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

punk

Dratatoo wrote: »

AtomBomb wrote: »

Yeah, it's ridiculous. I'm looking at something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833114042

Wouldn't it be better to switch to another cable type /system alltogether like Optical fiber to bridge this distance? (Unless the network infrastructure is in place already)

Yep. The most ideal scenario would be to have a professional come in and run several pairs of MM fiber then terminate it to LIUs at each end. Next most ideal is to run a single 900' duplex MM fiber jumper. Last would be to use the assumed existing copper infrastructure with some kind of xDSL range extender if there are clean pairs available.

In terms of equipment preference: (1) switches at either end (fiber), (2) media converters at either end (fiber), (3) vDSL range extenders over copper.

chrishallett83

Quick, convince the upper management at this place to convert their entire network to fibre-optic!

Apothe0sis

chrishallett83 wrote: »

Quick, convince the upper management at this place to convert their entire network to fibre-optic!

Pad the proposal with an alternative design based around sneaker net!

urahonky

electricitylikesme wrote: »

urahonky wrote: »

bowen wrote: »

If you're not on the same network as the Iranian Nuclear Program in question your chance of getting infected was about 0.

Agreed. Except the concern, now, is that there will be copycats.

Hasn't MS revoked the SSL certificate though? It's a pretty unique line of attack because it depends on having a Windows update private key file.

Only if you get the update.

punk

chrishallett83 wrote: »

Quick, convince the upper management at this place to convert their entire network to fibre-optic!

I'm sorry, but I'm not really sure how to take this. Is this a dig at my advice? If so, I would be happy to explain the reasons behind my recommendations.

Apothe0sis

I give up on users.

"We want to use word documents stored on a file server* to record procedures and details etc... as the Wiki is too hard".

The wiki is too hard! FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

*Which we keep losing/breaking/accidentally deleting/who-knows?

autono-wally, erotibot300

Apothe0sis wrote: »

I give up on users.

"We want to use word documents stored on a file server* to record procedures and details etc... as the Wiki is too hard".

The wiki is too hard! FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

*Which we keep losing/breaking/accidentally deleting/who-knows?

You need new users

bowen

Set up a dropbox account for them, that way you can roll back deleted files? If you're crafty enough, set up an SVN and this: http://dylanbeattie.blogspot.com/2011/01/mapping-drive-letter-to-subversion.html

Apothe0sis

But the wiki already does that, that's reinventing the wheel. I like Wally's solution.

bowen

The wiki does this, but its interface is foreign. They want word, not HTML editor that doesn't look anything like word.

But yeah his solution is the best one by far.

If there's one thing I know about users, changing interfaces makes them lose their fucking mind. But telling them to save to a different drive doesn't (hell you could even map My Documents to it).

urahonky

This virtual Windows XP is killing me. The ONLY disk we have with Windows XP on it is Windows XP Pro WITHOUT SP1 on it. So it literally takes me hours to install everything. And just when I thought I finally got it going SP3 doesn't include Windows Installer 4.0 which is what I need for the Windows Driver Kit. I'm so glad it told me 90% into the install!

Jeeze, I cannot catch a break!

e: Phew. It looks like it started at 90% after I installed the newest Windows Installer and rebooted.

e2: New error! Te.Service failed to start! Weeee!!! I just want to get started on my work!!

I'm so glad we moved to Windows 7... Ugh I hate XP so much now.

bowen

Keep in mind, you can copy that VM and save it for future use. So if you ever need to wipe or use a second VM you can just take the copy you made once you finished and spawn a new one.

iTunesIsEvil

honky, it sounds like you're about to learn about slipstreaming.

I am almost (ALMOST) flabbergasted that your IT guys don't have a disc with XP slipstreamed/patched up to SP3. I know we do here, and there are only three of us running XP and two of those installs are in VMs.

urahonky

iTunesIsEvil wrote: »

honky, it sounds like you're about to learn about slipstreaming.

I am almost (ALMOST) flabbergasted that your IT guys don't have a disc with XP slipstreamed/patched up to SP3. I know we do here, and there are only three of us running XP and two of those installs are in VMs.

I am the IT guy and this is the only Windows XP disk we have left.

urahonky

bowen wrote: »

Keep in mind, you can copy that VM and save it for future use. So if you ever need to wipe or use a second VM you can just take the copy you made once you finished and spawn a new one.

Oh yeah I've been making backups of the OS at install intervals, one fresh, one when SP2 was installed, etc.

bowen

iTunesIsEvil wrote: »

honky, it sounds like you're about to learn about slipstreaming.

I am almost (ALMOST) flabbergasted that your IT guys don't have a disc with XP slipstreamed/patched up to SP3. I know we do here, and there are only three of us running XP and two of those installs are in VMs.

We don't do it either, but it takes maybe 10 minutes to install SP2+3 if you've got the redist saved to a network share.

urahonky

bowen wrote: »

iTunesIsEvil wrote: »

honky, it sounds like you're about to learn about slipstreaming.

I am almost (ALMOST) flabbergasted that your IT guys don't have a disc with XP slipstreamed/patched up to SP3. I know we do here, and there are only three of us running XP and two of those installs are in VMs.

We don't do it either, but it takes maybe 10 minutes to install SP2+3 if you've got the redist saved to a network share.

Unfortunately this machine is off our network so I had to redownload them. And for some reason our network slowed to a crawl and literally didn't finish the SP3 download overnight.

bowen

One could leave it on the network until you're done. Not like you're risking shit either way. Or, save it to the local drive for future use and map a share to the vm from the local computer.

urahonky

bowen wrote: »

One could leave it on the network until you're done. Not like you're risking shit either way. Or, save it to the local drive for future use and map a share to the vm from the local computer.

Had I thought about it I would have probably had it saved to thumb drive to transfer between the two. But normally I get about 3MBps download so I assumed it wouldn't have taken so long to download.

Apothe0sis

Is the host also off the network or just the VM?

Because the former is missing lots of points.

urahonky

Both are on the network. It seems to be working now. I can see the COM port on both the host and the VM, and was able to finally talk to each other.

AtomBomb

Thanks for all the tips about getting a connection across 3 football fields. I haven't heard back with an approval for spending $300ish to get the VDSL boxes, to anything more expensive than that is probably right out. Of course, they spent $7500 to get this conduit run without asking me what they should have put in it first...

On an unrelated note, anyone have a good program/plug-in for splitting PDFs by content? 4 times a month I have to generate a bunch of financial reports on our AS400 system. The old way was to print out 2 copies, split them by hand and then have them physically delivered to each location. I at least switched that to PDF, but I still go through and manually split the files and then email them to each branch. The reports are formatted differently, but each report is consistent page to page. The other issue is that each part of the split isn't necessarily contiguous. For example, it might look like this:

Spoiler:

page 1
branch 100

page 2
branch 200

page 3
branch 300

page 4
branch 100

page 5
branch 100

page 6
branch 300

page 7
branch 100

So I need that to be split into 3 files. One called filename-branch100.pdf that has pages 1, 4, 5, and 7; one called filename-branch200.pdf with just page 2; and another called filename-branch300.pdf with 3 and 6.

I've tried a couple with random googling, but they all seem kind of shitty. I don't want to spend a bunch of time learning some bodged together thing if there is a better product out there that I've just missed.

bowen

Theres a few pieces of software you can use to split pdfs, some cost money, some don't. If you're good at programming it becomes easy. I've written my own splitter that creates 1 document per page.

AtomBomb

I'm not that good at programming. These reports get up to 200 pages or so, but I won't need to split them into more than 7 parts (there are 7 possible branches, not every branch is on every report). I do the splitting in Acrobat Pro, but there is no way to automate it in there that I can find.

bowen

Are they always certain pages? Or do they move around? pdftk is a good toolkit that you can even make batch scripts if you need to.

AtomBomb

They move around. Pdftk looks cool, but I need something to search through the source file to find out how to do the split. I also need to be able to specify where on the page to search, so that it only looks at the part on the page where the branch is listed for "100", and not on other parts of the page where there is data that might match that search.

EDIT- Here's an example of an actual split I just did on a 73 page report, if that offers anything useful. The missing pages in the run are summaries that don't need to be sent to a branch.

100- 1,26
150- 2-4,11,14-17,27-44
200- 5,12,18,19,45-53
300- 20,54
400- 6,21,55-58
500- 7,22,59-61
600- 8,9,23,24,62-71

ghost_master2000

I'm curious how you are getting the reports from your as400 to pdf. I have only briefly looked around and found some paid-for solutions, but wondering if there is a free alternative.

It just converts the spool files to pdf right?

AtomBomb

It is just converting the spool files. The export function is a custom spool manager that is part of the software package that we run on the system. I don't know if the developer wrote something themselves or if they bought it. I can try to find out if you want.

bowen

Hm. Not sure you'd be able to do that reliably with a program unless it was systematically in the same place, or set of places.

Probably beyond budget of you doing this by hand?

AtomBomb

I'm guessing. I doubt I could spend more than $100 on this. It's just one of those tasks that takes a lot of time and very little thought, so it feels like it should be automated somehow.

bowen

Yeah I've built stuff similar to that (that didn't deal with PDFs) for a few thousand before. Text recognition is a shit in the dick though unless it's in the same place every time.

Thanatos

If you can give me some more details on what you need from the system for the report, I can actually ask my mom about it, see if there's a better way to generate the report to get what you need, rather than just printing the whole thing (like, maybe just get each report individually). PM me if you don't want to post it publicly. This is weird to admit, but while she really can't handle a standard PC very well (it took her forever to figure out a mouse), she's a fucking wizard with AS/400 (been using it for over 30 years).

I have a line-item on my resume about working with it, but honestly, if I ended up at a job where I actually needed to wade into it, I'd probably be calling her three or four times a day.

bowen

That's pretty ironic.

ghost_master2000

AtomBomb wrote: »

It is just converting the spool files. The export function is a custom spool manager that is part of the software package that we run on the system. I don't know if the developer wrote something themselves or if they bought it. I can try to find out if you want.

No need for that. Since it is part of bundled software. I had tried some ridiculous method like creating a printer emulation session on a windows PC, then directing the print jobs it received to a pdf "printer". Unfortunately it just came out as a blank page. Though it might work with more testing, I spent only 5 minutes on it the last time I tried.

I may just finish the upgrade on our accounting software and see what kind of exporting ability it has first.

Thanatos

bowen wrote: »

That's pretty ironic.

It is the most ridiculous thing. I had to work with it a handful of times, and one of the times, the people running one of the servers was on the phone with me, asking me to do something, and I was, like, "I have no idea how to even begin to do that." When I asked her, she just said "oh, yeah, that's easy; just type in /wkspdf <seemingly random letters and numbers>."

So, command-line interface with practically zero documentation? No problem. Drag-and-drop? Too technical.

bowen

Haha oh my.

AtomBomb

Thanks Than. That's good to know but I don't think I want to cash that in for something that isn't that important. I could make the system spit out separate reports for each branch, but that turns running 12 reports into running 96 reports.

Ghost, I tried the print session thing too before we had the ability to export as PDF. It never really worked that well. However, I was able to get stuff out using the iSeries Navigator's printer output since that let's you print straight to a Windows printer. It also scales it to the page, so you don't end up just getting part of something designed to print out on 17" greenbar.

My boss is kind of like Than's mom. She's decent with Windows, but she's a wizard with the AS400. We switched to a GUI maybe 2 years ago, and that removed some of the green screen functionality.

Her- "This new thing is so slooooow! How do I print this roster?"
Me- "Search for the class using this search box, double-click it, click roster, then click print."
Her- "It was so much easier before. I just had to type 1, 4, 7, 7, 4, enter 4x, F10, page down, change a field to *all, F3, F12, type SRTRMTWTR P14, type WRKSPLF, find the RST45334 file, 6 to release it to the printer and that was it."

Of course she could do all that so fast that the screen didn't even have time to update before she was on to the next one.

Thanatos

There are still a scant few of those terminals bouncing around (you can get them on EBay, sometimes). I believe they use five-pin XLR for network cables, so if you don't have them run already, it can be a pain, and you need one of the original server boxes to get them to work. She has shown me some of the differences, and your boss is right, for some of the stuff it is just faster and easier, if you know what you're doing, to use one of the terminals.

On the flip side, she was having some weird printer issues between AS/400 and a newer printer we had hooked to it, and I was the one who got that figured out (felt good). Apparently, dealing with printer drivers has been a pain in the ass since before I was born.

chrishallett83

punk wrote: »

chrishallett83 wrote: »

Quick, convince the upper management at this place to convert their entire network to fibre-optic!

I'm sorry, but I'm not really sure how to take this. Is this a dig at my advice? If so, I would be happy to explain the reasons behind my recommendations.

No, not at all.

I think everybody everywhere should be going to fibre-only networks. It's just so much better! It's like upgrading from a horse and cart to a modern car.

The likely-hood of this happening is zero, though.

Tofystedeth

AtomBomb wrote: »

Thanks for all the tips about getting a connection across 3 football fields. I haven't heard back with an approval for spending $300ish to get the VDSL boxes, to anything more expensive than that is probably right out. Of course, they spent $7500 to get this conduit run without asking me what they should have put in it first...

On an unrelated note, anyone have a good program/plug-in for splitting PDFs by content? 4 times a month I have to generate a bunch of financial reports on our AS400 system. The old way was to print out 2 copies, split them by hand and then have them physically delivered to each location. I at least switched that to PDF, but I still go through and manually split the files and then email them to each branch. The reports are formatted differently, but each report is consistent page to page. The other issue is that each part of the split isn't necessarily contiguous. For example, it might look like this:

Spoiler:

page 1
branch 100

page 2
branch 200

page 3
branch 300

page 4
branch 100

page 5
branch 100

page 6
branch 300

page 7
branch 100

So I need that to be split into 3 files. One called filename-branch100.pdf that has pages 1, 4, 5, and 7; one called filename-branch200.pdf with just page 2; and another called filename-branch300.pdf with 3 and 6.

I've tried a couple with random googling, but they all seem kind of shitty. I don't want to spend a bunch of time learning some bodged together thing if there is a better product out there that I've just missed.

At my old job I wrote a Python script to split these massive (thousands of page) text files into PDFs for distribution to various folks. I can give you a hand if you're still needing something.