( Rant on, before I get out the power tools )

( cut for insanity )

So we run CISCO IPSec  VPN to allow people to work from home.

Some guy got a new machine, and guess what, it has 64 bit vista on it.

Cisco's IPSec VPN client doesn't support the 64 bit version of Vista,  32 yes, 64 no.

So he was asking what he should do.

Suggestions of solutions were:

1. We can upgrade our VPN network to support Cisco's VPN SSL, which is supported.  WE figured that would keep us all in jobs for the next 3 years while we figured out how to make all the rest of our 5-10 year old hardware work with the new equipment.

2. I  Suggested he install the 32 bit version of ubuntu as  dualboot, and then install the Cisco Ubuntu VPN client.

3. Another person suggested he install vmware, and run a 32 bit vista VM inside his 64 bit vista vm, and then install the VPN client inside the 32 bit Vista vm.

4. I think the next suggestion involves Microsoft, Cisco, and the third rail of the metro.

Here's a new one.

We have users that have beautiful xterminals that they use to connect via XDM to our LInux machines in either Gnome, or alternatively KDE.  We have them at our desks as well, and they work beautifully.

So we get a trouble ticket from a guy who says "his screen is fuzzy"  I talk to him about resolution, etc.  and hand it off to our xterm expert.  He goes over to the guys desk and is staring at an Xterminal running Windowmaker.

He comes to me and says "What servers do we have that have Windowmaker installed?" 

I become really confused, as we don't support Windowmaker on any of our Linux boxes.  I do a quick check around, trying to figure what machine we could have conceivably installed windowmaker on.   It just isn't there.

Turns out the end user had installed Windowmaker inside his home directory, and so was logging in via KDE and then running Windowmaker inside KDE.

WTF? 

"Locking ssh for security policy makes about as much sense as making people walk around naked to make sure that they aren’t hiding anything."

 "I know you have a backup of 28 GB of files, somewhere in that backup is a script that I need, I don't know what it's named or what it contains. Can you find it for me?"

( an email I prepared regarding security reports )

Gotta have faith in your security tool when it reports this:


Version for package xxxxxxxxxx (2.6.26-2.1.2) is less than 2.6.26-2.1.2.1

When you do

dd if=/dev/sda dd of=/dev/null

twice,

and get two entirely different drive sizes, 10 MB and 36 GB.


So if I do a 3rd, do I take the average?

Wow, ya know, sometimes you see something that you haven't done before, and can become amazed.

Snapshotting of logical volumes is one of these.

Lets say you've got a local volume /dev/vg1/www that you've got your web site on.

You can type:

lvcreate -s L<logical volume size> -n <snapshotname> /dev/vg1/www and it will almost instantly create a snapshot that is read only.  If you're original gets hosed, no problem, you just mount the snapshot, and copy the files back in.

Example:

I have a 205 Gigabyte (yes Gigabyte) logical volume that I store miscellaneous data on.  I typed:

lvcreate -s -L205 -n snapshot /dev/casa/shared

and in less than 3 seconds, yes 3 seconds, I had a snapshot.  I mounted the snapshot in /backup and voila!  All the files were there.