System Administrators's topics - tribe.net

Donations Sought: Time & Materials

funmoore — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:21:33 GMT

I work for a non-profit, after school program. We have a couple of needs for the computer lab.

Firstly, we need help fixing a broken fan on one of our desktops which doesn't find the fan at startup.

Secondly, RAM upgrades, 512MB+ preferred.

If you can help with either or both, please let me know.

Diana

PS: We're looking for pro bono work. For materials donations, I may be able to get you a tax write-off.

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

Cheap NAS box

tonyb — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:30:55 GMT

Alright so I am looking for a decent [cheap] NAS box for our backups. I was wondering if anyone could recommend any and/or present any comments about some they have used.

I have been looking at some of the lower end solutions from Iomega, Tritton, QNAP, WD, and others. It seems that a lot of them offer empty boxes that you get the drives separately. This does not seem too bad, drives are cheap right?

I am looking to get something around 1TB ideally either in a RAID 5 or 1 config (at least 3 drives or 2 respectively)
I will be using this in a Windows environment (with Backup Exec.)

Anyone have any thoughts on these?

Thanks in advance.
-Tony

posted in System Administrators - 6 replies

1099 pay rate?

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 02:22:39 GMT

I was just contacted by a recruiter that wanted to know if I would take a tier 2 support position at $37 an hour. Anyone know the tax liabillities on a 1099 worker in California? (like 50% taxes or 40%...)

posted in System Administrators - 11 replies

Content Advisor Password Crack

funmoore — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:24:43 GMT

I've got an XP box with Content Advisor activated on IE7. Unfortunately, I don't know the password. I already tried unistalling and reinstalling IE to no avail.

How can I reset the password?

Thanks!

posted in System Administrators - 2 replies

SSL Certs on IIS

tonyb — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:50:29 GMT

I was wondering, is it possible to get an SSL cert for a shared ip in IIS or do I have to assign a dedicated IP?

Here are my scenerios:

1) IIS ip is 192.168.1.10 site name: test.xyz.com
I add a new site with a header of zebra.xyz.com with it's own subdirectory on the server, etc.
Now I want to get an SSL cert for zebra.xyz.com, will this work?

OR:
2) IIS ip is 192.168.1.10 & 192.168.1.11
192.168.1.10 is assigned to test.xyz.com
192.168.1.11 is assigned to zebra.xyz.com (with it's own subdir, etc.)
Can I get an SSL cert for zebra.xyz.com in this configuration?

Note: Of course the server is behind a NAT, I am not sure if the IP follows the cert or not, if I change the IP will I have to change the cert?
At a later time, IF I wanted to get a cert for test.xyz.com would I be able to get it one as well? (and have it co-exist with zebra on the same server?)

Thanks in advanced,
-Tony

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

Website Blocking & Parental Controls

funmoore — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 03:56:29 GMT

I have a gig that includes maintaining a computer lab that kids use after school. I need a product that provides blocking by topic area (nudity, language, etc.) and for URLS that I specify.

I'm currently using IE's native Content Advisor. It seems though to apply the limitations I've set up globally. Is there a work-around so I can apply limitations only to the kids' account? The tutors need to be able to access sites like their webmail without having to enter a Supervisor password.

Failing that, do you have any recommendations for third-party products that would fit my needs?

We have four stand-alone (not networked) computers in the lab running XP and IE (6, I think)

Thanks so much for your help.

Diana

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

Monitoring

robt — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 04:28:40 GMT

Whats everyone use?.., or even better, whats your favorite monitoring package? I like Nagios very much, it's reliable as hell and aside from initial config easy to use. I did though, just deploy a Zenoss machine (Zenoss 2.0.6 under CentOS) that is really impressing me. It's using a mix of SNMP and SSH based tools for monitoring, uses Nagios plugins too. Zope powered, which I can take or leave but it requires a somewhat beefy machine ( instance I built is on a 1000Mhz Opteron x4 w/ 3G of memory... Zope moves pretty fast ;) to run things on.

Anyone looking toward "self healing" types of scenarios? (or doing it?) Things that restart when they die etc... load balancing network/services, things along those lines? Thats what I really want to get into place ( make on call easier :) for the long term.

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Gutsy+LAMP+New Webroot?

pixelslut — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:44:20 GMT

well i ended up reinstalling my machine linux laptop with Gutsy today. I had everything set up the way i liked it in fiesty but i seem to have problems mimicking the same setup in Gutsy for sme reason.

Ive got a partition i want to use for general storage. All the users on the machine in a particular group need to have access to this drive (lets call that group mydevs). What i want to do is move /var/www to /media/data/www. Obviously apache need access and everyone in the mydevs group needs access. But no one else save the normal system accounts. I jsut can seem to figure out the permissions wrangling to make it work.

help is appreciated.

posted in System Administrators - 7 replies

how to disassemble network infrastructure

crazypantsmcvee — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:46:38 GMT

My company is moving to an new location. I have about 20 ethernet cords running out of the server, through the wall, up in the ceiling and down to the cubicles and terminate at a muli-ethernet jack where the cords from the workstations plug into.

First, how disconnect the cords from the jack (the cords coming from the server)

Second, how to get the cords out of the wall/ceiling

Thanks in advance

posted in System Administrators - 8 replies

Winsock2 corruption???

TheRightRevRapMastaCornflake — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:36:36 GMT

What the hell? I've never dealt with this, before, and now I've had two Windows installations (one XP Home and the other XP Embedded... yes, I built the damned thing myself...) go south and have to be fully reinstalled because of Winsock2 corruption. What is with that?

How do I know it's Ws2? Because when I open a command prompt and type in ipconfig /release I get "Windows IP Configuration - The operation failed since no adapter is in the state permissible for this operation."

Here's the documentation from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259

Anybody have any idea why this is happening? I'm more interested in getting the XPe installation fixed. With XP Home I just blew the partition and reinstalled. Shotgun therapy, I know, but I was in a hurry.

I'm currently recompiling my XPe image, again, to see if I accidentally configured a component that may be causing a resource conflict with the wireless card. Gah!

Love and light, dear ones.
Rev

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

Good VPN Clients

tonyb — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 05:38:14 GMT

So I am looking for some recommendations for multi-VPN clients for Windows. I need to be able to connect to multiple vendors hardware and need to have one client to connect to them. As many of ya'll may already know you can not run the PIX client on the same machine with SecureRemote from Checkpoint, they kinda conflict. I have something for my Mac called VPN Tracker by Equinux. (This is a great product, I can connect to a Netgear, SonicWall, Netscreen, Checkpoint, or anything else, all at the same time.) I need this ability for Windows now as well and was wondering if anyone had anything. (I also could use such a client for Linux as well.)

Thanks,
-Tony

posted in System Administrators - 2 replies

outlook not connected to pop3?

crazypantsmcvee — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:34:00 GMT

About 3 hours ago was when we stopped getting email and also the ability to send email. I am on the phone right now with my ISP to see if it is something on their end.

Any troubleshooting suggestions?

posted in System Administrators - 5 replies

can you be on call for this server and make some easy cash?

shiraz — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 09:23:41 GMT

heya,

i'm the server admin for this site that's running really smooth. part of my contract is that i'm on call in case anything goes wrong. it's a smooth running super over-powered box, fresh install (fedora core 4 with cpanel), and the chances of something going wrong are extremely unlikely.

if a service fails, and that hasn't happened yet, cpanel will restart the service. but anyhow, as part of the contract, i need someone to be on call at all times, and i'm going away this June 21 - 25th. The server is both internally and externally monitored, and if a service goes down, it SMS's my cellphone with the message right away. If I can forward that to you, that's all that would be required.

The requirement is that you have a cell on you at all times for the time that I'm gone. You must also be able to respond to emergency calls from the client (again, not likely).

I figure like $50 to cover those days is good. Basically you just make $50 for giving me your cellphone number and agreeing to cover it. If something does happen to go wrong, you'll have SSH to the server and you can go fix er up at your hourly wage (let me know what it is).

I've really put this off to way too late... so I'm hoping it works out. Otherwise, if anyone can recommend some such service, I'd be thankful. I don't want to pay for a generic reboot service cuz that wouldn't make me feel comfortable enough to go out partying for 5 days.

Thanks bloods,

Shiraz

posted in System Administrators - 7 replies

Mounting a old mac image in windows.

jamesd — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:44:43 GMT

I made a DD image of a old ibook I need to mount the image in windows, I was hoping someone would know how to do this.

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

WAMP to LAMP migration

mathus13 — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:43:44 GMT

i just finished changing my server over from a WAMP configuration on w2k3 to ubuntu using a fluxbox interface, and am discovering coding issues with certain php scripts and and javascript.

any particular lines i should look for while scouring the php.ini and httpd.conf?

posted in System Administrators - 2 replies

Win2Ksrv SMB-shared files occasionally go missing...??!?

Steve — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 02:16:22 GMT

Hey, all... this almost seems like "user error" (and I definitely haven't ruled that out! But the problem appears to hit many of them, most of whom are computer-competent, neither n00b nor clueless.); it MIGHT be something else. There is a group -- a department of 6-8 users -- which is repeatedly experiencing "files missing" and "folders missing" issues... They estimate maybe 10 or so instances of this problem over the past 6ish months. Other same-sized groups, accessing the same network-share, do not report this problem.

The server runs MS-Win2KserverSP4. The network share is large, many files & sub-folders, many layers deep. RAID5. No disk-errors in system log (yes, the log goes back that far & more), so I'm disinclined to think it's disk-errors.

Some of the end-users are on Win2KproSP4, a few Mac OS X, a few WinXPproSP2 (no Vista... yet); a couple have Mac laptop's and Windows desktop's (no Linux/SAMBA/NFS/etc). The System Log *does* report MACSRV event-id 12061's, but those are obvious as disconnect-from-server events, and users know they may loose an active file if they get disconnected that way... This problem manifests as something else: files (or whole folders) gone from the still-active connection to the server. I don't THINK the "event-id 12061"'s are related to this issue (although, as a separate issue, I'd like to resolve THOSE, too... I'm gonna try a "net config server /autodisconnect:800" next, I think...) Also, I can't limit it to (the users' don't report it as limited to) files recently-written by the Mac's.

What makes this group different are:

- They're the only Mac users (except for one lone executive, who may simply not generate enough traffic to see the intermittent error)

- They *MAY* have some software-tools that others don't use, or that others use radically-less.

- They're the "most-active" on this server; because of the document-heavy nature of their work, they are constantly opening and closing doc's of all types.

I'm honestly puzzled. In many regards, it looks like a classic file-and-forget case of pebkac; but it's just a few too many users, a few too many instances of the same problem, for me to be happy with that diagnosis.

Oh, and my wife is one of the users experiencing the problem! So, aside from the whole issue of making-the-spouse-happy, I can report that we do NOT see this problem at home (eliminating at least one case of "user error").

One thought has occurred to me: when does it (or does it ever) happen that drag-n-drop file operations are CUT&paste rather than COPY&paste?

Other thoughts most welcome!

- Steve

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

Network monitoring - is OpsWare really the bloated piece of crap it looks like?

sciolist — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 05:01:43 GMT

trying not to be a troll (admittedly, not trying really hard with a subject like that...), but what are folks using for network monitoring out there? Has anyone had any experience with (or been subjected to) OpsWare? In my current position I've gotten active SNMP polling and trapping working via Nagios with trending and reporting being done by Cacti, but it looks like some networking guys wanted different things done for monitoring... and our VP keeps talking about exploiting "synergies" between groups, so I'm a little nervous.

Thanks,

-=Thomas

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Win2Kpro - Existing user gets newuser profile...?

Steve — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:45:57 GMT

Hi, all...

I'll be posting this on other relevant Tribes (apologies to those of you also subscribed to those Tribes!)

We have a longtime user logging into his regular Win2Kpro SP4 workstation.; domain server is Win2Kserver SP4. His login is FLast (First-initial Last-name). Our domain is written all-caps, as DOMAINNAME.

The user's regular credentials get him a "new-user" profile on the workstation (offering the standard tours/tutorials to the OS, requiring first-use configuration of MS-Office, etc).

Launching "Explorer" I see profiles on "C:\Documents and Settings\profilename"...

"flast.DOMAINNAME" is the newly-created one (that "f" as in first-initial, "last" as in last-name "dot" DOMAINNAME). Creation-date on the folder is this morning (just about when he logged in... imagine that!), and it has none of the user's customizations.

But right beside it is the another profile, "FLast" (no domain suffix), WITH the customizations the user has made...

Note the differences in capitalization; I'm not sure they are (or aren't) relevant, but "flast.DOMAINNAME" is the WRONG profile and "FLast" is the right one...

Logging into the computer, only a login to "DOMAINNAME" works; logging in as that user to "This Computer" fails.

Checking the profile on the server, I see neither explicitly listed.

Hints? Tips? Solutions? Derisive (but correct) pointers to the Right Answer... all willingly accepted.

- Steve

posted in System Administrators - 6 replies

Stinkin' dial-up...

TheRightRevRapMastaCornflake — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 13:29:06 GMT

Okay, some of you may just laugh at me, but I'm completely at a loss and don't know where else to turn. My company manufactures glass tempering furnaces. I build and maintain the computers that control them. The OS is Windows XP Embedded, which I've been developing. I've gotten pretty good at it, except for a recent brick wall. We've got a furnace going into a facility in Billings, Montana that doesn't have a network. So, I've installed a good old dial-up modem (Diamond SM56LE 56k PCI PRO) and created it as a component in the XPe target image. Windows recognizes the device, loads the drivers, I create an "accept incoming connections" to set up the computer as a RAS server (I first had to install all the correct networking components in XPe, of course... whew) and it answers the phone and accepts the incoming user (the administrator account from my laptop) but then... *fizzle* nothing... It even stops recognizing the LAN (a Linksys 802.11g gateway/router) through the ethernet port. In order to get it back on the LAN I have to delete the "accept incoming connections" information, flush the DNS cache, release and renew the adapter and finally it starts networking again. I've also noticed that when it's connected to the remote computer it's own IP address and the Gateway IP are the same (which sounds correct because it's the RAS) but the subnet mask is 255.255.255.255??? Shouldn't that have a zero at the end? I can't ping the RAS from the remote computer, but I can ping the remote from the RAS, so the connection works one way but not the other.

I haven't diagnosed dial-up problems in, probably, five years. Where do I turn? The next thing I'm going to be trying is replacing hardware, which I've already done on this machine (the mobo was bad... I couldn't get it to recognize anything on the ISA bus... yes, ISA, the analog I/O cards that control some furnace elements are very old industrial technology) and had to reinstall my target XPe image, five times, as a result.

Any ideas? I'll wait until you stop laughing.

Love and light, dear ones.
Rev

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

psp7 hangs on start

Steve — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 23:54:33 GMT

X-posted to other Tribes...

So we use PaintShop Pro 7 at work; nothing sophisticated, basic photo-manipulation (need to document phases-of-work out in the field). Functionally, PSP is overkill (even at 4-versions-old), but we've got it so we use it.

I've got a new installation of PSP7 which, upon launch, just seems to hang.

Win XP Pro/sp2.

The pointer goes to hourglass for a few seconds (as you'd expect given a big app). But the app never pops the window to the screen, nor to the menubar at the bottom. Taskmanager sees "psp.exe" in the process-list (where it's VERY busy, taking up a bunch of CPU-time), but it never appears on the Applications list.

To the naive user, it looks like nothing has happened; task-manager shows that it's running & using nontrivial amounts of CPU. But it never gets functional.

Same functionality whether I click on an image-file (to open it via PSP), or launch PSP as itself, without an image. Same if I uninstall/reinstall.

If I login as Administrator... boom, it works.

"Fine," sez I, "... a screwy permissions problem." So I set ordinary users and power users to run PSP wih full priv's. No joy. "WTFO?"

Any tips/advice welcome!

- Steve

posted in System Administrators - 7 replies

win2k3/SVN Woes

pixelslut — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:35:15 GMT

Im having all kinds of issues getting a Subversion server set up on our windows server 2003 (Small Business Server, actually) with apache-2.0.59, mod_ssl, and mod_sspi. Ive found numerous sets of instructions and ive tried them all to the letter but one component never works. First time everything but mod_sspi was working. Then everything but mod_ssl, then the svn modules for apache wouldnt work. Can anyone point me to a good up-to-date wlakthrough on installation and configuring from available binary packages (im loathe to install dev tools on the server to compile from source).

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

email help

crazypantsmcvee — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:04:40 GMT

First of all, I want to thank you guys for coming through for me on last problem I posted.

My next question is about email. My boss just asked me to set up a yahoo account that she wants all of her company email forwarded to. I am still quite confused about pop3, exchange, and the rest.

I am running Server 2003 Small Business Edition and use Outlook for (I believe) pop3 email.

Any help would be most appreciated.

posted in System Administrators - 6 replies

CompTIA certs

akgeek — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:06:58 GMT

What is the common thinking on CompTIA certs? From what I can tell, A+ is the most popular cert for computer repair, but what about other areas? They're branching out into Linux+, iNet+, Security+, etc. How do these compare with other industry certs covering the same material? What would look best to an employer?

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Anyone use "Spiceworks"?

Steve — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 19:23:52 GMT

Followed a link from the trade-press.
Looks interesting...
http://www.spiceworks.com/

Anyone here ever use it? Got an opinion?

Thanks!

- Steve

posted in System Administrators - 7 replies

F5 BigIP 3DNS

Kerstin — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 07:11:35 GMT

Hello!

Have an older version of load balancer F5 BIGIP 19" which wants to boot via PXE.

I urgently search the PXE boot image file for the BIGIP.

Can anyone help me please?

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

question

crazypantsmcvee — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:42:23 GMT

i am backing up an entire hard disk using the xp backup utility. my boss doesn't want who ever uses that computer after the backup to know it was backed up. Is this possible? Any help would be much appreciated.

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Do you know how to find open files on the /export/home partition while runnning Solaris 9?

DMTWon — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:37:13 GMT

Anyone?

Fox

posted in System Administrators - 8 replies

Looking for old "stock"

Steve — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:45:03 GMT

H'lo, again...

We've got some older servers which are entirely adequate to the job(s) that
they are doing. However, one of 'em has a disk failing in a RAID.

All things considered, we think the best option would be to replace the disk
with an identical disk, and just keep soldiering on. Problem is, I haven't
been able to *FIND* the older disk for sale. IBM will let me d/l a datasheet,
but doesn't seem to want to SELL it; other places list it (so Google finds it)
but show "Out of Stock".

Anyone got a hot tip about where to go to buy an older IBM SCSI-160 drive?
FWIW, the specific model is "DDYS-T18350M".

We use these in 2 different servers, and would actually like to get 2-3 spare
in addition to a replacement for the failed unit.

Thanks!

- Steve

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

DFS Errors (Win 2003 R2)

tonyb — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:07:55 GMT

Ok, Has anyone run into errors with the new DFS with R2? For some reason I can not get replication to happen with the new DFS system (I can replicate with the regular DFS, btw.) I am currently at: "DFS Replication service stopped on replicated folder xxx."

I am getting this Error ID: 997 (Overlapped I/O operation is in progress.). Event ID: 4004

I have been stumped on this for a few days now and can not find jack squat on Google that approaches this. I have applied a couple of hot fixes already since those were the early errors I got (something about RPC, and something other one.)

Any ideas out there?

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

CMS Recomendation

joystormer — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:55:54 GMT

I am putting up a CMS on a FC5 server.
I want something super easy for the end user to administrate their own sections.
Basically it is a volunteer gig and I don't want to do jack once I get it up an running.
I have been working with classic.squiz.net and it has been ugly as some jerk I see in the mirror every morning didn't include most development packages on install.
Suggestions for something quick and yummy would be appreciated.

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

How to get certified when you're out of work.

TheRightRevRapMastaCornflake — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:23:22 GMT

Sound like the quest for the Holy Grail??? Yeah, I'm starting to think the same. Still, I'm an unemployed support technician with more than eight years experience and I have no degree and no certifications. That's made my job search next to impossible. It's become clear that I need to fix that. My biggest problems are simple economics. So, I thought I'd search here and see if there's anyone out there compassionate enough to assist. All I really need is information. I've never needed certification in the past, so I'm trying to find a place to start. Here are my questions.

Can I simply study for any of the exams without enrolling in a course (A+, MCSE, MCSA, MCSE+Security, etc.)?

What's the best way to get started (online study, exam prep books, boot camps, etc.) that won't require a lot of $$$?

What exactly do they require before I simply sign up for the exams?

Any and all advice, humble requested and humbly accepted, is welcome. I admire all of you and want to be able to accelerate my career so that I can adequately support my wife and two daughters. Bless you all.

Love and light, dear ones.
Rev

posted in System Administrators - 12 replies

Developing Win XPembedded

TheRightRevRapMastaCornflake — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:08:41 GMT

Well, I'm working on helping the tiny company that I work for press forward, into the future. It's a company that manufactures computer controlled glass tempering furnaces. Not exactly rocket science, but not far from it, I assure you. The guy I was competing with for this job worked on the electrical engineering for the Titan missile program. Yep, a rocket scientist. I was awed, humbled and scared out of my FREAKIN' MIND. Still, I was victorious. Now I'm trying to properly earn my keep. The only deficiency that I have is in programming. The current software is developed on .NET, with which I have zero prior experience. That's okay, the old program was written in QNX and we (don't laugh) still support it.

Okay, I'm rambling... I'm a rambler... I ramble. <straightening fly-away hair> I might be losing what's left of my mind.

Here's my dilemma. The new computer systems (which I've completely redesigned) will have Win XPe loaded onto them, underneath our control software. Along with my new designs I need to be able to add support for devices which weren't in the original configuration. Simple things like CD-RWs, USB flash memory units, ZIP storage and network drive mapping. I am having to rely on our software development firm to reconfigure XPe, but I'd rather do it myself. Where is the best place to learn that? Buy a book? Take a class? I'm sure that I could research it and find out, but the last time I tried that (with the network certification track I'm on) it took days just to weed through all of the expensive and useless training programs out there.

Love and light, dear ones.
Rev

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Can anyone recommend an outsourced email vendor (for 2000+ mailboxes)?

idonthaveone — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 01:04:16 GMT

I've had two bad experiences at different companies, but I'm not ready to give up on the idea just yet ; as it didn't appear to be the technology, but the provider each time. Just curious if anyone is using this type of service, and is pleased with their vendor.

posted in System Administrators - 9 replies

PG&E rebates for Green Computing

Thu, 18 May 2006 21:32:51 GMT

Sun, working with Pacific Gas and Electric, have now qualified the CoolThreads servers (t1000/t2000) as being Energy Efficient Devices, like a Washer or a Refrigerator. The Galaxy Opteron x64 series (x2100/x4100/x4200) are somewhere in the process.
I recently replaced a Sun f3800 with a t2000 and am impressed so far with the performance (a little over 3 months of Orca tracking). Doing testing with an x4200 right now as well, as direct competition to Dell and HP. The pricing on the Opterons is very competitve and the lowered power consumption and heat output is a huge difference. I've measured over 8 degrees of power supply exhaust difference between a single processor Xeon Dell (1850 series) and the dual processor/dual core x4200 using an IR thermometer.
One thing I'm particularly happy with are the SAS SFF drives. HP is now making a 1u array that holds 10 73GB SFF drives for around $6500 - small footprint/low power consumption to add 520GB of performance storage as a RAID5/single spare.

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

QNX Windows???

TheRightRevRapMastaCornflake — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 01:21:32 GMT

Okay, so I just started a new job with a company that's a little, well, behind. They manufacture architectural glass tempering furnaces (computer controlled, of course). Their program ran on an OS called QNX Windows until a couple of years ago. But, they still have to be able to support the old systems. I've been trying to set up a "black box" test system but have not been able. I'm pretty sure that I should be able to set up a dual-boot with Windows XP, but I can't seem to get it to work.

I've loaded XP on the primary partition and tried to create a FAT32 logical drive to load QNX. Nope. QNX doesn't recognize NTFS.

Then I tried loading QNX first and installing WinXP on the extended partition. Nah. FAT32 doesn't seem to work here, either.

One OS works just fine but the moment you add the second everything goes entirely pear shaped.

What's the magic combo, here? I'll admit that I've never done dual-boot systems that weren't different flavors of Windows, but it shouldn't be this difficult. I'm trying to research this out, but I'd appreciate any experienced help, out there.

posted in System Administrators - 7 replies

Calendar + Project Mgmt?

Steve — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:19:22 GMT

So, the Big Boss here has us looking into Project Management software. He's heard about MS-Project... but OOOOoooo-E the price!
$750 for the server, $130 (per user) for view-only CAL's, $800 (per user) for the Professional working version... especially that last one, 800 per user... Ouch!

This leads me to consider Open Source...

I found Open Workbench: looked good, REALLY good... but it has no Mac version, which I believe is a dealbreaker in our shop (I haven't checked explicitly; but one of the co-owners / managers is a Mac-head; project management that locks out top management???!? ).

activeCollab is at ver. 0.7rc2, i.e. not even ver 1.0... again, this seems to be a no-go.

Also, the project-mgmt stuff needs to be calendar-aware, which likely means able to integrate with MS-Outlook and /their/ calendar... one tstopper (last time I looked at group calendar-mgmt apps) was a misfeature where "private" appointments were kept TOO private -- if I scheduled myself:
"11:15-12:30 -- Murder boss, carry corpse to dumpster, seal into dumpster w/ 3 lit sticks dynamite"
and marked the appointment "Private" then nobody could see the details (good!) but in fact they couldn't even see the timeslot as TAKEN & permitted others to schedule stuff into the same slot (bad! very, very BAD! My boss scheduled a MEETING that day at 11am, so I couldn't keep my own Private appointment!)

Argh.

I'm beginning to suspect that the software I want isn't available for less than ultra-premium prices (and associated added complexity (i.e. "enterprise" features) & cost).

- Steve S.

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

Damn I feel old...

Steve — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:08:27 GMT

"I remember the day..."

Remember when a NetApp fileserver appliance was uber-cool, but only the big-bucks shops could buy 'em?

Now I see stuff like...
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10409761&adid=17070&dcaid=17070
$239 for 400GB (usb expandable) on a gigabit etherport... all in a 3"x8" footprint!

I think my next piece of technology had better be one o' those wheeled walkers...

- Steve S.

posted in System Administrators - 12 replies

Fileserver w/ RAID -- pieced, or single-source? What disk-bus?

Steve — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:28:12 GMT

So, when y'all are getting a new fileserver (RAID 5), do you just buy "a solution" from a brand-name vendor like IBM / HP / Sun / Dell / etc ?

Or, do you buy a RAID controller here, your drives there, the server from wherever, etc... piecing together each bit with the price/performance ratio you want for that component?

Also, as regards RAID... do you do SCSI, SATA, or...?

- Steve S.

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

DHCP problems after NT to 2k3 migration

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 17:10:41 GMT

Has anyone out there come across this problem after migrating to 2k3 from NT. We are having a few clients (XP Workstations) that are getting the below error message in the event log. So do not run there logon scripts and get their mappings (Drives and Printer). Thanks for any help.

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Dhcp
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1003
Date: 9/28/2006
Time: 5:31:47 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XPWorkstation
Description:
Your computer was not able to renew its address from the network (from the DHCP Server) for the Network Card with network address 001320EC0F67. The following error occurred:
The semaphore timeout period has expired. . Your computer will continue to try and obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 79 00 00 00 y...

We also get this message before the above error:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: e1express
Event Category: None
Event ID: 31
Date: 9/28/2006
Time: 5:31:19 AM
User: N/A
Computer: XPWorkstation
Description:
Intel(R) PRO/1000 PL Network Connection :Spanning Tree Protocol has been detected on the device your network connection is attached to.
Data:
0000: 00 00 04 00 02 00 60 00 ......`.
0008: 00 00 00 00 1f 00 04 60 .......`
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0028: 1f 00 04 60 ...`

posted in System Administrators - 10 replies

Linux and hot-swapping SATA drives

Alex — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 00:45:56 GMT

OK, at least according to this: <http://linux-ata.org/software-status.html#hotplug>, hot-plugging drives is supported. However, the usual scsi commands for adding and removing devices[1] don't seem to work with any SATA controller I've tried (Promise TX4, Sil3114, etc.).

Has anyone had luck getting SATA disks to hot plug into a running linux box? Yes, the machines I'm working on do have SATA backplanes that support it.

[1] e.g. # echo "scsi add-single device 1 0 0 0" > /proc/scsi/scsi

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Sun's latest gadget

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:43:41 GMT

datacenter in a shipping container. when you have to do a lot of computing in disaster torn areas.

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/blackbox/story.jsp

a la 2005:

google's: http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/seo-news/topic-13156.htm

apc's: http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/P2650/36p50/36p50.asp&guid=

posted in System Administrators - 7 replies

bridging routers

pixelslut — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:20:12 GMT

I need to do come customization here and im unsure exactly how to go abotu it.. i have a general idea but i cant find and directions or specific documentation to putting the peices all together... i was hoping someone could point me towards some.

We currently have a network config something like this:

Internet -> SonicWall TZ 170 -> Win2k3 Server/DHCP/AD -> Clients: 4PC's | 2 Macs | WRT54G =>Clients: 1 PC | 1 Mac | WG Guests

Now in an ideal situation we would have enough active network ports to handle all our machines and the wireless router. Unfortunately we dont. However, we do need wireless because we have a few people in and out that need the access. And then there is that other PC i mention that is a client of the WRT54G... it needs to actually be on the primary network so it can access AD/shares on the server.

So what i need to do is Bridge the WRT54G to the main networok on the wired interfaces and keep the wireless interfaces on thier own subnet (ie. a wireless hotspot). Now im sure i can acheive this with OpenWRT im jsut not sure how to go about setting it up. IVe done soem searches on setting up bridges and on brouters in general but im having trouble putting all the peices together to give myself a difinitive process to attempt to execute.

Could someone shed come light or point me itn the proper direction? Thanks!

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Building a Toolbox-laptop

Steve — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 12:56:19 GMT

So, here's the deal:

I am Sys/Net-Admin'ing a small company network; about 25 users all told.

I *am* the IT dept, with occasional contributions from the 2-3 people who "were" the IT dept at-need (before they hired an "IT Guy") but actually have other (utterly unrelated) job-duties.

Servers are Win-centric, but there are a couple of Macs. Workstations are Win-centric, but there are a few Mac laptops. Most of the LAN is CAT5, but our little SOHO router is wireless, and 2-3 people use that:

(Router)----(cat5 LAN)
|
802.11g
WLAN

THere is no *NIX anywhere, except the router itself -- they bought it (before I got here) not even knowing it ran Linux; still don't know, wouldn't particularly care if they DID know... it's an appliance that works as long as it's got power, and that's all they care about.

I've *finally* got the go-ahead to buy some network monitoring and diagnostics stuff, probably starting with a laptop so I can take it 'round to test "stuff" wherever I need it (generally, "stuff" will be cat5; sometimes modem/etc); but, I probably don't have much budget beyond that, so I expect to go heavily into the Open Source world. I defintiely *DO* want Linux-compatibility (i.e. no "Winmodem" or other crippled or niche/unsupported hardware), though I expect to spend 50% and more of my time in MS-Win.

While I'm at it, I think I want/need to get the tools for doing some Penetration Testing against our wireless network (and security in general); I'm betting the people who set it up didn't do jack-all to harden things...

The thing is, many of these ventures (e.g. Wireless) are fairly new to me; I grasp the principles, but don't know the specific tools that are available & useful.

So, I'm looking for info/advice...

Here's my current notion:

- Laptop w/ ethernet, 802.11g card, modem;
- HDD partitioned and multi-booting (we have both Win2K & WinXP at the desktop, so I should have both) for testing.
- bootable from CD.

- Linux "Knoppix STD" LiveCD.

- Some source of wireless tools, akin to the "STD" but wireless-centric rather than security-centric (if a comparable, free/cheap collection of quality wireless tools exists); dunno what this will be.

- Other hardware/software?
- Wireless signal-strength detection?

SO.... can anyone name me specific tools for this laptop?

Thanks!

- Steve

posted in System Administrators - 16 replies

RANT: I'm not psychic, damnit!

Alex — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:38:38 GMT

Why is it that my lusers assume that I know exactly what the details are of whatever little problem they're working on. For example:

Luser: "Alex, it's saying the table doesn't exist."

OH THAT'S HELPFUL INFORMATION FOR ME. Obviously, because we only have a single machine, running a single database that only has one table, and is only queried by a single web page, ever, I can identify the problem from that little gold snippet of almost-information.

Me: "What is "it'? What table? What's the URL of the page giving the error?"

Ten minutes pass

Luser: "It's saying that foodb.bartable on server baz doesn't exist when I go to <URL>"

Me: "Thanks for the useful information. Now I can help you."

It wouldn't be so bad if this were an isolated incident, but this particular luser NEVER EVER gives me ANY useful information the first time around. And he wonders why I've started ignoring his email.

End rant.

posted in System Administrators - 8 replies

Backup Mail Server

Alex — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 04:18:34 GMT

I'm going to be adding a secondary MX to my company's mail system (yes, it will be on a different network in a different geographical location from our primary), and I've heard bad things about spammers abusing 2ndary MXes.

My idea was to do a little scripty dealy that will only open port 25 if the machine detects that the primary MX is unresponsive. This would keep unneccessary traffic to a minimum, while still giving us a backup SMTP relay.

Are there any glaring problems that I'm overlooking?

posted in System Administrators - 2 replies

LTO4

nekr0phage — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 19:24:27 GMT

Has anyone seen any recent news on the LTO4 release? Release dates or press anouncements or anything?

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

W2K - Acro4 won't run

Steve — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:22:28 GMT

H'lo, all. In case you don't recall "me" (my background) -- I'm a passably experienced UNIX/Cisco geek, not so much Windows, doing a Win2K - centric SA job. :-/ Just so's ya'll have a bit of context to judge the following...

While I was on vacation, a user lost her local profile (somehow, still not clear what/how happened).
Bookmarks, address-book, etc... all gone. One of the more-techie people assisted her in getting back to functionality.

A few days after I got back, she discovered that her Acrobat 4 wasn't working (yes, I know there's a "7" out there, and we use it; but some versions of Acrobat (that our clients/partners are using) are producing "writable forms" that 4 can write to and 7 cannot; so we use both (some of the newer PDF's can't be parsed by pre-7 versions...)).

The error is as follows:
- Acrobat splashscreen shows, and a bunch of "Loading & Certifying <blah>" messages flicker by; this is normal.
- The splashscreen freezes with "Loading & Certifying Asrch32.api"
-Then a MS-Win error pops up, reading:
"Acrobat has generated and error and will be closed by Windows.
You will need to restart the program"
It also mentions an "error log" but I can't find it. :(
Google isn't being useful.

A quick test showed that it works just fine for the Admin user, but another non-privileged user has the same issue. I thought it looked like a permissions and/or pathing issue, but permissions and paths look correct! WTFO?

Any help MOST welcome!

- Steve

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

Good Sys Admin Training

seattleeric — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:37:07 GMT

I am looking for what training people have found to be the most beneficial? I know its not very specific, but I have some training money I want to use, and my job is so broad I'd like to find a good training option!

posted in System Administrators - 5 replies

Programs in your toolbox

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:55:42 GMT

As system admins what programs/utilities are in your toolbox. Since I administrate Windows boxes most of my tools are windows based. Here is a list of some that I found very useful:

pstools and others from sysinternals (http://www.sysinternals.com/)
winaudit (http://www.pxserver.com/WinAudit.htm)
floppy image (http://www.woundedmoon.org/win32/floppyimage.html)
bartpe (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/)
netstumbler (http://www.netstumbler.com/)
windows server update services (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/updateservices/default.mspx)
std [secrutiy tool distribution] (http://s-t-d.org/)
ubcd (http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/index.html)

scripting/programming:
visual studio express (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx)
script center (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/default.mspx)
devguru (http://www.devguru.com/)
vbsedit (http://www.vbsedit.com/)

posted in System Administrators - 8 replies

Sr. or Lead Admin role with profitable Analytics co

sneakepete — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 20:48:58 GMT

Hello everyone,

A client of mine here in the Bay Area is looking for a Senior UNIX administrator to join their team. This is a profitable analytics company that has an ever-growing list of customers, and they have received a number of awards for their data mining solution. FYI - This is a permanent full-time role.

Qualified candidates can email me for more info about the company:
peter AT gravitypeople.com

take care,
Pete

Job Description:
Lead a team of System Administrators / Network engineers, while maintaining hands-on responsibility
Work with data center vendor on capacity expansion
Develop a strategy to scale the infrastructure in one or multiple data center locations
Be responsible for all infrastructure related items such as power, phone system, Internet connectivity, data center space management, and air conditioning
Develop & implement a disaster recovery strategy for the current hosted application
Be responsible for purchasing of appropriate hardware and software
Schedule on-call coverage for the Operations team, and carry a cell phone and pager, to respond to emergency work requests during off hours
Work well under pressure and in time-critical situations; establish and maintain good working relationships with various groups within the company

Qualifications:
Bachelors Degree/Equivalent in CS or Information Systems
Expertise with handling mission critical 24x7 operations providing high uptime
Experience with configuring servers, including high-end database servers and blade servers in a Windows 2003 Server environment
Knowledge of Microsoft Windows 2003, Active Directory, and Exchange
Experience of building and configuring RAID systems for file servers and database servers
Detailed knowledge of facilities provisioning related to power, AC, and server rack configuration
Knowledge of SAN or NAS storage desirable
Knowledge of security issues related to physical infrastructure and network systems
Experience or knowledge of disaster recovery solutions for warm or hot backups
Excellent oral and written communication skills, responsiveness, and attention to detail

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Using PXE server to create and restore ghost images

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 21:53:40 GMT

I just learned about PXE boot server, what a great tool. I use it for ghosting and diag tools for PC's. Now I don't have to look all over for floppies. PXE stands for Pre-Boot Execution Environment. Here is what you need to run in a windows environment:

tftp server
dhcp server
Which I use tftpd32 (http://tftpd32.jounin.net/)

pxe menu editor
floppy image editor
Which I use 3com's MBA disk utility (http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/mba.htm)

create and restore ghost images
symantec ghost.
ghostcast to ghost multiple machines at once (Awsome)

What other ways is a PXE boot server being used? Also if you need help setting one up let me know.

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Cross Platform Scripting

seattleeric — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 07:40:48 GMT

I am looking to learn more about scripting to save some time. What languages do people use? I see people referring to perl a lot. I am far from a coder and just want to learn some techniques to save some time :) Also can anyone recommend some good training options in this area?

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

IT Market tight in your area?

jholder — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 07:23:50 GMT

So how is the IT job market in your area lately? I live near San Diego, CA and here it seems that alot of the companies will post jobs but take weeks to make a decision, some companies even sending you through 2-3 interview process. I think its because with so many Sys Admins available and less positions that businesses can afford to be choosy. Have you noticed that on job postings they will have a huge wish list, its like they want a programmer, hardware tech, sys admin, and bus boy all in one.

posted in System Administrators - 16 replies

Apache 1.3.x on localhost:80 SLOW RESPONSE

pixelslut — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:29:45 GMT

LAst night my IP got reassigned ("semi-static" IP from Roadrunner using DHCP - its dynamic but this is the first time ive had a new one in over a year). Instead of trying to memorize it i thought id be smart and change some MX records on my web hosts so id have remote.mydomain.com point to my home computer's IP as well as mac-inode-1.workdomain.com point to it as well. Thusi could always access my home computer and easily and simply change MX records accordingly in the event of a reassign instead of having to modify a shitload of settings on every computer i use to connect home. I decided to make 2 address because at some point down the line when i had time i was going to attempt to route traffic from each of these address only to certain ports... Anyhow it worked all fine and dandy at first. Then all of a sudden Apache started taking forever to respond... it foound the machine in a snap but apache jsut took an ungodly amount of time to finish processing a request (although it does finish before timeout). At first i figured this was jsut a routing thing dealing witht he external servers/records and/or something RR had done at a router level to attempt to limit traffic/bandwidth in someway. I wasnt happy about that as id never experienced it before but i figured oh well beccause i have a standard personal accoutn not a business one so whatevs. But then i noticed it does the same thing even when i use localhost or 127.0.0.1!!!!! This is unacceptable as its impossible to get anything done in terms fo local web development - imagine having to wait close to 1.5 minutes for the default apache install page to process - let alone revieeng a complex page with lots of images or a dynamic lang running locally. So i removed the MX records thinking maybe it was something with this. Same result. The only way thing operate normall is if i disconnect the cable modem... then its jsut as fast as it was before.

Now it only seems to be http/port 80 that has this issue FTP from what i can tell is behaving normally and id suspect other services/ports are as well.

Any ideas???? Im dying over hear.

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Cisco Emulators below 100$

paul — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:35:28 GMT

Does anyone know of a Cisco Emulator that I can get for under $100?

The routersim.com product looks great but 189$ a little stiff right now.

Just joined and I live in Royal Palm Beach - new to SOFLO.

In a hurry for this

Paul

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

grep -2

Thu, 18 May 2006 20:16:53 GMT

hey, I need to use grep to return two (or even three) lines of output for each match it finds. I need the line before the match (and I wouldn't mind having the line after).

I did some research on usenet and found this:

# for file in $( find . -type f ) ; do grep -2in '.*ntfs.*' $file ; done

"The 2 tells grep to return two lines on either side of the string so you can see if there's anything you want there."

But I can't get it to work. I am working with tcsh. When I man grep and its affiliates, there is no mention of a numerical operand to indicate the number of lines to be returned.

Is it possible that this aspect of grep simply isn't available to c shells? Or am I just trying to use it wrong?

Here's my command:
> grep -2 error SCAN0120060516KP00000001.log

Here's my output:
grep: illegal option -- 2
Usage: grep -hblcnsviw pattern file . . .

Any ideas why this isn't working?

posted in System Administrators - 8 replies

NAS on a mixed Mac/PC Network w/ a OS X Server

pixelslut — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:17:39 GMT

Were trying to centralize and consilidate our small network at the office. Were a small creative firm and computing thus far has been disorganized and dangerous (no adequate backup scheme). Doing the work that we do poses some questions about performance in a networked storage environment. NAmeley speed... if everything is stored in one location and we are always working off a network drive are we going to see issues when were applying that "lens flare" effect to a 125mb photoshop file? Whats it gonna be like with 2 people doing this at one time? Add on the administrative birds working in MS Office apps at the same time.... IVe done stuff like this before... i mean worked in situation like that with NO problem, but im also not sure that what we have a budget for in terms of equipment and what not is going to be able to produce something like that.

In addition to that, if it is possible what products would you reccommend? Ideally id like somehting that supported NFS, AFP, and SMB. I dont want to have to use any kind of crazy client software on the machines...

Alternatively, and really like to go this way if its feasible, the cheaper route would be to jsut get external firewire RAID arrays, or even single drives, we probably wouldnt need anymore than 200GB available active at any time. However, wed want something that was fairly expandable just in case... At some point we may start doing some video so we might need to up active size considerabley - not that the device(s) would have to be able to run as a renderwall or anything but more in terms of just storage. This also raises another question in gegards to performance. If we went this route the server would have to be responsible for mounting and sharing the drives. This isnt going to be the most beastly machine in the world - it will be a:

1.6GHZ G4 iMac (Domed)
80GB HD
1GB RAM
OS X Server 10.4

But in this scenario not only would we have all SMB/AFP/NFS action going on but it would be running multiple other services, Open Directory, FTP, HTTP, MySQL, ColdFusion, Tomcat, Apache, PHP4, PHP5, Ruby, etc..

I also thought about getting a cheap pc, stuffing full of RAM and HD Space, and throwing Debian or the like on it. But then i realized except for the stuff i know from Darwin and working on webservers, i know nothing about Linux, so there would be a substantial learning curve there for admin/tech that i dont know i have the time for...

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

Xen, VMWare, etc

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 09:06:36 GMT

Anyone have positive or horror stories of implementing virtualization using Xen or VMWare?

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

Strange Network Drives

seattleeric — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 01:39:50 GMT

My users are getting numerous mapped drives all of a sudden that point to nothing. We only have 2 drive mappings for most users. Any ideas?? They are all using Windows XP Pro.

Thanks

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

The love that is Niagra

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:45:24 GMT

The Sun UltraSPARC t2000's are now available, mine should be here next week. 1 1.2Ghz processor with 8 full cores that can run 4 near simultaneous threads apiece. Solaris will see this as 32 processors, and the base system holds up to 32GB RAM. All of this in 3u, with less power draw than a normal 2 proc machine.

Santa is wearing UNIX Purple this year.

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Senior Linux System Administrator needed in Southern California

LauraLaBine — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 21:42:20 GMT

I have a hot lead on a position in Orange County. Contract or permanent position.

If you're interested, hit me up at: laurajanelabine@yahoo.com.

I could tell you more, but I'd have to kill you.

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

Sony BMG has been installing RootKit software with their Audio Cd's

taelron — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 09:39:52 GMT

I know I posted this on another tribe, but I thought there were enough people here not on both tribes and its related to our work...

Read and weep. Sony BMG has been installing RootKit software on any users computer that puts on of their music CD's in their computer. Ie, if one of your clients/users has decided to listen to one of their favorite artists by tossing the CD in their computer, and that artist is on a Sony label, that computer is now compromised...

Here is one of the links to the story...

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004145.php

posted in System Administrators - 8 replies

Behind the movie, into the computer?

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:26:39 GMT

Hello, folks. I was hoping that someone here might be able to direct me to a good source for young budding technical gurus, growing into hopeful sys admins and other computer building wizards.

Our growing visual effects company's sys admin needs an apprentice to build, explore, research and essentially play all day in the field of their dreams.
We are a high-end film and tv boutique VFX company that is located in the heart of Hollywood red carpet activity, and are looking for a self-reliant hardware and networking explorer to join us and grow with us. And build cool computers from the ground up.

Any leads or inquiries, please email
recruit@lookfx.com

Much appreciation!

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

Remote assistant

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:02:57 GMT

I was wondering...has anyone enabled remote assistant on their network?
My problem is i would like to enable this feature but i don't want to enable where the users can send remote assistant to another user.
The user should be able to send/receive request only to and from the administrators only.

I gone through and googled this up but it still enabled regular users to send/receive request to the other users on the network…
What am I doing or not doing to get this right.
Any help would be great..

Thanks in advance

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

Network storage?

zexos — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 04:17:11 GMT

I'm looking at upgrading the network storage capacity at work. Currently I've got 5 servers (desktop mobo's) hooked up to twin (mirrored) 200gb drives on Windows 2000 Server.

I'm looking to upgrade to 3 rack-mounted servers, at 1TB each (mirrored). These drives need to handle up to 100 concurrent connections writing to the drive (obviously not at the same time, but without blowing anything up).

What would you suggest as a server solution? I'm trying not to spend as much as a dell system, but am open to IBM and others as recommendations. As an aside, any information/cautions you might have about gigabit ethernet would be much appreciated as well!

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

slightly OT: embedded linux

shob — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:56:07 GMT

Hi SA's

anyone here spent any time playing with Linux on embedded devices? I've had some fun this week putting Debian Linux (ARM) onto a Linksys NSLU2 (consumer home NAS device), and last night I installed OpenWRT onto a Linuxsys WRT54g..

More in the next post on how this might apply to a System Administrator!

--shob

posted in System Administrators - 17 replies

Changing up the sysadmin desktop

shob — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 00:33:53 GMT

I decided that it might be a fun exercise to leave my powerbook at home and haul my Ubuntu-loaded Thinkpad down to work for a few days and see if I could work.

Turns out that it didn't take me about an hour to get reacclimated to the new laptop. This is probably sheer luck in that the only apps I truly depend on can be summed up like so:

apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird ssh gaim

So, now I'm set if the powerbook ever gives up the ghost.

Also, the above scenario is built on another fact; the fact is that I gave up using browser bookmarks. When I need to file a site to remember it now goes into either A). a wiki of mine, B) http://del.icio.us C) both.
This has helped my multi-machine scenario a whole bunch.

down with bookmarks

posted in System Administrators - 2 replies

Kronos TimeKeeper Central: anybody using this?

yersinia — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:05:40 GMT

If you use Kronos TimeKeeper Central it would be nice to have someone to talk to other than Kronos since they seem reluctant to support it in the real world application.

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

SA's what are you working on this week? (alternately.. what's borked?)

shob — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 21:15:30 GMT

Some centralized syslog-ng over here.
That and tuning Nagios.

What's everyone else doing?

posted in System Administrators - 23 replies

weird problem with admin access in win2000

Alex — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 16:22:25 GMT

So I am the admin and I know the password but when i log into to admin to install hardware or change the clock it says "you do not have proper privillage to access blah blah blah, please contact the sysadmin blah!"

arrrrggg.

i do'nt care about the time cause i change that in the bios but i want to look at the pictures on my new digital camera and that requires installing usb software sooooo

posted in System Administrators - 5 replies

Nagios Tips, Part I (*nix)

shob — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:48:25 GMT

You run nagios, you love nagios.... you've broken Nagios. Don't try to tell me you haven't, because if you haven't then you're either not tuning it very often or you're just really damn good. You update a config, you restart and kaplooey. Maybe you put in http-check-foo where you meant http_check-foo. whatever.

Here's the deal. And even if you don't break it ever/often, well, dig this stuff anyway then!

First, with anything in sysadmin-land, always create a test case, and work from a known good configuration. I've kind of lifted this idea from some of the "test based development" crowd. They would say to create test first, work until that test is GREEN (rather than RED) and then start work on your project. Nagios makes this adapting this idea easy. Here's a Makefile that explains what i mean. By the way, I use Makefiles quite a bit, because then I only need remember which directory to get to, and the Makefile becomes sort of a self documenting explanation of how those scripts that I haven't looked at in 6 months are supposed to work!

So here is the Makefile that makes a Nagios-admins life a bit easier:
<pre>
[shob@oink etc]$ cat Makefile
check:
<tab>/opt/nagios/bin/nagios -v /opt/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

restart:
<tab>/etc/init.d/nagios restart

(note: please replace <tab> with a real tab key... They *have to be tabs*, or else your Makefile will be borked. I'm sorry I couldn't seem to get this formatted correctly on a tribe posting, paths provided subject to site locale, your mileage may vary as they say)

So! we make our edits to services.cfg

we run:
make check

and if all is well , we run:
make restart

IF you bork a config file, running 'make check' will keep you from borking your running monitoring system and will also tell you *exactly what the problem is* complete with line numbers... So, you make small edits changing very few things at a time, and always remember to check yourself before you wreck your monitoring system (you thought I'd say wreck yourself didn'tcha?) then you should hopefully always have a stable monitoring system.

Did you know about /etc/init.d/nagios -v /path/to/nagios.cfg ?
Would you bother typing that after every edit?
didn't think so.
Makefiles are cool, aren't they?

Second, put all the *.cfg files under revision control with RCS. I'm not going to going into that part now for that is left as an exercise to the reader.

Or if there is some interest, maybe I'll do the Sysadmin's Quickie Guide to Revision Control with RCS. Me and some buddies have cooked up some good fu for that one.

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

migrating NT4 to Windows Server 2003

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 15:56:28 GMT

any advice?

posted in System Administrators - 6 replies

new Advanced BASH Scripting Guide has been release

shob — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 22:51:35 GMT

I noticed v3.6 of the Advanced BASH Scripting Guide listed on freshmeat today. There is a lot of new material apparently

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

freshmeat announcement:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/advancedbashscriptingguide/?branch_id=130&release_id=205290

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

Network Management Systems "http vs GUI" steel cage match

shob — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:01:28 GMT

I do a lot of Network Management Systems work, including monitoring systems, alerting and the like.

On freshmeat this morning, I spied an editorial paper on the subject are started skimming the content. Something stood out and I'd like to hear some comments about it. First, here is the article:

http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/1553/

Now here is the quote I'd like to discuss:

"There are two distinct camps, dedicated GUI and HTTP. A growing number of HTTP interfaces (typically with some Java thrown in) are being used.

While this type of interface may have its uses, it is not the best medium in an operational environment. A dedicated GUI is the only way to provide a fast, efficient, reliable mechanism for operators to interact with an NMS."

Bollocks i say! A well written web app can/will be just effective as a GUI, and easier to deploy and maintain.

discuss.

posted in System Administrators - 1 reply

Disk drive speeds

tonyb — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 18:33:03 GMT

Hey Ya'll,
I have been working on an issue for some time now and need some information. I have a disk array that I feel is performing really poorly. I am getting an average of about 20MB/sec transfer right from it. It is a 12 * 400gig SATA array (I believe 10k, maybe 15k drives.) They are striped, I had them in a RAID 5 and downed them to a stripe just to see if they would go faster. Now here's the deal, I have done testing on my desktop and seen a single 80gig SATA drive (in my personal desktop here) go at around 35MB/sec transfer. I have a theory that these drives should be able to transfer around 60-80MB/sec.
The application for the array is for a backup system disk staging for D2D2T system. Ohh it is connected via iSCSI with a dedicated SNIC (Qlogic). Anyone have any experience with this stuff? I was wondering if any of ya'll have done any similiar tests and got similiar performance or better numbers with the same setup? Or if ya'll have some other SAN/NAS type device hooked up that just fly's at like some faster speed.

Any info would be great.
Thanks,
-Tony

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

2003 file security

magikgrl — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 18:38:45 GMT

Hey guys,

We're looking to upgrade our current 2000 servers, to 2003, and wondered if you used anything for permission control, file security etc. The only thing I've come across is Security Explorer by ScriptLogic. Any other suggestions?

posted in System Administrators - 2 replies

Antiviruses: Which one do you recommend?

panyvinito — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 02:29:26 GMT

Hello all... I'm a brand new sys admin... my company is small and the antiviruses are about to expired... before me there was no sys admin, but the office manager bought McAfee cause she didn't know anything else... I tend to like trend micro...

but which do you recommend? I have about 30 Pcs.... half running 2000 and half XP...

thanks!

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

Broadband (Max Transit)

pixelslut — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:22:38 GMT

So im having issues with my cable modem at home. I called today and they ran a test and said i was in "max transit" and thatt theyd have to send out a tech and id probably endu up with a new cable modem.

My questions is, what is Max Transit? Whats the issue result from? How is the issue remedied? Is this a modem issue or an issue on the ISP's end (ie is there soemthign i may be able to do, or is it necessary for a new modem and/or adjustments at the "box" outside? etc..

I searched on goggle but all i dound were a coupel message board posts with references to the word but no explanation, solution, or anything else otherwise helpful, and then some tech specs that give max transit values...

anynoe know what the hell im talking about... in more detail than what ive pieced together of course.

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

health insurance?

poop_on_a_stick — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 20:55:42 GMT

Anyone got any tips on where I might find decent health insurance? I'm a sysadmin and self-emplyed. I'm cobra-ing off my last full-time job right now and I'm looking to switch to something a little cheaper (and ideally not just catastrophic). I'd like to be able to join some sort of group and get on a group plan because I'm not satisfied with the individual plans available so far. Anyone got any leads?

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

Networking woes

pixelslut — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 23:14:07 GMT

We have a wireless network at work. IT was set up poorly initially and im in the process of redoing everything so that we have shares everyone can send to the various printers etc..

Im pretty much done but i have one winXP pro SP2 box that jsut refuses to see anyone on the network or join the appropriate workgroup. IVe checked its settings agianst all the other machines time and time again and i cant find any discrepencies (which dosent mean there arent any)Its driving me nuts. The strange thing is if i map a network drive using the IP address instead of the computer name it maps properly and is usable... (yes NetBIOS is installed)

In addition to this i cant seem to set up the network printer. It was already set up on one machien so for now i hve them all running through that box instead of to the print server - this is a problem though because that one machine just happens to be a laptop. All the machines (except the one mentioned above that wont see anyone) see the print server, but when i got to set it up the ad printer wizard freezes right after it adds the driver/printer but dosent finish. Ive tired both the ad printer wizard, and the "user setup" on the print server cd, both do the same thing - it jsut takes a few more clicks of "ok" buttons to get there when using the CD. IVe alstried copying the INF off the cd to the hard drive of a machine the same thing happens.

Any ideas on either of these issues?

Specs
--------------------
Router: Linksys WRT54G
Printserver: Linksys WPS54GU2
Adapters: Linksys WUSB54G
OS(s): Win XP SP2
Firewall/Antivirus: Mcafee Trial, Norton, Windows XP (all disabled)

posted in System Administrators - 4 replies

SAMBA Troubles

pixelslut — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:33:47 GMT

Trying to get access to a SAMAB share from Win XP pro SP2. The share is on a mac running 10.2.4 and SAMBA 2.2.3a. It worked perfectly for like a week. Now all of a sudden in the XP boxes are using the username "MachineName/Guest", where machine name is the NetBIOS name of the OSX box. Its greyed out.

Apparently a number of people have had this problem judging from my initial google results. However the only solution i found was to try Mapping a network drive instead of creating a network place. I tried that i get the same thing, however there is a link to "log on as a different user". Wheni click that i can enter a username of my choosing and a password. But after doign that it searches for a few seconds then brings back the logon screen with "MachineName/Guest" entered and it greyed out...

Ive also tried:

- Deleting the NetBIOS name altogether from Sharepoints interface
- Using USER instead of SHARE security
- Loggin on as every USER on the MAC
- Using no password for the Guest account
- Deleting and then creating the guest account again
- Changing the "guest" account to "Guest" and "GUEST"

Im totally stumped since it was just working the other day and i havent installed any updates on any of the machines.

Any thoughts... or better yet - Solutions??? :-)

Also slightly related.... Sometimes when i go to mount the windows machine we are using as a makeshift server, it cant find it.... the connection progress bar jsut keeps going but never connects. This happens often but not all the time. I can see the machine in my workgroup list from the connect to server menu...

posted in System Administrators - 9 replies

Career Decission

seattleeric — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 03:27:52 GMT

If anyone is still awake, I have a career decision to make tonight. I was offerred a higher paying job in an enterprize level server environment where I'd focus solely on servers. To my surprize, my employer counter offerred with a higher salary and up to $2000 for training per year. At my current position, I am responsible for all aspects of IT (Security, budgeting, planning, support, servers, firewalls, desktops......) but the environment is about 100 users. The new opportunity offers a lot of new server technology, but with a baby on the way and maxed out sick and vacation its a hard decision to start all over. Any thoughts?

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

System/Database/Network Admin Jobs Yahoo Group

thomas_leavitt — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 23:03:11 GMT

Please forward this appropriately.

This is a forum for Systems, Network and Database admins to share information about finding work, employment opportunities, networking events, make contacts, etc. Please spread the word.

Founded in March of 2003. 360 members (and growing) - SDNADMINJOBS is an on-line job search community focused specifically on Systems Administration and related fields. This list is fairly tightly moderated to ensure that any and all job postings are relevant.

This means job seekers in this area don't have to wade through dozens of C++, Java and equivalent positions, looking for the needle in the haystack of a good system, database or network administration position... this saves them time, and allows them to respond more quickly when a position is listed.

Recruiters get higher quality responses in less time. Everybody wins.

Subscription information and a more detailed description are included below.

Recruiters/employers and job seekers are all invited to participate, if this particular area of IT grabs your attention.

Regards,
Thomas Leavitt
Founder

Post message:
sdnadminjobs@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe:
sdnadminjobs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe:
sdnadminjobs-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
List owner:
sdnadminjobs-owner@yahoogroups.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sdnadminjobs/

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies

July 29: System Administrator Appreciation Day

Altaira — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 20:36:52 GMT

It's coming soon!
http://www.sysadminday.com/

Be prepared give your sys admin a hug :)

posted in System Administrators - 3 replies

Horror Story of all time

jholder — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:02:16 GMT

I was working as a Sys Admin for a company called Plant Equipment Inc. out of Temecula, CA. They are in the 911 Public Safety industry, developing software and systems for 911 centers. I began work for them in August of 2004. The oncall (afterhours) support was horrible, there were about 4 of us in the sys admin group and rotated oncall since they had to support about 360 remote 911 sites, high availability of course. Usually you would have like 2 days a week on call, like a monday and wednesday, or tuesday and thursday, you get the idea. Plus you did at least one full weekend out of each month, from friday to monday. Now the killer to this was that it was not just oncall but you had to monitor system logs from all 360 of those remote sites 24 hrs, no sleep, you could barely shower, eat or anything. Only a weekend that would mean you worked your full regular day from 8-4:30pm then from 4:30 on friday til 8:00am on monday you were up 24 hrs working, then you worked another full regular day on monday from 8-4:30pm!

Now you would think that is alot of overtime huh, but this is how they did it, you did not get paid for being up 24 hrs monitoring the system messages, logs, alerts, etc. You ONLY got paid if a problem arose that you decided required you to login to the system remotely to fix. So you might spend typically 100+ hours oncall time during a week, but onl get paid for about 10 hours of it.

I complained formally in writing and everything but the company ignored me. I still did my job and did the afterhours because I did not want to feel like I failed to do more than my part. In April 2005 I had enough and filed a dispute with the Labor Board, and one week before the hearing I was fired because they said I had installed unauthorized applications on my company laptop, such as streets & trips. Pretty convenient huh.

I had a hearing at the Labor Board and they decided that this needed to go to court because I had a valid claim and they estimated that I was owed over $35,000 in unpaid overtime, plus penalties, plus wrongful termination.
The other thing is I have been applying for jobs around the area, and I found out today why I hadn't gotten any callbacks or interviews, and it was because the prospective employers had called my last employer (Plant Equipment) and my ex supervisor there had told them that she did not even know who I was!! That caused me to lose jobs.

This has been a horrible experience, although i was lucky in that I was smart enough to start collecting all types of evidence as to what was going on before I was fired, like schedules, pay records, alerts and pages (can you believe that during oncall I was paged no less than every 60 seconds for system messages, and they said that time was not compensatable).

My court date has been set for October, I did have to hire an attorney, and I can't wait to nail them to the cross for what they have done. So fair warning to anyone that lives in this area and plans to take a job with this company, contact me first if you want to find out more, then you decide your fate.

posted in System Administrators - 2 replies

CVS Branch Base tag question about new files

hoco — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 15:40:10 GMT

When you create a file on a branch in CVS, it correctly adds the file on the branch, but it doesn't create a base tag for it. The O'Reilly book on CVS suggests creating a base tag and then branching from that tag. Is there any benefit to creating the base tag for files added after the branch is created?

Thanks for any insights you can offer.

posted in System Administrators - 0 replies