[SYSTEMS ADMINS & IT MONKEYS] TrackPoint is trademarked. Call it a clit mouse instead.

ghost_master2000 · February 2012

TyrantCow wrote:

we always get the 24x5 support from dell, and it's never been anything short of spectacular.

never on hold for more than a couple minutes, next day parts.

i fought with some hardware problems on a server they sent me, next day got the parts that we deduced had failed. didn't work, next day a tech came out worked on it for a couple hours, no luck. two days later i had a completely new machine waiting for me when i got in.

I've had similar experiences. Had a tape drive auto-loader fail on me, and they had a replacement up here the SAME DAY. I was on the phone for like an hour having the tech walk me through some troubleshooting steps, and like 5 hours later the whole device was replaced. Good stuff.

uean · February 2012

Same. Aside from the fact I've been making phone calls every other day for the past month or so for HDD replacements, I'm incredibly happy with Dell support. Can't comment on server support though... hate poweredge with a passion, HPs support is excellent for the ML350s all over place I get to glance at and not touch.

taliosfalcon · February 2012

The only real problem I have with dell support is when you've already figured out the problem, and they want you to run through an hour of tests to prove it. It happened a couple of weeks ago and my boss came by while i was on the phone with them, he asked me if the laptop had complete care, i said yes, and he took it and threw it across the room so it pretty much completely shattered and said "tell them it was dropped"

ghost_master2000 · February 2012

Haha, holy shit. That's one way to skip all the bs.

justinschwimmer · February 2012

I've been lurking this thread for 2 years or so and thought I would introduce myself. It's fun following everyones stories around the thread.

I'm sysadmin onboard the US Navy ship USS Cole. 300 users and 190 machines spread across 4 levels of security including NATO. Its funny my stories are the same as everyone else's.

Looking forward to getting to know you guys!

Mike Danger · February 2012

justinschwimmer wrote:

I've been lurking this thread for 2 years or so and thought I would introduce myself. It's fun following everyones stories around the thread.

I'm sysadmin onboard the US Navy ship USS Cole. 300 users and 190 machines spread across 4 levels of security including NATO. Its funny my stories are the same as everyone else's.

Looking forward to getting to know you guys!

Were you working for the Navy in the 90s when they had all the problems with the Yorktown?

justinschwimmer · February 2012

Mike Danger wrote:

justinschwimmer wrote:

I've been lurking this thread for 2 years or so and thought I would introduce myself. It's fun following everyones stories around the thread.

I'm sysadmin onboard the US Navy ship USS Cole. 300 users and 190 machines spread across 4 levels of security including NATO. Its funny my stories are the same as everyone else's.

Looking forward to getting to know you guys!

Were you working for the Navy in the 90s when they had all the problems with the Yorktown?

Nope I've been in since 2008. I've been running the network onboard Cole since 2010. Are you referencing the ship Yorktown or the Naval base with the same name?

chrishallett83 · February 2012

Or, seeing as this is the IT thread, the Intel microprocessor architecture called Yorkfield?

bowen · February 2012

taliosfalcon wrote:

The only real problem I have with dell support is when you've already figured out the problem, and they want you to run through an hour of tests to prove it. It happened a couple of weeks ago and my boss came by while i was on the phone with them, he asked me if the laptop had complete care, i said yes, and he took it and threw it across the room so it pretty much completely shattered and said "tell them it was dropped"

Lucky bastard. The one I had to deal with for one of our SAN/NAS units took 4 days to confirm that a drive failed. By the time they okayed it and shipped out a replacement the raid failed because a second drive went down.

We now have 8 drives in case that happens again because it's a shitty mcshitfuck to have a medical facility potentially lose data because someone's okaying a return/RMA. Most pointless 4 hours of my life there.

Feral · February 2012

ghost_master2000 wrote:

TyrantCow wrote:

we always get the 24x5 support from dell, and it's never been anything short of spectacular.

never on hold for more than a couple minutes, next day parts.

i fought with some hardware problems on a server they sent me, next day got the parts that we deduced had failed. didn't work, next day a tech came out worked on it for a couple hours, no luck. two days later i had a completely new machine waiting for me when i got in.

I've had similar experiences. Had a tape drive auto-loader fail on me, and they had a replacement up here the SAME DAY. I was on the phone for like an hour having the tech walk me through some troubleshooting steps, and like 5 hours later the whole device was replaced. Good stuff.

I have to say that I have had far superior experiences with their premier tech support group in Texas than any of their offshore people.

Their Texas group also doesn't do that bullshit where they run you through an hour of tests to confirm what they already know. "RAID broken?" "Yep." "Did you try to re-mirror it?" "Yep." "That failed?" "Yep." "Windows showing disk errors?" "Yep." "Okay, we'll send you another drive."

TyrantCow · February 2012

whenever we have a drive fail i rebuild, walk away, if that fails > check firmware versions on the dell site, up to date > run the dell diag.

hop on chat support, tell them i've done the prior, they give me an e-mail address, i send the log, new drive on the way.

i guess i'm doing the hour of tests to prove it prior to talking to them; but, that seems to be the same process every time so by the time i'm talking to someone it's five minutes or so.

Mike Danger · February 2012

justinschwimmer wrote:

Mike Danger wrote:

justinschwimmer wrote:

I've been lurking this thread for 2 years or so and thought I would introduce myself. It's fun following everyones stories around the thread.

I'm sysadmin onboard the US Navy ship USS Cole. 300 users and 190 machines spread across 4 levels of security including NATO. Its funny my stories are the same as everyone else's.

Looking forward to getting to know you guys!

Were you working for the Navy in the 90s when they had all the problems with the Yorktown?

Nope I've been in since 2008. I've been running the network onboard Cole since 2010. Are you referencing the ship Yorktown or the Naval base with the same name?

The ship - I've had a couple of different people say "oh, you're into computers, check this out" and forward me old articles about all the "smart ship" stuff they were testing out that blew up on them. I was just curious if you'd been around during that time.

Beltaine · February 2012

Got a hands-on demo of a Citrix setup over the weekend and it was pretty slick.

Still haven't gotten to play with a live VMware setup, though.

Was wondering pros/cons between the two. Or is this a case of 6 of one and a half dozen of the other?

electricitylikesme · February 2012

Suppose I have a SOCKS proxy.

Now, were it an SSH server, I could re-direct things through it by creating a local tunnel from say, port 12345 to www.google.com:80

And then if I pointed my web browser at localhost:12345 I'd get Google.

My problem is, how do I do this with SOCKS?

It seems like some arrangement of netcat or the like should do it, but I've no success with it.

End · February 2012

If you're using your web browser, you can just set it up via the proxy settings (exact location varies by browser/OS)

If you want to force some other program to use the socks proxy, you may need to resort to an application wrapper that will redirect the socket operations. On windows I used to use sockscap a while ago, and a quick google search for Linux showed proxychains.

I do see a mechanism for talking to a socks server in netcat (the -x flag), but I have no experience with using netcat for that.

bowen · February 2012

electricitylikesme wrote: »

Suppose I have a SOCKS proxy.

Now, were it an SSH server, I could re-direct things through it by creating a local tunnel from say, port 12345 to www.google.com:80

And then if I pointed my web browser at localhost:12345 I'd get Google.

My problem is, how do I do this with SOCKS?

It seems like some arrangement of netcat or the like should do it, but I've no success with it.

Oh you want to do SOCKS tunneling eh?

http://www.proxifier.com/

is one I've used in the past.

Mike Danger · February 2012

Thanks again for the help with my hard drive problem, ELM. We finally had some time where we could fiddle with the disks without affecting anyone's work, and using the RAID's "verify disk integrity" tool seems to have solved the problem - rsync exits normally now.

electricitylikesme · February 2012

End wrote: »

If you're using your web browser, you can just set it up via the proxy settings (exact location varies by browser/OS)

If you want to force some other program to use the socks proxy, you may need to resort to an application wrapper that will redirect the socket operations. On windows I used to use sockscap a while ago, and a quick google search for Linux showed proxychains.

I do see a mechanism for talking to a socks server in netcat (the -x flag), but I have no experience with using netcat for that.

It looks like it should work, but I think netcat under cygwin doesn't work properly (it doesn't want to forward data between two instances of it, even though I can connect and see data from end or the another).

EDIT: Ok for anyone wondering how you do this, the answer is apparently rinetd on Windows. Obviously Proxifier is more complete, but for straight port-to-port stuff this apparently does the trick.

EDIT 2: Spoke too soon, while you can do redirects with this, it doesn't appear to provide you with any real proxying abilities.

Apothe0sis · February 2012

Beltaine wrote:

Got a hands-on demo of a Citrix setup over the weekend and it was pretty slick.

Still haven't gotten to play with a live VMware setup, though.

Was wondering pros/cons between the two. Or is this a case of 6 of one and a half dozen of the other?

If you're talking about Xen, then the pros are VMWare is used everywhere and supported by everyone. Xen, not so much.

If you're talking about VDI vs Citrix as a desktop virtualiser, then the argument is exactly reversed.

Beltaine · February 2012

Apothe0sis wrote: »

Beltaine wrote:

Got a hands-on demo of a Citrix setup over the weekend and it was pretty slick.

Still haven't gotten to play with a live VMware setup, though.

Was wondering pros/cons between the two. Or is this a case of 6 of one and a half dozen of the other?

If you're talking about Xen, then the pros are VMWare is used everywhere and supported by everyone. Xen, not so much.

If you're talking about VDI vs Citrix as a desktop virtualiser, then the argument is exactly reversed.

I guess I'm really looking at two things.

1. I want to virtualize my server stack.
2. I want to virtualize desktops. What I saw of Citrix used a WYSE thin client with apps delivered from the server. The user could run a virtualized Windows Desktop if they wanted, but it wasn't necessary. But someone on an Ipad could also run a Citrix app and get the same thing.

This would be XenServer and XenDesktop? Or am I misunderstanding?

Citrix seems to be more ready for "bring your own device" (which is what we're planning towards) than VMware. Or am I wrong in that?

If VMWare is better for server virtualization is a VMware/Citrix hybrid setup feasible?

Their websites are so overloaded with information (VMWare especially), I can't discern what product does what to be able to decide what I need.

Mike Danger · February 2012

Goddammit.

$ ps aux | grep rsync
root     19851  0.0  0.2 303072 12212 ?        S    07:00   0:05 rsync -aHuz --rsh=ssh --exclude=day_old /old_spears/home 140.232.101.174:/backups/incDaily/Tue/
root     19854  0.0  0.0   5160  2348 ?        S    07:00   0:00 ssh 140.232.101.174 rsync --server -ulHogDtprze.iLsf . /backups/incDaily/Tue/
melliott 23035  0.0  0.0   3324   788 pts/0    S+   10:21   0:00 grep rsync

It hasn't done this for the past two days and now it's going it again (rsync not exiting)

electricitylikesme · February 2012

Mike Danger wrote: »

Goddammit.

$ ps aux | grep rsync
root     19851  0.0  0.2 303072 12212 ?        S    07:00   0:05 rsync -aHuz --rsh=ssh --exclude=day_old /old_spears/home 140.232.101.174:/backups/incDaily/Tue/
root     19854  0.0  0.0   5160  2348 ?        S    07:00   0:00 ssh 140.232.101.174 rsync --server -ulHogDtprze.iLsf . /backups/incDaily/Tue/
melliott 23035  0.0  0.0   3324   788 pts/0    S+   10:21   0:00 grep rsync

It hasn't done this for the past two days and now it's going it again (rsync not exiting)

What did you actually run on your disk/filesystem?

Because if I recall from one of my big crashes, fsck and the like don't necessarily "fix" damaged files, they just mark the sectors unreadable. You need to manually copy what data has survived out, and delete the files to "fix" it.

electricitylikesme · February 2012

Oh for anyone following my netcat saga, the correct solution (works under cygwin and everything else because it's correct) is:

$ mkfifo reverse
$ nc -l -p 12345 < reverse | nc www.google.com 80 > reverse

Because obviously you can't just pipe traffic in one direction when you want a tunnel. This scheme works perfectly, and can be combined with netcat's SOCKS functionality to get the SSH-like tunneling I desire.

TL DR · February 2012

Man, I'm glad that they found a way to combine two of my favorite things, QuickBooks and Point of Sale systems.

I got to spend 4 hours yesterday trying to get a client's replacement workstation to play nice with QBPOS. According to Intuit, QBPOS2010 should work on Windows 7, but it kept timing out when trying to connect to the database. And of course it's not supported. And to upgrade to the new version is like $900.

Oh, well. At lease these clients are just hangers-on from our early days, and most of the stuff I do anymore is less awful.

Aioua · February 2012

TL DR wrote: »

Man, I'm glad that they found a way to combine two of my favorite things, QuickBooks and Point of Sale systems.

I got to spend 4 hours yesterday trying to get a client's replacement workstation to play nice with QBPOS. According to Intuit, QBPOS2010 should work on Windows 7, but it kept timing out when trying to connect to the database. And of course it's not supported. And to upgrade to the new version is like $900.

Oh, well. At lease these clients are just hangers-on from our early days, and most of the stuff I do anymore is less awful.

God I fucking hate Intuit.

I used to work at a Credit Union, for some reason we used an Intuit product for our online banking system. We had a weird bug where when you would export your transaction history into a quicken file it'd transpose some of the columns. Our programmers were standing by, ready to change whatever was needed with the interface between online banking and our database. Intuit basically said it was something with the online banking and quicken, and they couldn't fix it. Couldn't even get their own products to work together.

TL DR · March 2012

Aioua wrote: »

TL DR wrote: »

Man, I'm glad that they found a way to combine two of my favorite things, QuickBooks and Point of Sale systems.

I got to spend 4 hours yesterday trying to get a client's replacement workstation to play nice with QBPOS. According to Intuit, QBPOS2010 should work on Windows 7, but it kept timing out when trying to connect to the database. And of course it's not supported. And to upgrade to the new version is like $900.

Oh, well. At lease these clients are just hangers-on from our early days, and most of the stuff I do anymore is less awful.

God I fucking hate Intuit.

I used to work at a Credit Union, for some reason we used an Intuit product for our online banking system. We had a weird bug where when you would export your transaction history into a quicken file it'd transpose some of the columns. Our programmers were standing by, ready to change whatever was needed with the interface between online banking and our database. Intuit basically said it was something with the online banking and quicken, and they couldn't fix it. Couldn't even get their own products to work together.

Oh, nice. Similar to a situation I'm dealing with trying to get anything out of Amicus Attorney support (avoid this goddamn product like the plague). Users make changes to appointments, client info, tickets, etc that sometimes just save but then later revert to the previous state. After hours of phone time with support, testing various things, all they can say is uhh it's something to do with Exchange, can't help you.

This was put on a clean install of SBS08 / Exchange. There's nothing weird about it, and it's a supported OS and configuration.

uean · March 2012

So weird problem at one of my sites. New server installed to a workgroup and began migrating clients into the domain. After joining one client to the domain, I noticed that I can ping the server, but the server cannot ping back. Yeah - server can't ping back, the desktop joined the domain properly.... So here's what I've tried:

(client is WinXP Pro; Server is Win 2008 R2)

Client ping to server: ok
Server ping to client: Nope
Check DNS resolution: good. IP matches.
Try ping direct to IP: Nope
Hmm. Check client firewall settings. Check ICMP traffic is allowed. Disable firewall entirely. Disable firewall service and reboot. Still no good.
Check AV on client machine. Check for 3rd party firewall. End up completely removing client AV (Symantec Endpoint Protection). Still can't ping from server.
Checked group policies... just default domain policy, so that looks fine.
Check Network discovery is on on the server, can see the client machine listed in that list but cannot access \\client\c$
RDP works when initiated from the client to the server
Reboot the server for the helluvit

Not sure what else to try. It's not DNS. There is no firewall hardware in the mix. No firewall software. No AV on the client machine at this point. DHCP is being handled externally and not by this server, so my main concern of the lease running out and the client just dropping dead with no IP is handled, but it's still bugging me. Any thoughts?

Mr_Rose · March 2012

TL DR wrote: »

Aioua wrote: »

TL DR wrote: »

Man, I'm glad that they found a way to combine two of my favorite things, QuickBooks and Point of Sale systems.

I got to spend 4 hours yesterday trying to get a client's replacement workstation to play nice with QBPOS. According to Intuit, QBPOS2010 should work on Windows 7, but it kept timing out when trying to connect to the database. And of course it's not supported. And to upgrade to the new version is like $900.

Oh, well. At lease these clients are just hangers-on from our early days, and most of the stuff I do anymore is less awful.

God I fucking hate Intuit.

I used to work at a Credit Union, for some reason we used an Intuit product for our online banking system. We had a weird bug where when you would export your transaction history into a quicken file it'd transpose some of the columns. Our programmers were standing by, ready to change whatever was needed with the interface between online banking and our database. Intuit basically said it was something with the online banking and quicken, and they couldn't fix it. Couldn't even get their own products to work together.

Oh, nice. Similar to a situation I'm dealing with trying to get anything out of Amicus Attorney support (avoid this goddamn product like the plague). Users make changes to appointments, client info, tickets, etc that sometimes just save but then later revert to the previous state. After hours of phone time with support, testing various things, all they can say is uhh it's something to do with Exchange, can't help you.

This was put on a clean install of SBS08 / Exchange. There's nothing weird about it, and it's a supported OS and configuration.

See this is the problem with closed-source limited-user base development; you can get away with not actually delivering functioning product because your clients are already locked into long duration, expensive contracts and can't switch away because you already have them by the balls.
Should be outlawed frankly.

(I once worked support for a company that sold, for immediate use, a product to a client based on the performance of a specific feature that the particular client was essentially the only user of, then turned around and told the dev team to implement the feature; but not before I had to deal with the customer's understandable ire that the delivered product did not in fact have the promised function, just a non-functioning UI element)

Jimbo · March 2012

uean wrote: »

So weird problem at one of my sites. New server installed to a workgroup and began migrating clients into the domain. After joining one client to the domain, I noticed that I can ping the server, but the server cannot ping back. Yeah - server can't ping back, the desktop joined the domain properly.... So here's what I've tried:

(client is WinXP Pro; Server is Win 2008 R2)

Client ping to server: ok
Server ping to client: Nope
Check DNS resolution: good. IP matches.
Try ping direct to IP: Nope
Hmm. Check client firewall settings. Check ICMP traffic is allowed. Disable firewall entirely. Disable firewall service and reboot. Still no good.
Check AV on client machine. Check for 3rd party firewall. End up completely removing client AV (Symantec Endpoint Protection). Still can't ping from server.
Checked group policies... just default domain policy, so that looks fine.
Check Network discovery is on on the server, can see the client machine listed in that list but cannot access \\client\c$
RDP works when initiated from the client to the server
Reboot the server for the helluvit

Not sure what else to try. It's not DNS. There is no firewall hardware in the mix. No firewall software. No AV on the client machine at this point. DHCP is being handled externally and not by this server, so my main concern of the lease running out and the client just dropping dead with no IP is handled, but it's still bugging me. Any thoughts?

Could it be a bad NIC or cabling?
edit: also, check the ARP tables to see if theres funny business going on with MAC addressing

electricitylikesme · March 2012

Jimbo wrote: »

uean wrote: »

So weird problem at one of my sites. New server installed to a workgroup and began migrating clients into the domain. After joining one client to the domain, I noticed that I can ping the server, but the server cannot ping back. Yeah - server can't ping back, the desktop joined the domain properly.... So here's what I've tried:

(client is WinXP Pro; Server is Win 2008 R2)

Client ping to server: ok
Server ping to client: Nope
Check DNS resolution: good. IP matches.
Try ping direct to IP: Nope
Hmm. Check client firewall settings. Check ICMP traffic is allowed. Disable firewall entirely. Disable firewall service and reboot. Still no good.
Check AV on client machine. Check for 3rd party firewall. End up completely removing client AV (Symantec Endpoint Protection). Still can't ping from server.
Checked group policies... just default domain policy, so that looks fine.
Check Network discovery is on on the server, can see the client machine listed in that list but cannot access \\client\c$
RDP works when initiated from the client to the server
Reboot the server for the helluvit

Not sure what else to try. It's not DNS. There is no firewall hardware in the mix. No firewall software. No AV on the client machine at this point. DHCP is being handled externally and not by this server, so my main concern of the lease running out and the client just dropping dead with no IP is handled, but it's still bugging me. Any thoughts?

Could it be a bad NIC or cabling?
edit: also, check the ARP tables to see if theres funny business going on with MAC addressing

If you can get a brand new cable that you know works properly, and try switching out the one on the client which isn't working. Malfunctioning cables or NICs in my experience are an absolute bitch to diagnose since they'll happily sit there only working at 300bps, but insist they're syncing at 1Gbit (and throw no error messages up to the OS at all).

Seriously if anyone knows how to spot a bad cable with software I'd love to hear it.

uean · March 2012

Hmm. I'll give it a shot, I've always got 10 on me.

I just find it weird that I can RDP into the server and run ping tests back to the box I am RDPing FROM, and that fails. That says ICMP traffic to me getting blocked somewhere.

I checked the ARP tables on the server and they're fine. MAC matches. Later that day I discovered it is not just a problem with the server down to the client, but any communication (ping requests, accessing shares) into that client from another box, even another client. So that means ... I dont know yet.

Beltaine · March 2012

uean wrote: »

Hmm. I'll give it a shot, I've always got 10 on me.

I just find it weird that I can RDP into the server and run ping tests back to the box I am RDPing FROM, and that fails. That says ICMP traffic to me getting blocked somewhere.

I checked the ARP tables on the server and they're fine. MAC matches. Later that day I discovered it is not just a problem with the server down to the client, but any communication (ping requests, accessing shares) into that client from another box, even another client. So that means ... I dont know yet.

Are these machines on the same subnet? Check that their subnet masks are the same?

A 255.255.254.0 can see a 255.255.255.0 machine, but vice versa may not.

Connected to the same switch? Are you using managed switches that might be set to filter ICMP?

Djeet · March 2012

@uean I fixed a problem like this but it was from a Windows 7 box to an XP box. Had to define a security policy w/r/to to NTLM. I think it was the Lan Manager authentication level, but I cannot be certain and my google skills are not working this morning.

Straygatsby · March 2012

Can any of you fine folks rec your fave (or maybe even one you see most commonly in live environments) Unix/Unix-like? Later this year, I'll be leaving the comfy confines of my small environment, it generalist, jeans and sandals wearin' gig and looking for something a little more professional in a new state and city, and I've always had a sucking chest wound in my knowledge pool when it comes to *nix. I don't want to be the guy that loses points for not getting the sudo joke, and I don't know if it'll even come up when I'm looking for desktop support/helpdesk jobs, but it seems like I should get on it (jump on it) ASAP.

bowen · March 2012

Ubuntu is almost the defacto standard of "I want to do linux but not claw my fucking eyes out."

Straygatsby · March 2012

bowen wrote: »

Ubuntu is almost the defacto standard of "I want to do linux but not claw my fucking eyes out."

Ha, ok, well that sounds like an excellent emotional starting point for me. Thanks. =P

Saeris · March 2012

Fedora is also very accessible, although to my understanding it frowns upon proprietary software, whereas Ubuntu is more pragmatic and accepts it when no FOSS alternative exists.

If you want a distribution just to screw around with, though, and you have some old box you might want to use exclusively for that purpose (so you can just nuke it when something goes horribly wrong), you might try something like SliTaz. Maybe only try that after spending a few weeks with Ubuntu to learn the basics of Unix-like systems though.

Beltaine · March 2012

You may run into CentOS as well. It's geared at being a more enterprise-ready flavor of Linux.

It's friendly enough to learn, but you miss out on some of the Desktop style goodies in Ubuntu.

ghost_master2000 · March 2012

Can anyone recommend a good web content filter that integrates with AD? We were using an ISA server on our old domain, and depending on costs I may migrate it and use it on our new domain, but if there is something better I'd like to use that.

Won't really need firewall services as we have a hardware firewall for that. The hardware firewall has limited web content filtering, but it does not integrate with AD making it virtually useless for blocking anything but porn.

Feral · March 2012

ghost_master2000 wrote: »

Can anyone recommend a good web content filter that integrates with AD? We were using an ISA server on our old domain, and depending on costs I may migrate it and use it on our new domain, but if there is something better I'd like to use that.

Won't really need firewall services as we have a hardware firewall for that. The hardware firewall has limited web content filtering, but it does not integrate with AD making it virtually useless for blocking anything but porn.

Barracuda.

The AD integration is done two ways; either a simple LDAP query configured on the webfilter itself, or with a small Windows program that you install directly on an AD server that runs as a service and communicates with the webfilter.

Penny Arcade

[SYSTEMS ADMINS & IT MONKEYS] TrackPoint is trademarked. Call it a clit mouse instead.

Posts