Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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Damn it. That stupid work thing I was complaining about last week? Apparently the Bigwigs liked it, so now they're launching a massive six-month high-priority data project. Now I know why that fruit basket arrived at my house last week. And the raise. Damn it, now I have to do more work. What kind of horrible world is this, that the reward for doing good work is being given more work to do?! Ugh. This is going to cut into my World of Warcraft time. I want my fox mage to get high reputation with the walrus people so he can get that fishing pole that lets him breathe underwater. So sick of almost drowning. Working life is so weird.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Damn it. That stupid work thing I was complaining about last week? Apparently the Bigwigs liked it, so now they're launching a massive six-month high-priority data project. Now I know why that fruit basket arrived at my house last week. And the raise. Damn it, now I have to do more work. What kind of horrible world is this, that the reward for doing good work is being given more work to do?! Ugh. This is going to cut into my World of Warcraft time. I want my fox mage to get high reputation with the walrus people so he can get that fishing pole that lets him breathe underwater. So sick of almost drowning. Working life is so weird.
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Tell management that to provide the data you need a fishing pole that lets you breathe underwater.

Simple solutions FTW.

ETA: Wait, I forgot, things like that in WoW are spirit-bondaged or whatever they call it, and can't be swapped, so you need management to provide your fox-mage digital assistant software with a fishing pole that lets him breathe underwater.
 
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Reoccuring event, a version of which is currently happening, that I've gone through about 4 times now.

Company: "IT, we need you to set up an account so we can order product/service. Give so and so in Accounts Payable the information and set it up the account with her e-mail as the info so we can keep track of it."
IT: "Okay so what happens so and so leaves?"
Company: "Oh that won't happen."
*Sponge Bob Announcer* "Five Minutes Later"
Company "Well so and so quit and all the account information for ordering that product/service is under her account...."
 
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Upper management requires me to put a client on all our Windows machines.

Here's the installer binary, once you install it edit the registry and change the servername to 10.x.x.x.


Really? THAT'S your process?
 
One of our T1s just took a call from someone who started the major Windows 10 1909 update last night, then shut the computer down, and wondered why it was still trying to run in the morning.

That was dumb, but even dumber was when she asked whether the update could be paused so that she could do some work.

I suggested that it was a bit like taking your car to the mechanic, them hauling out the engine and putting it next to the car, then returning and saying that you need to urgently drive somewhere and can you just take it away and bring it back later for the engine to be put back in.
 
arthwollipot said:
One of our T1s just took a call from someone who started the major Windows 10 1909 update last night, then shut the computer down, and wondered why it was still trying to run in the morning.

That was dumb, but even dumber was when she asked whether the update could be paused so that she could do some work.

I suggested that it was a bit like taking your car to the mechanic, them hauling out the engine and putting it next to the car, then returning and saying that you need to urgently drive somewhere and can you just take it away and bring it back later for the engine to be put back in.
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On systems that don't have a brain-dead design (high-end IBM systems and other mainframes, Linux, and possibly VMS) it's entirely possible to work on the system while applying updates. On Linux even a restart often isn't necessary, although if a new kernel has been installed a reboot is a good idea.
 
Blue Mountain said:
On systems that don't have a brain-dead design (high-end IBM systems and other mainframes, Linux, and possibly VMS) it's entirely possible to work on the system while applying updates. On Linux even a restart often isn't necessary, although if a new kernel has been installed a reboot is a good idea.
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Yeah but such systems aren't necessarily practical for a government department with thousands of users, many of whom don't have more than a rudimentary grasp of how computers work. Microsoft has government contracts well and truly wrapped up.

For the most part, our system works pretty well. But now that we're using Azure and everything is in the cloud, we're a little stuck when something happens at their end. Our O365 systems were down for a couple of hours yesterday, which generated a massive number of calls. It's been months since there's been a decent nationwide outage.
 
If you Reply to the automated email that our system sends to you advising you that an incident has been resolved, it reactivates that incident.

If I email you and say "please advise us if this does not resolve your problem" and resolve the incident, you Replying to that email saying "Yes, this has resolved my problem" re-opens the incident and makes me resolve it again No Further Action Required.

It's only a little thing, but it's mildly annoying.
 
Wudang said:
Wouldn’t that also happen with an out of office? Wouldn’t it make sense to make them do something specific like change the subject to “reopen”?
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We've got automation that takes care of out of offices and other known responses. The system looks for the job number in the subject line in square brackets, which it includes in all automated messages it sends out. It's not a bad system, really, but it's not perfect.
 
Blue Mountain said:
On systems that don't have a brain-dead design (high-end IBM systems and other mainframes, Linux, and possibly VMS) it's entirely possible to work on the system while applying updates. On Linux even a restart often isn't necessary, although if a new kernel has been installed a reboot is a good idea.
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FWIW the only times I’ve actively rebooted my windows gaming notebook in the last 4 years have been related to issues with my router where I’ve needed to power off the wifi network card. It still patches in the background and even reboots occasionally but it does it overnight while the notebook is in sleep mode. When it’s done the reboot it opens nearly everything back up the way I left it. The only reason I even know it rebooted is that VMware desktop (at least my version of it) doesn’t come back up. The only issue is that the background installer process can consume CPU/IO while I’m doing something else.


In reality there is no real difference between Windows, Linux and any other significant OS running on X86 hardware for when restarts are required. Most windows reboots are due to either a) someone setting the require reboot flag in an installer even though there was nothing in the update that required it, and b) the fact that in Windows nearly everything reliably comes up in a known state. This can make for quick, easy, resolutions for application issues.
 
FML.

A mandatory update to the Windows 10 license went out to all staff which essentially revoked Direct Access for people across the country who are working from home. Which is about half of the total number of staff on our network, or approximately 4,000 people.

There is an automated fix, but a lot of people didn't receive it before having their Direct Access revoked. There is a manual fix, but it requires remotely accessing the computer and using an administrator password, which requires a different remote access software that is available to anyone to install but which is not automatically installed, and which sometimes doesn't install correctly when someone is having problems with Direct Access.

For those staff who can't get it fixed one of these two ways, the only option is to return the computer to the office, which isn't an option for staff in Melbourne who are under mandatory lockdown.

We opened the lines at 7am, and at 7:01am there were already 9 calls waiting, and only one T1 available to take calls.

This sucks. Worst Friday ever.
 
arthwollipot said:
... There is a manual fix, but it requires remotely accessing the computer and using an administrator password, which requires a different remote access software that is available to anyone to install but which is not automatically installed, and which sometimes doesn't install correctly when someone is having problems with Direct Access.
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That's interesting. I know you're not on the technical team, but I'm surprised that team doesn't have the infrastructure in place to push the required software to the computers. There's a decent amount of management software out there designed to do that sort of stuff.
 
Blue Mountain said:
That's interesting. I know you're not on the technical team, but I'm surprised that team doesn't have the infrastructure in place to push the required software to the computers. There's a decent amount of management software out there designed to do that sort of stuff.
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Yes, and we do have such tools, but you're assuming that they've been properly deployed and configured, and that the push had been done prior to the problems we've been having.

After a morning of 20min+ wait times, we've finally cleared the queue and everbody has some breathing room again.
 
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