Top 10 System Administrator Truths

Vo0k writes "What are your top ten system administrator truths? We all know them already, but it's still fun re-telling them. Stuff like "90% of all hardware-related problems come from loose connectors", even though you already know it's true, may save you from replacing the "faulty" motherboard if you recall it at the right time."

95% of all problems....

[seramar]

... are operator errors. But you can't tell the operator that.

Never....

[citizenklaw]

Never post stupid top ten administrator lists on Slashdot, lest I have to spend my time restoring a web server from backup.

Re:95% of all problems....

[Anonymous Coward]

"99% of all problems don't occur when the computer is off. That's why I always keep a pair of well-insulated pliers around."
-- BOFH

#10 Reboot should be #1

[digitaldc]

When all else fails, reboot. If it still fails, blame the user.

#6.5:

[Dirtside]

IT'S NOT A CUPHOLDER!!

Variation of #1

[hal2814]

I had a boss once who didn't lie to me but at the same time wouldn't follow my instructions when I had to help him over the phone. I'd tell him to do one thing. He'd do something else and then ask me what to do next. I'd tell him to do what I told him to do in the first place. After 3 or 4 tries, he'd actually do what I told him to do and his problem was usually solved.

Re:#10 Reboot should be #1

[j-cloth]

The other benefit of a reboot is that, in the case of weird problems, even if it doesn't work it gives you two minutes to think about other possible causes without having the user nagging you.

PEBKAC

[Billosaur]

Most users should not being allowed to operate computers, let alone drive cars. Sysadmins need to learn who these people are and minimize the damage they cause. I suggest randomly changing their password every day until they quit in frustration.

Re:In no particular order....

[Hektor_Troy]

Good manuals should be read before you do anything.
Bad manuals should not be read UNDER ANY CIRUMSTANCES.

Fortunately all manuals come with stickers like "Super manual A+++++" or "Horrible manual, stole my wife, raped my dog F--------".

From the user's side...

[Otter]

Top System Administrator Truths

• The best way to improve security is to give users more, longer, more complex, more frequently changed passwords. Eleven characters, including uppercase, lowercase, numbers and Unicode, changed every 30 days -- it's easy! The users should just keep making up new, easy to remember mnemonic phrases that, uh, include words begining with numbers and punctuation.
• If users modify their system in any way, anything that happens is their fault. Smoke coming out of the power supply? It's because you added new applications to the Start toolbar!
• If I've never heard of it, you obviously don't need it.

Re:95% of all problems....

[Anonymous Coward]

When troubleshooting SCSI devices, always remember to light the black candles at midnight, and run the silver knife up the goats abdomen.

Never make system config changes on Friday

[winkydink]

Unless you lack plans for the weekend.

Top Ten Sysadmin Truths

[Golias]

Number One: You will die alone.

Work smatah.

[wheezl]

If your job requires you to wear a name tag, carry a gun, or administer a Windows system, you have made a serious vocational error.

My rule

[ptomblin]

It doesn't matter whether I'm giving or requesting tech support, the number one rule is that the person on the other end of the telephone is an idiot.

First System Administration Truth

[Master of Transhuman]

Don't get linked to by Slashdot!

None of the other nine truths will save your server!

Re:PEBKAC

[WTBF]

And you said you were qualified to operate a computer! You'd better have mine." I pass my computer card calendar over, flipping it to page one - "ENTROPY"....... ...I like it. "Now, you give the cretin an excuse then what do you do?"

"Kill them off?"

"YES!" (He certainly has a fixation) "Then what?"

"Hang up?"

"NO! Then they'll call you back when the problem recurs. Your job is to make them FEAR calling you. How can you work when people are calling? So, you make them pay for calling in the first place. What would you do?"

"Delete their files?"

"Yeah, it's a start, but then they may call back when they get new files. You want them NEVER to call back. What could you do?"

"Swear at them?"

"No. I can see we'll have to demonstrate. Have you got a metal ballpoint?"

"Yes"

"See that wallsocket over there. Take the refill out of the pen and poke in into the wallsocket."

"But it's live!"

"Would I really make you do it if it were live?"

"Oh" >fiddle< >fiddle< >BZZZZZZZEEEEERT!< >THUD!<

The Bastard System Manager from Hell #1 http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard4.html [ntk.net]

Acronyms

[d_54321]

If the acronym contains an F, don't ask what it stands for.

Re:Gunking up the works?

[oneiros27]

what can a computer full of dust do to make it not work?

Spontaneously combust

Trust me -- you do not want to get that call:

Caller:

You know that machine in (room) that has a sign that says 'do not turn me off'?

You:

Yes ... what about it?

Caller:

There's smoke pouring out of it.

ME?

[Ragein]

1. 90% of problems are user error.
2. The rest are us trying to fix the the first.
3. "Your mouse doesn't work because it has NO BALL!!" (I work in a school)
4. Q: What where you doing when the problem occured? A: Nothing, meaning organising the windows folder.
5. Q: Did you try to fix it yourself? A: No. Q: Why is the gaffa tape involved then?
6. Our server doesn't forget your password's you did.
7. If you save over 30gb onto your desktop don't ask me why your profile takes 10 min's to load.
8. Your mouse is moveing on its own because i have taken controll out of your silly hands.
9. Have you checked to see if your mouse/keyboard/screen/LAN/printer/Random piece of hardware is plugged in turned on.
10. Who said you could download all this crap?
11. No thats not what i said.
12. Thats not the question you asked the first time.
13. Asking my boss won't speed me/the LAN up.

Was it supposed to be 10?
And just remember that if we ran the networks for ourselves only they would probably have more problems due to tinkering. But at least everyone would be walking round the office with cordless headphones, mic chatting with gtalk.

Re:My rule

[BushCheney08]

Something to remember: the converse is true, too : p

Re:Not too bad

[Spy der Mann]

No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft.

Microsoft has been BOUGHT!?!?

*Runs to Check the stock market*

Type twice, hit enter once

[bcattwoo]

Read what you typed before hitting enter.

Now let me just kill that last background process with the old 'kill %1'

[$researchgroupserver]: kill 1 enter

Crap!

Re:Top 3

[MORB]

1) Never believe anything anyone tells you: always test for yourself."

Falling from the last story of a building hurts.

Re:listening skills...

[Reverend528]

For some reason, I read that as "Always enrage the user", which is also useful advice.

Re:All I got to say is...

[donnyspi]

PICNIC

Problem In Chair, Not In Computer :-)

Re:In no particular order....

[PureCreditor]

sounds a lot like how eBay users rate each other

Re:Work smatah.

[dosquatch]

If your job requires you to wear a name tag, carry a gun, or administer a Windows system, you have made a serious vocational error.

My job requires me to wear a nametag while administering a Windows network.

They won't let me carry a gun. Even though I asked really, really nicely.

Bastards.

ironic

[beforewisdom]

Isn't it ironic that a web site about sys admin problems has given a system admin another problem by slashdotting it?

MICROSOFT is an Acronym

[an_unknown_soldier]

MICROSOFT is an acronym: My Intel Computer Runs On Software Often Failing Totally (c) 2005 an_unknown_soldier

Diabetic Shock in 3, 2, 1...

[2names]

"It gives me the feeling that, if this is what everyone in support puts up with, I can do it too."

Great. Glad you feel that way. Now, before we all hug, skip, and fling daisies, you need to remember ONE thing:

THERE ARE NO FEELINGS IN IT. EVER.

Feelings are reserved for secretaries named Gladys who come crying to you when they accidently delete all the pictures of their grand kids.

"This article is very comforting."

You better sack the hell up if you are going to make it in the IT world.

Re:95% of all problems....

[grub]

Indeed. Most of the problems here are "Layer 8" (the user)...

Re:95% of all problems....

[Brigadier]

dude this maybe funny to you, but me and a dell technician spent 38 hours trouble shooting a poweredge scsi assemble. and I swear if voodoo was an option I would have tried it.

Re:In no particular order....

[notthepainter]

6. Management tells you so.

Back in the mid 80s a co-worker of mine had told his boss at a previous job that the unix machines needed to rebooted when the PIDs got too high! Great bit of fun at the PHB expense. (This is also the guy who submitted an purchase request for some close parenthesis... got it signed also!)

Re:95% of all problems....

[TedCheshireAcad]

I call it an excuse to have a few drinks at lunch.

Re:95% of all problems....

[SatanicPuppy]

Effing Dell technicians. I had one power down a system to switch a hotswap SCSI drive, and wipe out the whole RAID. I was ready do do some serious voodoo right there in the server room, and I'm not talking about sacrificing a goat here.

Re:Not too bad

[EvilTwinSkippy]

No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft.

Actually not true. I know the guy, and I fired him myself.

(We are a Linux/OS X shop today.)

Re:All I got to say is... ID10Ts???

[NatasRevol]

Nah, carbon based errors, instead of silicon based errors. 99% of people won't get it - unless you work at a chemical plant!

Re:95% of all problems....

[EvilTwinSkippy]

(Also what keeps in-house wizards like me on the payroll.) Me: (Some vague hand movement, a muttered incantation.)
User: It's working, how did you do that?
Me: I could tell you but your eyes will glaze over...
User: Tell me anyway.
Me: (Detailed techical explaination)... or I'm just magic.
User: Wow, my eyes did glaze over. You must be magic.

MCRS

[MrNougat]

I am a Microsoft Certified Reboot Specialist.

Re:Gunking up the works?

[Pathetic Coward]

I once worked in a place with a large testing lab. The computers and other electronics were on a UPS. The air conditioning wasn't.

Power failed one Friday evening.

What was found Monday morning is left as an exercise to the reader.

Re:95% of all problems....

[NateTech]

Layer 8 - Religion ("We're a Microsoft shop.")
Layer 9 - Politics ("The boss wants it, even if it's stupid.)

Both of which are more important than the other 7 layers. ;-)

Re:95% of all problems....

[gstoddart]

When troubleshooting SCSI devices, always remember to light the black candles at midnight, and run the silver knife up the goats abdomen.

I've found for SCSI-2, you want to move the knife in a downwards manner.

And by the time you're working on low-voltage differential SCSI-3, you want to make a left-to-right transverse cut. The second yellow candle is crucial in this case.

Re:Another one

[sammy baby]

It's worse than you think.

Not long after starting my first real tech job, I got called into my boss' office to help him when he complained that he didn't have network connectivity to his computer. (Note: the boss was the director of an organization which later supplied internet access to about 100k people).

I walked into his office, and looked at the laptop. Back then (1997 or so), the ethernet came via a PCMCIA card. They were Xircom combo-cards, which I remember mostly for being bright red. I think that's why I can remember with crystal clarity the way the card looked that day, with the accompanying ethernet cable sitting next to it, disconnected, about six inches away. I plugged it in and walked out.

"Fixed now," I mentioned on the way out. "Connectivity issue." That seemed to satisfy him.

Re:95% of all problems....

[Tmack]

Just make sure the drop of blood you put on the chipset isnt too big or you will anger the controller and it will let out the magic smoke that makes it work. The drives are usually more forgiving, thus a nice big blob usually appeases them.

Tm

Re:95% of all problems....

[mforbes]

No fair listing the same layer under two different descriptions!

Never answer your phone...

[briansmith]

...wait at least 24 hours to read an email. Do not reply to any email until the sender has sent a follow-up email. Do not do any work until the requester asks his boss to talk to your boss about why you didn't respond to the service request.

Re:95% of all problems....

[voice_of_all_reason]

It's because of the "requests ether" that all work-related queries go into. I'm a reasonably computer-savvy guy, so that saved a couple of steps

I write an email "Hey bob, my PC lost connection to the network."
2 hours later, I get a response. He'll be over soon.
half hour later, he shows up. Checks that it's plugged in, hoping I'm just an idiot
checks that the jacks weren't turned off by sum dum gai. they weren't
it's fuxxored, he says. I need an appointment with the PC move team to bring it to IT (no, they're not allowed to do it themselves)
Move guy shows up while I'm at lunch. No one told him which PC, so he leaves
After lunch, I have to make another appointment. He shows up at like 3:30, so I goof off the rest of the day
Next morning. IT guys apparently take breakfast from 9 - 10:30
11:00 they call, with the zeal of a mad surgeon at the thought of swapping hardware
1:00, that didn't work. They come to check the jacks again. I dunno, maybe they think they screwed up yesterday.
1:30 On a whim, he looks at the whip still in my cubicle. Turns out I've been running it over with my chair several times a day for the past 2 months or so.


User wins.

Re:Not too bad

[shadowbearer]

I don't know about Bought, but given the number of totally trojaned systems I've seen recently, Owned does seem to fit :)

SB

Re:95% of bad GUI design..

[Blakey Rat]

I'm guessing he came up with this theory after using Lotus Notes for a few days? :)

Re:Diabetic Shock in 3, 2, 1...

[Anonymous Coward]

You better sack the hell up if you are going to make it in the IT world.
 
This coming from some pasty-faced geek who doesn't know the proper use of the dangly thing in front of his sack.

Re:95% of all problems....

[Anonymous Coward]

I write an email "Hey bob, my PC lost connection to the network."

Am I the only one that sees a problem with this?

Re:Geek aura

[NumberGod]

Computers can smell fear !

Proximity of genius effect

[bugnuts]

1. Never underestimate the Proximity of Genius effect.

I've personally seen this happen all the time. Someone tells me "this doesn't work" and the moment I type the same command or push in the PCMCIA card myself or whatever, it suddenly works. We dubbed it the Proximity of Genius Effect and is similar to the following koan:

The Master walked into the room and watched a student power-cycle a machine several times in hopes of getting it working. The Master approached the student, hit him upside the head and declared "Idiot! You cannot simply power-cycle a machine and expect it to work without having any idea what is wrong!" Then the Master turned the machine off and back on. And it worked. The student was enlightened.

2-9 are generally just variations of #1. :-)

Re:4 Rules

[hackstraw]

I can't tell you how many times I wanted to say to a user:

"Which part of 'no such file or directory' didn't you understand?"

Re:In no particular order....

[meringuoid]

... wow.

Is it wrong that I was reading through that and taking mental notes on proper Unix usage for future reference?

Re:Type twice, hit enter once

[penguinoid]

Indeed. I just did `kill -9 1` as root and init didn't blink. OK, maybe I shouldn't run whatever script/command someone says, but I was curious. I have also done `rm -rf /` as root, and `rm -rf *` as root, without doing any damage to my computer. (Actually, 'cd /; rm -rf /` and `mkdir empty; cd empty; rm -rf *`. Don't do this unless you have recently made a backup, or are sure your system behaves like this :-). )

Re:Geek aura

[hburch]

Very often, people asking me for technical help have problems that refuse to manifest themselves when I am present. My wife calls this my "aura".

The component responsible for this behavior is called the "Authority Detection Module" (ADM). Standard equipment from almost every electronics manufacturer, the ADM detects the proximity of someone who knows how the device should behave so that the device can revise its behave appropriately.

Unfortunately, the ADMs installed in young children are not nearly as high quality as those used by electronics manufacturers and have a tendancy to malfunction.

I do not have a good explanation for coding errors that do not cause any problems but, once found, could never have worked and, oddly, don't, even in old compiles that used to be fine. I suspect quantum mechanics is involved.

Re:Geek aura

[jimicus]

Very often, people asking me for technical help have problems that refuse to manifest themselves when I am present.

Lots of people in IT find this. Generally, it's because most vaguely complicated electronics is sufficiently sentient to know when it's in the presence of a Higher Power, and that it Must Obey.

Fortunately, they're not that sentient. I have found an extremely good way to maintain system reliability is to place a photo of myself in the server room.

Re:Geek aura

[nappingcracker]

I have a friend with the opposite aura.

He is a geek, and has been for years, degree in CS, programmer, hardware, networking, blah blah. He knows his way around computers, and generally knows more than me.

HE BREAKS ALL KINDS OF SHIT.

Its not his fault, he knows what he is doing, but all kinds of devices decide to crash, die, fault, whatever, whenever he touches them. Routine stuff (like deleting a cache, increasing virtual memory size, hitting enter) will conjure the most horrible data losing crash possible.

This is why I believe in magic. All of the technical expertise and "This is how it works." type stuff is moot when the computer gods decide to cancel your luck subscription. As mentioned by the parent, the luck will instantly return when a mojo geek enters the equasion and candels the anti-mojo geek.

Geeks...mojo...does...not...compute...*boom*