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

uean

Haha. I had a similar experience. Except I was apparently speaking "unnecessarily technical" when I stated that the gateway wasn't passing ICMP traffic. I rephrased to "Ping no worky" and the guy finally got it. *banghead*

Apothe0sis

That's terrifying uean!

Beltaine

So, a switch at one of our schools died this week. It happened to also have half of the building's wireless access points connected to it.

Replaced the switch, no big deal, I thought.

Now all the wireless access points are refusing to turn on their radios because they're connected to a switch with a different MAC address than before.

What's worse is my supervisor has misplaced the document with the password info to the access points. So, I had to hard reset each one and reload the configuration.

Thanatos

So, the battery on my APC UPS needs to be replaced. APC says to use this one. NewEgg says that this one will work, too. What is the difference? This isn't exactly a unit that sees a lot of use as a battery backup.

Sentret

$160 seems like a lot for a replacement battery to me. What does the battery currently in the backup look like? The two are pretty visually distinct.

Thanatos

Sentret wrote: »

$160 seems like a lot for a replacement battery to me. What does the battery currently in the backup look like? The two are pretty visually distinct.

I can't get at it without unplugging the servers.

LuvTheMonkey

@Thanatos

UPS batteries are big and expensive, but you do not need to use OEMs at all. My company goes through thousands of aftermarket cells a year with no ill consequence. That RBC2 cartridge is NOT compatible with the SMT1500, way too small.

If you're feeling froggy, the RBC7 takes 2 12volt 18amp-hour cells, like this one. Swapping them in the carrier is not too hard - standard At Your Own Risk Working With Serious Batteries disclaimer goes here.

TyrantCow

agree with luv, used aftermarket before with similar results to brand name

the only thing to note is that APC will void the warranty if something happens to the unit with an off-brand battery inside. but, i've been running some APCs for years and years without having any of the hardware failing, just replacing batteries here and there.

TyrantCow

i take that back, i had a APC UPS fry on me once, one of the most terrifying pops i've ever heard

i did something stupid though, so i don't blame them.

TyrantCow

Thanatos wrote: »

Sentret wrote: »

$160 seems like a lot for a replacement battery to me. What does the battery currently in the backup look like? The two are pretty visually distinct.

I can't get at it without unplugging the servers.

you may want to try to reconfigure that when you do replace this battery. a big plus is that you can replace the battery while everything is still plugged in to the UPS.

ghost_master2000

TyrantCow wrote: »

i take that back, i had a APC UPS fry on me once, one of the most terrifying pops i've ever heard

i did something stupid though, so i don't blame them.

Now I've got to know....

bowen

I had one blow up, sounded like a huge mosquito was near me, and then a loud pop, and I couldn't remove the battery at that point because it had mangled itself inside the unit.

Beltaine

We have a local battery supply shop that we order UPS batteries from. Usually works out to about $12 each.

I also had to replace an entire UPS once because the batteries had physically swollen in size so much that they couldn't be removed.

Sentret

One of our older APC units once began to smoke and drip a liquid we assumed was battery acid on the server room floor. Luckily it was the one on the bottom of the stack.

Thanatos

LuvTheMonkey wrote: »

@Thanatos

UPS batteries are big and expensive, but you do not need to use OEMs at all. My company goes through thousands of aftermarket cells a year with no ill consequence. That RBC2 cartridge is NOT compatible with the SMT1500, way too small.

If you're feeling froggy, the RBC7 takes 2 12volt 18amp-hour cells, like this one. Swapping them in the carrier is not too hard - standard At Your Own Risk Working With Serious Batteries disclaimer goes here.

Can you point me to a replacement guide? Preferably something with pretty pictures?

mrt144

Beltaine wrote: »

We have a local battery supply shop that we order UPS batteries from. Usually works out to about $12 each.

I also had to replace an entire UPS once because the batteries had physically swollen in size so much that they couldn't be removed.

Sentret wrote: »

One of our older APC units once began to smoke and drip a liquid we assumed was battery acid on the server room floor. Luckily it was the one on the bottom of the stack.

Jesus Christ this is scary.

SiliconStew

Thanatos wrote: »

LuvTheMonkey wrote: »

@Thanatos

UPS batteries are big and expensive, but you do not need to use OEMs at all. My company goes through thousands of aftermarket cells a year with no ill consequence. That RBC2 cartridge is NOT compatible with the SMT1500, way too small.

If you're feeling froggy, the RBC7 takes 2 12volt 18amp-hour cells, like this one. Swapping them in the carrier is not too hard - standard At Your Own Risk Working With Serious Batteries disclaimer goes here.

Can you point me to a replacement guide? Preferably something with pretty pictures?

Pull the front face plate off (finger grips on top sides). Unscrew the two screws in the top corners for the front access panel, it will swing down. Pull the battery out and unplug. Plug the new one in and slide it back into the unit. Might have to fiddle with the cables to get everything stuffed back inside, I don't think the battery will fit if the connector is between the battery and the back wall of the unit, needs to be on top.

BioPort

SiliconStew wrote: »

Thanatos wrote: »

LuvTheMonkey wrote: »

@Thanatos

UPS batteries are big and expensive, but you do not need to use OEMs at all. My company goes through thousands of aftermarket cells a year with no ill consequence. That RBC2 cartridge is NOT compatible with the SMT1500, way too small.

If you're feeling froggy, the RBC7 takes 2 12volt 18amp-hour cells, like this one. Swapping them in the carrier is not too hard - standard At Your Own Risk Working With Serious Batteries disclaimer goes here.

Can you point me to a replacement guide? Preferably something with pretty pictures?

Pull the front face plate off (finger grips on top sides). Unscrew the two screws in the top corners for the front access panel, it will swing down. Pull the battery out and unplug. Plug the new one in and slide it back into the unit. Might have to fiddle with the cables to get everything stuffed back inside, I don't think the battery will fit if the connector is between the battery and the back wall of the unit, needs to be on top.

Make sure you unplug the UPS unit first.

Sentret

mrt144 wrote: »

Sentret wrote: »

One of our older APC units once began to smoke and drip a liquid we assumed was battery acid on the server room floor. Luckily it was the one on the bottom of the stack.

Jesus Christ this is scary.

Yeah. It was difficult to get it out of the rack, because even after we'd unplugged it and it had stopped smoking, nobody really wanted to touch it.

bowen

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Online-Ordering-System.aspx

Thought you guys would get a kick out of this as well.

Velmeran

Got into work this morning to see emails dealing with a comm sat being down and we were moving clients (boats) to point to other ones temporarily. Then a few hours later it became apparent the sat was full on dead (power supply went cablooey in space it seems, which means whole cooling system died which means thing became slagged by heat from the sun). Makes me feel better I'm not a tech for those guys, 100's of millions just went PoP. On the downside for us though, it was the main equatorial sat, so now clients near there are having to practically aim only 6-10 degrees above the horizon to get internet, and when in port, 2-3 story buildings now block them...

mrt144

bowen wrote: »

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Online-Ordering-System.aspx

Thought you guys would get a kick out of this as well.

LMAO, so funny.

SiliconStew

BioPort wrote: »

SiliconStew wrote: »

Thanatos wrote: »

LuvTheMonkey wrote: »

@Thanatos

UPS batteries are big and expensive, but you do not need to use OEMs at all. My company goes through thousands of aftermarket cells a year with no ill consequence. That RBC2 cartridge is NOT compatible with the SMT1500, way too small.

If you're feeling froggy, the RBC7 takes 2 12volt 18amp-hour cells, like this one. Swapping them in the carrier is not too hard - standard At Your Own Risk Working With Serious Batteries disclaimer goes here.

Can you point me to a replacement guide? Preferably something with pretty pictures?

Pull the front face plate off (finger grips on top sides). Unscrew the two screws in the top corners for the front access panel, it will swing down. Pull the battery out and unplug. Plug the new one in and slide it back into the unit. Might have to fiddle with the cables to get everything stuffed back inside, I don't think the battery will fit if the connector is between the battery and the back wall of the unit, needs to be on top.

Make sure you unplug the UPS unit first.

No need. The battery in that unit is hot-swappable.

TyrantCow

ghost_master2000 wrote: »

TyrantCow wrote: »

i take that back, i had a APC UPS fry on me once, one of the most terrifying pops i've ever heard

i did something stupid though, so i don't blame them.

Now I've got to know....

oh, it's not a very good story. it was an older model, it had four batteries in an L shape. to get to all the batteries you kind of had to take some stuff apart. i was a little over-zealous, and when it was time to put it back together, well...

LuvTheMonkey

Thanatos wrote: »

LuvTheMonkey wrote: »

@Thanatos

UPS batteries are big and expensive, but you do not need to use OEMs at all. My company goes through thousands of aftermarket cells a year with no ill consequence. That RBC2 cartridge is NOT compatible with the SMT1500, way too small.

If you're feeling froggy, the RBC7 takes 2 12volt 18amp-hour cells, like this one. Swapping them in the carrier is not too hard - standard At Your Own Risk Working With Serious Batteries disclaimer goes here.

Can you point me to a replacement guide? Preferably something with pretty pictures?

Well the manual for the SMT1500 is here, but you probably want more than that. This link seems to be a guide for refurbishing the RBC7 cartridge.

Yeah I've seen whole 1500VA rackmount units have to come out of the field because the batteries swelled past the point of removing the cartridge. Happens a lot when people aren't diligent about checking the battery alarms and they sit forever. They're usually repairable, depending on how degraded the battery casings become.

uean

mrt144 wrote: »

Beltaine wrote: »

We have a local battery supply shop that we order UPS batteries from. Usually works out to about $12 each.

I also had to replace an entire UPS once because the batteries had physically swollen in size so much that they couldn't be removed.

Sentret wrote: »

One of our older APC units once began to smoke and drip a liquid we assumed was battery acid on the server room floor. Luckily it was the one on the bottom of the stack.

Jesus Christ this is scary.

I'm just picturing Alien. Did your techs take the maintenance hatches to the lower deck to see how many floors the acid burned through?

uean

Ok here's a stupid question. WInXP machines shutting down with scheduled tasks. Client needs the machines to shutdown at a different time. I'm offsite, no remote tools on these machines. Server is Win2008 R2. Scheduled tasks have changed so much between XP and Win7, can I still use schtasks /change, or is the whole thing different? I know for sure I can't open .job files (my initial plan was to just open the .job, make the time change, and push it out to all the clients via script which would take 10 seconds).

uean

Guilty followup - I pushed VNC onto one of the machines so I could make changes to the scheduled task on the machine itself and then copy it to the server so I could push it back out to all the clients. Once VNC was on there I saw a user was logged in, so I spent about 10 minutes sending fake messages about needing to log off and save work immediately, then punted them. It was fun. I abuse my power sometimes.

Tofystedeth

TL DR wrote: »

Oh God

Brought in to address a "recurring virus issue" on a potential client's new server.

It's running Windows 2000 and something called Rising Antivirus, which appears to be some sort of free Chinese product.

for just a few seconds this is how I read it and it was even funnier.

Tofystedeth

bowen wrote: »

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Online-Ordering-System.aspx

Thought you guys would get a kick out of this as well.

Holy shit.

mrt144

Here's two good ones from this week:

1. We need to connect to a 3rd party to schedule out rooms at the convention center. Tuesday night everything goes to shit and we can't connect Wednesday morning. We test our wired connection, we can't connect. We test our wireless connection that bypasses our firewall and we can at the very least ping and tracert. 2 days later of going back and forth with the guys over there and endless "its your firewall, no it's your firewall". What was the problem? Conflicting rules on their firewall pertaining to sql traffic. First question asked on Wednesday was "Did you make any changes to your firewall?" Uhhhhhhg sometimes.

2. Rolled out a new desktop to a user with a printer in his office. He uses the printer to printer checks. I plug in the printer and install drivers. Reboot computer after some windows updates and BAM, the computer wont even start. It doesn't even get to the bios screen. I pull out the usb printer cable and it boots up. WHAT THE FUCK? I do this 4-5 times and then go buy a new printer at office depot, problem solved.

ArcSyn

So I'm going to be managing two domains at work, I was thinking of reformatting my laptop with a linux distro, and using VirtualBox for two Win7 VMs, one for each domain. I thought maybe Linux would deal with sharing the resources between the two VMs (which would need to run simultaneously) better than running a Win7 machine in one domain and having a VM for the second domain. I might run a Win8 VM just to check it out too.

My laptop is a Core 2 Duo with 4GB, is this a decent idea or not worth it? Anyone run into this before and have a good solution?

bowen

mrt144 wrote: »

2. Rolled out a new desktop to a user with a printer in his office. He uses the printer to printer checks. I plug in the printer and install drivers. Reboot computer after some windows updates and BAM, the computer wont even start. It doesn't even get to the bios screen. I pull out the usb printer cable and it boots up. WHAT THE FUCK? I do this 4-5 times and then go buy a new printer at office depot, problem solved.

Wow. Did it have it's own BIOS override or something? I've seen video cards do something like this on older machines. Never heard of it happening with a USB printer though.

Beltaine

bowen wrote: »

mrt144 wrote: »

2. Rolled out a new desktop to a user with a printer in his office. He uses the printer to printer checks. I plug in the printer and install drivers. Reboot computer after some windows updates and BAM, the computer wont even start. It doesn't even get to the bios screen. I pull out the usb printer cable and it boots up. WHAT THE FUCK? I do this 4-5 times and then go buy a new printer at office depot, problem solved.

Wow. Did it have it's own BIOS override or something? I've seen video cards do something like this on older machines. Never heard of it happening with a USB printer though.

I've seen it happen with USB hard drives, but that was several years ago. I want to say a motherboard firmware update solved it.

Always weird when you run into a dead end hardware incompatibility.

bowen

Yeah hard drives too I could see. That must've been one weird as fuck printer.

TL DR

Could it have been a bad cable? I saw a PC refuse to boot once, and it ended up being because someone's kid had put a thumb tack through the USB cable and caused a short.

TL DR

So there's an issue with out ESET clients; some of them lost connection to the server, are trying to update directly from ESET (and failing, since they don't have our current license info), and won't respond to updates.

I have the registry edit here to change the server address, but it can't be edited while the ESET service is running and that service can't be stopped, disabled, or delayed.

Is there a way to run the .reg file during startup or from safe mode or something, so I don't have to touch all of 30+ workstations today?

mrt144

TL DR wrote: »

Could it have been a bad cable? I saw a PC refuse to boot once, and it ended up being because someone's kid had put a thumb tack through the USB cable and caused a short.

We swapped cables a few times. It was the damnedest thing.

Thanatos

I have a dictaphone at my office that will cause my computer to not boot if it's connected via USB, but once it's booted, it works fine.

lwt1973

I have a user who used the Windows XP encryption on a file on the Windows 2003 server a while ago with no issues. Now said user can't gain access to the file. I've tried going in through the users original machine when they encrypted it, I tried going through the admin account, I tried having the user log into the server directly with no use as it's still access denied.

Any thoughts?