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Top 10 System Administrator Truths
Vo0k writes "What are your top ten system administrator truths? We all know them already, but it's still fun re-telling them. Stuff like "90% of all hardware-related problems come from loose connectors", even though you already know it's true, may save you from replacing the "faulty" motherboard if you recall it at the right time."
... are operator errors. But you can't tell the operator that.
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
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Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Never post stupid top ten administrator lists on Slashdot, lest I have to spend my time restoring a web server from backup.
the future is but past forgotten
... even though it's better than it used to be, registry corruption is still the number one cause of boot failures in Windows XP. And the contents ntbtlog.txt and the Recovery Console are still horribly inadequate tools for fixing it...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The solution to the problem is almost always simpler than you think. You can often cause more problems trying to fix a problem then the original problem itself. When you try one thing and it doesn't work, reverse the changes before trying the next thing and document each change.
Bradley Holt
When all else fails, reboot. If it still fails, blame the user.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
IT'S NOT A CUPHOLDER!!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
PEBKAC
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
1) Never believe anything anyone tells you: always test for yourself.
2) Always ask the dumb questions: is it switched on?
3) Reboot cures most things EXCEPT rm -r * when logged in as root
After that, things could get tricky.
Most users should not being allowed to operate computers, let alone drive cars. Sysadmins need to learn who these people are and minimize the damage they cause. I suggest randomly changing their password every day until they quit in frustration.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
-You shall be very pessimistic
-Make sure you can leave exactly like it was before you touched it.
-Dont fix what aint broken.
-Start from a known state of the system (switch off - switch on).
-Even you are genius level techie, follow the manual, RTFM.
-Dont reinvent the wheel. Compare with something thats working.
-Cables are not perfect. If something doesnt connect, check lower levels first.
-If its there, ther must be a reason. Never ever delete anything. Rename instead.
-You memory is not infinite. Write what you do.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
from bending them around and whatnot, they develop breaks that can get pushed back together. This is what causes the problem to be intermittent. The cable 'is' bad, not going bad. People need to be more careful in wrapping their cords up. There should be a little bit of slack in the loops or else the slightest bit of pressure will cause them to develop a break.
Rule 1. They lie. End users often tell you what they think you want to hear. When asking a question you should use terms like. What does it say? vs Does it say this?
Rule 2. They don't know they are lying.
Rule 3. Sometimes they are telling the truth. Yes sometimes what you think is impossible really is happening or looks like it is happening.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Unless you lack plans for the weekend.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Never put the screws back in the case until you've tested your new hardware is working.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
HPs Jetdirect cards have a pretty solid reputation of failing every few years
Is this really the case? We had several JetDirect enabled PCs at my former place of work and almost none of them had a card failure. We even had a few extra cards just in case. Several of the printers were actually quite old even. The biggest problem we had was with only HP-5P (I think that is the number). Some users departments did not have the money to replace those crappy old printers. On a bit of an aside, we had several JetDirect "boxes" (the external box that connected the printer port to ethernet) that were working great. I believe most everyone in the IT staff had one at home for their printers.
No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft.
Not really true. There are some shops so enamored with Novell (mostly because of bosses stuck in the stoneage) that the idea of purchasing Exchange or using a full out ActiveDirectory system with a Windows only network storage share were unheard of. I once again reference my previous job.
Not too bad of a list overall. Most of the items are right, and it is quite true. To be honest, the places I have worked there were really only a handful of problem employees, and most of them got handled directly by our SysAdmin or the head of IT because no wanted to worry about what lie they may come up with about the work we were doing.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Seriously, the "90% of all hardware-related problems come from loose connectors" bit is found nowhere in the article or on google for that matter...
Number One: You will die alone.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If your job requires you to wear a name tag, carry a gun, or administer a Windows system, you have made a serious vocational error.
-- oh.... so..... sleeeeeepy.
In my Tech Support experience, I have found only three basic rules.
Rule number 1. People are stupid. This one is true of all people. Tech support, highways, shopping, whatever. This rule has been extended to cover just about any stupid thing that anyone does.
"Why did that guy just..."
"Rule number 1."
"Did she think she could get away with that?"
"Rule number 1."
Rule number 2. People lie.
Me: "Has the computer been restarted since the problem started?"
Them: "Yes..."
Me: "OK. Let's try restarting the computer now and see what happens."
Them: "What do you mean by restart?"
And when you add 1 and 2 together, you get 3. Sometimes, people are so stupid, they don't know that they're lying. You know these people. They're the ones who have "Windows 2000 XP" or "2000 ME." They're the people for whom "Nothing happens when I try to check my email. Nothing! Just this error message..." Not realizing that the error message is *exactly* what I was looking for. An error message is *not* nothing. Grr.
There is a fourth rule that also shows up from time to time:
Rule number 4. No good deed goes unpunished.
In the famous words of the leader of the Uruk Hai from his battle call at Helm's Deep in The Two Towers: "Grr."
It doesn't matter whether I'm giving or requesting tech support, the number one rule is that the person on the other end of the telephone is an idiot.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Don't get linked to by Slashdot!
None of the other nine truths will save your server!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If the acronym contains an F, don't ask what it stands for.
Support the FairTax
Spontaneously combust
Trust me -- you do not want to get that call:
Caller: You know that machine in (room) that has a sign that says 'do not turn me off'? You: YesBuild it, and they will come^Hplain.
One of my big truths, set standards!
I've worked in two kinds of places, ones where they set (and stick to) standards and ones that don't. Every place that doesn't use or doesn't stick to standards has always been an experience in wasted time, confusion, and lots of bugs. Those that do can seem like you're always being nagged but in the end you find things work as expected, code is far easier to manage (especially when it is someone else's), and you aren't always having to reinvent the wheel (i.e. figuring out how to fix a subtle bug again because the solution was never written down the first time).
It sounds simple but it takes discipline at all levels. Even something as documenting what you did afterwards and putting it in an orderly file system can make a huge difference but how many people bother to do it? Managers and fellow developers have to crack the whip and keep people from trying to cut corners.
Standards should be open to some change and can be bent but there has to be a very good defendable reason for it.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Now let me just kill that last background process with the old 'kill %1'
[$researchgroupserver]: kill 1 enter
Crap!
Treat users with respect even if they are clearly in the wrong. Don't patronise somebody if they haven't got the first idea about computers: educate, don't insult. I'm not a buddhist but the old karma idea of "what goes around, comes around" seems to play out in the long term. Being patient with somebody who's royally screwed up their computer pays off in six months time when you need them to put your expenses claim through accounts at 5pm on a Friday evening/ notice you standing in the rain by your broken down car/..../
Even if you've been doing this for 20 years. If you are working with another technician, have the grace to treat them like an intelligent human being.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I have a friend living the GeekSquad life. I'd never hire him as he believes in their process to fix lockups:
1. It must be this unsupported software: remove Firefox or any F/OSS.
2. It is a virus, your AV is no good, purchase Norton CoverYourAss v9.6 for $49.95.
3. The AV doesn't perform a deep clean by itself, we can run one for $24.95.
4. You need a bigger hard drive, w recommend Norton Ghost to copy it. $199.95 + $49.95.
5. We should install the drive. $24.95 + $8.95 wrist strap.
6. We should run ghost for you, $19.95.
7. You need USB 2.0 ports for your mouse to run faster, $49.95 plus $24.95 installation.
8. Your hard drive cables are old belt style, you needbthe snappy round cables, $29.95 plus $9.95 installation.
9. Your video board is old, the ATI MegaWow XL is only $199.95.
10. You should probably buy one of our Compaq BusinessPro by HP combinations, you burned your TCP/IP converter with static.
I pop open the discarded PC, replace the processor fan and blow out the case. All is fine - $30.
"Rule #10 - The Holy Grail of Tech Support is the reboot"
If you believe this or if you need this, you are running a
POS operating system and its probably from Microsoft.
That this would even be considered a rule by a professional IT
worker is all the proof we need that Bill Gates has caused
more damage than he can ever hope to make up for.
What utter crap.
On a 24x7x365 job, I learned the value of walking through the user's work area every weekday morning, first thing.
They started waiting for me to stroll in instead of paging me at night, just to be nice to me.
But the best part was, they thought of me as the guy who keeps the system running, because most of the time that I showed up, the system was running.
My colleagues who only showed up when their systems broke had the reputation "Here comes trouble!"
Taking credit for things going well is essential!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
10) Patch Current. Then ask for the unreleased patches. Then ask for development involvement.
9) Patching only works 30% of the time
8) Metalink is like a massive "Magic 8 Ball" that pulls responses from the database. Treat it as such.
7) Tars are the same as 8, except you have a customer service rep reading the 8 Ball.
6) If it generates core files it's the DBA's problem.
5) It's ALWAYS the DBA's fault.
4) RMAN is your friend.
3) You know more about Apache than Oracle does.
2) Oracle won't admit this.
1) Autconfig doesn't.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Great. Glad you feel that way. Now, before we all hug, skip, and fling daisies, you need to remember ONE thing:
THERE ARE NO FEELINGS IN IT. EVER.
Feelings are reserved for secretaries named Gladys who come crying to you when they accidently delete all the pictures of their grand kids.
"This article is very comforting."
You better sack the hell up if you are going to make it in the IT world.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
...is the result of trying to implement 100% of user requests. Sometimes, telling the user "no, you simply can't have that" is the best way to ensure an application isn't horribly poisoned by thousands of totally irrational, non-intuitive crap "features" each piece of which makes sense only to the person who requested it. Worse, such design-by-committee applications are invariably written interface-first, back-end last with no regard to how to actually make the goddamned thing WORK, much less work efficiently.
I agree, good software should be intuitive, but far better to be proactively engineered to be more intuitive, rather than reactively veneered to feel less unintuitive.
Seriously, anthropomorphizing machines is a powerful technique. It gives you an approximate but effective mental model of a complex system. "Primitive" cultures are not dumb when they attribute personalities to objects. Our brains are wired to use personality to predict complex behaviour.
My Mother had no technical skills or knowlege - but she treated the automobile like a pet. She was alert to the tiniest change in sound or vibration of the machine, and very often alerted my Dad to problems long before he was aware of anything. One time, driving across country, my Mom said the right front wheel "didn't sound right". We were cruising along at 70, and everything seemed fine. But she insisted, so my Dad pulled over and checked all the tires. No sign of a problem. He pulled the hub cap off the right front wheel - and noticed that the cotter pin had broken! A few more miles and the wheel would have come off. My Dad panicked, since we didn't have any cotter pins in his repair kit. But my Mom dug in her purse and offered a bobby pin. My Dad didn't want to use it, because it was the wrong kind of metal and would break easily. My Mom said she had more, so he put it in. That bobby pin took us another 5000 miles.
My Dad does all his own work on his cars - at least he did until he ruined the valves on his Honda Accord a few years ago. Now he lets a mechanic do some stuff for him. I learned to be in tune with machines from my Mom, and learned to fix them from my Dad. When designing file system software back in the '70s, the rhythmic sounds of the disk access mechanism was my best feedback on its efficiency. Those were the days of 14" disk platters.
Nah, carbon based errors, instead of silicon based errors. 99% of people won't get it - unless you work at a chemical plant!
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
1) Document everything. I've had coworkers who thought being asked to document their processes and procedures meant they would soon be canned. If you document your processes, you can pass them off to other team members when you tire of them, so you can move on to bigger and better problems. 2) Talk out loud when working with users. It was a habit I got into while doing field service. Explain what you are doing while you are doing it and a) the users may learn something, and b) it lets them know you're not related to Nick Burns (SNL). By taking the time to explain things (knowing most users won't understand any of it to begin with), the users will know that you are interested (okay, some may feign interest) in their problems and the resolution. After doing this for years, I have seen many technophobic users start to come around to where they will actually try to fix a problem themselves before calling the help desk. 3) Problem always happen on Fridays just before quitting time.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I once worked in a place with a large testing lab. The computers and other electronics were on a UPS. The air conditioning wasn't.
Power failed one Friday evening.
What was found Monday morning is left as an exercise to the reader.
I can't stress enough how valuable one of these, or some other good LiveCD, can be. If the box is Windows, Linux, whatever, keep one handy. One of these things can be priceless if the thing refuses to boot properly, someone deleted NTLDR, X locks up on runlevel 5, your driver interrupts conflict, a recursive script uses all of the PIDs, or any number of problems. Keep a printout of the boot options for the disk, too, to boot the unbootable.
I've personally seen this happen all the time. Someone tells me "this doesn't work" and the moment I type the same command or push in the PCMCIA card myself or whatever, it suddenly works. We dubbed it the Proximity of Genius Effect and is similar to the following koan:
2-9 are generally just variations of #1.
Don't hang the hub by the cables, no matter how thick the ethernet and tiny and tiny the hub. Don't let 2m of cable hang from the switch on the high shelf down to the hole by the floor. It will work the first month or two, then will start to mysteriously fail. The most basic reason behind all these ports failing is that the cable puts stress on a port. Just attach all the cables half a meter away from the hub with ducttape or nails or staples or whatever, don't let them hang though, keep them loose, always leave at least minimal slack.
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