparently written/laid out anyway - man pages to a budding coder, anyone?) for something that should be incidental and transparent to your main duties. In fact, it's rather like techies complaining about having to deal with "idiot" bosses. They have different skills to you. Deal. You enjoy tinkering with things and reading manuals and understanding how things work. They can eat expensive dinners and play golf. They don't want to have to understand how everything works - that's what they pay us for.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Krunch]

That's why I love CLI.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[nn5ks]

When I worked support desks, I knew the ignorance of the caller was my bread and butter. Ignorance in a user is fine; that can be corrected. Willing and enduring ignorance in a user is unacceptable and should be punishable by slow death.

Since the users I supported were already IT, they were expected by to have some knowledge. If they did not, they deserved no sympathy.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[flacco]

But what your dumb fuck self does not realize is that money does not grow on trees, nor does it magically appear in the ether that you "support".

and what you don't realize is that IT staff are professionals in their field just as the sales and marketing people are in theirs. an enterprise is a cooperative effort. most IT staff don't get off on "power trip" games - they're trying to do their job professionally, and sometimes this requires protecting IT assets from the very users they serve.

unfortunately this is often a one-way relationship: IT policies can directly affect other users in the company, while sales and marketing policy make no fucking difference at all to the IT staff. that's why you tend to see resentment from non-IT people towards IT people: they're marginally affected by security restrictions etc. but usually have no understanding whatsoever of what's gained through these minor inconveniences.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[bhmit1]

Keep in mind that you need a license to drive a car. They'll let just about anyone use a computer these days, and most of them are plugged into a network. If you need a license/knowledge to drive a car on public streets, why not the same for letting a user plug a computer into the internet?

P.S. There are lots of dopes in cars, too. Example 1 would be the guy to run a red light and spin me around once on the parkway because he didn't defrost his windshield and therefore couldn't see where he was going. Ask any first responder and they are sure to give you a hundred other stories like that. Sysadmins just happen to be the first responder for IT issues.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[sjames]

It's all a matter of degrees though. I can understand a user who doesn't know what to do when the car won't start, and can't manage to adjust the timing.

However, some so-called computer users regularly call the mechanic when they put the key in the 'ignition' (you know, the vertical slot on the back of the car) and for some completely inexplicable reason the trunk opened but the car didn't start. They figured that the trunk opening must be why it wouldn't start so they welded it shut but the car still won't start.

They guess the engine just isn't firing. Should they start a small fire on the engine (you know, that funny hump in the pasenger compartment) to help it? Maybe they should cover it with aluminum foil first to catch the ashes?

No,No, the mechanic explains (as calmly as possible under the circumstances), the 'ignition' is that vertical metal slot on the side of the thing the steering wheel is attached to.

OH, the key won't go in there, I heard people might try to steal the car so I jammed a screw in that and put epoxy on it, DUH! do you think I'm stupid or something? What kind of idiot mechanic are you anyway??! You just get your lazy butt down here and help me, I'm going to get the firewood!

The insurance claim form will state clearly that they followed their mechanic's instructions.

As absurd as the above sounds, it's a perfectly reasonable analogy to what many techs have faced on more than one occasion. While fortunatly, the vast majority of users aren't THAT bad, it's only natural that a few incidents like that will stick in one's mind. While I find many users misunderstandings and confusions to be natural enough, there are some who continually amaze me that they actually manage to not die of starvation from the simple inability to correctly operate their fork.

In an office environment, there are a number of basic skills that one is expected to master no matter what their job is. People are expected to be able to at least not destroy the copier, multiline phone, fax machine, and water cooler, even if they need help to operate them (at first). They are expected to not need help after the first few times unless the device is actually broken.

A person who can't manage at least that level of competancy with a computer is no more qualified to work in an office than a person who can't figure out how to use the phone. Mysteriously, a person who routinely ignores the instructions NOT to pour ink into the copy machine when the copies come out light would likely be fired, but opening viruses over and over in spite of the admin pleading with them to never open an attachment of any kind (we're talking routinely, not once by accident here) is 'understandable'.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Transcendent]

I have to curb myself from saying "What part of no such file or direcory do you not understand!?!?!?"

Probably the "file" or "directory". The average person when told to double click on the file will probably go to their filing cabinet, pull out a file, and put the mouse on it.

"File" or "Directory" is still tech lingo to them.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[computational super]

>Your function is back office - that means you support the front office, or revenue generating functions.

...

the finance types that create price points, the marketing types that create demand, the accounting types that ensure your check clears

Ummm... pardon me, but I beleive that finance and accounting are the definition of the back office. What business school did you attend? I want to make sure not to send my son there.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[op00to]

He's a PHB, he reads slashdot because they don't do anything else.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[computational super]

A mechanic would think your pretty stupid to go on an across country trip with a 1/4 tank of gas, knowing the gas was at 1/4 tank, telling you it was at 1/4 tank, and wondering why the car does not go

You know, I remember one time I had a car with, I was certain, an electrical short somewhere in the wiring. The car had electrical window controls, and I could use the buttons to roll up and down the driver's side window, but not the passenger's side window. It worked fine when I used the button on the driver's side, but the passenger's window up/down button was broken.

Well, I had to take the car in for some kind of maintenance, and it occured to me to mention this problem to the mechanic while I happened to be standing there talking to him. He did what any of us tech types would have done when a really dumbass user presented us with a really dumbass problem - he reached in to the passenger's side, flipped the "window lock" button to "off" and rolled down the passenger's side window for me.

My reaction was to LMAO and say "You're going to be telling people about the idiot who came into your garage with a 'broken window button' for weeks, aren't you?" He just smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

I think far too many computer users could stand to develop a sense of humor about their computer illiteracy.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[nytmare]

95% or more of error messages are crap. So which program was trying to access the file or directory? What kind of access -- read, write, or create? What was the name and location of the damn file it was trying to access? Error messages simply don't provide enough information for a user to determine what's wrong, and half the time the message is just flat out inappropriate for the actual problem.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[el cisne]

My all time favorite so far is someone, in another state mind you, calls me and tells me they created this file on their comptuer but can't find it. ????!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, you want I should find your keys, too?? Geez. It's not even my job -- I'm a developer on separate apps, but they have my number. So I walk them through, "Go to Start->Search for Files...." and so on. She didn't know what she named the file.... >:-(

Time for more coffee, and maybe a cig.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[drinkypoo]

Understanding is not required. The user knows exactly where to click and the instructions reflect this. The only understanding required was dragging and dropping, which they already understood. Other than that enumerated every button, icon, and checkbox which I clicked, or which must be in a specific state. Now if I wrote documentation and the user didn't understand it, that might well be my fault. But if I walk the user through the process, and specify precisely what they should be doing and why (This checkbox does this, leave it checked, for example) and they take their own notes - I am working at their pace BTW - and then they still can't do it, they are hopeless.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Cynikal]

"I have found that treating my userbase as people, and not as [...] trying to be mister 31337 BOFH."

oh come on, i challenge you to name me ONE upside to knowing more than everyone else other than the pleasure of shoving that fact down their throats on a daily basis?

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Cynikal]

im sorry, but that attitude offends me...

the reason it support personel are paid so little is because the things we're supporting you with are so easy, anyone could learn it if they had half a brain. I took a job doing support hoping my amassed knowledge would be put to use fixing real problems, i was dissalusioned to find i was stuck in the monotony of retarded problems like "i cant open my attachment" and the like.

we fix things.. just like your $40/hr mechanic, like your $200/hr lawer or doctor.. something's broke and you dont know how to fix it. everythign you said could be aplied to in house lawyers. if they're in-house, they're really not making money for the company, but theyre there to fix any legal problems that arise. if there were no in-house tech support agents at a particular company, they'd be calling me everytime they have a problem, paying me $50/hr for the support, and $100 just to show up at said location to see whats wrong.. and then i would be earning my company some money..

your views are really out of context, when you should be comparing the role of in-house support versus call-and-pay-for support. just liek if your company had in house lawyers over hire-and-pay-thru-the-nose layers..

think about it

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[xenocide2]

I'm pretty sure most every Fortune 50(0?) executive will tell you that sales people are where the money lies. Not in engineering, not in IT. Where do you think most of the promotions to executive tasks come from?

Engineering is the bitch-- an expense. Sales is where companies look to for profits.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[GuyverDH]

Executive - From the root - Execute - ie - To Kill

Seems appropo to me. Executives kill the company.

Nuff said.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[N1KO]

I've used computers for about 10 years, since I was 10. I've learned that using common sense is the best way to run into problem because a lot of things just don't make any sense.

For example, the backspace and delete keys work differently on every unix system. Sometimes the behavior of openssh/putty/other ssh clients vary on the same machine.

Now, no matter how much common sense you have, when you run into this problem for the first time it's impossible to tell that your keyboard generates certain codes and the machine you're connected to is expecting ^H ^? or some strange escape sequence.

I've been running into these problems that make no sense since i was using dos and win 3.1 and I imagine most users have and some just can't handle it and panic.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Lose a marketing person and see if your business folds."

Now its time for a marketing person to enter the frey. I'm in marketing/advertising, and I have to tell you that you cannot accurately make a blanket statement like that. You see, in marketing, there are very good marketing people and very bad marketing people to put it into basic terms. Also you need to take into account how many people are actually in the marketing department.

One marketing person may be a drop in the bucket to a large marketing department like in most large companies. However, if that is a very skilled individual, who was particularly creative, or who had the right connections, etc, it could be very fatal indeed.

The skill of the marketer becomes an even more important factor when there are fewer. Some companies have one person doing marketing, if any at all. Marketing is what drives the communication side of business. For example, think of how much better a freelance IT consultant would do if he had someone to do full time marketing for him who knew the right people for PR efforts and could handle basic advertising. If he doesn't do marketing in SOME regard, he will most likely have his freelance consulting business "fold" because unless he's someone special, people won't be knocking down his door for his services because they won't even know about him.

Sorry, its just very aggitating that people on Slashdot group ALL marketers/advertisers/PR people together. Some of us actually have ethics, make intelligent business decisions, AND treat our good IT people with the respect they deserve. They're not just IT people, they're coworkers. Hell, some of us are even geeks, such as myself. I recognize there are good IT people and bad IT people, and I try to make my judgements accordingly. The least you could do is the same.

Thanks,
Representing the Marketers on Slashdot you insensitive clod.

Re:Doesn't really strike a chord with me, nope.

[Pinball Wizard]

So, I take it you pay your tech guys 10 dollars an hour and regard them as steaming piles of shit? I wonder what your company would do without its data? If this is the attitude your company holds about its technical staff I have a feeling you will find out sooner or later.

Mind letting us know what Fortune 50 company you work for? I personally would like to short your stock.

Nice to see the competence of these sysadmins.

[-kertrats-]

They sure can keep a server running great, can't they...

Re:Nice to see the competence of these sysadmins.

[ShallowThroat]

the oft frustrating job of THESE systems seems to just have gotten a lot more frustrating.

Inept users

[RY]

I need to check to see how may pages of users trying to open up virus stories there are.

Re:Inept users

[RY]

Only one page. /.ed

just a thought...

[mobiux]

This site is gives a hilarious picture of the daily frustrations of dealing...with slashdotted sites.

I know its daily for me.

Re:just a thought...

[unknown_host]

I wonder what would it take to slashdot slashdot..

----
To iterate is human, to recurse divine.

Re:just a thought...

[drinkypoo]

I dunno. Maybe we can get everyone to click on this link...

My Favorite

[Blair16]

was a lady running a Mandrake system asking me about saving files to a disk. She was having troubles and thought that maybe automount wasn't working. I went over there, put in a disk, and copied the file.
Her problem - she hadn't put a disk in the drive.

Re:My Favorite

[gswallow]

What do you mean, insert a disc? It's supposed to *automagically mount*!

Re:My Favorite

[OneIsNotPrime]

True story.

My coworker mentioned to his boss that he could tell every time she got email because her system beeped. She said she'd like to turn it off, but didn't know how. He proposed just muting the volume. She complained "But then I wouldn't be able to hear the clicky sound of the keys when I'm typing." He gave her a blank stare, trying to figure out if she was joking or not, then she put her ear up to the keys and started pressing them. "Yeah, I couldn't hear them" she affirmed, then started clicking the mouse "or the clicking sound of the mouse."

This is one of our lead programmers by the way. *sigh*

Re:My Favorite

[Brandybuck]

This is one of our lead programmers by the way.

A dot.NET shop I gather...

Re:My Favorite

[Spoing]

1. This is one of our lead programmers by the way. *sigh*

While not as bad, I've taught one of our jr. maintenance programmers these tips this week;

Tab / Shift-Tab

Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V

Ctrl-Z / Shift-Ctrl-Z

Process not product.

If using Access, how and why splitting the front end from the back can be useful.

The registry and why it can be useful.

How to write and answer a defect report.

How Windows and Unix have the same general parts (with examples).

Process not product. Process not product.

Why installation programs can't be trusted.

Program dependencies.

Moving as much as possible from the client to the server has multiple benifits for maintenance/development/security/... even if it is not a web app.

Network concepts; why security management here should make you run in horror. Really.

Did I mention process, not product?

The list above is far from complete. I consider it part of a crash course on doing things the right way.

Re:My Favorite

[emptyknow]

Another true story. Once our email servers went down, and we were handling some phone calls explaining to our customers why their email wasnt working. One lady calls and says, "I just spilled all this coffee on my keyboard and now my email isnt working" Can you guys fix it?"

Re:My Favorite

[catbutt]

Ok, just for the hell of it, her side:

"I want to turn off the f**king beep sound when i get an email. Turning down the volume is not a solution, that denies me the use of the sound system of my computer. It really doesn't matter what I use the sound for, if its not bothering anyone else nearby, I like my sound, so bite me. I just don't want a f**king beep with every f**king email, its distracting. Comprende?"

"Fine, you don't know, why not just say so. I know I can turn down the volume you tard, so no need to be Mr. No-It-All like the assh*loes in IT. And stop looking down my shirt. I am so going to quit next week."

Re:My Favorite

[Daleks]

I've got you beat. Way beat. In the Nursing & Something or Other department at my University a faculty member called the IT help desk with a complaint about the startup message on her PC. The faculty member was furious about her computer spewing racist drivel. The help desk employee asked to what she was referring, and the response was: "It keeps talking about masters and slaves!" I'll leave the rest of the joke up to the reader. And yes, you may now begin banging your head into your desk.

Re:My Favorite

[Crispy Critters]

"But then I wouldn't be able to hear the clicky sound of the keys when I'm typing."

My XT clone (I think that's what it was) did in fact make little clicky sounds with the speaker when keys were pressed. (It was possible to turn it off.) It was a useful sort of feedback for people used to loud, clunky keyboards or typewriters.

Site died already.

[iridiumz0r]

Archive.org mirror.... http://web.archive.org/web/20030714083852/www.sysa dminco.com/main.php Seems to still work, haven't tried loads.

Re:Site died already.

[keith_nt4]

I found this tip a while back. Actually I learned it from TechTV: If the address is down add a '?' to the end and some how it tricks the server into giving you the page. So use this address:

http://www.sysadminco.com/?

I don't have the where-with-all to explain how this works.

Re:Site died already.

[notsoclever]

Adding a ? doesn't do anything server-side, but it makes it so that your browser and/or proxy Must try to reload it. But then the URL with the ? will just get cached. I usually do things like ?sdjhfsdf or ?dshfakhfaiowe or whatever.

don't you find this ironic ?

[Kilka]

I find it funny that a site designed by a bunch of sysadmins to vent their frustrations will likely be very frustrated when /. hammers it into the ground.

This post have been here for less that 5 mins and i'm already getting mysql_connect errors!

-Kilka

Re:don't you find this ironic ?

[robfoo]

I thought it was intentional at first - clicked on the 'quote of the day' link and got:

Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Too many connections in /home/garweb/inc/connection.php on line 15

I thought that was a pretty poignant quote, as any php/mysql admin will attest..

Re:don't you find this ironic ?

[Ryan Stortz]

I clicked on quote of the day and it took me a minute to realize it was an error and not the quote.

hmmph

[SQLz]

I worked support for a long time. I don't think the users are inept...I think they just have other interests besides computers. I mean, if a brain surgeon or nobel prize winner calls for help on setting up dialup networking, are they a idiot user? I don't see doctors making websites about what idiots we are when we call them for medical advice.

Re:hmmph

[slycer9]

There's a difference between being an idiot, and being an 'idiot user'.

The two are mutually exclusive.

You must not know many doctors, I hear plenty of them joking about how stupid the average person is when it comes to preventive medicine and home remedies.

Re:hmmph

[ottffssent]

The reason doctors don't make websites complaining that I'm an idiot surgeon is because they're idiot users.

Re:hmmph

[strider_starslayer]

I'm going to have to defend other professionals here; when I was working tech support for HP all in one printers on the mac (awful awful devices that crash constantly and we were not allowed to tell you how to fix them properly- (the proper solution almost allwase being 'use the cups drivers')) the people who had the greatest ability to understand complex instructions were the doctors and lawyers who called in.

They might have been completely clueless at the beginning of the call- but they'd be able to write down (I hate people who refuse to write things down, and then call back with the same problem a half hour later), and follow complex sets of instructions without any problem. They would also readily accept critiques like 'If you continue to use that 9 meter USB cable your going to get more comunication errors then if you had bought a 2 meter one'; and except for there asking me what that was in feet all was well (being a canadian I refused to switch to imperial unless specifically asked; and never refered to the letter z as 'zee' instead using the most sensible 'zed' (because this way you don't get it confused with 'c' as 'see')

This may have something to do with them being mac users, but we had a lot of very dumb mac uses call in too. Though not as dumb as the windows users who were convinced they were using 'macintosh windows XP'

Re:hmmph

[Zutroy Of Earth]

> ... I hear plenty of them joking about how stupid the average person is ...

But the real question is, do you know many doctors that treat their patients with anger and frustration whenever they think that the patient is an idiot? Not many huh?

Any admin that gets angry because of 'stupid users' should not be an admin at all. Part of the job is to interact with people, not just computers! If you can't do both, you should be a tech. Remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid anwsers.

Where I work, we have an agressive admin who just explodes whenever he's ticked off at the "stupid users"... The result? Never got fired. He's too 'important' (give me a break). So now, people just let the problems accumulate untill something positively absolutely breaks down. In the end, that's more work for him, but he doesn't understand that, not with his PhD and all.

I think I should do a web page about users being treated like scum from 'stupid admins' :) I bet that this page would have a nice audiance.. if they can find the inter-web-browser thingy that is.

Re:hmmph

[QuickSilver_999]

Here's one.
Here's another.
Here's one for the Internet.

Seems to me a lot of them have been published... Now we just need to convince the users to READ them! :)

Re:hmmph

[idiot900]

I don't see doctors making websites about what idiots we are when we call them for medical advice.

Aside from most of them not knowing how to make websites, I can think of a few reasons for this.

1. Much of the time, it isn't the user/patient's fault she is sick. Can you blame the patient for getting colon cancer?

2. At least nowadays, potential medical students are rigorously screened during the interview process for the genuine desire to help people. Those who are in it for the money are shown the door even before they start school. (I know, I'm a med student and have been through this process.) How many tech support people are in it for the satisfaction?

3. A doctor making fun of her stupid patients in a public forum would take a really big reputation hit if her name was made public. Medicine is a hard enough field to be in without purposely making yourself look like a giant asshole. By contrast, do you know the last name of any techs you've talked to on a support call?

4. People look up to doctors. Sure our (USA's) healthcare system has its problems, but I don't know anyone who doesn't think the average competent doctor is a pretty smart person and worthy of their respect. If you are respected for your position and work, you are less likely to lash back at the general public.

Re:hmmph

[drinkypoo]

You're not looking very hard. Internet - PCs - Computer Basics. P.S. You need the complete idiot's guide to google.

Re:hmmph

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because most people don't treat their doctor like they do their tech support. People call tech support and start yelling and swearing at the tech right away. I don't know many people that would do that to a doctor.

It's a matter of respect. You want it, you give it.

When I worked tech support and someone did that, they got what they deserved. But if they were polite and cooperative, I'd go the extra mile for them, no problem.

Re:hmmph

[Shinglor]

There's a difference between being inexperienced and being and idiot user. The idiot user will ask you what a dialog means and what they should do before they've even read it instead of trying to figure it out themselves first.

Re:hmmph

[sydres]

you have obviously never met doctors medical ones i mean that work at a small hospital in western New york, after attempting to double and triple bill you they still insist that you never paid for that operation that you never had. then when you do need them they screwup and make a bad situation worse like in my case I went to the MD for an ingrown toenail and he drove the needle of lydocain into the joint causing pain even three years later. also a dialysis patient was nearly killed when they pumped her blood onto the ground on accident (happened twice in 10 year span different patients)amongst other incidents. I know this probably is not the norm but in jamestown bad things have happened too often.

Re:hmmph

[Kahm-Hime]

As others have pointed out, there is a difference between somebody who doesn't know how to use computers, and someone who is stupid/inept/incapable of listening.

I'm an phone support agent for a large ISP, and quite good at my job. I can quite happily talk someone through the entire troubleshooting routine in just a few minutes. However, once a month or so you run into that one person who refuses to listen, tries to tell you why you are wrong and just fix it already, can't type the same thing twice in a row, and takes 8 minutes of explanation to find the "forward slash" button on the keyboard. (He couldn't find the question mark key either.) THOSE are the clients you get mad at.

There is a difference between stupidity and ignorance. Ignorance can be cured.

Re:hmmph

[Desert Raven]

I don't see doctors making websites about what idiots we are when we call them for medical advice.

Maybe not websites, but I've read a couple of books like that. Having worked in the medical field, I can tell you that sysadmin/user stories have nothing on doctor/patient stories. I have literally been in pain from laughing while reading those books.

The #2 funniest stories are those written by police officers, usually those who worked in mid-sized towns.

Re:hmmph

[Chasuk]

No, but when that brain surgeon or Nobel prize winner opens up the umpteenth attachment that you've warned them not to (umpteen times), when they browse the web without ant-virus software when you've installed it for them numerous times, when they ask "right button or left?" after you've explained to them that it is the left button unless you indicate otherwise 4,000 times, when they use the computer for HOURS daily but still don't know how to copy or paste text, or replace an icon on the Desktop, when they call you up every week because they don't remember their password and they've lost the piece of paper AGAIN that you wrote it down for them on, when they've purchased 500 ink cartridges for their printer but they don't know whether it is a Lexmark, an HP, or an Epson, when they don't know what version of Windows they are using, what version of what browser they are using, whether they are using Outlook Express, Eudora, or Pegasus... yes, they are inept.

No, they are more than inept, they are fucking 'tards who shouldn't own computers.

Re:hmmph

[slycer9]

>>But the real question is, do you know many doctors that treat their patients with anger and frustration whenever they think that the patient is an idiot? Not many huh?

Ever have a prostate exam?

Re:hmmph

[LordLucless]

I don't see doctors making websites about what idiots we are when we call them for medical advice.

Of course not, that's what case notes are for.

Re:hmmph

[idiot900]

I have met many, many doctors. I am typing this from inside the hospital complex that houses my school.

I didn't mean to say that doctors are perfect, just that there is a large effort to only bring well-meaning people into the field. Like in any field, there are a number of bad doctors still practicing.

Double and triple billing is of course not justifiable.

It seems like the doctors in this care are trying to recoup their costs in an unethical manner. Health care is in a crunch nowadays. Medicare/Medicaid don't begin to cover the provider's costs, so they have to make up for it on patients who have real insurance. (One reason why hospital supplies are freakishly expensive when you see them on your bill.)

As for your toe, well, everyone makes mistakes. It sucks when it happens, especially in healthcare, but that risk is the price you pay for having medical care in the first place. I have a hard time believing your doctor didn't know where the joints are in the foot or how to use lidocaine properly, or that he or she purposely wanted to cause you pain. Expecting 100% reliability from anything, human or machine, is unreasonable.

And I'm sure that has something to do with fed-up sysadmins. Really!

Re:hmmph

[RadioTV]

You might want to run that one through Snopes.

Re:hmmph

[511pf]

That was one of the funniest things I've read in months. Thank you.

Re:hmmph

[BigAl_nz]

Actual dialogue of a former WordPerfect Customer Support employee:

[snip]

Incorrect.

Re:hmmph

[gad_zuki!]

> do you know many doctors that treat their patients with anger and frustration whenever they think that the patient is an idiot?

The real answer is TONS. Up until recently (when it was exposed by an AP reporter) many doctors and nurses routinely used some really nasty acronyms in patient records to describe patients they didn't like. I remember one being on par with "really ugly kid - RUK." That's not even funny, its one thing to mock someone for their actions and another to laugh at one's looks.

Re:hmmph

[damiam]

As Snopes says, 90% of that dialogue (including the basic premise of a user not realizing that computers need power) is real. Since it's funnier when embellished, I posted it that way, but the point is just as valid.

Re:hmmph

[Monkelectric]

Im not gonna go into too much detail, but my uncle broke his arm at one point and cancer happened to be visible on the arm x-ray. The radiologist circled it -- and the doc said nothing. 5 years later he finds out about the cancer because he's very ill (he's still alive although theres no earthly reason he should be), the HMO gets the records, alters them, and lies in court... but not before he got his own copy of the records and the x-rays. No consequences for the HMO or the doctor except the california maximum malpractice damage award of 100,000$.

Re:hmmph

[shepd]

>But the real question is, do you know many doctors that treat their patients with anger and frustration whenever they think that the patient is an idiot? Not many huh?

Go watch Aricle 99 and then tell me that again with a straight face.

Re:hmmph

[ekilfoil]

You can be the most learned person in the world, but if you can't follow simple instructions, you're an idiot. I have no idea how many people I've talked to that probably have VERY specific high tech jobs in areas such as robotics, circuit engineering, etc. But when it comes to general knowledge about how to actually USE a computer, they know absolutely nothing. That is fine. I do not expect them to know about the insignifant details about why they have to enter a subnet mask or know what DNS is. It isn't important to most people and it shouldn't be. It should just work. I type in the website address and a page is displayed. Nevermind the DNS lookup, the ARP request for the router, the routing protocols that take said piece of information and transfer it across the globe. They design a robot, not a network.

Now, with that said, when I say click on the 'Start' button, I shouldn't normally hear comments like, 'What is that?' Now, granted, it's possible they aren't aware of that type of thing. No problem. But when I say, "It's the button on the bottom left hand corner of your screen," I shouldn't hear dead silence for a minute and have to follow that up with a question such as, "Did you find it yet?"

The inability of people to follow simple instructions is an amazing phenomenon. Years ago when I did tech support for an ISP, we would SNAIL MAIL setup instructions to customers on how to configure their computers. The instructions were very clear and precise and dealt with most issues that came up while setting up the Windows9x IP stack. People would get the instructions, and immediatley call in. It was then my job to read (word for word) the instructions that we had sent to these people. More often then not, there was no troubleshooting. It was just a simple matter of them needing to have someone read the words aloud. These are the same people that worked at SAS institute in RTP as well as the 90 year old man that claimed to have worked on computers for "64 years now."

I've just come to terms with the fact that a lot of people are scared of computers. And I don't mean intimidated. Flat out scared. I onced watched a 60 year old woman's hand tremble as it came near the mouse when I was showing her how to use her recently purchased internet access. Oh god, I'm glad I'm not doing tech support in Florida anymore. Having a tech support person on the phone while they are doing this is like a security blanket.

Re:hmmph

[subtillus]

Macintosh windows XP

That reminds me of a gem I heard the other day while picking up a spindle of CD-Rs. There was this guy badgering the sales person in the next isle...

Clueless guy: So, if I buy this game and it doesn't work can I take it back?

Salesman: well, not really, because of regulations about copying, you're technically only allowed exchanging it for the same thing.

cluelessguy: Oh, well what if it doesn't work.

salesman: well, it should, it's not a new game (diablo 2). What kind of computer do you have, we can check the system requirements.

clueless guy: microsoft office 96

Salesman: ummmm....

do you know if it's a pentium or not?

clueless guy: no, it's not a pentium, it's microsoft office 96. it's a macintosh windows computer.

maybe you had to be there, but the look on the salesmans face was priceless; it was kind of a oh crap, do i smile and nod (lie) or should I teach this guy computer-ology 101... Oh crap Oh crap I don't want to be here!

Re:hmmph

[rhaig]

If they don't konw anything, and admit it, then fine. Those people don't bother me. It's the shitheads that tell me how to do my job then fuck it up and make me have to work late because all of a sudden their fuck up turns into an emergency change, and ruins my weekend.

lusers.

pass the scotch

Re:hmmph

[Maserati]

Me: "Sorry sir, there was a power outage and the machine you need to dial in to is down."

Caller: "But I'm a tenured professor !"

Obviously not a rocket scientist. In three months on helldesk for a major West Coast medical university (take the "N" line) I heard "But I'm a tenured professor" four times. I do not have a magic button that I couldn't be bothered to press, unless you're a tenured professor in which case everything will be made All Right immediately. This is also the position where I had to explain the right mouse button; 20 minutes - my boss listened to half of it and gave me an extra break when I was done. One fellow, doctor or student I'm not sure which now, actually returned his new PC to the store (Gateway) after the preinstalled AOL setup popped up and he thought he had been hacked and given them his password - his university password . Gaaaghh. That was his second call, and not his last... I'm honestly surprised he got it plugged in and a little sorry he didn't autodarwinate. Come to think of it, I'm also surprised about that last.

Part of the secuity on the patient records we had was that they were remotely accessible only via the modem pool. Fifteen minutes into one call I finally established that this woman, an RN, had her computer hosed by an AOL 5.0 install. That's a reinstall. That version of AOL would overwrite system DLLs and leave you with only AOL for dialup connections - which wouldn't talk to our terminal emulators nor our RADIUS setup. Since her kids installed it (those damn free disks do work !) the EULA would not apply so I gleefully mentioned the class action suit to her. Then I directed her towards getting Windows reinstalled.

That IT organization made the cover of Computerworld while I was there. Their merger with Stanford Health Care failed miserably due to a lack of due diligence and sheer incompetence. Let me just say that the Axe belongs in Berkeley.

Lastly, I would like to say that the helpdesk manager was probably the best possible manager for such a job. She treated the employees like people and that's all it took. Well, that and Boomtime salaries - I'm running an office solo and making a lot less now. Sigh.

Re:hmmph

[TrippyZ]

Personally I refer to the left slash and right slash, based on their keyboard position. Still, I have to explain what I mean. But they remember next time round.

Re:hmmph

[kigrwik]

> It was just a simple matter of them needing to
> have someone read the words aloud. ... as well
> as the 90 year old man that claimed to have
> worked on computers for "64 years now."

Hmm, maybe it's just that your 90 year old man's sight is not what it used to be ?

JUST BE SURE TO SPEAK UP AND INTO HIS EAR !

Re:hmmph

[Faithman2k]

They don't make websites because they'd be sued. But they DO talk about their idiot patients.

I know this because I discuss it with them, often.
I also work in the medical field.

Re:hmmph

[Mac Degger]

I'm guessing that those acronyms are also mental reminders; the whole history of the patient might not jump out of memory when you read/hear a name, but when you see RUK, all kinds of info will come up.

Anyway, RUK is just descriptive to painfully true, not neccessarily mocking.

Re:hmmph

[paj1234]

>I don't see doctors making websites about what
>idiots we are when we call them for medical advice.

Here's a page about stupid patients!
http://personal.coslink.net/kpezzi/stup id_patient. htm

Re:hmmph

[sydres]

well it just seems that the bad doctors all get funneled into the local hospital. as far as I know they are not even members of the AMA only the local JAMA

Re:hmmph

[idiot900]

JAMA is the Journal of the American Medical Association - a publication of the AMA.

Membership in the AMA has nothing to do with the competency of a doctor. A better indicator would be something like board certification, reputation, bedside manner - anything other than membership in an organization.

Re:hmmph

[sydres]

actualy localy the jama is the Jamestown Area Medical Association

Re:hmmph

[GoatJuggler]

Well, thank you for responding in a non-abrasive manner, but....(everyone has a but!) those books are HUGE, which means SCARY. Respectively to your post:

456 pages
408 pages
380 pages

So, newbies have the choice of reading all 3 of those books, or reading War and Peace. There's a simple elegance to documentation/user guides, and I'm sure they exist out there on the web, but for some reason, no one wants to offer them forward. I'd be willing to join a project that strives to do this.

Re:hmmph

[GoatJuggler]

Why don't you read all 3 of those books and summarize it for the newbie user? What's the matter, can't stomach 1258 pages? Here's what your suggested books prescribe:

394 pages
408 pages
456 pages

I tell you what, I was going to suggest you read all 3 of those books, then summarize them into an easy to read FAQ, but judging by your idiocy, I wouldn't want to deal with users who had to listen to your advice.

Re:hmmph

[silicon not in the v]

Oh, my greatest props to you for linking BS to snopes.com! I love that site to send someone a link for every time I hear something about a Teddy Bear virus, taxing email, etc.

'The internet is dead'

[Locky]

Nope, just their site, it seems.

Site not hilarious

[onyxruby]

Site not hilarious, not well designed either. Have to scroll to read more than a half dozen lines of text in a story. It basicaly a small handful of stories about customers that don't understand DNS. As a sysadmin type, I was sorely dissapointed. Not only that, but the site melted almost right away. Yawn, next?

Re:Site not hilarious

[iminplaya]

In the remote chance you haven't seen it, this might be what you're looking for.

oops

[Anonymous Coward]

Biggest Sysadm hangup: Getting slashdotted.

Funny voicemail we got at work

[bdigit]

I am a student working at a helpdesk at a university, one day we came in to a voicemail from a user where they apparently thought they hung up the phone but they hit the 3 way button and well ill let you guys listen for yourselves.

http://s.bouncybouncy.net/call/

Quote of the Day

[JThundley]

I love the quote of the day on their site:
Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Too many connections in /home/garweb/inc/connection.php on line 15
Connection could not be established

I think that was funnier than any qotd I've ever seen :)

rinkworks-- better material

[way2trivial]

http://rinkworks.com/stupid/

good for a larf...

I've found anti-idiot types are often idiots aswel

[autopr0n]

Seriously. I remember reading those "tech support humor sites" where they would go off on idiots while at the same time illustrating a huge amount of technical illiteracy themselves. One of the worst was a guy who chastised a woman for calling her PC's case (I.e. the big metal box part) the "engine.", while he called it the "CPU". Neither one of them knew the correct term, but the woman was at least thinking about it and coming up with terms on her own. The tech support guy was an idiot.

Yeah, there can be stupid users out there. There can also be idiotic sys-admins. At my high school, I once lost half a semester's work on a video project due to their (moronic) synching software crashing halfway through. (When you logged on, you're files would be copied over. With my hundreds of megs of video files this could take five minutes. If the upload failed, and you logged off, you would have a blank folder copied over to the system.

I went to the sys-admin's office and told him that my files were gone. He disappeared into his office for a few minutes, and came back out and said "yup, they're gone." I'm like "do you do backups?" and he's like "backups?"

bleh. if they had any brains, they'd be designing these systems, not servicing them.

Not even hilarious once

[yum_icecream]

I_Love_Pocky said the word "hilarious" twice. The site isn't even mildly amusing.

enough bitching.... please.

[kennyt]

Not that I've read TFS, but I'm sure all the jokes are nice and old. Does anyone really want to be reminded about the Kazaa-groking, virus happy CEO?

My lemmings never listen to instructions...

[Currawong]

I manage a bunch of lemm...err...Team Members who pick, pack and otherwise deal with a large online stationary ordering company. I approached one of the old timers who deals with orders that we couldn't deliver to tell her to use a different quickdial setting with a different number on the fax for sending forms to the call centre.

"But I've always used that number." she says.
"But now we are to use this other number." I reply.
"But for 5 years I've always used..." she goes on.
Fuck it, I just change the quickdial she uses to the other number. How they manage to use SAP every day without completely fucking things up is way beyond me.

Wow

[autopr0n]

Warning: mysql_pconnect():
Too many connections in /home/garweb/inc/connection.php on line 15 Connection could not be established

wow, these guys sure are some ub3r 31337 sys4dm1n5.

Re:Wow

[IANAAC]

In the majority of cases, sysadmins don't get to choose which database is used (although you'd think they'd at least have a say regarding splitting machines between web and DB).

That error message is a DB error, plain and simple.

Re:Wow

[draziw]

Yeah, dynamic content for every page, etc - and not beefing it up before trying to get it slashdotted might not have been a great idea.

Re:Wow

[drinkypoo]

It's a database error? Have you heard of connection pooling? Looks more like a programmer (if you can call a web developer that) error to me. Anyway it's not a database error at all. It's a PHP error. Keep trying though, you'll get it eventually.

Re:Wow

[IANAAC]

So out of the three componenets (PHP, Apache, MySQL), which do you suppose didn't do what it was supposed to?

PHP passed the error just fine to Apache, which in turn displayed it in your browser.

Re:Wow

[$kr1p7_k177y]

You're incorrect. You may want to try your hand at a little php and mysql before you get all condescending.

> Keep trying though, you'll get it eventually.

"Those who know, do not say... Those who say..."

Re:Wow

[autopr0n]

It always amazes me to see these MySQL errors (and, btw ever notice how it's always MySQL, and no other databases?). On links to what are basically straight up static content.

I mean, judging by the content of the site, it could have been done with straight-up HTML, but for some reason they just decided to throw everything into a database, and not do any caching.

Even with autopr0n, i set things up so that the database only needs to be queried when things are changed, not every time they're accessed. That would just be retarded.

Tech types can be dumb, too

[willith]

It's not just the lusers who are lusers. Sometimes, the internal support is pretty terrifyingly inept, too. I speak from experience. Hit my site. You'll see. Oh, you'll see.

hilarious?

[unknown_host]

Check out the Gnu Know your System Administrator field guide and Top 100 things you don't want the sysadmin to say ...

Borrowed from another AC post

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of this comment from earlier today, which gives the top 10 reasons for committing seppuku (a Japanese form of ritual suicide by disembowelment)

-----
Here are the top 10 reasons:

10) You've just been ordered to migrate from sendmail to Exchange server.

9) Your boss, let's just call him Bill, insists upon being given root priviledges, in spite of the fact that he constantly breaks things even with mere user priviledges.

8) Your boss won't let you filter out .vbs & .exe attachments at the mail server because he is an amature (read: terrible) coder. Moreover, his amature programs cause as much if not more trouble than the virus-laden attachments he keeps opening. He also has crazy ideas about putting "stamps" on email.

7) You are told by your boss, who (mis)read a computer security advisory to put the company webserver (which handles online sales) on a non-standard port "so the hackers won't be able to mess with it."

6) Your boss expects you to find a way to make your Solaris servers, with tons of ancient, crufty legacy code which is vital to the company, run ASP pages just so they can use (read: justify the rediculous expense of) some crappy B2B application they bought without consulting IT. Preferably sometime next week.

5) Your boss thinks that some 'internet accelerator' software (read: spyware) should be made mandatory for all employees to improve productivity.

4) Your "security policy" is more like a list of who to blame for what.

3) Your boss is negotiating a SCO IP license, since "any publicity is good publicity."

2) Your boss thinks you should be more thankful, because the management is so "IT-savvy" and always ready to help you out.

1) You ignore all this bad advice, pretend you took it anyway (he'll never actually know...), and waste your time posting on Slashdot instead of working.

Re:Borrowed from another AC post

[bob670]

"4) Your "security policy" is more like a list of who to blame for what."

I've never seen you at the office, where do you sit?

Re:Borrowed from another AC post

[LuxFX]

8) ... He also has crazy ideas about putting "stamps" on email.
What a coincidence, so does Bill Gates

Re:Borrowed from another AC post

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post confirms sysadmins are hi-tech janitors with unjustifiably inflated egos.

Re:Borrowed from another AC post

[xhunter]

Without the janitors, the shit gets messy real quick.

Not that this justfifies an ego, but janitors need some love like everybody else.

CPU`

[way2trivial]

actually, a lot of very basic computer stuff (i.e. like dummies books) have you ID components as the Monitor, Keyboard, and CPU

I really think calling it CPU is defensible.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=cpu includes cpu
2. Occasionally used (although less and less) to refer to the
system unit.

so Nyaahhh

Absolutley true story (for unix nerds)

[Monkelectric]

My first (and hopefully last) sysadmin job was of a fairly sophisticated solaris/irix/mac/linux/windows network of a university research labratory.

After about a month on the job, my boss came to me one day and said, "What do you use to read your email?" I reply, "Well, in windows, I use eudora, and in unix, pine. Which system did you mean? (everyone had a solaris and windows machine)" "Unix", he says, "Show me this pine program, I've been using this program, I forget the name, and the problem is, whenever I get an attachment it screws up the screen and I have to scroll past it. " So I show him pine, and as im leaving I say, "Just out of curiosity do you recall the name of the program you were using?" To which he replies "Oh yea! Its called .... um ... TAIL!"

Sure enough, the poor SOB had been running tail on his mail spool to read his mail. His spool was 150 megs and had every email he'd recieved since the lab opened in 1991 (this was in 2000).

Re:Absolutley true story (for unix nerds)

[LostCluster]

Users left on their own to learn a system will always learn exactly one way to make the computer do what they want it to do. Users who learn a way that works but isn't the right way can go on forever until stops.

Re:Absolutley true story (for unix nerds)

[dmaxwell]

Users who learn a way that works but isn't the right way can go on forever until stops.

OS and software upgrades are traumatic for those people. The one upside is that I can show a correct way to read the mail or open the document and maybe slip in a couple more "helpful tricks".

Re:Absolutley true story (for unix nerds)

[shfted!]

I've noticed that about long time unix users -- they tend to get very set in their ways of doing things. I know people that still use EMACS.

Re:Absolutley true story (for unix nerds)

[Monkelectric]

not a troll -- whats do you like better then emacs? I find myself using eclipse pretty much exclusively.

Re:Absolutley true story (for unix nerds)

[shfted!]

VIM, of course ;)

Re:As a sysadmin type, my feelings on the matter

[onyxruby]

Harold or Sid? Personaly, I'm a Sid fan, he's old and evil and reminds me of a friend of my fathers. That said, theres appeal to both methods. Sometimes you need finesse, sometimes you just need a hammer...

Re:I've found anti-idiot types are often idiots as

[Anonymous Coward]

>bleh. if they had any brains, they'd be designing these systems, not servicing them.

Would you mind filling us dummies in on why you hadn't made your own backups?

oh those PhD's from hell

[segment]

I have a PhD cust who spends like 400 a month for ISDN as opposed to DSL (it is available to him) and I always shamefully get his transferred calls:

PhD: Look I know what I'm doing I have a PhD and I'm telling you your system is erratic

Meanwhile the guy has his modem set to dial his own phone number AND HE USES CAPS ALL THE TIME so his username/password is almost always the issue. This after I've spoken to him like umpteen who knows how many times. He also has a T1 at his company and always calls:

PhD: my router isn't working and I'm getting very tired of your company doing this to me.

Meanwhile he disconnects his routers to put on wireless switches, faxes, jams phone cords in his ethernet ports, tries to jam his T1 cord into his phone, tries to make calls through his T1 you name it. I have no pity for people you have to explain things over to a trillion times. Users suck

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[unknown_host]

its Phenominally Huge D***'s you insensitive clod.

--
Only those do a PhD, who don't have a PhD.

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[iminplaya]

Maybe you picked the wrong line of work, if it stresses you out so much. Sometimes you need the patience of a monk when dealing with people. Case in point: Did you ever pull on a door when the sign says "push"? Ever done it more than once?

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[hugzz]

when i pull a door that says "push", i dont call for asistance. you'd happily provide assistance for 1000 people a day who pulled on a door named "push", even though your job has so much more potential?

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[iminplaya]

Maybe he felt he was entitled to yell if he's paying money for the service. I'm not trying to justify it, but we all can be real assholes sometimes, and over the silliest stuff. Yeah, users might suck, but I'm sure there are moments when everybody sucks at least once in their lifetime. Remember, patience is a virgin.(or something like that)

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[iminplaya]

Since my main ambition in life is retirement, I'd consider it if it helps me reach that goal. That said, my potential comes from within, not from a job. When a job doesn't meet my expectations, I simply change jobs. If you feel chained down due to family or financial obligations, well, that was your choice, and you shouldn't take it out on other folks because of your own frustrations. We all can be real jerks, and we need to remember that before we pop off on somebody.

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[4b696e67]

Sounds to me like job security. If it wasn't for users such as you describe, you wouldn't be as needed. From what you have written you say that you are the "contact" person for him. He must halfway think you know what you are doing. You should take it as a complement and fix his stupid mistakes with a big smile on your face as you hold his hand though his difficult ordeal(your getting paid).
I speak from a little experience... I have a few users I support that give me job security as well :)

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[FreeForm Response]

Lord knows I have.

In fact, just this week, I pulled on the same push door... twice.

I failed in my first attempt to get through, and then I pushed it open and held it for somebody to walk through. That person asked me a question about the building, so I let go of the door and pointed out the answer to her. I then turned around and immediately proceeded to pull on the push door again. =(

Times like this remind me that, no matter how funny I may think these stupid user stories are, there's probably a office service workers' network (maintenance/janitorial) where they all laugh at us stupid people who can't figure out the doors. :-P

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[Burning1]

"Did you ever pull on a door when the sign says "push"? Ever done it more than once?"

The difference is: he probably tried pushing before asking someone else to "come unlock the door."

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[flacco]

I then turned around and immediately proceeded to pull on the push door again.

poor design: the push side of the door shouldn't have a pull handle on it.

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[Glamdrlng]

Sounds to me like it isn't the job that's stressing him out. The user is letting technology stress him out, and is effectively transferring that to the tech.

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[ISPTech]

I have one that starts all of her phone calls with "I have an IQ of 150 so I'm not a stupid person."

I hate taking calls from people that think they're smart due to some unrelated title/test.

Re:oh those PhD's from hell

[Lost Race]

Are you saying there is a line of work that never involves having to deal with obnoxious idiots? Please share!

Doh

[NanoGator]

I named a computer 'BUTTHEAD' once. It was the mail server. Unfortunately, this was my first mail server, and when I first built it it became an open relay. (Yes, it was Exchange. Bite me, I'm not a sysadmin.) We were blacklisted from a site. The CEO came into my office and said I had to change the name of the server immediately because the term 'BUTTHEAD' was offensive, and we were getting filtered for it. I just rolled with it, figured it was better that he the name of the server was the problem, as opposed to creating a security risk.

On a brighter note, shortly after they hired a full-time sysadmin once again!

I find it funny when...

[Anonymous Coward]

...supposedly technically literate people can't handle a good slashdoting.

Re:I find it funny when...

[Anonymous Coward]

and I find it funny when "supposedly technically literate people" like yourself assume the site was built to handle slashdot levels of traffic and that all web sites should be able to as well. So I'm setting up a joke site, let's order a few grand in servers, hook up to a good fat pipe or sign up for hosting and bleed money for that, etc. etc. What are you people smoking?

Serious Question...

[GeneralCern]

This is a serious question, not a troll or an attempt to start a fight....

Here it is: How would you "farm the load", "load balance", or otherwise prevent a slashdot effect on a small to medium size web server? Say you are running Apache, MySql, PHP, or some other scripting language on a small to medium sized box. You only have one webserver to work with. what steps can be taken to prevent slashdotters from bringing a site to its knees? Any suggestions?

Re:Serious Question...

[Kneht]

Put up enough static pages to satisfy curious visitors. Wait for load to die down, go back to php-run site.

Re:Serious Question...

[Cranx]

The question doesn't have an answer; farming out the load means, by definition, using other servers to balance the load out.

But assuming you can afford to set up a couple dedicated servers on short notice, how about:

1) get your basic servers up with apache and whatever else you need to serve the pages
2) mirror your content with rsync, both the web pages and any SQL databases it uses
3) set up your DNS to rotate the IPs for each new server

rm -rf /bin

[Metex]

All I can say is thank god for rescue disks. it was pretty evil when the login function got rm.

Re:I've found anti-idiot types are often idiots as

[Molina the Bofh]

I went to the sys-admin's office and told him that my files were gone. He disappeared into his office for a few minutes, and came back out and said "yup, they're gone." I'm like "do you do backups?" and he's like "backups?"

If I were he, I'd have asked:
"What do you think your username WAS?

(Note: If you don't know what a BOFH is, go read the chapters here)

Humor in an interview

[NanoGator]

I interviewed for a web-admin job a few years ago. They asked me "How would you troubleshoot a blue screen of death?" With a smile on my face, I replied "I'd press F1 and ask Clippy!" Ah we all had a good chuckle at that. Heh. Didn't get the job, though.

Re:Humor in an interview

[rhaig]

A few years back I was interviewing for a job as a usenet admin and was asked (as the first interview question), "What's usenet all about." So I considered it for a moment and replied correctly, "Porn! Well, and warez, but mostly porn." I got the job.

Re:I've found anti-idiot types are often idiots as

[autocracy]

... because it's a university network system? Where would he back up to anyway?

hahah

[autopr0n]

God that's helarious.

OT!

[HaloZero]

KOTOR! :-D Sysadmin savior everywhere. Atleast now that it's out on PC. Go HK-47. ;)

My father doing backups...

[silvaran]

I was once at my parents' place. They just bought a brand new CD burner and my dad was interested in backing up his files. Specifically, he had a lot of contacts and e-mails in Outlook. He asked me to check the state of his backup to see if he had done it properly. The result? One "Microsoft Outlook.lnk" on a single CD-R. He had dragged the outlook shortcut to the CD in an attempt to "back up" his outlook files.

Re:My father doing backups...

[Jeremy Erwin]

what's so funny about this? On MacOSX, you drag the files you want to back up to the CDR icon, and then you drag the CDR to the burn icon on the dock to burn it. Couldn't be simpler.

Re:My father doing backups...

[kashani]

Yes but he was dragging the desktop shortcut to the disk not the file which is this case would outlook.pst.

kashani

Re:My father doing backups...

[Jeremy Erwin]

It still sounds like whoever wrote the Windows UI did a slapdash job.

Re:My father doing backups...

[kashani]

When you drag the Safari shortcut off to the disk it automatically saves your bookmarks? If so, then yes you have a point.

kashani

Re:My father doing backups...

[evilad]

Whenever I hear something like this, I cringe. If you asked a UI designer for the probable intent of "dragging a program shortcut to a backup device," what do you think they would tell you?

It can only reasonably mean one of two things:
1. Back up this program, or
2. Back up the user files associated with this program.

The principles in UI design should be:

1. What is a list of all the tasks a user might want to do?
2. What is a list of all the ways a user might try to interact with the UI?
3. Is there a complete and logical mapping?

If there are undefined cases, then the UI is broken. If there are cases where an interaction has multiple intuitive meanings, the UI is broken. If the common functions are not accessible by intuitive interaction, then the UI is broken.

Why is it perfectly acceptable for a set of software in common use by millions of people to have an utterly broken UI?

Re:My father doing backups...

[Quobobo]

Umm, right. You might have a point if copying an alias to a CD would burn a backup of the program and its associated files in OS X.

Re:My father doing backups...

[Jeremy Erwin]

Oops.

Well, that sounds like a pretty good idea to me. As f now I just backup ~/Library/Mail. Not the simplest option.

You can't backup dock aliases in MacOS X, although backing up /Applications/Mail.app seems a troubling possibility.

Re:My father doing backups...

[Monkeybaister]

If you can prove to me that there is only one "intuition", I will then believe that your position is not utter bull shit.

Re:My father doing backups...

[mt-biker]

Why is it perfectly acceptable for a set of software in common use by millions of people to have an utterly broken UI?

Disclaimer: I hate Microsoft.

No-one said that it's perfectly acceptable. But I can't think of any operating system that would not be considered broken under your criteria.

People in glass houses and all...

Requests from Hell

[stox]

"We demand that you notify us of system crashes beforehand."

Scary part, I was working at a High Energy Physics research lab. I said, "No problem, but I'll need a Higgs Boson to do it."

Re:Requests from Hell

[Repugnant_Shit]

Or maybe a Plagiarism Detector!

Re:Requests from Hell

[addaon]

Higgs wouldn't help. You'd need a tachyon.

I would say something but....

[suso]

I'm too frustrated with work to talk about it. Wait, why am I reading slashdot. Argh!!!

Re:My cow orker

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly does a cow orker do?
What is involved in orking a cow?
What does one gain by owning a cow orker?
Should I consult a vetrenarian to determine when and if my cows should be orked?
In your honest opinion where is the best place to get an orker and which brand/model do you recommend?
If I ork a cow will I go blind?

Re:Huh?

[slycer9]

*sigh*

To clarify, the post above was humour.
I know what the text represented, and I caught the humour inherent in that useage.

It's just Karma, but I hate being misunderstood.

*sigh*

(Humour, never apologize, never explain.)

Latest bit...

[Vrallis]

Not your typical Sysadmin story...

I work for a large auto parts retailer (nope, not Auto Zone!).

Each of our stores has a Linux system in it, using Comtrol serial boards to run the serial terminal and printers in the store.

One of our stores decided to do some rearranging, and wanted to move the main counter a few inches. The counter isn't bolted to the floor, but it does run the full width of the store, and is pretty much permanently wired for electricity and serial connections where it is--it's not meant to be moved.

So, what did the store do? They moved the counter. With everything on it. With all the terminals and printers on said counter plugged in. And turned on.

The employees heard a few 'pop's and looked up to see smoke coming from all the terminals.

The best we can figure is the main power line running into the counter was punctured or otherwise shorted, shorting hot to either ground or neutral. Naturally, the terminals weren't on any sort of surge protectors. I doubt this would have helped, though, unless they had good Triplite or another good name-brand surge protector on it (which won't happen--too expensive--yep, the usual story).

The incident didn't just destroy the terminals on the counter, though! It made it's way through the serial lines and destroyed every piece of serial-connected equipment in the entire store.

The serial card looks like somebody took a blow-torch to it. I really wish I had a picture of it to post here, but I haven't taken one yet (it's hanging on our 'wall of shame' at the moment).

Amazingly--somehow--the PC is fine. I've had it running stress-tests for 3 weeks now, with no problems. There are scorch marks around the PCI connector and in the bottom of the case. Most of the ICs on the serial board were reduced to nothing but ashes instantly--the rest blew into pieces.

Re:Latest bit...

[TykeClone]

I've got a Daktronics time and temperature clock at work (it's got circuits therefore it's like a computer) installed during the early 1980's.

One night, one digit stopped working. In this clock, each digit is controlled by a "small" circuit board with various components on it. A real good sized capacitor blew fried the board. Looked pretty exciting, but did no real lasting damage.

Re:Latest bit...

[TykeClone]

No - the company is out of South Dakota (I think) and still exists. They make scoreboards and time and temperature signs and stuff like that.

Some sysadmins are morons...

[lazypenguingirl]

I am a user on a university network. Due to some evil twist of fate (and issues involving pay and seniority), our machinist was actually a computer guy his whole prior career who also is skilled with machinist stuff. Our department sysadmin was a machinist prior to his current job. On one hand this is good... the machinist is a linux geek too and thus we get along great. He has pushed aside professor's "emergency" jobs to do minor-by-comparison lab jobs for me. Our sysadmin really shouldn't be behind a computer. And he is very abusive of his position of power over everyone's computers. Many grad students come to me for help instead of him because of his incompetence as well as attitude, and many a time I have correctly diagnosed a problem the first try that later he spends weeks trying to "fix" only to be wrong about three times. And during blaster, he threatened to remove me from the network until I proved I had installed the patch for it (I have my own personal laptop that is registered on our network). I had a hell of a time telling him that there was no patch against the blaster worm for Slackware. So, I guess my point is that I really wouldn't mind a strict sysadmin who actually knew what he was doing. He'd (or she?... there have got to be some out there) would make a great person to interact with and I'd have a lot of respect for them. But there are some out there that are worse than the user base that they are supposed to administer over... and those type are greatly resentful of those who know more than them (some people have suggested that perhaps some of his additional attitude towards me is gender-related, but I really would like to think the best of people). *sigh*

But hey, thumbs up to all you good sysadmins out there (we had a great one in my division when I worked in government). I know it's not an easy job.

Whoa! Slashdot effect in full force!

[gsperling]

Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Too many connections in /home/garweb/inc/connection.php on line 15
Connection could not be established

Re:Uhh

[Soko]

Try here: Memorable Quotes from Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery.

Guess where my .sig comes from?

Soko

I want a new mouse!!!!

[kajoob]

I want a new mouse!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm a human being!!! I have a college education!!!!!!!!

Re:I want a new mouse!!!!

[dagnabit]

Wow, that is one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time!!! Wish I had some points to mod you up...

IMHO

[bruthasj]

The most dangerous sysadmin is the one who believes that he's dealing with inept people when the real ineptness is found within. Whole corporate IT policies are dictated by these people *all* the time.

Even the brightest...

[Brandybuck]

The guy who is in charge of our Solaris NFS network and UNIX development tools goes over to Bangalore this week to set up our "replacement" facility. I get an email on Monday:

"I keep getting a 'portmap' error when I try to mount an NFS drive. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong."

I am *NOT* in support. I am *NOT* in IT systems administration. I am a systems programmer. I am his client. Why is he asking me, a user, how to do what he gets paid to do?

Alternate Story Titles

[jazman_777]

"The Oft Frustrating Task of a Slashdotter" (aka trying to read /.ed stories)
or
"Here, try to Read this One!"

so much for mysql

[Anonymous Coward]

so much for mysql:

Warning: mysql_pconnect(): Too many connections in /home/garweb/inc/connection.php on line 15
Connection could not be established

I only have one thing to say...

[Jade E. 2]

Check it out: Adminspotting.

Solutions for tired sysadmins

[suso]

Here is some ascii art that a coworker where I work made back in 1998. Actually the systhug.com site itself was our attempt to try to organize some sysadmin information. Back then, we even tried to make a pseudo-union type deal, called the Local 202.

People post about dumb sysadmins...

[Anubis333]

I know people like to post about dumb things they have heard sysadmins say, but the fact is, that to most of the people they deal with, they are speaking chinese anyway. I work in a high end facet of computer graphics, and there is a point where a problem can be so complicated you just do not want to waste the time talking about it to the end user. I have also worked as an A+ cert'd tech and sysadmin in the past.

You just make some shit up, in fact, sometimes we would just make shit up to crack each other up, or to see what we could get away with.

There is nothing like having your boss tell you that he is getting errors, and you toss out the bait "Sounds like an ID 10 T error." And *BAM* he strikes "Yeah I had heard about those ID10T errors in {insert OS here}." [I'm sure you have asshole..]

Nothing quite like having the boss tell the other tech crew about how you helped him when he had an ID10T error either.

Re:sys admin=trite

[redwoodtree]

What world are you living in? Our sys admin team rolls out at least one major enhancement every six weeks. Our users hate us because we're constantly upgrading one thing or another in order to keep our company current. We barely have time for the maintance and tasks that we need to do.

In fact we rolled out a spam solution this month that has been a great success. We have rolled out new tools for finance, accounting and in the next six weeks we're rolling out new directory services, a cert server and a few other goodies.

Sys admins != trite.

well what ya know

[cangeceiro]

The ip address used on the main page just happens to be one owned by the company i work for...odd

Re:well what ya know

[Bambi Dee]

Wow -- you work for me? Interesting. =)

Making fun of others

[mother]

Are there websites out there for car mechanics to make fun of their customers who bring in their car for a tune-up?

How about a website for chefs that makes fun of people who don't know how to cook?

Re:Making fun of others

[slugo3]

>Are there websites out there for car mechanics >to make fun of their customers who bring in >their car for a tune-up?

what if the person doesnt get a tune up for 100,000 miles and then brings it in because it runs funny. if you expect to use a tool (car, computer etc..) you should learn how to use it.

>How about a website for chefs that makes fun of >people who don't know how to cook?

If I want to cook I read a recepie and I wont call albertson's market and complain that the food they sold me didnt work if the meal doesnt come out right.

on a more on topic note, I had a user come to me one day and say very seriously that he was concerned he had a virus on his home computer. the symptoms were that when ever he would type stuff in word it would sometimes overwrite text. after I was done laughing I recommended he press the insert key on his keyboard. he had enough of a sense of humor to laugh about it the next day when he told me I had cured him of the insert key virus :p

Re:Making fun of others

[sik puppy]

dunno about web sites, but I recall seeing a VERY expensive couple of pieces sitting on a desk at one garage.

Stupid owner of a Ferrari 512bb kept driving even though there was no gear oil in the rear differential - drove it to the shop with the rear end screaming. Cost him about $15k and gave the mechanics a good story...

Re:Uhh

[BobWeiner]

Try here.

Re:sys admin=trite

[flint]

No one ever appreciates a sysadmin until they need one.

My Favourite story

[schon]

This was several years ago - before DHCP. As sysadmin, I kept the list of IP addresses assigned to the computers.

Newbie tech, right out of school (I'll call him 'D.') comes up to me, while I'm in the middle of something.. he says "I'm working on the machine in shipping, and I need its' IP address."

I say "no problem", point to a piece of paper, and say "they're all on that piece of paper". He takes the piece of paper, copies down the number, and goes away.

A few minutes later, he comes back, and says "that must be wrong - it tells me that it's in use."

I tell him "that's weird - I'll come take a look at it in a few minutes."

So I finish what I'm working on, and go to shipping.. I ask "D. said there was a problem with your machine." They shrug, and said "it's working OK right now." Just to be sure, I take a look at it, and the IP address is correct, and the machine is working fine, so I go back to my desk.

Two hours later, D. comes back to my desk and asks if I'm done yet.. I tell him I went to the shipping computer, and it was working fine.

He tells me "No, I'm at my bench, setting up a new system for them, and when I enter the IP address and connect to the network, it tells me that the IP address is in use."

I guess he skipped the class where they talked about IP addresses having to be unique.

Re:My Favourite story

[crackwhore_indeed]

Yeah, Back when i was toddle at my first tech job we used a somewhat similar IP tracking system on our sparcserver10 to keep track of who was awarded a specific IP and additional info. It was a plain text file into which the techs were supposed to enter any ip/mac/info issued to users with the aid of mighty 'vi'.

This was of course a trivial task, but after a huge restructure of the different machines across the complex there was a lot of running back and fourth the server-room and a lot of typing to everyones dismay.

Then the typical windows tech, full of clever ideas, thought that he would make it easier for himself and telnet to the server and edit the files, which the non windows handicapped had done since day one. However, as the sparc had nice useful buttons on the keyboard to perform tasks such as copy/cut/paste/etc from within 'vi' which a windows machine lacks the tech guy was scratching his head trying out all button combinations imaginable to achieve a exit from 'vi'. Needless to say, 'vi' is quite unforgiving to those who walks amongst us with faith in easy drop-down win-style archive menus, thus his feeble attempts resulted in severe damage to the file in question.

We of course laughed as hell and awarded the windows techguy with ample of lovely remarks regarding competence and intellect and headed to the the section manager(Posterchild PHB) to retrieve a backup. He gasped at the stupidity and explained that the backups for said systems was snailmailed to another location due to security reasons, and wouldn't be retrievable without ALOT of bureaucracy since this was a governmental institution.

The windows tech guys error all of the sudden looked less amusing by the minute as the implications of said actions dawned upon us and we started to get a small glimpse of the work required to recreate the file without the use of a backup. Booting 1000+ machines to retrieve info seemed like a non-stimulating activity so we did what every admin would do in our situation, we applied for a intern under the premise of graphmem upgrades needed in workstations.

So, its not only users that are asshats there are quite a few admins that possess the same fine qualities as well..

Argh, yes

[T.Hobbes]

I do tech support for a dialup service. Just spoke with a technophile today who compained that 'The internet made his computer slow'. I asked him if he saw a speed mentioned when he was connecting, and he replied that the speed of the connection wasn't the problem, it was that his computer was slow when he was on the internet. After several attempts at explaining the fine distinction between establishing a connection and the speed of a connection, I gave up.

Another good one from this week was a user who called in to complain that she conneted to the internet fine, but didn't get any webpages after connecting. I asked what she clicked on to connect, and she said the shortcut to her connection. What did she click after that? Nothing. I advised her to open Internet Explorer and click on things.

I don't really mind users who are ignorant, but competent. I do mind users for whom I have to repeat SMTP, not SMPT ad infinitum, or who phone in to basically have me read error messages back to them. Willful ignorance is what is bad, be it in regards to computers or anything else one deals with. At least attempt to understand what's going on with the device you paid $2000 for. Don't assume that just because you pay your $20 monthly fee that you'll have your hand held everytime you are too lazy to read the message that pops up in bold text a foot in front of your eyes.

semi serious answer

[Clover_Kicker]

That site doesn't need to be dynamic. A 486DX66 serving static pages can saturate a T1.

If your site "needs" to be dynamic, does your front page *really* *need* to be dynamic? Re-generate the front page from a cron job every 60 seconds- that's probably dynamic enough, and will save you a zillion database hits.

Re:semi serious answer

[GeneralCern]

This is a very interesting solution, and one I wouldn't have though of trying. Thanks for the informative reply.

Re:semi serious answer

[Clover_Kicker]

There was a great discussion about this here a year or three ago. It may have been an "ask slashdot" topic.

There are lots of people from the "lets make everything dynamic for no good reason" school of web design. Eventually, they get what they deserve :)

Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Atario]

At a government office where I worked once (best places to get this kind of story, near as I can tell), one of the techs (who I sat near) came in and told everyone to gather 'round. He said he just got back from a half-hour conversation which consisted of him explaining to a user why the print-screened copy of an application window she had put in Word wouldn't respond to its buttons being clicked. "It's like a calculator and a picture of a calculator. You can't press the buttons in the picture and expect it to work, can you?" A larf was had by all.

Now, being a technically-inclined programmer, I rarely have reason to deal with techs. Most of my problems, I successfully deal with myself. Therefore, unfortunately, most of the interactions tend to be about disruptive hardware upgrades or else special handling for me because I need more access than is standard in the organization. At one place I worked, not only could you not install your own software by default, but in fact had no access at all (much less write access) to most of your own C: drive. They give me more permissions grudgingly and eye me with suspicion, and even then only after being so ordered by a mutual superior. So naturally I tend to see them as fascist policy-drones. Too bad, that; we'd probably be good geeky buddies otherwise.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Xawen]

At one place I worked, not only could you not install your own software by default, but in fact had no access at all (much less write access) to most of your own C: drive.

So, just a matter of curiosity, you think that it would be better to run an environment where any user can install unlicenesed software and delete critical system files? How about get infected with a virus, and due to thier heightened access it's able to delete the OS. To be perfectly honest in today's IT world, you can't trust the people using the systems with any sort of access that can affect the system itself.

Unfortunately that goes double for the "technically inclined" users. Sure, you may have have a top notch, dual processor, 5 gig ram desktop at home running 200 different operating systems on a souped up wireless network but you don't know THIS environement. Things are different in a large network environment, and if it's not your job to run it, you probably don't know all the rules. I have had to spend more hours than I care to count fixing something some developer broke because his manaager forced us to give him administrative access on his machine. It's rarely that the person isn't technically capable, but that they don't know how our systems are set up. It's easy for someone to make a mistake when they have access to things they don't understand.

It is by no means an insult to your technical abilities to lock your machine down. It is simply the only way for the sysadmins that are responsible for your system to ensure that it's working properly.

I'm sorry if I seem a little testy, but I just spent 2 weeks screwing with virus damage because certain users have access to things they don't need. This post just hit a well timed nerve...

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Unoti]

Fascist policy drones could not otherwise be good buddies. They are enemies, small thinkers.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[djp928]

I empathize with those "fascist policy-drones", because they are as anal as they are for good reason. Who gets blamed if a system crashes? Not the programmer who wrote a bad application that systematically allocated every available byte of RAM. Not the dumb-ass manager who opened an email attachment and unleashed a virus on the company. The sysadmin gets blamed.

Programmers as a general rule think they're the shit, even when they're not. Just like in my world of system administration there are five "paper" MCSEs and CCNAs for every one real system or network admin, there's five dumbshit programmers who only got into the field for the money for every true geek programmer. And these dumbshits think that since they spent three or four years in some school learning how to program, they're naturally qualified to do *my* job as well.

The fact that you find it strange that you didn't have access to your own C: drive is a typical reaction, but there's a good reason for it. That's not your C: drive. That's my C: drive. Who has to rebuild it if you fuck it up? Who has to troubleshoot it when your shit stops working on you and you call for support? Who gets blamed for you not being able to meet your deadline because your computer mysteriously crashed? Me. The sysadmin. I do. I'll get blamed even if I can prove you intentionally deleted the kernel just to keep from having to work towards your own unreasonable deadline, because they'll blame me for giving you improper access against company policy, even though I did it to you as a favor because you claimed you needed that access in order to meet your important deadline.

As a general rule, most sysadmins will give you only the bare minimum level of access you need to do your job. And if it's at all possible to get away with giving you less than that, we'll do it. We don't do it because we're facist rules nazis. We do it because too often it's our own ass if we don't. The last virus our company got was brought in by the development team, because we trusted them to know how to install virus detection software on their systems and know how to update the .dat files regularly, and it turned out that trust was severely misplaced. Who got blamed? We did. Not the ignorant programmers. We got the blame for not taking care of the systems we were told we could trust them to maintain.

So, yeah, if you don't have access to your C: drive, it's because the sysadmin doesn't trust you. But don't take it personally. He/she doesn't trust anybody. There may yet be hope. If you can prove your geekdom sufficiently to your local SA, you can usually earn some trust that way. We may be a totally paranoid lot, but we know true brothers and sisters when we meet them. If you can earn our trust we can usually see our way clear to bending the rules for you a few times. But don't cross us. The first time you make your SA work all weekend to fix up a mess you made of a server due to your code running at some level of access you shouldn't have been able to run it at in the first place, you'll get shitlisted, and good luck getting back in his/her good graces after that.

Then again, maybe your entire systems admin staff are a bunch of paper admins and aren't true geeks at all. If so, I'm sorry. There's not much you can do.

-- Dave

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I just spent 2 weeks screwing with virus damage because certain users have access to things they don't need

Computers that run Windows?

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[dmaxwell]

I understand your point of view, believe me. You just want to get something installed so you can get some work done. I'd probably let someone like you have more leeway...once I was truly convinced you knew your shit.

Some of my most bitter work experiences have been caused by wannabe sysadmins creating a big mess for me to fix. When you manage to surmount cut budgets, prima donnas, politics, shoddy product and manage to get things working at least on a minimal level, you don't want anybody screwing around with the machines. It invariably generates hair tearing. I have to do things like explain to indignant teachers "No you can't install that software you brought from home.

"But I paid..."

"For a copy that is licensed only your home machine. Unlicensed software could get us sued......"

"Well I don't see why..."

A few of those and few more who insist on local administrator access to their machines (and you know they don't know jack shit) and you start wanting to rein in the worst of the chaos.

I know Policy can go too far but some of the worst problems are caused by someone who took aim at their own feet with a shotgun and managed to blast a few innocent bystanders in the process.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Anonymous Coward]

You are making the incredibly naive assumption that if you successfully lock everything down and minimize your workload, that you are doing a good job. Guess what? Your job is not the only job in the organization.

The pit crew of an auto racing team runs around fixing things. Abused things, damage that could be avoided if they took the keys away from the drivers. But, guess what? That's their job, fixing things, and its essential to the success of the team.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Stupid White Man]

AMEN brother! Speak on it!

You make me proud! How many times did I have my ass handed to me for doing my job?! Back in the day I did an enterprise level Norton Antivirus roll out. In 1 week over 50,000 virus infected files were found, and they told me to TURN IT OFF because they didn't like the fact that laptops were getting scanned at lunch. (They go home at night, when else can they be updated or scanned!)

And so I followed the direction, and 2 weeks later I was handed my ass along with the I Love You virus.

GOD DAMN IT!

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[rhaig]

yeah, and when the "developer" spends three days trying to fix his workstation because his manager said he could have root on it, who gets yelled at? IT, that's who. Why are developers doing sysadmin his manager will ask... Because you told us to let him, that's why.

Damn developers.... even sysadmins who used to be developers... you don't need root, you don't need to be able to install software. All you'll do is install the crap that gums up your box, or in your (windows) case, all the spyware and bandwidth wasting crap you can find.

lusers.

It's official... I'm entirely unrecovered.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Srin Tuar]

I have had to spend more hours than I care to count fixing something some developer broke because his manaager forced us to give him administrative access on his machine.


Riiight, its so easy to develop drivers when you dont have root...

Anyway- I'm not saying your dev's not dumb- perhaps he is. If he was good enough he wouldnt have to ask you for root, he'd take it.( single user mode- or use one of the infinite windows local privilege escalation exploits )

I just wanted to say though, that having run into stingy netadmins before, what good are they if they prevent work from getting done? Your job is supposed to be providing facilities- not denying access to them.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not your C: drive. That's my C: drive.

Not to be rude, but unless you also own the company that's not your drive either. You seem to be making the exact same error the person you replied to made in thinking that just because you work with it, you have any actual ownership. He's a cog, you're a cog, I'm a cog - live with it.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Atario]

it would be better to run an environment where any user can install unlicenesed software and delete critical system files?

There's a long way between "no one has any access" and "everyone has every access".

if it's not your job to run it, you probably don't know all the rules.

By "rules", do you mean technical requirements (your IP configuration, not deleting user.dll, etc.) or policies (no changing your browser's homepage (much less your browser), no installing your favorite editor, etc. -- whether created by the administration or the IT department)? If the former, fine. Anyone who doesn't know enough to reverse a change that breaks their system deserves to be thwarted. But if the latter, I care not for the rules. They are but impediments.

I just spent 2 weeks screwing with virus damage because certain users have access to things they don't need.

What, they turned off their antivirus software? Or the automatic updates thereof? Or they uninstalled it completely?

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Srin Tuar]

I remember having a windows box where the virus scanner crap was installed and ring 0 so even with admin priv's I couldnt turn it off or unistall it.

The problem was that the damn thing would kick in right around 1pm everyday, then proceed to make the computer useless for the next 2 hours. The IT guys refused to turn it off, saying it was against policy.

It turns out that if you rename certain files that you are otherwise not allowed access to, then on the next reboot the scanner wont be able to start up. (windows security is always good for a laugh)

When you work with windows, no virus scanner is going to stop a worm, so theres really no point in running them. Ditch anything IE related, and your about as safe as you can reasonably get.

(I did my own source code backups as well, wisely it turns out, not trusting the company backup system for anything.)

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Atario]

Who gets blamed if a system crashes? Not the programmer who wrote a bad application that systematically allocated every available byte of RAM. Not the dumb-ass manager who opened an email attachment and unleashed a virus on the company. The sysadmin gets blamed.

If your organization operates that way, then you have my sympathies. Just don't assume they all do.

Just like in my world of system administration there are five "paper" MCSEs and CCNAs for every one real system or network admin, there's five dumbshit programmers who only got into the field for the money for every true geek programmer.

Amen. If all the hangers-on would go away, our job market might improve a tick, too.

That's not your C: drive. That's my C: drive.

I beg to differ. It's the company's C: drive. One they assigned me so I could do my job. If I can't use it the way I need to, then that only interferes.

I'll get blamed even if I can prove you intentionally deleted the kernel

Wow. Is this from experience?

The last virus our company got was brought in by the development team, because we trusted them to know how to install virus detection software on their systems and know how to update the .dat files regularly

But assuming the rest of your machines were properly antivirused, only their machines could get infected. Right?

If you can prove your geekdom sufficiently to your local SA, you can usually earn some trust that way.

Exactly what hoops am I supposed to jump through? "Here, watch me manually patch a running kernel while drinking a glass of water"? How about instead the admins just remember who screws things up and who doesn't?

If you can earn our trust we can usually see our way clear to bending the rules for you a few times.

I'm not asking for bending of rules -- I'm asking for different rules for different levels of user competence.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[MurphyZero]

That sounds like my computer at work. Two - three hours every day, computer slows to a crawl while the virus scanner runs. Some of the folks have started timing their lunch breaks during it.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Seraphim_72]

Well spoken. Just this week, after I told the man responible for our security (virus and network) about a set of huge dl's a student made being all legal stuff, and that I had looked into it personally.He then looked at me horrified and said "Let me get this straight, you trusted a user? MY GOD! What were you thinking?" I offered him my geek badge as an appology - he said no, but he had to get back to work - oh, and by the way that work, was deleting my account. lol.

Sera

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Atario]

Damn developers.... even sysadmins who used to be developers... you don't need root, you don't need to be able to install software.

This was probably a troll, but I'll bite anyway... A developer doesn't need to install software? Not even the software he's developing? Hello, McFly?

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[forlornhope]

I think your problem is much deeper than the users having too much access. Your assuming that you can keep your client machines secure. This is a losing battle. As another poster has already pointed out that there are plenty of ways to take root access on a local machine you have total access to.

Where I work we assume the clients can be comprmised at any time and we protect the servers. We also have ways of reinstalling the clients at a moments notice in a very reproducable way. Its surprisingly easy and much more secure than locking down the clients and trusting them. It also doesnt hinder the users.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[rhaig]

man, you're right down there with the ranks of them.

no, a developer doesn't need to be able to install software. and they shouldn't be doing development on their workstations anyway (at least in my line, unix admin). Windows developers are a whole other animal, and their machines need to be locked down with special care... too easy to fuck them up.

and no, it's not a troll.

let the luser install software in his home directory... let them install stuff in designated local space, but don't give them admin on the box or you're screwed.

I've seen too many times where a developer does development on his workstation and then the code doesn't work in QA, and IT is called in because it's a library issue. Oh yeah, the luser says... I reinstalled my box with this cool new leet linux distro... What? no, you cna't have root... it's MY workstation!!

lusers

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[surprise_audit]

It wasn't so long ago that I had to recover from a "security guy" deleting half a password file. He vi'd /etc/passwd, screwed it up, saved the screwup, then tried to recover by copying /etc/opasswd to /etc/passwd. He got it the wrong way around, though, and managed to copy the screwed up /etc/passwd to opasswd...

Another time, possibly the same guy was trying to set up a list of generic userids that wouldn't be allowed to login, but could be su'd to. He read somewhere about /etc/nologin preventing logins, so he put the list of names in that file... On a production server... Fortunately, port 512 was open and I was able to 'rexec "rm /etc/nologin"'. I could probably have logged in at the console as root and achieved the same result, but that's in another building and "security" don't give out the root password because we have SeOS on the box - you login as yourself and sesu to root - if you can login at all...

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[gcaseye6677]

I've seen this troll before on a related topic. What this 'admin' fails to realize is that the company computer network does not exist for the purpose of providing system administrators with power trips and an empire to control. It exists to provide value to the company. How much value does it provide when programmers need to ask the network monkey to come and change a setting so they can compile something? How much productivity is lost because people don't have the ability to install so much as a new font? If you can't run a network where you have a centrally monitored anti virus and firewall system along with a good data backup/recovery methodology, which does not require keeping the system completely locked down from everyone, then find a new job. Most admins for companies large and small have this figured out. Why don't you?

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[haystor]

I work somewhere that I get the same computer as everyone else.

I have a 1.7GHz P4, with 256M of ram, and a 17" (non-flat screen) monitor.

Obviously the ram is a sore spot since I have to run win2k. But it gets worse. I have to run Lotus Notes. I'm developing for Weblogic. If I let everything else page out I can get an IDE working.

When I start up my computer and do nothing but open up Task Manager, there are 42 processes running. About 6 of them have something to do with virus scanning. The scanners have to run every day, during the day since the computers must be turned off when not in use. Today, McAfee's virus scanner logged 70 minutes of cpu time out of the mere 8 hours I was logged on. This was a good day though, and sometimes it uses up to 3 hours of cpu time.

I have to put up with all of these things because everyone must be treated the same according to the IT rules. The way I see it, I get work done in spite of their services, not through the aid of their services.

Just once I'd like to be at the company that expects and trusts its employees to do their jobs.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a show were we have a nice reinstall (read norton ghost with syspred winXP). This is great, it only takes 10 minutes to ghost it, then another 10 to run sysprep. Then it's 10 more minutes to do more tweaks. Thats not a bad turn around time, but the bad thing we have is that most of our computers are all across campus. 20 of them ar over 2 miles away, and the rest are about a mile. That would be fine if we could drive, but no, the pointy haired bosses had to STEAL, yes I said that STEAL our golf cart that we paid for with OUR IT budget. Bastards. We wouldn't have minded so much if it was in the unit's department, but heck that could have been at least 4 new top line Dells (I'm guessing at the price of the golf cart).

One time, after migrating one of my users from 98 to 2k (two years ago) everything went good untill ten minutes after I got back to the IT office, he called me and asked me to guide he through installing a program. I told him that he was not allowed to because of netowrk policy. He then goes to verbilly obuse me for a period on two occasions. Which got the head of the unit, his direct boss, the head of IT, and my direct boss but the smackdown on him. When the dust had setteled, I was told by my boss that he was wanting to install software that was not related to work but a side business that he was running while he was on the clock. This didn't make anyone happy (espicially the managers).

We also have users that think they are good with computers who have to have all this extra software that is work related (sorta). Our policy is, we will install (not elivating there privledges) but will not come out to work on your computer unless it is security related. These are the worst uses that think they know but don't know anything about computers. If we were to give them admin privledges for the local box, they would have it infected with god knows what kind of malware.

Looking at our policy, were pretty lax with most things, im in the standard build, no montering of surfing, no blocking of sites, and we don't mind mp3s as long as they are not on their network share(though 90% of our users don't even know what they are).

Tim
The BOFH tech that works for the gov.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[sparkeyjames]

If you have had to spend any more time than a passing glance with a knowing sneer at the virus traffic, and had to spend actual time fixing it your not a very good system admin. Either that or you have no control of the standard programs your users use to access email ie. exchange servers and outlook. If you cannot convice management that you could save the company thousands of dollars if not more than that by using an email client and server system that is impervious to virus' then you are NOT doing your job.
You deserve the frayed nerves and problems. They are brought on by your own lack of being able to deal with management in terms they can understand $$$ and lost productivity.
Me I use Qmail as a server and mozilla as a client. System wide. Do I get complaints? yes. Do the complaints go away with a short explaination. Yes.

Just my .002.

sparkeyjames
If sense were common everyone would have it.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[ozric99]

You deserve the frayed nerves and problems. They are brought on by your own lack of being able to deal with management in terms they can understand $$$ and lost productivity.
Me I use Qmail as a server and mozilla as a client. System wide. Do I get complaints? yes. Do the complaints go away with a short explaination. Yes.

I would tend to agree with you for admins in small to medium sized organisations. Larger companies, however, work rather differently. When you have to go through 5 or 6 levels of management before you even get to the guy making the purchasing decisions your argument breaks down rather spectacularly ;)

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add that the driver doesn't need an mp3 player, a dvd player, fuzzy dice, leopard skin seats and a goofy steering wheel to race, even though thats what eventually winds up on people's desktops when they have admin rights. Most users are far from race car drivers, they're fucking 90 year old ladies doing 30 MPH in the left lane with their blinker perpetually on.

I'd like to know from any other admin types out there: how many n00bs have you helped/trained/berated that have no concept of a corperate network and/or username/password vs Intarweb thingy and screename/password, yet have no problem changing their desktop wallpaper to their favorite child/popstar/pet, moving their menubar then setting it to autohide "So noone can find it but me", then changing their cursors to some rediculously large animated animal thing.

rename user.dat user.man

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Solosoft]

Actually one program I found REALLY good for things like that is "Deep Freeze". It lets boot up and you notice nothing different but you CAN'T change the drive. Once you reboot it will go back to normal. Your user could delete the windows dir, it would break then simply reboot and it comes back. This would be good for more public computers not as much a "personal" computer. You can always "thaw" a drive if you wanted to tho.

Deepfreeze USA
Here is a nifty link if your intrested

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[miu]

I empathize with those "fascist policy-drones"

I don't. Computers are tools, they are used to make money. IT often seems to have the belief that computers are an end unto themselves. Allah forfend that anyone actually use a system in a way not forseen by the all knowing IT dept.

The only time that I ask for support is when hardware fails. I ask IT to replace it, they re-image the drive, I tell them that didn't work, repeat until I complain to my boss.

I understand the need for IT, I just hate the practice of it :)

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Some Bitch]

Anyway- I'm not saying your dev's not dumb- perhaps he is. If he was good enough he wouldnt have to ask you for root, he'd take it.)

Depends if he wants to keep his job or not.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Some Bitch]

Allah forfend that anyone actually use a system in a way not forseen by the all knowing IT dept.

If we don't have a policy on your unforseen use I can guarantee we will by tomorrow, we have procedures to deal with that. Admittedly sometimes the answer will be along the lines of "No, we won't open port 6667 outgoing so you can use IRC. Not even from just your MAC address." but we attempt to accommodate and reasonable request. In the IRC case the potential security implications outweigh the need of a developer to access an IRC channel. Use Google and deal with it.

In the case of new software it must be tested, authorised for use on the network, a diff of the system pre/post install made (for asset management) and instructions on default configuration for our network issued to the engineers nationwide. This will take a day or two so you can't have your new software right now but the SLA on software installs is 5 days so we'll still get it there on time.

We can't forsee every possibility but we can have procedures in place for dealing with requests that fall outside the spec. The minor inconvenience caused by working within these procedures is more than made up for by having a network that we know works reliably and the response time of our engineers to real problems is faster because we aren't dealing with machines that the user has managed to make a mess of by tinkering or installing potentially dodgy software.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I work in a government facility and all the warfighters' computers that are coming back from Iraq are wiped and reloaded to purge all the war data (they backed up critical stuff on CD or what-have-you) but the contractor in charge of it is setting a BIOS password on them and by the time they get to use, no one knows what the BIOS password is. Problem is, they are brand new Dell laptops and you have ot call Dell for every signle one and give them some sort of code that is different on every laptop so they can give you some sort of "counter-code" to unlock the laptop! Now, multiply this by about 1000 and you see the problem we are having. When I find those contractors, I will beat them to death with a Dell D800 laptop.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[miu]

If we don't have a policy on your unforseen use I can guarantee we will by tomorrow, we have procedures to deal with that.

My IT department doesn't work like that. They either quote a ridiculous level of effort or just say no. On some projects I waste more time working around IT than I do on getting actual work done.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Some Bitch]

A good sysadmin ... one would never know he/she exists. She/he would not be in the way in the first place.

A good sysadmin would have documented the decision not to grant root access along with the reasons and can expect backup all the way. Not being able to find them is not an issue in our company, you can always find at least one of the systems team and any idiot can look up the support ticket (note: this may not apply to smaller companies, the one I work for provides desktop support to around 7000 users and maintains a global network so it's not like there's a lone systems person who can just vanish).

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Some Bitch]

My IT department doesn't work like that. They either quote a ridiculous level of effort or just say no. On some projects I waste more time working around IT than I do on getting actual work done.

This is where I hate some IT departments :(. In some cases it may take a ridiculous amout of effort to implement a request but in the end, that's what we get paid for. We are there to balance the needs of users with the integrity of the system. We are not there to things hard, we are there to make IT users as productive as possible without compromising system integrity.

My job is front line support, unlike most departments we work completely unscripted. Training consists of about 2 days learning how things work in our company and how to use the call logging software then you're live. If you can't deal with that then you aren't going to get the job anyway, we employ people who can deal with problems by thinking, not by stepping through a preset fault resolution script. Of course this means we pay well above the industry average (about 40-50% above) for tech support staff (admittedly this still doesn't make a stunning wage but the average is dragged down by the call centres staffed by trained monkeys) but we believe the level of support we can provide means it's worth it.

We are all here to help and we're good at it.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Anonymous Coward]

Administrative access to own machines does not mean they can screw up the network, otherwise there wouldn't be all that much isps for one thing.

You are exactly the sort of idiot^Mperson the poster is refering to when he says people with admin rights screw things up.

You *wham* do not *wham* need *wham* admin *wham* rights *wham* *wham* *wham*

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[pacman on prozac]

I'm not asking for bending of rules -- I'm asking for different rules for different levels of user competence.

Yea, but what this comes down to in the actual environment is that you're asking the admin staff to risk having to do extra work, to risk staying late to fix your machine, to risk costing your company money. You're asking them to risk that based purely on your word that you "know what you're doing". How many self-proclaimed IT experts have you met who are actually completely clueless?

I appreciate that you don't like the way the parent described things, but unfortunately that is exactly the way they are and will stay for a long time in most companies. Its CYA CYA CYA in IT, and don't expect that to change just to make your life easier.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[willie150]

Fuckhead. You want to use the car analogy?

If you put the wrong oil in your car and something happens, then it's my fault? If you want your oil changed, let me do it.

Drive how you like, but if I have to keep it running 24/7, you aren't going to lift the hood.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[PSC]

no access at all (much less write access) to most of your own C: drive.

Much like not being allowed read access to the entire /etc and /sbin on Unix, much less write access to /

I don't know what exactly you do for work, but unless you're a software developer, there should be no reason for you to tamper with the install. And I would argue that even application developers should do just fine without these privilegues. They can write, compile and test their programs without advanced privilegues.

(Application programmers will of course need to test the installation process as well, but that should be done on dedicated machines, preferrably virtual ones.)

As an administrator I would refuse to take any responsibility for any setup where users are not strictly confined to what is essential for their job. And I'm saying this as a developer. Of course I work under Unix, where I can install any programs I really need in my home directory, without any advanced privilegues.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Xawen]

By "rules", do you mean technical requirements or policies

I was a simple way of saying "the way we have chosen to run the infrastructure such that all critical services are avaialable all the time". That includes both the technical configurations, and the administrative policies.

But if the latter, I care not for the rules.

To be frank, I don't care if a user likes the "rules" or not. They are there for a reason. I am prefectly willing to work with them to find a way for them to get what they need done within the constraints of our environment, but that does not include simply giving them admin access and walking away.

What, they turned off their antivirus software? Or the automatic updates thereof? Or they uninstalled it completely?

Several people have made this comment (or a similar one about not having an adequate Anti-Virus setup). Let me explain those of you who quite obviously have not had to deal with the situation this past two weeks: The recent Bagle, MyDoom, and Netsky viruses were being released faster than the AV companies could update defs. Once they did release them, it takes my organization 3 hours to push the updates to all 15,000 clients. In that 3 hours, we routinely had several people manage to infect themselves with these viruses. MyDoom in particualar was setup to randomly delete files from any accesible drive. Several users with admin access had thier machines trashed as critical system files were deleted. Now, this is a gross simplification of the events of the past two weeks, but it's a good rough example of what I'm talking about.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Xawen]

We do have a fast, automated client rebuild process, however, don't you think that at least an attempt should be made to be proactive? We can't have our desktop techs spend all thier time reimaging our 15,000 workstations.

Absolutely, you can't secure everything. But making the attempt can at least deter some of your problems. It's the same as a lock on your door: It probably won't keep someone determined out, but it will at least keep the honest people honest, and foil the most unskilled crooks...

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[BasilBrush]

Better to stay silent, and let people think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt

Maybe you should have stayed silent.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[tirnacopu]

IRC doesn't run only on 6667. Yes, it's just a poor choice for an example. My point was: block access to external sources in 'paranoid' mode and you will just give users an incentive to overcome those limitations. They WILL find out about proxies and tunnels, they WILL dig for exploits trying to elevate access on their own (or worse, some other colleague's) machine. Keep the herd happy, allow them to mess around and poll the machines regularly to see what runs on them an what applications are installed (also archive those reports, of course). You will get more control and a solid explanation next time one of them f*cks up .

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[flacco]

I empathize with those "fascist policy-drones", because they are as anal as they are for good reason

i instituted locked-down workstations at work. i also went with mozilla for browser and mail, and uninstalled outlook from all the desktops. no e-mail viruses, fewer problems with system-level spyware, fewer problems with unauthorized programs installed. keep in mind that all of our several hundred windows workstations have internet-routable IP addresses - no firewall (sorry, that's not up to me).

do i get recognition for doing the right thing and saving hundreds of IT support hours, and several hundreds more of our users' lost productivity? no. i get cranky users because they can't upgrade their own programs and change system settings, and management sulks because their mail program is "different from home".

point being: users don't notice the ABSENCE of problems; they just notice the small "sacrifices" that must be made in order to keep things running smoothly.

now i know how parents feel when kids give them the evil eye for making them eat their vegetables.

i need a new job.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you for real? Ever tried to do webdevelopment in a company that mandates a NT 4 workstation installation?????

Get real, help your developers when they ask you about things. Where I work the admins gave us (developers) admin rights and the (friendly, not anal like some of you sysadmins seem to be) admin told us about licenses and that kind of thing. He knew we would otherwise hack ourselves into the system in order to be able to get our job done, so instead he choosed to help us.

When I want to install a program that isn't in the default installation, I mostly consult him first as well. Why, because he is helpfull instead of a anal paranoid prick like some of you think they should be.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[djlowe]

That's their job, fixing things, and its essential to the success of the team.

Sure, but the analogy breaks down in a networked environment: Yours isn't the only car for which they are responsible, and they *all* have to work. In addition, the damage caused to a racing car is the natural result of its environment and use.

In a workplace with an IT staff, you aren't responsible for fixing your computer, they are. I've rarely seen a situation where locking down a computer, when done properly and with attention to the task(s) which that computer is to perform, hampers the user. The few times that it has, rectifying the problem is easily accomplished.

Most times, the people that resent not having full access to "their" computer are exactly the ones that shouldn't have it in the first place, either because they lack an understanding of how it fits into the rest of the network, are by nature inclined to play around with it and cause headaches for those that have to correct the resulting problems, or both.

User failures happen just as often as hardware failures, I've found, and even the most intelligent user doesn't necessarily have the knowledge needed to ensure that changes made to the PC that has been assigned to their use won't adversely impact others.

There's an inherent arrogance in your post, which is probably why you posted AC: You think that your job *requires* full access to "your" computer. That's doubtful, but possible - and if it were, a rational conversation with your IT staff should establish that.

And here's the sentence that confirms your arrogance for me: "Abused things, damage that could be avoided if they took the keys away from the drivers"... normal use of a computer doesn't include abusing it in any manner.

Sure, there are things that might involve "abusing" the computer - driver development and testing come to mind as one example. But if you're doing that, it's very unlikely that the PC that is assigned to you for that task is locked down.

It's more likely that you're a user that discovered that he/she doesn't have full access to "their" computer, resent what you think impugns your technical knowledge, and worse, prevents you from using "your" computer for things other than those for which it was assigned to you. Here's a clue for you: They didn't target you specifically when they locked down "your" computer.

Well, probably. It's possible that they *did* target you, because you proved that you couldn't be trusted not to abuse full access to it. If that's the case, good for them, I say.

To paraphrase your opening sentence: You're making that incredibly naive assumption that you need full access to "your" computer, and that not having it somehow hampers you from using it to perform your job duties. Guess what? It's not likely.

Just my opinion.

-dj

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[markh100]

I have the exact same problem at my workplace. At 12 PM everyday, a Norton Real-Time Virus Scan would kick off, rendering the computer useless for the rest of the day. IMHO, Antivirus software is worse than the actual viruses. After a couple days of that, I realized I could start the problem by restarting the "Symantec Antivirus Client" service. Once restarted, the computer returned to my control.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[ostiguy]

It provides a ton of value when people cannot install fonts:

Design team: we have standardized on the schlotzky font for all documents. Dear IT, please install schlotzky on all pcs.

ostiguy determines that it is not a standard font on a windows install, and rather something that comes with a 800 bucks a seat design package.

ostiguy to design team: you will need to license the font. here are some links to who appears to own it.

after they realized that it was going to cost real money in the 4 to 5 digit range for 90ish users, they determined mgmt was not likely to go for it.

ostiguy

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[ISPTech]

I've seen this lame excuse for a reply on a similar rant of mine. Here's the problem with your insult/reply.

Every developer thinks their computer is the most important computer on the network. The management expects me to make sure your little driver coding or whatever other crap you are working on in VB doesn't F*** up the accounting dept or the sales group...etc.

Work our side for a while, and you'll see how flawed that comment is.

When I have to let someone do stupid things on a machine we put this big barrier all the way around the machine sort of like the anti-virus people do when testing a virus's capabilities. You are the type that would probably bitch about that wall too, but as the person you are replying to said, when the network gets F***ed up because you HAD TO HAVE YOUR ADMIN PRIVS and the accounting/sales/other depts can't do their work, it's MY ass.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Angry_Admin]

Lets see you say this when someone hacks your network through privilige escalation, downloads the SAM file off of your Windows Domain Controllers and cracks everyone's passwords?
Firewalls and managed AV servers are a good start (as well as AV running on your web proxy), but what good does that do against the threat from within?
How many people actually take the time to disable unused protocols on their networked printers? I always love the reply "What's a hacker going to do to my printer? Not let me print?". They've never had anyone hack into a printer and change it's IP address to that of your router!
You MUST try to be proactive! Use port security, port protect, dynamic VLANS. Use whatever is at your disposal to secure your network against ALL threats, known and unknown.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Darkangael]

It would be great if developers weren't able to install programs that required admin access on their workstations. It would encourage them to write software that doesn't need admin access to install.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[bellings]

Developers need admin access to their development machines. They probably don't need admin access to their desktop machine (singular). Whether or not every developer has admin access on the integration machines is a choice for the development managers (not IT). Only a small subset of developers will have admin access on the staging/daily build servers. Almost no-one will have admin access on the live/final buid server.

And, why would your techs ned to reimage a workstation? Why can't the developers reimage the workstation themselves? It should be only a few clicks for a developer to re-image, and then perhaps a half hour or so of waiting while everything loads across the network and installs itself. After it reboots, *bing*, 100% complete re-imaged workstation, ready to be logged into again by the user, with no extra work at all.

At least, that's how I thought thats how every developer worked. I guess it must be different in small shops, with only 15,000 workstations.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[dgatwood]

The real problem is not that they had admin access, but rather that they were using their admin accounts to do things that they should have used their user accounts for. They -do- have separate accounts for admin work, right?

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Cynikal]

"I have a 1.7GHz P4, with 256M of ram, and a 17" (non-flat screen) monitor. Obviously the ram is a sore spot since I have to run win2k."

not to be labled a flamer, but that made me laugh a bit, since i've had p200s running win2k on 64mb of ram easily... what you need to do is turn off kazaa, close slashdot, and do some work :D

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[miu]

In some cases it may take a ridiculous amount of effort to implement a request but in the end, that's what we get paid for. We are there to balance the needs of users with the integrity of the system. We are not there to things hard, we are there to make IT users as productive as possible without compromising system integrity.

Since I work in engineering my customers are marketing and several operations groups, my job is to build and design things in a way that helps them accomplish their job. An encounter with IT never fails to baffle me, because that attitude is missing entirely.

Even though some of those things my customers need are difficult or occasionally unworkable I never just shut them down. Even when we get a new marketing guy who wants to put anti-gravity in the product I try and stay gracious and explain why what he wants the impossible (I kinna violate the laws of physics capin!). Even when an operations group has changed its mind at the last second, I explain how we can either slip the date or stay with the original schedule. Even when we do 20 hours of work to avoid 5 minutes of work on the part of another group, ... okay I do get fairly pissed off when that happens - but I try and give a realistic level of effort and do what needs to be done.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[wtansill]

"So, yeah, if you don't have access to your C: drive, it's because the sysadmin doesn't trust you. But don't take it personally. He/she doesn't trust anybody."

Here's the thing though -- I don't trust you either. I have a job to do. If you can help me get it done, I'll work with you. If you make attempts to impede me, I'll go around you, because, in the end, I am held accountable for getting the work done.

Here's an example that'll curl your hair: I downloaded the Eclipse IDE to my desktop. It's against company policy. Why did I do that? The company has a system that lets me order software for internal use, so why go around it? Because they only supply JBulder Standard Edition!!! I need to be able to interface with a WebLogic server running locally on my desktop to support a J2EE app. Can't do that with the Standard Edition!!!. Regardless, I have to support my app. Guess what -- I choose to supply my own tools and get my work done rather than making excuses. Does it violate your policy? Yep. Will your policy let me get my job done? Nope. BTW -- explained the situation to both my immediate manager and his boss as well. They too favored getting the work done. Want me to comply with policy? Make policy that doesn't get in the way!

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[cyborch]

Yea, but what this comes down to in the actual environment is that you're asking the admin staff to risk having to do extra work, to risk staying late to fix your machine, to risk costing your company money.

There's a flip side to that coin: the admin staff is asking him to do extra work to get stuff done under their rules, to have to stay late to work around the admin staff's rules to actually get anything done, to cost his company extra money.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[cubicledrone]

I've rarely seen a situation where locking down a computer, when done properly and with attention to the task(s) which that computer is to perform, hampers the user.

Probably because you're not the user.

The few times that it has, rectifying the problem is easily accomplished.

Yes. Something along the lines of "Tough. That's the policy," with arms folded and $DIVISION_VP phone number on speed dial usually seems to work with little effort.

Most times, the people that resent not having full access to "their" computer are exactly the ones that shouldn't have it in the first place, either because they lack an understanding of how it fits into the rest of the network, are by nature inclined to play around with it and cause headaches for those that have to correct the resulting problems, or both.

Ah, yes. IT people know all and the developers are only there to make IT's job of keeping the cubicles the proper shade of gray more difficult.

Nice and adversarial. Just the way corporate management likes it. That way, when you have a good, smart programmer, management will always be able to find someone who will say "they aren't a team player because they changed their start menu" as support to fire them and destroy their career.

Just for reference, most programmers are far FAR more clueful than assumed by most IT people. Everything else is just a pissing contest.

But if you're doing that, it's very unlikely that the PC that is assigned to you for that task is locked down.

This presumes a level of management cluefulness that is unknown in normal space.

It's more likely that you're a user that discovered that he/she doesn't have full access to "their" computer, resent what you think impugns your technical knowledge, and worse, prevents you from using "your" computer for things other than those for which it was assigned to you.

And most IT people have discovered that some user is screwing up "their" computer, resents what they think impugns "their" policy and worse, prevents them from having total control over "their" computer for things other than those for which "they" think it should be used for.

That's why there are no such policies in this company. When I discover such a policy, I overrule it and throw it in the trash. If the people who build things that we sell need something, they'll have it by lunch, period.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[ckaminski]

Just for reference, most programmers are far FAR more clueful than assumed by most IT people. Everything else is just a pissing contest.

I can say emphatically, that this is bullshit. As an IT guy turned programmer, I've spent more years of my life educating programmers about the computers they use, and the grand overall scheme of things in network interoperabilty than I did learning my bad-ass programming skillz.

Programmers as a general rule can program, burn cd's, rip the few MP3s, and maybe, just maybe, avoid getting their nuts cut when they shave them in the morning...

:-)

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[djp928]

I think I made it pretty clear I'm not a slavish policy nazi. If you have a legitmate business need for something, you should get it. We have a "no downloads" policy where I work too, but if you have a business need for some downloadable piece of software we're happy to download it for you and/or give you temporary access to download it yourself. If your boss can't make the sysadmin folks see the need to bend policy once in awhile, then that's either your bosses fault or you have an *actual* policy nazi in charge of the sysadmin team. I'll be the first to admit those people not only exist but seem to get promoted way beyond their competancy because they say what the higher-ups want to hear.

That all being said, too often I see people making up completely ridiculous business cases just because they're pissed and don't think they should have to be confined by rules. Hey, guess what? I respect that you're an individual and all, and I respect that good programmers are generally creative free-thinking types. Still, I have a business to protect here. There's a reason policies exist, and it's not just to piss you off, believe me. Policies exist because without them I can't do my job. If I don't have control over what goes on a server, I can't admin it properly. If any old user can come along and install whatever, I can't guarantee the service levels my SLA requires. If an app you install crashes the server, that's my head. And saying "I didn't do it, Mr. Programmer did it!" doesn't help at all, because then I'll just get beat with the company policy that says I shouldn't have ever given you access to do that in the first place.

Your case sounds like you've either got some real policy nazis or you haven't done sufficent job convincing the people in charge that you really need this to do your job. Make sure it keeps getting kicked up the chain. Big companies especially have ridiculously slow bueracracies. If that doesn't work, try just talking to the sysadmin team directly. Find the real geek and explain to him/her why you actually need this to do your job. We SAs hear that excuse all the time, BTW, and it's a lie as often as not. But since you're actually not lying, you've got nothing to lose by taking your case over to the sysadmin team. At least you'll find out if there are any real techies there or if they're all just pretenders.

-- Dave

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[djp928]

I know that feeling. Unfortunately, that's what it's like being in the service industry. Very few people really notice "good" service at a restaurant--they just notice when the waiter fucks up. Likewise, you can have year-long uptimes on your servers, but the first time one crashes during a critical build or during a high volume sales day, it's your ass, and that year of uptime means nothing. It's expected that the systems will be up and will work all the time. Nobody sees the work that goes into that.

I often think about getting another job. However, I have no other skills. I'm a UNIX guy and can do Windows in a pinch, and that's all I know. So, I'll tough it out for now.

-- Dave

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[haystor]

True, no a stock computer it might do well.

My p3 600MHz runs better than that work machine by a large margin.

Read through the other crap about virus scanning. Over 12% of my cpu time used up by virus scans. Combine that with Lotus Notes and you've got yourself a crap computer.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Cynikal]

yeah, thats why i didnt want to seem like trolling.. my old place of work had 400-800 mhz systems each with 128-256 mb ram, all running nt4, which should have been smoking for the minimal web work we did, but all their spying software brought it all to a flaming wreckage.. i could only imagine how many QA reports contained blue screens and illegal ops

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Metzli]

True, but remember that the admin staff's rules aren't always self-dictated. My company, who's security policy originated with the information security group, says that only those who have administrative responsibilities are allowed to have administrative privileges. I have a choice: follow the policy or choose to "explore other occupational opportunities." Given that choice, the developers won't get admin access. If they don't like the situation, then they can go through the proper channels to get the policy changed. I'm not cold-hearted or obstinant, I'm just following corporate policy.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Metzli]

I understand that your job is to help your customers , i.e., marketing and operations, do their job. As an admin, my job is to ensure that my machines fulfill the purpose for which they were built. The servers need to run on my SAN, the databases and applications need to run on my servers, the mail needs to flow through my gateways, etc. That's how I help my customers do their jobs, be they inside or outside the company.

It may seem to others that I'm stubborn or pig-headed, but they don't see the big picture that I do. I do "just shut...down" users, developers, even management. I'm involved in storage, systems, security, etc., so I get to see aspects of systems interdependency that they don't. Part of my responsibility to maintain system integrity and usability is to prevent users and developers from doing something stupid. It's not because I'm on some type of power trip. It _is_ because a failure on any one of my system can have a very big and very real impact on the company's ability to do business.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[Metzli]

No, I haven't done web dev in that environment. However, I have spent many a day (and night) fixing something that a developer screwed up.

Once you go through those things, then you don't trust developers until they've proven themselves in your environment. Even then, you still keep them on a short leash. I'm anal and paranoid about my machines because I have to be, not because I like to be. Your job is to worry about the app. My job is to worry about the systems that run your app and others.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[wtansill]

You actually sound like one of the (sadly few) reasonable folks out there. Wish we could work together -- I think we could actually get things done w/o wreaking too much havoc!

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[ckaminski]

Rule #1 of IT work:

Get CYA Insurance. Yes, brothers, Covery-Yo-Ass Insurance. Get the email from your boss saying it's okay to do this. Yup, send your unreasonable request to the boss, and the requestors boss. Get both to agree it's a good idea. CC EVERYBODY.

Yeah, baby. More likely to get the VP fired than you. I can't tell you the number of issues I've gotten "dropped" by simply having Directory-level approval from two different people.

-Chris

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[EJB]

Perhaps you shouldn't make such a complex setup then. And (or), document it properly.

Perhaps you do all that. In my experience, many adminstrative types add complexity for no other reason than hearsay. (don't try to discuss the reasons in such a case, unless you love getting nowhere) And without documenting it.
No wonder only they know how to maintain it.

Of course you may not be like that at all. But quite a lot of adminstrative types are.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[cyborch]

I was in a situation like this at one place where I worked. I chose to "explore other occupational opportunities." The developers at that company didn't get admin access, nor did they save the company money by working efficiently. I, on the other hand, have got root where I work now. The company policy should not be to hinder it's own employeees, but rather to let them get the work done. If getting my work done requires me to have root, then I should get root, not spend countless hours trying to do the company's tasks DESPITE of all the company's best attempts... I'm not saying that you ARE a cold hearted bastard, cold hearted has nothing to do with it. Actually the cold-hearted, pragmatic approach is to let the developers do their job, even if that job requires them to have root. Developers make the software that the company survives by selling, just like a construction company survives by selling buildings. You have to let the brick-layers lay their bricks, otherwise the building won't get built and nobody gets any money.

Re:Another story; and programmers vs. techs

[sr180]

You think thats bad. I friend who works as a teacher at a school connects her laptop to the novel network and BOFH permissions come in. Right Click on c-drive to view the properties and work out how much free space is on HER drive, auto kick and logout. Open control panel on her laptop, auto kick and logout. Open a command prompt on her laptop: auto logout. Basically anything she needs to do that doesnt involve MS Office cant be done while she's logged into the network.

Favorite quote used by non-techies...

[BobWeiner]

"Who needs to read computer manuals when I've got a son who's a computer geek!". Something I overheard a while back and decided it would make a cute 'toon. Here it is.

Re:Uhh

[ptomblin]

Man, I'm quoted a lot on that page. I never knew I was so quotable.

I feel so inadequate

[howhardcanitbetocrea]

I don't have a funny sysadmin story

Re:sys admin=trite

[SharpFang]

You forget user support.
Users can mess up badly and usually it's the admin to fix it.

Re:sys admin=trite

[Sandman1971]

You're obviously not a sysadmin. Fighting spam is no longer a trivial thing. When an influx of spam (due to a virus/worm, etc...) peaks CPUs on dozens and dozens of machines, stopping legitimate mail from going through, it's definately not trivial.

Not to mention setting up new servers (an almost daily occurence in our shop... yeah, I guess that's very rare), fixing issues (hardware never breaks. New bugs are never discovered.. shyeah right!), fighting fires and the odd time when you have a few free minutes actually being pro-active... Oh, and actually supporting the customer/end-user to boot.

Incompatent Sys Admins...

[fracex]

...Can't build a site that can keep from being slashdotted

Re:Incompatent Sys Admins...

[BobWeiner]

and what about those that can't spell, hmm?

New Frustrations

[Tokerat]

*ring*

"Tech support"

"Hi, My Internet Explorer isn't working, and neither is My Outlook!'"

"Sorry ma'am, but we've been Slashdotted and our pipe is full at the moment."

"What on Earth does the plumbing in your building have to do with My Computer?"


...true story. ;-)

Re:New Frustrations

[Tokerat]

And you're a flamebaiting little troll who doesn't have a sense of humor. You're part of an entirely different and much more annoying problem.

Funniest thing I ever said to a Luser

[ellem]

Now this is OK to say Luser b/c it was a vendor.

After meeting vendor wants to see my "intrastructure"... so I take him to the server room which due to some repairs has a HUGE A/C unit with a big silver pipe going into the ceiling. Geek that I am I have affixed a sticker on it that says "UNIX".

We go over server sever and their functions and he points to the A/C and says, "Oh you guys run Linux?"

"No just regular old Unix."

"So what's the bad boy do?"

"What's it do? Look at it! Look at the pipe on that thing!"

"Oh yeah..." he says knowingly, "What's the specs?"

"This sucker is pushing 250,000 BTUs."

"Wow! Man on a Windows box that'd be BSOD City."

"Yes. Yes it would."

We didn't buy his product.

Re:Funniest thing I ever said to a Luser

[Bobman1235]

"This sucker is pushing 250,000 BTUs."

"Wow! Man on a Windows box that'd be BSOD City."

"Yes. Yes it would."

Geez, I have the worst headache right now from trying to wrap my head around that story. Truly bewildering.

well...

[thatgirloverthere]

They have the internet on computers now?"

Many sys admins are just plain jerks...

[mtrupe]

You know, not everyone knows what sys admins do--- that's why sys admins are paid. Just yesterday where I work I witnessed a sys admin refuse to help with a machine that needed a bios update. He insisted that since he was not the "official adminstrator" of it, he couldn't touch it. Now, this machine is "adminstered" remotely. He stood there and told my boss- to her face, that a "good" sys admin would know how to do a bios update remotely.

Huh? WTF?

There's no need to take advantage of people and act like a jerk about things. I've dealt with far too many rudy and cocky sys admins in my day.

Re:Many sys admins are just plain jerks...

[rdr2]

Maybe your attitude of "Hey you work with computers, so fix my problem" is just the fuel that feeds our anger.... You know we became sysadmins because we have horrible social skills! Just becareful and tread lightly or you may find yourself on the "unexplained" computer troubles. :-P

Re:Many sys admins are just plain jerks...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

. Just yesterday where I work I witnessed a sys admin refuse to help with a machine that needed a bios update. He insisted that since he was not the "official adminstrator" of it, he couldn't touch it.

What's the political situation over there? In some places, if your admin updated a machine outside his domain and it screwed up, he'd be on the hook for it. Where I work, he might be up on charges.

Tech support sucks

[elasticwings]

One time when I was doing tech support for an ISP. I was walking a user into doing an ipconfig from the command prompt and had to give her directions to where every letter was on the keyboard. And when I asked her to hit the enter key, she asked, "Where's the enter key?" I was like OMFG. It's only two of the largest keys on the board. At least try, to look at the keyboard before giving up!!!

A vendor did this once

[SuperBanana]

I am a student working at a helpdesk at a university, one day we came in to a voicemail from a user where they apparently thought they hung up the phone but they hit the 3 way button and well ill let you guys listen for yourselves.

That's nothing. We had a vendor do the same thing- he was apparently on a conference call to his boss, and his boss made him call us for an update. The voicemail went as normal, and then there was a click-click.

"Yeah, I got his voicemail, the guy wasn't around." They then proceeded to discuss how they'd handle selling us on something, so on so forth.

It was so priceless I yelled for my boss to come over, hit the "start over" button and within minutes everyone in the department was giggling with glee that a vendor was not only stupid enough to not know how to work a phone, but to also talk about a customer behind their back. We never did tell him, or give him our business, for that matter :-)

The three-way calling reminds me of a story from a book- I forget which- where the author was at a college which got three-way calling for free. The author's friend would, for fun, flip open the phonebook to a random page, plant his finger down, call the number wherever his finger landed. When the person answered, he'd say "Hang on a sec!", put them on hold, and then dial the other number and say the same thing, then connect them. The conversations were reportedly priceless once you got through the universal part, which was: "Hey, why did you call me?" "I didn't call you, you called me!" "No I didn't!"...

Re:A vendor did this once

[ostiguy]

I had a vendor who have a macro ridden spreadsheet that apparently was designed to print out quotes - it auto set print area, etc. *NOT* email them. Upon reception of this .xls wonder, I was able to see their stock margins on hardware and services. Sweet.

That's a bad password?????

[Stephen Samuel]

This is an actual IM chat log (names have been changed to protect the , uhm, innocent)

.....
(16:13:55) hackeduser25: omg i cant belive they did this to me
(16:14:35) stephen samuel: precisely what did they do?? All I saw was on the guest log page.
(16:14:53) hackeduser25: they put porn on it and changed everything around
(16:15:19) hackeduser25: im gonna havet to do it all over again it took me months and now i must re-type it all
(16:15:23) stephen samuel: Do you have a backup copy at home?
(16:15:29) hackeduser25: im gonna have a panic attack...no
(16:16:05) stephen samuel: It's possible that (most of) the original stuff is still there.
(16:16:18) hackeduser25: i know the site is frozen
(16:16:35) stephen samuel: How do you do updates??
(16:16:49) hackeduser25: easily but i cant access my account!!!!!
(16:16:52) hackeduser25: cuz they changed it all
(16:17:30) stephen samuel: You may want to get to the people who host the site and ask them to reset it back to what it was yesterday... (at least the password).
(16:19:26) stephen samuel: In the meantime, I'd suggest that you come up with a password that's not easily guessable.
(16:19:48) stephen samuel: Did you have an 'easily guessable' password?
(16:20:19) hackeduser25: well it was password.
(16:20:47) stephen samuel: That explains why you got slimed... It's the first password that a hacker would try.
(16:21:13) hackeduser25: omg great
(16:21:15) stephen samuel: Literaly -- it's the absolute MOST used password by newbies.
(16:21:27) hackeduser25: oh well great then
(16:21:49) stephen samuel: justasec.. I'm looking for my file on how to create relatively secure passwords....
(16:22:13) hackeduser25: k
(16:24:24) stephen samuel: http://www.bcgreen.com/solaris/passwords.html
.....

Re:That's a bad password?????

[haystor]

I worked someplace where we scanned 250,000 passwords, and a full third of them were 'password' or the loginid.

Re:That's a bad password?????

[MadBiologist]

Had a Win98 box at work that would automatically reset itself to "Password" if it's network password ever got reset. It didn't have full network access... but seems to be a security hole nonetheless...

Re:That's a bad password?????

[Stephen Samuel]

I saw more like 10% (but the loginids were assigned and not all that memorable). It was also a pool of people a bit more likely to be geekish than the average population.

I use those stats to impress sysadmin students...to try and convince them that coming up with decent passwords is a good idea.

People are part of the job...

[$kr1p7_k177y]

Just because we specialize in very linear concepts, it doesn't absolve us of the requirement to communicate clearly and civilly.

Just think of the $$$$, and you can tolerate any user situation (well, almost...)

Love the look of the site

[Alien54]

This is the way the Internet was meant to by.

So Pure. So Simple.

It's Art

Re:Love the look of the site

[Alien54]

It also loads like I'm on a 1200 baud modem.

well, I was intending a little bit of dry humor/irony in the comment.

and besides, I was thinking a 300 baud modem, one step up from teletype soeed. Which is what it is behaving like with the slashdotting it's getting.

Just be thankful...

[G. Waters]

Just be happy you have the job. There are thousands who'd like be in your position (or have it transferred overseas). Try not to waste any "employment karma" loathing your users; it might seep through the facade.

User Friendly comics

[glinden]

The comic strip User Friendly often visits the topic of frustrated sysadmins. Good for a laugh. I have and recommend all of the books.

Related link (bastard operator from hell...)

[keith_nt4]

Well there's always this link: Bastard operator from hell

That guy's my personal hero (kept me sane during those long 3 hour blocks of no tech support calls).

Re:Uhh

[Soko]

I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou.

Paul Tomblin

You are my God.

/me bows in reverence

Soko

Oh the horror.....

[lgwood01]

I love when taking calls at a dialup ISP when they say initially that they can't get on the internet, when after about 10 minutes of telling them to go here or go there because they can't dial up because they are on their home phone that they have forgotten their yahoo.com email password and can't get into it anymore!

Horror stories

[fm6]

I love to read the horror stories in Computerworld's Shark Tank column. My favorite story is about the boss who heard the saying, "a computer is secure only as long as there's no network connection". And he took it literally. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except he was in charge of a data center...

But there's a difference between healthy venting and obsessive, pointless bitching. Not sure which kind this site represents.

You know you are a sysadmin when...

[BeBoxer]

You know you are a sysadmin when you hear the phrase "users are losers" and don't think of drugs.

I need something removed...

[SharpFang]

A guy comes up to me. "I need something removed from this floppy."
"Ok, no problem. What?" - I display the directory.
"Report2.doc"
shift-delete, enter.
"Aaaargh, I meant just a few lines from inside of the file!!!"

Pointy Haired Boss

[rdr2]

Sat in a meeting with a Senior VP who was trying to convince everyone that you could replace a 8 way 400 MHz Sun E4500 with 1 PC.

His reason? Because 8x400MHz = 3200MHz, so all you would need is one to two 3 GHz processor intel system.

It was hard not to laugh...

Re:Pointy Haired Boss

[nathanh]

Sat in a meeting with a Senior VP who was trying to convince everyone that you could replace a 8 way 400 MHz Sun E4500 with 1 PC. His reason? Because 8x400MHz = 3200MHz, so all you would need is one to two 3 GHz processor intel system.

It's often amazing how otherwise intelligent people can be unbelievably stupid.

For example, I have a friend who got top marks in Computer Science, went on to do Honours, and he is now doing his Masters in his spare time. He's one of the brightest people I know. He can code like a natural, can design like a professional, and holds down an important and well paid job as a J2EE designer.

One day he was describing to me how a PIII running Linux is way better than a Sun E10k. I thought he was joking at first. No, he was being serious. Apparently he'd ran the same database software and J2EE application on both systems and the Linux system smoked the E10k in performance.

After a little prodding I find out his domain on the E10k was only 4 CPUs and was memory starved.

After a little more prodding I find out that the database software they were using was single-threaded.

Yet pointing these facts out didn't convince him then of his mistake, and to this day he is convinced that E10ks are gutless wonders (which is true but not for the reasons he thinks).

So I learnt that day that anybody can make a mistake. The important lesson to learn is that the idiot might be yourself. I make an effort these days to be more humble when someone tells me I'm wrong; they might just be right.

Re:Pointy Haired Boss

[pclminion]

to this day he is convinced that E10ks are gutless wonders (which is true but not for the reasons he thinks).

It's testimony like this that makes me proud to be a computer scientist. Even when we're wrong, we're actually right!

Funny tech request

[the1truedan]

I work for a local public school district. I showed up one of the buildings in the district, and talked to a local tech who had the strangest request.
It seems a teacher needed to send an attachment in an email, and didn't know how. The tech ended up going to the teacher's classroom, and opened up their email client... then asked "Where's the document you want to send?" The teacher then handed the tech a sealed envelope.
True story.

A professor once said it best

[Gary Destruction]

It was a professor that once said something like,"Computers are designed to make people feel stupid when in fact it's the computer that's stupid."

Here come the troll mods...

[litewoheat]

If one was truely smart, one would understand when a non-technical user was explaining a problem or making a request. Otherwise one would just make jokes with the others who also cannot in order make one's self feel superior when in reality one's not...


...especially if it's one's job!

Re:Here come the troll mods...

[TiggsPanther]

What exactly is it we're supposed to "understand"?
Sometimes it's not easy to figure out.

I'm honestly glad I don't do Tech Support where my mum's a secretary. So often she'll say to me "I'm having problems with my Microsoft at work".
A "What program?" will usually be met with an "I don't know. it's Microsoft."

Also, where I do work, I was left a message this week about an error message that had popped up overnight. The error message itself might have been useful - had the tutor jotted down which program had given the error.
"This program has performed an illegal operation" is, strangely enough, less than helpful without a touch of detail.

What really worries me is that I'm fully aware of how much I don't know. I feel I should know a lot more than I do, so I really panic when the decisions are made by people who know less than I do.
(Clue: Decisions I don't feel I know enough to make...)

Plus it's when as a mere data-entry office-temp you end up fixing problems caused by the Manager in the next office doing the computer work for your floor.
My Line Manager at one job knew I knew about computers, so asked my why hers wasn't working after the Manager next door had moved it to a new desk.
Turns out the mouse and keyboard had been plugged into the wrong PS/2 ports. Bad enough, but the ports were colour-coded, and one of the plugs was too.

Tiggs

I live the dream....

[felonious]

Our big boss is totally computer/technology illiterate. Let me show you the depths of his abyssmal knowledge of the most simple of tasks...

These are things he says to me...

My son just sent me this digital clock can you set it up for me?

This fucking printer never works! My response-Do you see the toner light flashing? That means it's out.

The reason he gets so pissed is because he prints every email everyday and then goes in the woman's bathroom to drop a stinky load while reading through them. No joke!

He keeps a minimum of 5000 emails in his inbox and around 5000 in sent and another 10000 in deleted. Yes it's a lovely thing along with his constant crashing of outlook (it doesn't need much help)!

Our top MCSE (oxymoron) will take down the network mid-day while warning no one and usually has problems getting it back up yet our big boss refers to him as the "GENIUS".

I never understood how pop-ups tricked people until I saw our big box click on one that said "YOU HAVE WON!". I was enlightened to say the least.

The rest of the users I support, around 80, are unbelievably computer illiterate...to the point of myself just letting them talk about what they think they know so they will just stfu!

For example one guy was trying to convince me how DVDXcopy rips dvd in mp3 format and he finds the quality superior to DVD.

WTF?

As usual I just listened till he left since it's pointless to respond because these fucking idiots know they are right.

One of the funniest things that happened was when our top MCSE (Oxy Moron x 2) opened an infected attachment and set in motion a massive virus outbreak. File servers, mail servers, beepersystem, phone systems, etc. all dead in a matter of minutes as we run M$ shiite and it was unpatched.

Yet another fucking no brainer!

Does anyone here just throw out big tech terms just to see the user you're talking to implode from their lack of trying to comprehend something well beyond their comprehension?

Here are my favorite questions to ask even before getting started on solving an issue.

Is it plugged in?

Are you logged in as yourself?

Do you know your name?

Do you know what printer you printed to?

Did your parents have any kids that lived?

How can you be so fucking stoopid?

One last thing....

Our big boss is an unbelievable, accidental bug finder no matter what he uses. He can break any and all software/hardware you throw at him and have no idea how it happened but the funniest thing ever involving him wasn't really him but to me personified his luck with pc's, etc.

This is short and sweet...
I was going through my email and received and email from him. I clicked on the email and in that instant the power blinked in the building and went out for hours. I know this has nothing to do with him but can anyone actually prove it?

Re:I live the dream....

[davew2040]

Wow. I'm humbled to be in the virtual presence of one as staggeringly intelligent as yourself.

Sysadmins cause 1/2 the problems

[fname]

I think the sysadmins are largely responsible for these clueless users making silly requests. Not on the admin-level necessarily, but on the executive tech type level. Let me give you one example.

With Win2000, when you print a document, a printer icon appears on the system tray. Double-click this icon, and the network printer you're using shows up and lists the currently queued jobs. So if a document doesn't print out, take a look at the printer, figure out what user is holding up the line, and ask him to cancel. Or if you accidently print 10 copies of your overheads for a talk, you can easily cancel your own print job. Took about 10 seconds start to finish. It always seemed to work, and was never a problem. My guess is that is occasionally took a sysadmin 15 minutes to solve a problem caused by someone canceling the wrong job. Time is money! So naturally, the admins "improved" it.

How? Well, they removed the ability to view the current queue of jobs. So now we can't cancel our own print jobs, or figure out who the bastard is who's holding up the line. What do we do now? Call our support desk. Enter our employee number, choose the correct option from a choice of 5, wait on hold for one of our sysadmins, tell him or her the problem. Tell them the name of the printer. Verify our employee number. Job is cancelled. The last two times I've done this, it's taken about 10 minutes of my time, and about 2 minutes for the admins. And my time costs the company a lot more money than the sys admins time. But the costs for running the support center went down, so it must be good!

Honestly, this is more descriptive of the level of Dilbertism present than a general indictment of admins. To tie in with the original post, this is what causes user frustration. Thinks work fine, someone who "knows better" changes things to make them supposedly better (but actually just more complicated), and the user gets frustrated. Waiting on hold for 10 minutes to cancel a print job (when I should be doing other work) is really frustrating. Add in instances where the admins re-start computers which are in the middle of hours-longs computations without bothering to check in with the users, and it creates generally feelings of hostility towards the tech support staff.

So you want smarter or nicer users? Spend a little time understanding how the admin actions affect the end-user before implementing brain-dead improvements. I suggest doing this by asking them.

Re:Sysadmins cause 1/2 the problems

[rhaig]

And my time costs the company a lot more money than the sys admins time.

That's right, because we're just fucking sysadmins. If you're so damn important, go to the CTO and get an exception or buy your own damn printer.

lusers....

(yes, I'm bitter)

Re:Sysadmins cause 1/2 the problems

[fname]

Don't be bitter. I'm not that important. I work at a company where 70%+ of the Technical Staff have graduate degrees, and I'm probably in the lower half of the pay-scale. I doubt we spend as much time & effort hiring our support personnel (which may go to the crux of the problem). My only point was, whoever decided to implement this system did not do a very good job at assessing how much of a pain-in-the-ass it would be for end-users; and when they were making their ROI calculations, they probably neglected to include the cost to the company for an end-user to sit on hold for 10 minutes in order to cancel a print job. No slight was intended.

Re:I've found anti-idiot types are often idiots as

[Idarubicin]

At my high school, I once lost half a semester's work on a video project due to their (moronic) synching software crashing halfway through.

Yep, you're right. That does sound like moronic synching software. And backups would seem to have been a good idea.

Then again, this was a high school we're talking about. Nobody dies, nobody loses any money, life goes on in the rest of the world if students lose some files.

The parent poster doesn't mention when this anecdote dates from. If he was doing video editing not that many years ago, he might well have been soaking up a significant amount of the school's total available networked storage, and backing it up might have represented an 'unreasonable' expenditure of time and money for the local sysadmin...who might have also had teaching duties, but also had to repair vandalized equipment, manage hardware from new to eight years old from six different vendors running three different operating systems, and plead for funding from the school board.

The sysadmin might have made backups of 'critical' stuff to keep the network and frequently used applications running, but figured that most students would only use the network for doing research and writing papers small enough to fit on a floppy.

If I was going to do large, long-term work on a network that seemed held together by chewing gum and prayer, I might be tempted to ask the sysadmin about it. If I was going to do a project that sucked up significant shared storage resources, I might mention it out of courtesy, too.

And the parent poster has learned a valuable lesson about keeping backups, hasn't he? (The rest of us have all been burned by a drive failure or the like once, and then we learned.) Bummer about losing half a semester's work, but going two or three months without making a backup...?

I'm a graduate student, and I know that the networked storage at my institution is mirrored instantaneously offsite, and backed up to tape every evening. I don't take it off the network until it's been burned to two CDs--one for the office and one offsite at home--as well as a live copy on my local hard drive. (Everyone checks their CD backups periodically, right?)

Symmetrical

[dmaxwell]

You've just been ordered to migrate from sendmail to Exchange server.

That one works in either direction. I'd regard the nasty things like nitro myself. If it's working doooon't screw with it. Exchange and Sendmail? That's like trying to choose between a root canal and a rectal exam.

Re:Symmetrical

[Throtex]

However, you do get to keep your dignity when you have a root canal.

Re:Symmetrical

[sdibb]

That's nothing -- I've got the best of both worlds. I just host my services under Cygwin using Windows.

Re:Symmetrical

[Imperator]

Exchange and Sendmail? That's like trying to choose between a root canal and a rectal exam.

When Sendmail is involved, you always have root!

Re:Symmetrical

[kevin7kal]

Sendmail or Exchange?

One noun...Postfix for an MTA!

Re:Symmetrical

[flacco]

However, you do get to keep your dignity when you have a root canal.

but with the right proctologist the rectal exam could be simply marvelous!

Re:Symmetrical

[Dashing Leech]

That's like trying to choose between a root canal and a rectal exam.

Why choose? The answer is to have the root canal via a rectal exam.

too many freaking hats

[myowntrueself]

For me, the worst, most frustrating part is having to wear too many hats.

I find it really difficult to simultaneously do development and administration work.

For me, development work requires focus. I don't think I am too whacky there.

As an administrator, working on a collection of networks that have evolved over quite some time since well before I started working here, I have to be constantly vigilant and constantly available to deal with issues as they arise. I like to be proactive, finding and fixing things before they become an issue.

These (development and administration) are, I feel, incompatible.

If I am to do good development work, I need a clear head and focus; I can't keep being interrupted to deal with disasters ('Help! I deleted a critical database file! You have to restore it *RIGHT*NOW*!!!!!').

Doing proactive maintenance work takes time; if I am busy doing development work, I don't have time to do enough proactive maintenance.
And believe me, we *need* proactive disaster avoidance work.

I think that more division of labor is required; I mean for heavens sake, its one of the first principles that programmers learn!

Re:Uhh

[Clover_Kicker]

They didn't even include my favorite:

"The PROPER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article, then hire a
hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and fuck his dog and smash his
computer into little bits. Anything more is just extremism." - Paul Tomblin

What's that noise mean?

[unixdad]

One of my own favorite sysadmin stories comes from when I was doing support in a General's staff office. The user had been having problems with her computer so I had the computer unplugged while I had it opened and was replacing the modem.

In the middle of the procedure, a device on the desk next to us starting this warbling noise-- user jumps a little bit and says "What does that mean?".

"Well, seeing as that device is your phone, I think it means that someone is calling you."

Nick Burns - "MOVE!"

[UnknownSoldier]

I know we shouldn't make fun of the users, but everyone should watch Saturday Night Live - Nick Burns - Your Company's Computer guy. Funny stuff.
My bro's get a kick out of it, when I say that while helping them with their computer probs.

Are there only 5 skits? I've seen ...
- Billy Bob Thornton (the best one)
- Jamie Fox (very funny)
- Callista Flockhart
- Jackie Chan
- Jennifer Aniston

--
"Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary."
- Wrongly credited to St. Francis of Assisi
http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/ Oct2001/ Wiseman.asp

oops

[catbutt]

I think I misread the boss as being the male and the employee being female. Oh man, glad this is slashdot because I would catch a lot of hell for that kind of mistake in a less-all-male arena.

admins that think they are technical people SUCK

[aaron_pet]

SysAdmins that are non technical, or are lying cheeting bastards like FOX INTERNET (www.foxinternet.net) talking to a technical person, treating the technical person like they are not a technical person... Really boils my blood..

===Story:===

---background/ attempted solution---
nowadays some idiots put up spam blockers that block mail from peoples own web servers... so we can't run our own mail servers without having problems galore...

Well, enter my mom, who was suckered into prepaying for 3 years dial up internet, and my dad who believes that one should pay for their email accounts to ensure operability... and her email costs $$/hour after the initial time is used up!

My dad has multiple, full time ISP accounts. So I set up a computer to do internet connection sharing with those, and dial out whenever it's needed. Saves mom having to dial out on her laptop.. right???

WRONG!!

Fox Internet (foxinternet.net) didn't let her send mail from her account while dialed up to a different ISP... With the encrypted login! no less!

So I call tech support, They say it can't be done, that we MUST send email from their dial up connection..

Call marketing: yeah, that should be possible,

Call tech support, so, we need to send email...
It can't be done ...
escallation
hi, can you hook us up with some form of authentication so that my mom can send email from her computer wherever?

It can't be done..

I have a howto right in front of me.
please enable it

that would be opening our networks to attack

ARRGGGE@!!! Set up some sort of SSH thingie! my mom has Outlook Express, and I'm not switching her to your web mail, because it's not IMAP and so she won't be able to reply to emails that she has already recieved and downloaded...

it can't be done .. eventually

we arn't going to do it, it's against our policy

is your policy to screw your customer?

no, we can't have spam stuff

lets arrange for a refund

Broohahahahaha

So you want people to go arround singing "Fox Internet Sux Fox INternet SUX"

that's being childish

you not providing the service promised to your customers is childish, I'm being musical, and talking directly to you rather than telling the world the " Fox Internet Sux... Fox Internet SUUUuuxx"

click.

Call tech support

RTFEM

[Prof. Pi]

If people would read the document that read 'README' or read the error message instead of panicking when one occured, 95% of all computer problems would be fixed instantly.

Read the ____ error message -- what a concept!

I was adminning a lab full of Suns, and one guy emailed me and said that he got a "filesystem full" message, but he didn't have a key to the room with the file server so he couldn't reboot it!

"Why on earth would you reboot a machine for a 'filesystem full' error?"

"Because you always reboot machines to fix problems!"

Now it wasn't like it was /tmp that was full, in which case a reboot would at least fix the problem, if sloppily. Turns out he was raised on Windows, so in his thinking, System Problem -> Reboot, automatically. (We saved him in time, and got him into Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD, so he turned out all right. He may even be reading this now.)

Re:RTFEM

[cowbutt]

This is something that concerns me; because Windows and Windows applications tend to be much less obviously deterministic than other OSs and applications, non-technical users get used to the idea that computers are mysterious, unpredictable devices. Similarly, because Windows error messages are so frequently inaccurate, politically-loaded, or even outright lies, non-technical users get used to ignoring them because they've never found them to be any use in fixing their problems in the past.

--

Re:1 missing script

[PacoTaco]

Did you just give out your IP address to all of Slashdot? Probably not the best plan.

Re:Uhh

[rhaig]

man, I wish I had time to start reading ASR again... I need it. I'm fully unrecovered now.

hmmm... it appears that I at least have a good feed... Yes, I'll have to start making time to read again.

Remember when

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

it used to be called Sysop

Re:sys admin=trite

[rhaig]

so backups aren't nessecary right? and what about dealing with a know-it-all "developer" who writes many gigs of data to a filesystem and fills it up and or uses multiple tapes on the backup system? You may be in a static environment, but that's you. Not all of us work for the state.

The design of everyday doors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Donald A. Norman's book "The design of everyday things." You'll find that the fault lies with the designer of the door.

Re:The design of everyday doors.

[FreeForm Response]

You know, I thought that same thing. The door had the sort of curvy tube which so often invites me to pull on it to open the door it's attached to.

Also, as curvy-tube handles are much less efficient for pushing open doors than, say, crash bars, I just assumed this one was for pulling upon also..

Then again, I can't pass the entire buck onto the door's designer. There was a nice shiny "PUSH" sticker for me to read. =)

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

confused with the menu

[sysbot]

I'm confused about how to use the menu on their website. Sysadmin plz contact me. :D

Okay, fine.

[davew2040]

I think we get the picture already. Users are easy to hate.

However, witnessing firsthand the smug, whiney, holier-than-thou attitudes of such a large proportion of the admin crowd, apparently they're easy to hate as well.

Hehehe...

[calebb]

step 1) put a typo in clients.conf so radius dies altogether
step 2) fix the typo, but leave the IP mangled so your NAS doesn't work
step 3) fix ONE of the typos, leaving the other for good luck
step 4) ???
step 5) profit!

These guys are great... and they're in eastern Washington, too! :-)

Yet another true history.

[jotaeleemeese]

In one past life of mine I worked for a scientist of international fame in the area of seismology (he helped to design a system to give advanced warning of earthquakes in a geographical zone where this can actually be achieved).

Anyway, he was jealous of his colleagues all whom have been connected to the internal network (all of them had Sun 3 workstations or Macs, all of them easily networkable) and demanded to be connected as well.

The probleem was that his pee cee did not have a network card. I dutifully proceeded to enable PPP through his serial port to allow email and a half decent acces to UNIX terminal.

He complained bitterly about the speed, and in spite of my explanations this figure of international name could not understand why a cable should be slower than the other :-)

Must be someone from Microsoft

[rodgster]

It must be some one from Microsoft.

Remember the browser wars (and lawsuits)? Microsoft and Bill Gates claimed they didn't know what a browser is.

Outsourcing

[rodgster]

I think it is time to outsource the Bullshitters. The CEOs, CFOs, VPs, and other non-essential non-producing assholes.

Some one in India can sit at a desk and play solitaire just as well all day too for a lot less cost.

Re:Outsourcing

[null-loop]

Dell have already taken that step.

Dell CEO Replaced by Calcutta Orangutan

Aaaah a plush CEO.

FYI

[rodgster]

Notes that people may take are useless (for them). I use screen shots. You know the old a picture is worth a thousand words. Anyone competent can then follow instructions. The people who can't .... well.

Why I am a SA

[rodgster]

I became a SA because it is easy for me (many things are). I like challenges and I don't even look at it like work. I probably spend more time bullshitting with users than I do actually working which makes it more enjoyable.

I also try to explain issues to people in terms they can understand (like IP address like a phone number, port number like a phone extention, etc). But the true id10Ts are easy to spot and I don't bother with them. I've seen somewhere that 10% of users consume 50% of support time. I'd say it's true, but it all pays the same.

Sound

[rodgster]

Maybe I'm just an SA Nazi.

In my opinion, in most shops (not all) sound and speakers have no business purpose. I only allow them to be deployed if a true reason exsists (or the big bosses ask for them). For the most part, it would just encourage users to waste company resources (bandwidth, storage, etc) downloading and listening to musak.

Re:Sound

[andy_shepard]

In my opinion, in most shops (not all) sound and speakers have no business purpose. I only allow them to be deployed if a true reason exsists (or the big bosses ask for them). For the most part, it would just encourage users to waste company resources (bandwidth, storage, etc) downloading and listening to musak.

Why don't you try sharing an office with six people who never shut up before going on about how listening to music wastes company resources?

PHD

[rodgster]

I remember meeting some asshat many years ago who had a PhD and a JD.

Turns out he basically got it off the back of a match book cover. start to completion for both was like 18 months. He didn't know basic stuff that I did (I have a BS).

Bottom line: There are stupid people everywhere, some with acronyms at the end of their names and it is not just limited to MCSE, CCNA.

The key is to be able to recognize these people for what they are in 5 minutes or less.

Amen

[johannesg]

While most reactions to your post are evidently from system administrators, I cannot agree more. There are too many sys admins around who think the company is their own private kingdom, and more often than not they have the means to enforce it (at least, in the short term). Couple that to being treated like shit by most people (they are, after all, always being associated with computers being broken!), and I see where some of them get their attitude.

So could the system admins here please realize that us users just want to do our work, with as little hassle as possible? Try to make that possible, hard as it sometimes is. And remember, while you are important to the company, so are your colleagues. Yes, even that cute secretary who opens every single attachment and whose best two attributes are sticking forwards (you could think of here as the "morale officer").

And could the users, in return, perhaps treat their sys admins as real people? Because, you know, they are. Next time you have a computer problem, call your system guy over, _honestly_ tell him what happened ("I opened the attachment"), and then offer to get him some coffee while you are waiting for him to fix your machine. A bit of appreciation goes a long way to establishing a good working relationship, and it will guarantee you get a top response time in future problems.

Re:Amen

[dbIII]

There are too many sys admins around who think the company is their own private kingdom,

I came in the day after what I assume a couple of guy like that were escorted out the door. There were so many things in the network that were effectively a dead man switch - without attention things would die. Things broke, outages occured almost every morning, but things got fixed. The porn dvd rips was cleaned off the company ftp server, the purpose of the undocumented servers was discovered, the VPN tunnels to home machines on cable were shut down and after a while the whole thing was in a good enough state to hand over to someone else with a fairly breif summary.

After all that's said, I think a scathing post by the exec above was an over-reaction to a joke.

Re:Amen

[Glamdrlng]

So could the system admins here please realize that us users just want to do our work, with as little hassle as possible?

If that were truly the case, sysadmins wouldn't have the gripes that they have. Unfortunately, not all users want to just do their work with as little hassle as possible.

The ones who piss us off want to put weatherbug, bonzi buddy, elf bowling, comet cursor, and every other piece of cutesy malware on their machine that gets emailed to them or pups up in an IE install-on-demand window. And just maybe, somewhere in the middle of all that, they want to occasionally get some work done.

Tech Support

[rodgster]

I worked lapdance (laptop) tech support for a major PC maker back in '97. There was a specific product that every time (99%) a call came in it was because the hard drive had failed (OS not found).

Well, virtually the only call I ever got for that product model that wasn't a failed hard drive was some guy working on his PhD thesis (I forget what his issue was). I solved his problem and was bullshitting with him when he mentioned that he had his thesis on the PC.

If I'd have to told him anything about this issue with this model (and some one heard it) I'd have been fired before I could hang up. So I told him, "You know sir, anything of significant importance should be periodically backed-up".

I hope he heeded that advise.

sysadmins are in the customer service business

[ajagci]

I know, this may come as a surprise to many sysadmins, but you are in the customer service business. Your function in life is to make sure that people can get their work done as efficiently as possible. You may regard marketing and sales as a menage of moronic monkeys, but they bring in the money--you don't. If they ask you for something, even if it sounds stupid to you at first sight, you have to listen patiently, be nice, and figure out the best way in which they can be helped. If their request doesn't make any technical sense to you or can't be implemented, explain to them in the nicest possible way why and try to come up with another solution in cooperation with them.

Bash marketing folks? You underestimate sysadmins

[pjt33]

MS-DOS - far more evil than bash.

Bone Cancer?

[rodgster]

If it was bone cancer, I understand that is one of the more painful deaths possible. Sorry to hear that.

I guess the $100K basically boils down to what's a life worth? I'm thinking a little more than that.

As for the HMO and doctor lying and altering records, my experience is that is human nature.

I wish you & your uncle the best.

Hmm, not sure about this one.

[MegaT]

The amusement from sysadmin/techsupport vs luser websites is usually derived from the consistent insanity of the guy requiring help, and the tolerant, patient way in which the sysadmin tries to deal with it. Unfortunately this site does a better job of highlighting how impatient, intolerant, and disdainful some sysadmins feel they have a right to be. The blurb uses the word "hilarious" twice. I'm not really sure why - I found it quite sad.

Shame they can't do web design

[pjt33]

Although I must admit I haven't tried viewing it in lynx to see whether adding in some colour contrast makes the site navigable.

FYI

[rodgster]

A number of times clueless owners or CEO have totally ignored everything I've advised them on and bought shit which it is then my job to implement and support.

Example: replace a SQL based financial database with an Access Database for many times more than the cost to upgrade to the latest version of the SQL one. Not to mention waste several thousand dollars for tech support from the SQL provider to help the porting to access (which was by itself more then the upgrade cost).

I'm at a loss. Oh well, it all pays the same.

Correct Answer was

[rodgster]

If you look at some of the posts above, the correct answer to fix a windows BSOD is to reboot (just joking).

Re:Correct Answer was

[NanoGator]

Heh. Actually, an NT bluescreen can be quite useful. It tells you where it farted and why. That's how I found out that my dual Dell machine didn't like running at 2x AGP. Cranked it down to 1X and it ran smooth as silk. I expected more of Dell, but it was one of the first machines to use 2X AGP.

Even Better

[rodgster]

Back in '97 when I was working phone support, a user call to say that they had just bought their new computer, initially configured it, backed it up (to floppies) but during the verify floppy number 157 (or something like that) had failed to read (bad disk).

I told him to only backup data (such as my documents, etc.)

Correction

[rodgster]

It is probably outlook.pst but... depending on what version it originally had and then upgraded to, etc. I always do a search for *.pst myself (look at the file dates, etc). And don't forget archive.pst

Dark green on black???

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

Sorry, but what kind of idiot puts up a web page with such colors (dark green on black) and then complains about his customer and/or boss stupidity??? Your page is unreadable on my monitor.

Re:Dark green on black???

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

Boy, I actually remember the times with green/black terminals very well. I was working on them. I neven complained about green, I was complaining about DARK green.

UI design

[rodgster]

I think the primary question is what is the stupidist thing anyone would ever try to do with this.

SAs (M$) should know outlook either stores in a *pst or the priv.edb

Believe it or not I have a group of attorney who use M$ Mail. I haven't even seen that since '96 (pre exchange).

You can lead a horse to water, but can't make him drink. And you can lead a human to an idea, but you can't make hime (or her) think.

VPN

[rodgster]

I'd guess the VPN (or there may even be a firewalling of the VPN) is not functioning properly as you wouldn't want to have NFS directly accessible on the Internet.

Just my 2 cents.

Info

[rodgster]

You can get the same useful info out of 2K & XP if you turn off the automagically reboot feature (my computer->properties->advanced->Startup and Recovery Settings->uncheck automatically restart. That'll show you the BSOD with the driver and system file diagnostic, ala NT BSOD.

My Dell that I'm running Redhat 9 on cannot boot from any HD but the primary master. I expect better from Dell (everyone else can do it) too, but what can you do? I don't need windows XP (even though I have a license for it anyway)

If I'd sold this machine to an End User (EU) I'd just say, "fucking Dell". But I say that anyways.

The brand new slave problem

[dbIII]

The major problems I have had are purely social. At a very disfunctional workplace of a company that had just lost half it's staff, including the former IT people, there were a few people at the bottom of the organisation who found to their surprise that they now had someone at their beck and call. Angry demands to move printers to save a few seconds of walking and demands for longer phone cords resulted. It turned out location of the printers was some form of departmental status indicator, and it had to be done by an outsider for territorial claims to be valid.

One memorable incident was when one staff member sent another woman (who was theoretically at a position of the same level, but was younger) with a broken leg in a cast down the stairs to repeat the demand for a longer phone cord at a time when I and several others were furiously trying to get ALL the companies comms servers going again so customers could connect (which is something every employee in the building knew - and most could visualise a meter showing lost $ ticking over fast). In that situation a very nasty woman was proving her place in the pecking order by making unreasonable urgent demands on two people over a trivial issue. Various unprofessional threats were made to my chest hair (I'm serious folks) by several middle aged women that I had never met before and a nasty little guy who had the attitude that the whole world hated him because he was gay - so he has the right to take it out on anyone.

My contract was terminated after I took an unused printer away from the proximity of the nasty guy - he said it was "HIS", and couldn't understand that it belonged to the company, was paid for out of an IT budget, and that the boss of the person that had been using the printer previously would have a say but not him. The correct way to do things would have been to stroke his feelings, make him feel like the big alpha male he saw himself as in that corner of the office, talk to him in person and possibly swap the unused printer gathering dust with a bigger, more impressive one that was not as functional. The brief, polite but firm email to him on a busy day led to him yelling complaints at the top level of management - probably about attitude.

Putting pizza coupons in letterboxes for a few weeks after that was great fun in comparison, and got me out in the sunshine. Spam, but only on paper.

Currently the only social problems I have are guys bringing in their childrens computers for me to fix, but letting me think that they belong to the company. I probably would have done it anyway, but it really looks bad after you've postponed important work to try to recover a school assignment from a dead hard drive, and you really should be getting back to another site - the time for that is after hours for bonus karma, and working around my own schedule.

I did get "are we there yet" every few minutes on Friday, but it was a workstation used for transferring pay into bank accounts, so the user would get the same from others if I didn't fix it quickly. Working with people that have actually been to a university or have worked outside an office environment make being a sysadmin a lot easier. A guy who drives a truck knows that a computer is not a typewriter, that all kinds of things can go wrong, some can be fixed in seconds and others take serious time.

When the boss gets hands on

[CmdrGravy]

I look after a Telephone ACD and a few months ago it stopped working.

Us to Boss: Yes it looks like someone reconfigured all the trunks coming in to our cards
Boss: What do you mean ? We can't afford these kind of outages, this is a disaster
Us to Boss: Well we didn't reconfigure anything, have you any idea who else might want to have done this ?
Boss: No, Oh hang on this isn't connected to the work I gave My Deputy to do yesterday would it ?
Us: What work ?
Boss: Well I needed to reverse the direction on all the circuits
Us: Yes, that might explain things. Why didn't you ask us to reverse the direction on our cards as well ?
Boss: I just thought it would work anyway
Us: No, it doesn't
Boss: Oh
Us: So do you know what direction everything is going now ?
Boss: No, I did write it down but I think some it was the opposite of what I wrote anyway
Us: So you have no idea what's doing what now ?
Boss: No.

They shouldn't need a book.

[khasim]

The company should put them through a BASIC familiarity course when they're first hired.

This is a phone. Dial "9" and the number to get out. To call someone else in the company, just dial the last 4 digits of their number. We call that their "extension". People can call you on the 1-800-xxx-xxxx number and then type in your "extension" to call you "toll free". But we monitor the bills for the 1-800 number so only use it for work calls.

This is a computer. There is an "on switch" for the "monitor" and the "computer". They are here and here. There is also an on switch for the power strip. It is here. Don't plug anything else into the power strip, ever. This one is only for the computer. The computer will only be usable if all of those are turned on and plugged in. If the computer doesn't turn on and you've checked that it is plugged in and all three pieces are turned on the use the "phone" to call the help desk's "extension". We'll send someone over to fix it.

This is your login screen. This is your username. You will have to change your password every 60 days. Your username goes in this space. Your password goes in this space. Sometimes the machine says you've typed in the wrong name or password. If that happens, check your caps lock key. To the machine, capital letters are different than lower case letters. Machines are like that. If it still has a problem, you might have let your password expire or you've tried too many times to get in with the wrong password. Use the "phone" to call the help desk's "extension" and we'll fix it.

This is a browser. We have it set to "open" our "Intranet page" automatically. ...and so forth.

Just a day working with their new boss or some other mentor to teach them the basics of using the tools we provide. It prevents so many problems and mis-understandings.

Re:sys admin=trite

[Sandman1971]

Hmmmm, at last count, our shop manages over 70 mail servers. SO you're right, it's not dozens and dozens. It's a lot more than that. Oh yeah, it's an ISP! I guess dozens and dozens of mail servers must be an exageration. 1-2 mail servers should be more than enough to handle millions of mailboxes and hundreds of millions of email transactions a day!

A virus/worm is easilly stopped with one filter? Show me a filter that will stop a worm/virus that sends itself out (or spam) with rotating from field info, random message text and rotating file name attachements. ANd yeah, you're right on one point. Fighting spam does take up the bulk of our time, because spam has becaome a very major problem. End users don't want to see spam in the inboxes, and more and more the majority of emails flowing to the system is spam. YOu find one way of combatting it, and spammers will turn around and find 10 new ways to get thru your systems. And because of fighting spam, this means you have less time to actually do other work. This is why sysadmins bitch and complain about spam.

When spam stops (and oh god I pray for the day that it will happen), it means sys admins everywhere will actually be able to do other work.

So until you actually become a sysadmin, I highly suggest you stop your whining, cuz you obviously have no clue as to what it means and what it really entails.

I don't think that's what he meant

[stewby18]

I'm pretty sure you are misunderstanding what he meant by "produce nothing valuable". This is extremely different from "is not valuable to the company"; "produce nothing valuable" means "creates nothing that can be sold to the customer for profit". The point being that an IT department's sole purpose is to make life run more smoothly for everyone else. Having a stable network servers no purpose by itself; no company's buisiness plan is "We'll set up a company that has a really good IT department, and hope that we magically make money" (excluding, of course, IT consulting companies).

So the point is, being a BOFH means you are doing the opposite of your job; making life harder for the revenue-generating people. The BOFH mindset is "I, and my network, are the most important thing". The good IT mindset is "Making sure that I, and the network, make the things that create profit easier is the most important thing". Sometimes it may look like an IT department is being a pain in the ass; if it's for a greater overall good, then great, but if it's only for the IT department's good, then the IT department is failing.

That doesn't mean that the IT guys should be treated like crap, or given no power/respect; as you say, they often serve a vital role in the company. But unless they are fulfilling that role, they are 100% dead weight, or worse.

Re:admins that think they are technical people SUC

[jaegerx21]

i don't get it open relay mail servers are the bain of my existence. almost all the spam i recieve is from them. just set your moms mail account to use whatever isp's she's dialing into's smtp server.

Slow news day?

[TheTick]

Sysadmins find users thick? Bosses are slow on the uptake? Who would have thought? How long has this been going on??

Welcome to 1985, guys.

Dumb vs. unwilling to learn

[wk633]

Everyone has something to learn. I try not to assume that someone is dumb just because they don't know something I think they should.

What I can't stand are people who refuse to listen. Or assume they know more simply because they are higher on the beuracracy pyramid.

And a better site with tonnes of stories:

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.techtales.com/

And....

[carlmenezes]

the other part is true too...Exchange does come from Microsoft which is... :)

Design & Color

[Laebshade]

The design, yes it's geeky, but would've been better if they implemented a java command line (or just a simple text box) to change pages. Now the color.. they obviously don't look at the page, such a dark green with a skinny font on black? What were they thinking? Horrible...

Re:admins that think they are technical people SUC

[MegaT]

This is pretty standard. You should probably steer clear of any ISP hosting an open relay, being as you'll probably find it gets blacklisted before long. Why can't you use the SMTP server of whoever you're connected with at the time?

pah, nothing compared to developer support.

[Dr.Knackerator]

ok, i used to work at MS in VC++ support many moons ago. You'd think the customers would at least have some clue, or the ability to work the documentation search engine. My shortest call was:

Visual C++ support, X speaking, how can I help?
Err, yes, is there an API to get the current directory?
Yes sir, it's called GetCurrentDirectory
Oh thanks, bye

or the person who was so dumb that even after looking at samples, then us modifying the samples twice to make it more like they needed - still couldn't get it. We got so fed up with her calls and total lack of knowledge I told her to bring the PC in and I wrote the damn code for her (elapsed time: 20 mins).

Or the people who could phone up 80 times in 30 days (basically we wrote their whole project)

or the programmer who asked 'whats a swap file'.

Or the *professor* who swore blind there was a bug in the C++ compiler, as his overriden function in a derived class was not being called. Only for him to fax in his code and we immediately spotted that he had a spelling mistake in the function name.

Or the woman who whilst we were trying to get her to fix her problem by changing system settings was sighing a lot then said 'i dont know why I am doing this when are you coming out to fix it'.

Or the multi million pound project that was being developed on NT to be deployed on Win32s (a kind of crippled 32 bit mode you could run on Windows 3.1), only for them *not to test it on the target platform until a week before release*. (after much moaning on their part turned out to be bug in their code hitting a limit on win32s)

Or possibly worst of all, continually recieving stupid calls, only to find out that the caller was sat not 20 feet away from us, working on business apps as a developer for the local IT group

There's no point flaming me about any quality of support you've got from MS over the years, I was saying the same stuff from inside and believe me it irked me as much as you.

Unsolicited Programs

[Un0r1g1nal]

I've found that giving a fairly simple explanation to the user why they can't have product on their computer usually solves a lot of the user vs. admin problems. We get on well with most of our users, and they respect the policies that we have made, not that they are draconian by any means. This I would attribute to the level of comunication, which comunication is 2 way. When people ask for certain items on their computers we dont just say 'no, bugger off' but we give them a valid reason, as to why, and in most cases also give them a suggested alternative as well. Now you notice I said most of our users, of course you get the ones that just keep bitchin and moaning, but they just get blacklisted, so to speak, and just about any request they make is rejected :) I know it seems like it's not worth the effort sometimes when they just can't get the point, but overall the more we educate our users the less time we have to spend responding to silly requests.

Woohoo

[No. 24601]

This week's bitch and whine thread.

It's not an "open relay"

[aaron_pet]

She doesn't have a mail account on the ISP that we dial into... My dad does... but we don't want my mom's email mixed in with my dads.

I was asking for it to be done with encrypted authentication, or a VPN...

yes: Steer clear of open relay, why not work: belo

[aaron_pet]

I agree that we need to steer clear of open relays...

but that is what encryption and authentication is for!

She can't use my dad's email account over dial-up for multiple reasons:
We don't know my dad's password.

Also, the stupid folks at FOX INTERNET must be running an open relay of sorts if their only method of keeping a spammer from relaying email is to only accept connections from their dial up server...

That is just about as insecure!

Dial up passwords should not be the same as the mail server passwords!

and thier customers probably get hacked plenty easily and start sending email.

Why not SMTP server of who I'm connected with?
I don't have the password!
and it's my dad's account!

Actually.. I haven't tried it yet... hehe.. but that would be an open relay because untrusted people can send mail over it ;O

note: we have one computer connect to the net automatically... for multiple accounts and users... these users should not be trusted by the currently connected ISP.. unless a password is supplied.

Solution:

[StarKruzr]

1) Buy cheap stick of SDRAM from somewhere
2) Install in your machine. Tell no one.
3) Expense it as something like "Computer consumables"
4) Profit!

Well, wait a second...

[StarKruzr]

"Who has to rebuild it if you fuck it up? Who has to troubleshoot it when your shit stops working on you and you call for support? Who gets blamed for you not being able to meet your deadline because your computer mysteriously crashed? Me. The sysadmin. I do."

Uh. What if you *don't*? What if I fuck it up and you never hear about it until after *I've already fixed it*?

"Dave, dude, I'm such a dumbass. I loaded $DRIVER for my PDA and thought it'd be fine, but it turns out those WHQL certs are there for a reason. Totally hosed my system. No worries though, I reghosted it in an hour this afternoon. Ain't that a PITA, though?"

Usually the real geek users are more than smart enough (and more than willing) to support themselves with just a little bit of info from IT to help (what's the feed for ghostwalk, what's my BIOS password so I can boot from CD, etc.).

Re:admins that think they are technical people SUC

[BigBadBri]

my mom has Outlook Express, and I'm not switching her to your web mail, because it's not IMAP and so she won't be able to reply to emails that she has already recieved and downloaded...

So your mom is incapable of cutting and pasting?

Stopping IPs not on your subnet from sneding mail is standard practise - it may reflect laziness, or it may just be that the extra admin time involved in providing secure authentication just isn't seen as worthwhile, especially if a web mail service is offered.

You sound like a pissed off teenager who has read a couple of howtos and considers himself an expert - in the real world, operational considerations sometimes overtake technical ones.

My favorite management type quote

[kamend]

This quote was acually sent to me after I sent a manager a quote for some new software:

"Is the annual maintenance cost something we will need tp pay every year?"

I love that. It reminded me of Mad Magazineand "Stupid Answers to Stupid Questions"
We had fun time trying to come up with really nice answers to that question......

Re:yes: Steer clear of open relay, why not work: b

[Nerd4News]

"Why not SMTP server of who I'm connected with?
I don't have the password!
and it's my dad's account!"

"Actually.. I haven't tried it yet... hehe.. but that would be an open relay because untrusted people can send mail over it"

You don't need a password and it's not (necessarily) an open relay. Generally if you're logged in on one of their IPs you're automatically verified for SMTP unless they're forcing POP before SMTP. Your mom should be able to retrieve her mail while connected to any ISP but has to use the SMTP server of the ISP she's connected through. They don't (shouldn't) care what info you have in the To: and From: headers.

OTOH, while I'm almost sure you must have reasons, WTF is your mom doing with an IMAP account rather than POP? My mom can barely handle POP email. I shudder to think of trying to explain IMAP to her.

There are several ways to do what you want to do but you have to find someone at the respective ISP with a clue.

Re: incapable of cut and paste, not worth effort

[aaron_pet]

well, I did make a stink,
I got very pissed off, to my discredit

1.
but NO, I cannot change my mom's email

2.
Yes, she could cut and paste, but she really doesn't want to do anything differently on her computer, and SHE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO

2.5 ALSO, she keeps a record of all the email that she sends.. this is REQUIRED, webmail doesn't do that for her

3.
The marketing people SAID that we could do this.

4. Web mail sucks

5. I definately acted like a teenager, but I had the restrictions of what I was allowed to do LIKE i was a teenager, and I was really pissed off.

I needed to do one thing, but all of the solutions were bared from me.

As it is, my mom switches the phone, disconnecting everyone from the net, which is way less than ideal.

6. My point still stands that SysAdmins that have charged for a service, should make it happen.. and not hide behind stupid excuses... maybe the software that would allow them to do what I needed was buggy... PUT IT ON A DIFFERENT MACHINE, AND USE SEPORATE PASSWORDS or whatnot...

7. security IS more important that features in most cases, except for when the feature is really really needed.

8. Why is this standard practice? I can log into my moms account and send email as her as it is! This is WRONG... (It might require a packet sniffer)

9. They should allow us to secure our network, they just passed the insecurity on to us!
My mom shouldn't have to trust me for her username and password, neither should my dad, That's why we use logins! (well actual reason is to keep our profiles seporate.. but when I run my teenage pr0n illustrated howto for setting up secure smtp.. I don't want my mom to be able to browse my home directory ;)

10. I've met other sysadmins that DON'T WORK WITH THE CLIENT
I have a need, I say I want to do SOMETHING LIKE this, how do we do this..

AND THAT IS BEING PASSED OFF AS A "BAD QUESTION" ???

The sys admin should not be banging vis head against the desk because of the stupididy of vis clients, the sysadmin bangs vis head because of VIS OWN STUPIDITY...

EVEN WHEN IT's:
Gee, why did my coffee holder retract splling coffee all over my machine?

I can't say that I'd really blame the sys admin for that one...

UNLESS THE SYSADMIN DOESN'T KNOW WHO VE IS SERVING, AND TAYLORS VIS SERVICE FOR THOSE PEOPLE!

Racing analogy

[phorm]

In other words, the pit crew doesn't take the driver's car keys, but they don't hand him an air-driver and ratchet-wrench either.

If your users have their office software, etc etc and whatever else they need to do their job, there's no reason for them to have access to install the latest version of kazaa or whatever.

voratious spam filters Re:no password, WTF IMAP

[aaron_pet]

1. There is also the problem that lots of spam filters check the To: From: addresses of the email... and increase it's spam rating dramatically if they don't match.

2. Yes, she can recieve her POP3 email from anywhere... and that's part of the problem, it makes it LOOK like she should also be able to send.

2. I'm saying that they should require a password, because we leave our internet connection on, and have multiple people using that account... and We don't want to "bless" the email sent from our machines by sending them all through a legit email server... because we might have a few nuts use their accounts for stupid thingss...

3. We want to be able to change the ISP that we dial up to, while keeping my mom's email address... This is illogical to me, but my mom was told to believe that something she pays for is worth more than free services... even if they don't do what they want it to do!

4. IMAP... she is using pop3. I could set her up with IMAP.. If she were using IMAP then web mail would work better for her, because she would be able to access her account from multiple readers and have the messages there.
POP3 sucks when storing emails on the server.

5. I think I hit the "we don't have clueful people, or arn't willing to pass you along" ISP people.

6. I really was trying to be nice.. but after being shuffled arround on PBX and making repeated calls trying to get that cluefull person, and finally getting escalated to the "customer we don't want anymore" arse hole, THEN I started singing and doing juvenile things.

7. Now, KEEP EVERYONE AWAY FROM http://www.foxinternet.net
THEY HAVE BURNT US, THEY WILL BURN YOU TOO.

8. I believe in saying bad things about people who are actively harming the innocent with false advertising and other autracities (spelling yadayada I know)