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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."
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....
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
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.
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.
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
Archive.org mirror.... http://web.archive.org/web/20030714083852/www.sysa dminco.com/main.php
Seems to still work, haven't tried loads.
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
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -Chomsky
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.
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/
good for a larf...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Check out the Gnu Know your System Administrator field guide and Top 100 things you don't want the sysadmin to say ...
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)
.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.
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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
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.
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.
"Derp de derp."
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.
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.
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.
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.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
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.
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."