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Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

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Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#61

Post by dozzie »

stephengillie wrote: post #33
AznHisoka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate apps that do 1 job and do it extremely well and it insists I update just so I am on the latest version. It works now stop bugging me. I don't care if you changed the color scheme!

A benefit to web apps is seamless updating to users. One click loads the updated webpage. They might not even notice their profile pic has changed from square to round!

...and then good luck when the application that yesterday worked well today doesn't work at all, because somebody removed a small function critical to your workflow and you can't get it back. Seamless experience!

Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#63

Post by rxseger »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #28
ars wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm somewhat surprised that there isn't a sysctl to disable the reservation of ports 0-1023. There is: /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range

That does something entirely different; see Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt (online version at https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/ip-sysct... ). ip_local_port_range sets the range of ports used as source ports for outbound connections that don't bind to a specific port. I checked for a sysctl controlling the ability to bind to privileged ports before writing my comment. The relevant code in th…

FreeBSD has the sysctls you are looking for to control the reserved port range, allowing unprivileged users to bind (curious that Linux doesn't):

    $ sudo sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow=10
    net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow: 0 -> 10
    $ nc -vvl 1
    ^C
    $ sudo sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow=0 
    net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow: 10 -> 0
    $ nc -vvl 1
    nc: Permission denied

Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#64

Post by loteck »

MertsA wrote: post #57
krylon wrote: post #8

As a sysadmin on a Windows network of ~100 computers, this story makes me want to cry, although maybe for the wrong reason: I see weird problems of the sort "It did work before I went on my lunch break" on a fairly regular basis. How often would I like to go down the rabbit hole and explore these problems in such depth, but if I did that, I would hardly get any work done. The frequency at which our users run into the…

This is what I hate about closed source software in general. Every sysadmin out there has complaints about how terrible support is from XYZ vendor, but it's not just that the vendor can't provide support, it's that by going closed source, the vendor is the only one who can really track down these sort of bugs. With an open source stack, no matter what breaks in any software component, I'm not left high and dry hoping…

As a sysadmin, I'm putting my neck on the line anytime something breaks.

In many years of doing this type of work, I've noticed this fear of your neck being on the line is a myth. Heads rarely roll merely because something goes wrong.

I've also noticed almost every sysadmin believes that myth, and it can make us very difficult to relate to or even work with. Ironically, that's a problem that may actually cause you to lose your job.

Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#65

Post by vacri »

lfowles wrote: post #4

> This computer stuff is amazingly complicated. I don't know how anyone gets anything done. Indeed.

When me and my colleagues are tearing our hair out over a problem, I'll often exclaim "These computer things are hard!". It's delivered both as a joke, and also a reminder that it's okay to take a while to figure out the problem in a particularly complex system. Eases the tension a touch.

Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#66

Post by 616c »

tikhonj wrote: post #47
616c wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in a similar boat. With DSC, I am increasingly excited with the idea end user computers can also shift to immutable, or approaching what we call immutable, infrastructure that has logically valid weight in the communities represented here. The problem? Culture. So many people do not understand when I say the following things: - Do not install with the GUI, please use the deployment system to document unattended…

Honestly, this is what got me most excited about NixOS. I mean, the underlying technology is spiffy, of course, but the real key is that it lets you configure everything declaratively while keeping track of different versions and actively pushes you in that direction. Doing things the "right" way is also the path of least resistance. Sometimes this is a bit annoying when you just want something to work but can't just…

I am very excited for NixOS, for me. In the professional IT sphere, outside of DevOps, this is so far away it is depressing. I spend my weekends with QubesOS, NixOS, and maybe in the future GuixSD and SubgraphOS as my therapy.

I have started to look into a career transition into DevOps (please do not laugh, feel free to downvote) not because of how cool it looks or the increasing culture around it, but I need a break from the mainstream of throw everything and anything on the wall until it sticks without rigor, or your time is cheap automation is a very, very low priority since we pay you to do the tasks we dislike as more serious engineers (who also build some systems with checklists).

Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#67

Post by krylon »

616c wrote: post #24
krylon wrote: post #8

As a sysadmin on a Windows network of ~100 computers, this story makes me want to cry, although maybe for the wrong reason: I see weird problems of the sort "It did work before I went on my lunch break" on a fairly regular basis. How often would I like to go down the rabbit hole and explore these problems in such depth, but if I did that, I would hardly get any work done. The frequency at which our users run into the…

I am in a similar boat. With DSC, I am increasingly excited with the idea end user computers can also shift to immutable, or approaching what we call immutable, infrastructure that has logically valid weight in the communities represented here. The problem? Culture. So many people do not understand when I say the following things: - Do not install with the GUI, please use the deployment system to document unattended…

I read about DSC a while ago, and it sounds very appealing.

So far, though, I have not managed to actually get to know it personally, so to speak.

We have over the past two years tried to move as much of the configuration as possible to GPOs, although they bring their own share of problems. On Unix-like systems, one can use log files to track down problems most of the time, on Windows it seems like logging is kind of an afterthought. I especially hate it when gpresult says it did apply a certain setting when upon inspecting the system the setting clearly has not been applied (or overriden by something else? Who knows?).

It is frustrating because GPOs seem like such a great idea in theory.

Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#69

Post by tonyedgecombe »

MertsA wrote: post #57
krylon wrote: post #8

As a sysadmin on a Windows network of ~100 computers, this story makes me want to cry, although maybe for the wrong reason: I see weird problems of the sort "It did work before I went on my lunch break" on a fairly regular basis. How often would I like to go down the rabbit hole and explore these problems in such depth, but if I did that, I would hardly get any work done. The frequency at which our users run into the…

This is what I hate about closed source software in general. Every sysadmin out there has complaints about how terrible support is from XYZ vendor, but it's not just that the vendor can't provide support, it's that by going closed source, the vendor is the only one who can really track down these sort of bugs. With an open source stack, no matter what breaks in any software component, I'm not left high and dry hoping…

A good vendor will work with you to resolve the problem, not all closed source software is bad.

Re: Don't tug on that, you never know what it might be attached to

#70

Post by gosub »

mturmon wrote: post #59
lfowles wrote: post #4

> This computer stuff is amazingly complicated. I don't know how anyone gets anything done. Indeed.

In particular, the set of exported shell environment variables is a sinkhole of state that can potentially affect every program we run.

If only we had a way to deal with state without it being mutable...
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