When given a choice, the vast majority of the users that I support choose Windows over Linux as their desktop OS. To be more specific, many of the users I support are assigned both a respectably powerful Windows laptop and a pretty darned nice dual screen Linux workstation setup.
The majority of those users use their Windows laptop as their main computer. Nevermind that most of their time is spent in terminal windows connected to Unix systems
Graphical apps on small laptop screens.
Using windows as little more than a way to display a bunch of windows at once.
Users like what is known, that almost always means Windows.
While getting our new tape jukebox working, I was running into all sorts of seemingly random and odd behaviors. The new jukebox (run by WinCE) couldn't consistenty recognize all of it's drives. On boot, the server did not always find all of the devices connected. Tapes would show up as unreadable in some drives some of the time. General oddness all around.
I checked the cabling, the scsi id's, and the termination. Everything was as it should be. I even added up the various lengths of cable to make sure I was within spec for total cable length. Through a tedious process of elimination, I was left with a seemingly bad cable. Which lead me to sysadmins Law 7;
We had just recieved a new server and my coworker and I discussed which server room to put it in; the as yet incomplete one where we were plugging servers into regular wall outlets, or the original server room which we would be moving out of within the month but had multiple circuits dropped above each rack.
The matter of not having proper power in the new server room was
discussed, but our desire to not move the server later that month caused us to
decide to put the system into the new server room. Shelves were quickly
installed, and the server was racked. Power and ether were hooked up and the
power button was hit. Nothing blew up, so I left the room for my coworker to
finish getting the OS install under way.
Not 15 steps out of the room and I hear a sudden decrease in the noise from the room. And while it was mildly cool to hear 15 loud machines be powered off at once; I present a firmly learned lesson;
Sysadmin Law 92: Always double check that you aren't about to overload a
circuit before plugging in a new server.
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.
