Needing a variety of power, ethernet, and kvm cables, I send emails to the three vendors I am legally allowed to purchase from. One particular vendor responded very promptly, although it required a few additional emails to get the quote right.
To:salesrep From: sysadmin Subject:Cords and Cables Oh My
It's time to neaten my server benches. Can I get a quote for the following cable order?
16 6ft standard computer power cords
4 3ft cat5e rated ethernet patch cables
4 10ft cat5e rated ethernet patch cables in the same color as the 4 3ft ones.
16 15ft cat5e rated ethernet patch cables
4 3ft ps2 kvm cables
4 10ft ps2 kvm cables
The response to that was a correct quote. This exchange didn't exactly give me confidence in the company, but to make matters worse, the quote I recieved did not include the needed legalese that matched their agreement with the State, and had someone elses name and address in the Bill to and Ship To fields. The final price would have been $531.
The other two vendors were much better in terms of service, but weren't even in the correct ballpark for what I wanted to pay. One gave me a quote for $333 (this being the price after I removed the incorrect inclusion of sales tax; which is wrong both because I am in another state and because my purchases are tax exempt). The other gave me an accurate quote on the first try but wanted $488 for the order.
Going through Cyberguys (where I personally order computer cables) I assembled a shopping cart with all the needed parts in less than 10 minutes for a grand total of $153.
You would think I would learn; pretty much everytime I am do hardware
maintenance on a linux system, I happen to time one of my reboots so that
one of the automated fscks is trigged. Either too much time has passed
since the last one or the partition has been mounted too many times (both
can be set/reset by tune2fs). It is almost always one of my large
partitions which takes a good while to check, meaning I sit around
twiddling my thumbs not wanting to start anything else until I finish the
maintenance. Thus I present sysadmins law 119.
Automated file system checks (those not triggered by an error) always
happen at the most inopportune times. Either reset the counters or do a
check before starting maintenance.
My office is littered with random computer paraphernalia. Some are parts that are still useful, many others are antiquated and would be considered trash by most people. This bit is one that I find too amusing to even consider throwing out. In the box is A Devoke Data Products Disk-Pro-Tek Floppy Disk Reinforcing Kit. As the instructions (scan) state, they "Extend the life of your flexible discs and mini-flexible discs by strengthening the spindle hole and thereby substantially reducing the chances of disc dimpling, coating removal, and permanent distortion."
While I never actually used 8 in. floppies, I used plenty of 5 in. ones and rarely had issues that this kit would solve. Overly paranoid computer users do all sorts of silly things (for example d_skin Protective Disc Skins). If a particular disk is that valuable, a copy should be made and the copy should be the one used on a regular basis.
These are the actual reinforcement labels. They basically work like the reinforcements thatare used with standard paper hole punches.
This kit includes a double sided (one side is for floppies (8 in.) and the other for mini-floppies (5 in.)) applicator.
While I am confident in my onsite backup system, to handle the possibility of my server room going up in my smoke, I need offsite backups. I have about 600 gigs used on my primary backup server, but I only need to store about 300 of that at an offsite location to be able to recover from a complete server room meltdown.
Taking tapes offsite is of course the classic way to solve this problem. This means user intervention on a regular basis (which means it is more likely to be skipped), and it means using tape, something with which I have a great dislike (mostly caused by bad experiences with QIC tapes in the early 90s).
I could contract out to an outsider service, and the central IT group on campus will sell me storage on a massively redundant Tivoli managed backup system for two dollars per gig per month. That's $600 a month or $7200 a year for my 300 gigs.
Or, I could build a server and host it some place else. Turns out I wasn't the only person on campus who had a desire to host a server in an "offsite" (meaing not in the same or an adjacent building) location. I easily found another systems administrator on campus who was willing to swap space in our respective server rooms.
For $2500 I can build a server that will meet my expected future needs for at least three years. Sure the server likely wouldn't be as robust as the Tivoli managed service, but I don't really need that level of service, I simply need another layer of protection.
I have been working on a single script that will do user account
creation. I'll cover the script itself later, right now I feel I call
attention to the awful programs xcacls.exe and xcacls.vbs.
After experimenting with xcacls.exe (download)
to modify the ACLs of home directories, I thought I had down everything
I needed to do. Opening the GUI to verify that my carefully crafted
command lines did what I expected them to do, I was presented with an
interesting message-- The permissions on FolderName are incorrectly
ordered, which may cause some entries to be ineffective. Press OK to
continue and sort the permissions correctly, or Cancel to reset the
permissions. It seems there is a problem
with xcacls.exe. Apparently using the program in a way that is
concistent with the instructions is not supported,
So I
downloadxcacls.vbs and start
experimenting with it. It took about thirty minutes of experimentation
to work out the new features and the differences with the previous
version, but it seems the script does solve my problem. That is not to
say it is a well written script. An annoyance: you can't designate the
username in the active directory form of username@domainname; just NT
style ntdomain\username. A problem: the program takes 5-10 seconds to
process the ACLs on about a dozen files/folders.
I can only wonder if had the script had been implemented and compiled
to a native binary it would have been as fast as the original program.
This is also another reminder that Microsoft expects me to learn and
code all of my utilites in VBScript. I think not.
The only access I have to do network configuration for ports under my control is via a custom campus written web application. For each port I can configure things like rate, duplex setting, and what vlan it is on. This system has been in place for nearly two years, and just last month they finally made it possible to lock specific jacks to specific MAC addresses.
Tangent: MAC address filtering is not secure in and of itself. Spoofing the MAC address a card responds to is possible with pretty much every network card and OS I have used in the past several years; it can even be done in the bios on some motherboards. It is however quite an effective deterrant against casual attempts to hook non-sanctioned equipment.
Now this new feature only allows you to lock a single port to a single MAC address. This is a useful thing for most systems administrators on campus. Being able to limit which computers professors plug into the network jack in their office will most definitely improve the overall well being of campus networks. I had hoped however for a system where I could setup lists of addresses and I could specify that a port should be restricted to one of the lists (the simplest form of course being a single address being locked to a single port). My hopes however were dashed with the last section of the introductory document announcing the MAC address locking feature.
It seems the campus-wide network architecure team feels there are political and logistical reasons (which they choose not to share) not to provide list based locking. The only explanation they provide is that it is better network design to provide each device with its own jack (this is a concept I do generally agree with).
Clearly the campus-wide network architecture team needs some more creative thinkers on it. I can think of a few situations where it would be useful.
My lab solves serious workstation troubles (be them software or hardware) by replacing the problem machine with a spare sitting in the closet. Without having a list the person doing the replacing would need to be able to access the configuration application to change what MAC address is locked to that port (and this can't be done as the lab assistants that would be doing the replacing do not have the technical knowledge to use the tool safely).
I partially manage the ports in several public classrooms. I would like to restrict use of those ports to my collection of laptops that instructors may borrow.
A faculty member wishes to be able to use their laptop in their office. It's not worth installing a second physical jack for this occassional use, but the sysadmin still wishes to limit the jack to only the desktop and laptop.
I am annoyed at this mostly because of what should be possible, and not by what I actually need now. I have much bigger fish to fry before I get around to MAC address locking at the switch.
Anyone that knows me would agree that if I don't have something to fidget with, I will find something to fidget with (or worse, take apart). I have had this wad of Silly Putty in my office for about 6 months now. It acts as a medium for temporary artistic endeavors, provides unbreakable stress relief, and can be a relaxing focus as it oozes from whatever form I give it to its natural blob like form.
There is one other benefit that I had never considered before. a blob of Silly Putty can apparently be used to pick up women. Now I have found that woman are much more likely to ask to play with one of the desk toys as I solve whatever problem they came to see me about it. But for some reason the Silly Putty is more attractive to them than any of the other gadgets, gizmos, and stress toys I have. So to all those single guys out there-- Silly Putty, better than a cheesy pickup line.
Anyone that knows me would agree that if I don't have something to fidget with, I will find something to fidget with (or worse, take apart). I have had this wad of Silly Putty in my office for about 6 months now. It acts as a medium for temporary artistic endeavors, provides unbreakable stress relief, and can be a relaxing focus as it oozes from whatever form I give it to its natural blob like form.
