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Stunts, Idiocy, and Hero Hacks
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Paul Venezia serves up six real-world tales of IT stunts and solutions that required a touch of inspired insanity to pull off, proving once again that knowing when to throw out the manual and do something borderline irresponsible is essential to day-to-day IT work. 'It could be server on the brink of shutting down all operations, a hard drive that won't power up vital data, or a disgruntled ex-employee who's hidden vital system passwords on the network. Just when all seems lost, it's time to get creative and don your IT daredevil cap, then fire up the oven, shove the end of a pencil into the motherboard, or route the whole city network through your laptop to get the job done,' Venezia writes."
I don't think you understand the term "got lucky." Oh right, I'm reading Slashdot ...
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
I once took my laptop and used it to set up an Apache + DNS server while replacing a webserver that died. All I did was to post a "Emergency Maintenance" page while we swopped out the server.
Every IT guy who has been in the trenches for 10+ years has "I once" stories. Oftentimes they salvaged hundreds of thousands of rands of damages for the company, or helped mitigate a bad management decision.
The thing is, one of several scenarios invariably happen:
1 - You get no recognition because no one understands what you did. ("Oh, you had another web server running on your laptop, that's dandy!")
2 - You get an accusing look. ("How was it possible that this happened? Sure you fixed it but this should not have happened, make sure it doesn't happen again.") - I saw something like this happen to a senior network admin once, something totally out of IT's control that occurred due to a bad management decision not to buy a spare router. We used an old PC with IPtables to route traffic on a network over a weekend while our suppliers tried to source one.
3 - The dark suit analogy: Doing a good job is like spilling coffee on a dark suit, you feel warm all over, but nobody notices.
Being in IT is a bitch, and management doesn't help - IT is honouring the impossible promises of management to unthankful clients.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I have packed drives in dry ice to get one last read out of them. Once the drive is very cold it's a race to get the data before condensation builds up on the circuit board. Side note, bare metal "screams" when pressed against dry ice... gas hammering against the metal.
My normal MO for this is stick cables on the drive, stick the drive in a heavy freezer baggie with the cables sticking out the open end of the bag. Rubber band or tape it shut as best you can with the cables sticking out. Put a block of dry ice on the top and bottom of the drive (outside the bag) and wrap it with something like a thin towel or paper to keep the dry ice in contact with dirve. Stick the whole thing in the freeze for at least half an hour before trying to spin up the drive. Leave the dry ice in place and hook the drive up (I have done both USB and IDE connections). If you are lucky you can HURRY and copy your data... If not you're out $5 for dye ice.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
When you are spending so long doing something awkward it's normally worth sitting back for a few minutes and reconsidering the goal and approach.
Goal: Recover documents off computer.
Solution 1: Spend hours writing down key strokes and working blind.
Solution 2: Plug harddrive into another computer and retrieve files.
Solution 3: Use VGA mode or any Windows install disk to recover drivers.
Most of the time when you are working hard it's because you are doing it wrong.