Temperature sensors



  • The post on the main page reminds me of the temperature sensors we had installed in the server room over a year ago for the reason to prevent exactly what the article talks about. They monitor the temperature and humidity of the server room and are placed opposite each other (2 in total).

    Here's the first WTF: The server room used to be someones office, and so has a window.The only thing they have changed since the servers have been moved in was to place a few metal bars over the window. So during hot summer days the A/C has to work extra hard as the sun shines directly into the room for about 5 hours each day. 

    No worry, the monitoring devices have alarms set in them and can be accessed over the web to view current and historic data.  The second WTF is that these alarms are only visible once you have logged into the web interface, and that they use the html <blink> tag to do so. 

    So generally, the data is only actually looked at if someone walks into the server room and goes "It seems a little warm in here, whats the current temperature reading?".

    I've no idea about the make or model of the units as they don't seem to have any particular markings on them apart from something that looks like it resembles a part number on the rear, but returns zero hits via google. I can only assume they were bought via ebay or similar. 



  • Why not put something reflective over the windows to keep it cooler and save $$$?



  •  I kind of assume an additional WTF would be the temperature sensors with reading spikes at regular hours every day as the direct sunlight passes over them. 

     

    Hmm.... I just got a great idea for a Rube-Goldberg style Sundial.



  • Why not indeed... But this is BigWTF Inc, you can't expect them to do something sensible like that.

    Its the same with the sensors - I would have bought something which would at least have the ability to send an email out when an alarm is triggered, rather than forcing people to login to the web interface to see if theres any current alarms. I can understand why the people in the IT office think it's easier to just walk in the room when they are coming back from somewhere rather than bringing up and logging into the web interface. 

    I've even suggested placing a 15" LCD reclaim (from upgrading someones PC) on the wall so you can just glance at that information whenever and actually see the blinking alarms, but apparently thats not possible as you would be logged out of the web interface for inactivity... 



  • @Mole said:

    Why not indeed... But this is BigWTF Inc, you can't expect them to do something sensible like that.

    Its the same with the sensors - I would have bought something which would at least have the ability to send an email out when an alarm is triggered, rather than forcing people to login to the web interface to see if theres any current alarms. I can understand why the people in the IT office think it's easier to just walk in the room when they are coming back from somewhere rather than bringing up and logging into the web interface. 

    I've even suggested placing a 15" LCD reclaim (from upgrading someones PC) on the wall so you can just glance at that information whenever and actually see the blinking alarms, but apparently thats not possible as you would be logged out of the web interface for inactivity... 

    Couldn't you just hack together a script that polled the web interface and looked for temperature spikes and then send an email from that?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Couldn't you just hack together a script that polled the web interface and looked for temperature spikes and then send an email from that?

     

    Or does it at least have SNMP? If so, you could use one of the many open-source monitoring apps out there.



  • @Mole said:

    The server room used to be someones office, and so has a window.
    And that reminded me of how someone once raided the datacenter of the company where my syster worked. To get there you had to either:

    • Walk past security and go through a lot of big ass doors with both card and thumb readers.
    • Bust open the emergency door that led directly to the middle of street.

     Guess which happened.



  • @Zecc said:

    @Mole said:

    The server room used to be someones office, and so has a window.
    And that reminded me of how someone once raided the datacenter of the company where my syster worked. To get there you had to either:

    • Walk past security and go through a lot of big ass doors with both card and thumb readers.
    • Bust open the emergency door that led directly to the middle of street.

     Guess which happened.

     

    You forgot the best option: #3. Cut a hole through the wall with power saws.

    Edit: WHAT THE FUCK COMMUNITY SERVER STOP ADDING A SPACE TO THE END OF THE FUCKING URL.



  • @snover said:

    Edit: WHAT THE FUCK COMMUNITY SERVER STOP ADDING A NON-BREAKING SPACE TO THE END OF EACH FUCKING SENTENCE.

    FTFY.

    But nobody really notices that except for those who look very closely, or use the plain text editor.



  • It has what seemed to be a custom thrown together authentication system.  Basically, you just get a "Unauthenticated" html page (no HTML error code, just that text. Not even wrapped in "<HTML>) until you visit index.cgi which on proper username/password gives you a hash value which you then have to send to every other webpage to access the contents. The hash value isn't a session token as it's not exactly difficult to take a known working code, change a few bytes inside it which seems to be date related and access all the other pages on any day (otherwise the "hash" value expires after 12 hours regardless of activity). 

    Course, parsing the html page to get at the values is a lot more involved and I never got around to it (and even then, it's not allowed to install the script on any PC awake 24/7 without a shitload of paperwork...)

    No, it doesn't have SNMP - just HTTP. 



  • @Mole said:

    Course, parsing the html page to get at the values is a lot more involved and I never got around to it (and even then, it's not allowed to install the script on any PC awake 24/7 without a shitload of paperwork...)


    Something like beautiful soup should be able to help parse it. IIRC tidy can also take HTML soup and generate nice XHTML (which is much easier to parse).
    Of course there's your paperwork hell though.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Lingerance said:

    IIRC tidy can also take HTML soup and generate nice XHTML (which is much easier to parse).
    I can vouch for HTMLTidy. I've used it to clean-up HTML documents generated by MS Word and convert them into XHTML.


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