Sysadmin at work rant

[KarrottoP]

This isn't entirely linux related, or at all really, but I have got to get this off my chest. I just started working for this company (I am a CAD Drafter/ Architectural Designer) and the system admin is a total luser. I had a copy of knoppix in my car and asked him if he wanted it and his statement to that was that he hates linux and wouldnt want to use it for anything. That told me something right there. But, I overheard them complaining about the network slowness, Then I noticed that all the computers on the network, over 50 were obtaining their ip's via dhcp and were on the same subnet, including the file servers (that have huge traffic, drawing files and such) and 3 large format printers, and the internet, all on this dhcp configured network. I had a ssh connection set up to my computer at home, that I was using at lunch, but had exited, and he thought that I was doing something that slowed the network down, and when I told him it was ssh he said that he did not know what it is, then I had to explain to him that is was basically telnet. Sheesh.

Well, thats it, I just wanted to vent.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Wow, that's a serious loser.

How much does he make an hour? How secure is his job? Do you live close enough to Nashville that I could come over, make him look like a fool, and take his job? ;)

[Icarus]

At least you didn't spend 20 minutes tring to explain to your boss that the DR test took an hour longer because they had a different model fiber channel controller then our system...questions like, "why is it working fine on ours then?" were repeted...and he didn't understand why I needed to re-compile the kernel with the module for the card to see the drives (process takes an hour including reboot)

To speed things up for next time I suggested compiling the additional FC driver in the kernel so it would be available and we could save an hour off of recovery..."why would we need to do that? it works just fine here" :rolleyes:

After 20 minutes I think he understood that 2 different parts need 2 different drivers...even though they do the same thing, they are different...

[Brocket99]

nice webpage mahdi! i'll add it to my favourites. off topic but so is /dev/random :)

are you a ut player by any chance ? :D

[KarrottoP]

Nashville, well Im about 2 states away. I have a plan though. Right now I am pretty new, and folks at my new company dont know that as I side job to being a draftsman I spent 4 years as a IT geek. Besides that I am one of you, you know who you are, so, given that nobody knows that my home network is set up smoother than our works network I am going to wait untill I am a bit more seasoned at the company and start shaking things up a bit. The IT guy has walls, so he must be making something, and he does some small things here and there for the company. But, let me give you an example of how backwards this company (although they seem to be doing pretty well is) I learned how to write lisp routines for autocad, for the non autocad literate it is a programing language simmular to you standard lisp or common lisp programing languages you can use with os's, but it is geared towards autocad functionallity. The thing is, if you are going to do something over and over, you can set up sort of a "smart macro" type application that will do it in seconds instead of, in some cases, hours. I have written a bunch of great ones, during my lunch and after work sometimes because I actually enjoy doing it, and my response has been mostly of the (why waste time on that) So, I made one that should be distributed to the rest of the company to set up our drawings and included a little logger sub-program that attaches a used by, and what time etc. note to a log file on the network. Hopefully once I am there for awhile I can start fixing the obvious problems.

[carrja99]

Yeah, total idiots like that get sysadmin jobs while here I am, entering my 5th year of college next year, and I still can't even get hired for a F*CKING INTERNSHIP!!! I don't understand... I have alot of skill, and alot of promise (I've always finished my progrmming projects in top notch condition) but for some odd reason, despite my good looks, every place I try just decides to hire idiots for internships instead of me.

So far they've hired people I tutor instead of me, and even one guy in my class, when I brought up the LAN our college has, and he says "What's a LAN" and then calls me up because he can't get on the LAN through windows... EVEN he got an internship instead of me, and it was the same one I interviewed for!!!

AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! :mad:

[bosox79]

Originally posted by iKarrottoP
This isn't entirely linux related, or at all really, but I have got to get this off my chest. I just started working for this company (I am a CAD Drafter/ Architectural Designer) and the system admin is a total luser. I had a copy of knoppix in my car and asked him if he wanted it and his statement to that was that he hates linux and wouldnt want to use it for anything. That told me something right there. But, I overheard them complaining about the network slowness, Then I noticed that all the computers on the network, over 50 were obtaining their ip's via dhcp and were on the same subnet, including the file servers (that have huge traffic, drawing files and such) and 3 large format printers, and the internet, all on this dhcp configured network. I had a ssh connection set up to my computer at home, that I was using at lunch, but had exited, and he thought that I was doing something that slowed the network down, and when I told him it was ssh he said that he did not know what it is, then I had to explain to him that is was basically telnet. Sheesh.

Well, thats it, I just wanted to vent.

That Admin sounds like a total dumass:mad: he/she must be a paper MCSE. I feel your pain though when you work with or around IT people you sure find a lot of NBM's. paper MCSE's are a huge joke. I bet the admin was so pissed becuse every time he needs to patch/update the server he needs to reboot the server;) you gotta fell kinda sorry for them

bosox79

[Darksamurai]

During a layoff period, I was the network admin for a marketing company (Windows NT/98 based).. the head of new business asks me to start on a project that would have tripled my workload (I was already pulling 16 hour days), and would need another person to maintain... period.

After arguing with him on the floor for over an hour (mostly about the fact I'd be lucky to have a job the following month, much less hiring an assistant), I finally explained it to the owner and the database admin (based at the company's second facility) and they finally told the guy to let it go... but I know well arguing with idiots for extended periods of time.

(shortly there-after they closed the place... I ended up doin' PC repair for a few months, resigned due to VERY low wages and now I paint warehouses, apartment complexes and shopping centers... how's that for a career change... sorry for the life story... just amuses me sometimes the irony of life)

[KarrottoP]

Originally posted by bosox79
you gotta fell kinda sorry for them


Its hard to feel sorry for someone who's inability to preform their job adaquately is a hinderence to my job preformance. RIght now my main focus is learning a bit more about the industry I am in now, I also have suffered from a recent lay-off, and I am getting paid a bit less for this position. The manager in my dept, for cad is good with the industry specific stuff but not as good at cad at I am, so I see some potential in the not to distant future. I just cant believe that they can operate under a situation where the it director jumps up and down like a monkey because he got a new plotter to play with and prints everytihing he can at full size, full color just to play with it, and even then cant get a simple, but huge, plotter configured correctly. Those things waste a ton of money if you make a mistake and print something in b/w, I cant even imagine how much the waste of full color plots is causing......I hope he dosent decide to start learning linux and stumble upon this :) I know that he checks what data has been downloaded from where for some ridiculous reason, but he does not have static ips so he can not pin the user, lol. Good thing I dont surf at work that often unless its job related :)

[chatins]

Yes, i am a highly paid sysadmin. When someone challenges me at work it mostly comes down to a game of 20 questions that someone else in the company asks. They are not necessarily my strengths. someone asked me the 20 questions on the various ports that servers use and i had forgotten some obscure ones. That didn't qualify the guy in anyway to take my job. It did, however, mean that i was buying the winner lunch.

[KarrottoP]

Yes, but I am sure that you dont dhcp the network, or at least on that big. I have known many extremely qualified,much more than me, Sysadmins. I was asked how much ram a autocad system, that runs what we are running should have in it, and told him that I got the answer as a consensus from an autocad user group. The guy sitting next to me asked him what a user group was and he told him a bunch of people that use the programs and dont know what they are talking about.....5 minutes later I got an email from a guy that works at autodesk, Im gonna guess he knows what he is talking about. That made me laugh pretty hard.

[chatins]

I don't think the admin is using pure dhcp on the network. The "problem" admin probably used the ip of the server as a dns address and put in a static ip gateway for the router. The ip of each workstation is assigned by the server.

BTW, there are plenty of ways to monitor internet trafic in this configuration.
:rolleyes:

[michaelk]

I realize that you just trying to vent but I don't see DHCP being the real issue. Unless you have a small lease time DHCP shouldn't slow down the network at all no matter how many are on the same subnet.

[arioch]

There's a lot of win generation adminteurs out there who really can't do s**t with anything else than a windows machine. Imagine a mechanic that can only fix one brand of cars! There's a lot of "skilled" admins out there, who more or less panic if you ask them to do something on a
non-win machine. It's pathetic. Microsoft's dominance results in an almost assembly line like production of dumbed down IT personnel. :rolleyes:

[plattypus1]

Originally posted by arioch
There's a lot of win generation adminteurs out there who really can't do s**t with anything else than a windows machine. Imagine a mechanic that can only fix one brand of cars! There's a lot of "skilled" admins out there, who more or less panic if you ask them to do something on a
non-win machine. It's pathetic. Microsoft's dominance results in an almost assembly line like production of dumbed down IT personnel. :rolleyes:

Yes- thereby Linux/UNIX/Solaris admins are rarer, and thus we can charge more for our skills. See, everything's got an upside :-D

But seriously, the sysadmin at my school beats anybody's horror stories. She holds the almighty admin password, and she doesn't even know how to upgrade her own OS (Winblows 98se-2k). For the longest time the admin password was "admin" because she didn't feel like changing it... much to the chagrin of anybody on campus who knew what they were doing. (Only reason she's sysadmin is 'cuz she's the principal.) Plus, the school locks down stupid little things that they consider a danger (right-clicking, everybody KNOWS how dangerous that is!) while leaving massive security holes open (command prompt, regedit, Run command, Network f***ing Neighborhood) on the workstations. Plus, even though the computer teachers have URGED the school to put on a BIOS password, there is none. As such, the hacking opportunities present themselves quite easily in the form of Knoppix >:-) Oh, and on top of that they block any site with the word "hack" in the domain name off of the school's content filter thing under the category of "criminal activity." HACKING IS NOT A CRIME!!!!
Anyway, I'm sure I've gone on for quite a while, so </rant>