Joshspot

A Good Time Was Had By All

2007-08-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

This weekend we saw Becky's family for a big family dinner on Sunday. Lots of folks were there and there was LOTS of good food. Becky's brother, Greg, and I spent a little while digging through the depths of the barn. We found lots of cool old stuff: wooden crates for tank ammunition, lots of Lionel train bits and some 15 year-old hard cider. The bottles of cider were still sealed, so we brought a few bottles home with us to try later. I wonder if it'll be any good...well aged cider can't be too bad. :)

Becky's cousin Cori was running around and pretending to be a cat for most of the day, which made for some fun pictures. Here she is being silly:

We were back home by 9 o'clock. Which is good, because I'm on-call for rescue squad tonight. Tomorrow will be a busy day at work, so hopefully it is a quiet night.

An Early Morning

2007-07-03T06:14:00.000-07:00

Time: 0530
Today was an early morning. I had an outage scheduled to begin replacing a core switch in one of our academic buildings. Unfortunately, this promises to be a labor intensive outage, since I am replacing a non-trunking switch with a newer model (that does trunking). The ability to trunk is a requirement for the ongoing VoIP telephone project (and this should have been done a long time ago). Because none of the edge switches in this building are currently configured for trunking, I have to patch a closet into the new switch and then go to that closet to configure trunking and VTP. Then I return to the core switch closet and patch another closet, then go to it and configure trunking and VTP. Repeat ad nauseum (or 11 times, which ever comes first). I finished my fourth closet just before 0800 and decided that was a good stopping point (since users begin arriving around that time). I'll need to come in early on Thursday (since I hope to be off on July 4) to finish up the task.

Time: 0745
Shortly after stopping work on the core switch replacement I got a phone call from a vendor who was on campus to install a pair of T1s for the VoIP project. They needed to be let into a switch closet in an academic building to patch their fiber through to our Network Operations Center (NOC). Then we spent some time bringing up the electronics in the NOC to terminate the T1s. After some brief excitement with a broken fiber patch, both T1s came up and tested good from the central office (CO). This is a very good thing, because I don't feel like tracing broken fiber. The vendor left to go and repeat the process for the downtown campus.

Time: 0930
I finally get a chance to sit down and check my email. I have 60 new messages since yesterday evening. About 20 of these are SPAM and get deleted right away. Another 20 or 30 are automated messages alerting me to some impending danger or horribly inappropriate behavior on a system. These emails are skimmed and ones that tell me about something particularly nasty lead to some brief diversions (either to fix the problem or to send a heads-up email to someone who can). The remaining messages, usually about ten in number, are emails from users regarding existing issues. This means that I need to open up our ticketing software to record my responses and close tickets. I always hope to closet alot of tickets (or to have no tickets to close)...rarely does this happen.

Time: 1100
I find a pile of forms on my desk from yesterday's work in the closet. I pull together these forms and put the information that they represent into our telephone tracking database. This is a tedious process, but requires a knowledge of the network and the (new) VoIP telephone system...so I get to do it.

Time: 1215
Ron pokes his head in my office and asks me if I want to do something to lunch. We end up getting take-out food and I come back to my office to eat it. I need to get the rest of these forms processed and into the database.

Time: 1330
I notice some students sitting around the HelpDesk, so I put one of them to work finishing up the cabling the new server rack. I started this cabling last week, but never was able to get back to it to finish. At the time, it was the perfect Friday task: very little thought required, work in the NOC on a hot day. You get the picture.

Time: 1415
Its time to get out in the field with the crews of guys that are inventorying and cabling for the VoIP project. This is a thankless task (have you seen a pattern yet?) that usually needs to happen in a cramped, hot and humid closet. Did I mention that it doesn't go quickly.

Time: 1545
My crew finished one of the larger closets in the same amount of time that it took the other guys to do two slightly smaller closets. I've decided that I'm slow at this process. Others might suggest that I just need more practice. I gather the data sheets from the other crew and start inputting them into the database.

Time: 1630
It's time to go home. Tomorrow is a holiday and I've reached a decent stopping point. With any luck, things won't go up in flames tomorrow. Just enough time to solve the mystery of the "strange disk quota" on my way out.

A Year in the Life of a Sysadmin

2007-07-03T06:09:00.000-07:00

So I have decided to keep a record of my life as a systems administrator. I'll post a log entry here for each day that I do work, including weekends and holidays. Some will be short and some will be longer. If it is a busy day in the office, this may turn into a twitter-ish blog. It is my hope that this will provide insight into the life of a system administrator (and it will let my wife know what I do at work too).

Burning DVDs without cdrecord

2007-03-15T07:47:00.001-07:00

I learned today that the DVD burner on my IBM T60p is not recognized by cdrecord, which makes it difficult to burn DVD ISOs to DVD. Or so I thought...

I was able to grab the /dev designator for my DVD drive by doing:

dmesg | grep DVD

This told me that my DVD drive was /dev/hda. Then I was able to use growisofs to write the ISO to DVD:

growisofs -Z /dev/hda=/path/to/dvd.iso

It was just that simple.

Burning DVDs without cdrecord

2007-03-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

dmesg | grep DVD

This told me that my DVD drive was /dev/hda. Then I was able to use growisofs to write the ISO to DVD:

growisofs -Z /dev/hda=/path/to/dvd.iso

It was just that simple.

A little bit of sad

2006-09-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

Today marks the end of an era. We took down a system for trade-in today. One of the last commands that we issued on the system was a "sh ver". It reported an uptime of 913 days, 21 hours, 11 minutes.

Security Methods to Consider

2006-08-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

The following security considerations should be employed/considered:

Ingress/Egress filtering at VLAN edge - This will prevent a malicious user from spoofing their source address to gain access to restricted services.

Separate departments using VLANs - We should consider dividing the adm network into departmental groupings

Linux search and replace in multiple files

2006-05-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

So, I needed a little tool to perform search and replace on multiple files in a Linux environment. Here's how I did it:


#!/bin/sh
for file in *; do
mv $file $file.old
sed 's/FINDSTRING/REPLACESTRING/g' $file.old > $file
rm -f $file.old
done

Fedora Core 5 on an IBM (lenovo) T60p

2006-04-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

So, I just got my new IBM (lenovo) T60p laptop. It came preloaded with a bloated, vendor-hacked version of Windows, which I couldn't bear to leave on there. So, I busted out my FC5 CDs (all five of them) and got my install on. There were a number of devices which were must-haves from my perspective:

Video: I had to have a good display revolution, but running ATI's drivers were not high on my requirement list

Network: Both the Intel Pro 1000 (eth0) and the Intel Pro Wireless 9345 A/B/G wireless (eth1) had to be fully functional

CPU: This beauty has the new Intel Duo processor, which means we get to run an smp kernel! WOOT!

So, here's how I got those guys working:

Video - This worked "out of the box." It doesn't use ATI's driver yet, but I get good video quality using the vesa driver, so I probably won't try to change unless I have a compelling reason.

Network - The wired interface worked right out of the box. The wireless was a pain in the /dev/null. The FC5 kernel comes with ieee80211 compiled in. We shouldn't mess with this, we will only mess it up. Trust me. After I installed, I 'yum update'ed which brought my kernel up to 2.6.16-1.2080_FC5smp. Luckily, I found an atrpms mirror that had RPMs for the ieee80211-kmdl and the ipw3945* items. So I grabbed and installed these rpms:

Reboot and then run /sbin/ipw3945d. Now you should see a new interface (eth1 on my box). Viola! You can use your iwconfig tools to manage it just like it was a regular network interface.

On Screen Display -
http://www.nongnu.org/tpb/

Is Your Dad Home?

2005-05-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

"Is your Dad home?" The voice greated me from the open door. I smiled slightly and tried to rub the sleep from my eyes. I had just woken up from a late afternoon nap on the couch and was feeling a little groggy. I was looking at a guy not unlike myself wearing a gree John Deere t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. His hair was cut short and he wore an identification badge around his neck.

"No, it's my place. What can I do for you?", I reply. I had him pegged as a census taker, forgetting that the next census won't happen for another few years yet.

"Well, you probably won't be interested, but I'm selling study guides for high-school students." I blink long and hard. Did he just say what I thought he did? Why would anyone in their right mind spend hundreds of dollars on "study guides" when they live in a community with a public library?

Packing and Moving

2005-04-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

The day is finally here. It's my last evening in the apartment. It's my last day as a non-homeowner. Hehe! How exciting.

Tomorrow I close at noon and then I get to move in to the new house. If you are interested, here are a few pictures. Enjoy!

Oh, and here is a corney little countdown script that will give the exact amount of time until I own a house!

Wines, Friends and Family

2005-03-21T20:30:00.000-08:00

This weekend was my first experience with wine tasting. I drove down to Elmira on Saturday and met up with Becky and a bunch of her friends from EC. We then headed up the east side of the lake, hitting up several wineries. It was fun (and sort of strange for me)... It seems like every winery that we went to, I either knew the owners or somebody working there. First it was Catharine Valley Winery (which is owned by one of my high school friend's parents). Then it was the Red Newt (where I saw several folks from high school). After that it was Hazlitt's winery (which is operated by a friend's parent). Follow that up with the extra sketchy Rasta Ranch (where I spotted a very drunk friend's mother). Then we ran into Bethanne at Logan Ridge (where I found a couple of bottles of great desert wines). Then lastly we went to some uber-expensive place. All in all, it was a very fun time. I think next time we'll definitely have to hit up Bully Hill.

Good thing I'm leaving the neighborhood...

2005-02-24T19:35:00.000-08:00

So last night on my way home from the store I was a little annoyed because there cars parked on both sides of the street, essentially blocking the road (I couldn't squeeze between them). I was even more irked because three of them were police cars (parked on the wrong side of the street, in the no-parking zone). Luckily there is another street that sort of cuts around this and let me get home.

So, today I turn on the news and what do I see? A cocaine bust! Three people arrested and $100K worth of cocaine confiscated. Where did this happen, you might ask. 7 Washington street. That's only three houses down from me. I AM SO TO BE LEAVING THE NEIGHBORHOOD SOON!

http://www.wwnytv.net/72k/full-story.asp?uid=7008&area=home+page

VoIP System

2005-02-15T19:54:00.000-08:00

So I was able to score some more "throw-away" gear from work today. It just so happens that we got a new VoIP system, so all of the old VoIP hardware was headed for the trash bin. I managed to save a bunch of "Cisco IP Phone 30 VIP" phones (pic1, pic2). Together with Asterisk they are still quite useful.

So far I have only setup calling from one phone to another, but future plans include enabling voicemail, on-hold music, etc. Eventually, I'd like to get it hooked up to one of the free VoIP providers so that I can setup an 800 number for my family to dial into (and then be able to dial out again, making their long-distance calls much cheaper). Or maybe set something up so that you could dial in and get the weather or have their email read to them. It'd be pretty neat.

The irony of the whole situation is that OIT had originally contracted with a vendor to come in and implement a system like this for the department. However, they decided that it just wasn't possible. I managed to get it setup in about 2 hours this evening. Too bad they hadn't asked me to do the system. :) Oh well...

Hillarious

2005-02-10T20:50:00.000-08:00

This is really funny:

Baby Got Book

Accepted!

2005-02-02T23:41:00.000-08:00

So, it is official. The purchase offer is signed. They counter-offered and I accepted their counter-offer. I'm buying a house! Woohoo!!

Made an Offer (They Can't Refuse?)

2005-01-29T23:00:00.000-08:00

I am on the edge of my seat in anticipation. I pace. I fidget. I cannot wait to hear how the seller reacts to my purchase offer. It went in this morning. One of the conditions of the offer was that they respond to me (either affirmative, negative or with a counter-offer) by end of business on Monday. So, I can't immagine that I will be very productive at work, but then again some days are like that.

So, if they accept my offer straight off I will worry that I offered too much. But then by the same token, if we negotiate too much then I'm afraid that I will go too high. I guess its all a balance.

Home Loan

2005-01-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

Well, I went to the bank today and they pre-approved me at an awesome interest rate. That means that all that remains is for me to put an offer in on the house, for them to accept the offer, and then for the state to process my loan (that could take up to three months). I hope that everything goes smoothly.

If you'd like to see the house that I'm looking at, check it out here. I'm pretty excited about the possibilities. :)

House Hunting, Family Time and Other Fun Stuff...

2005-01-24T18:00:00.001-08:00

This weekend was a fantastic time. Becky was here to greet me after work on Friday. We went out to dinner and a movie before collapsing for the evening. A bit of advice about "The Aviator": its not necessarially a movie about flying. It is a movie that is more about Howard Hughes and his mental issues than it is about his piloting abilities. A little disappointing, but overall not bad.

My family showed up on Saturday afternoon and we looked at a pair of houses that I'm thinking about buying. Its difficult to make the decision between the two of them. One is less expensive, but needs a bit of work. Either way, I'm not so sure about coming up with a down payment in time to buy the house. I will have to see how things play out after this next round of bills.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend. I really enjoyed seeing my family again and I had a fantastic time with Becky. I really like the way things have been going with us lately. I was a little worried about her getting home safely (considering the big snow storm that we had this weekend), but I got a call around noon letting me know that she got home all safe and sound. Yay!

My First Time Too

2005-01-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

Well, this will be my new blog. How exciting. I spent the better part of the day today cleaning up my apartment for this weekend. Now it's all spick-n-span. The laundry is all done. The dishes are in a different pile (on the other side of the sink). The bathroom has been cleaned for the first time in ages.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone this weekend. Hurry here.