1 server, 10 workstations, 1 idiot, 1 cup
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If you really want to weed out the imposters just ask about subnetting.
<img src=http://www.theitcareer.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cidr-chart.jpg">
"How many hosts are in a network with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.128?" (126)
"How would you represent the range 192.168.1.0-192.168.3.255 in CIDR notation?" (192.168.1.0/22)
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subnetting is so much fun. throws me each time when it's one of those weird ranges where the IPs look like like they could never ever be from the same subnet but then end up being anyway. Thankfully it doesn't come up that often.
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One workstation is reported to not be working. What would you check?
- Does it power up?
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What is AD?
Active Directory, Microsoft's LDAP+Kerberos thing for centralizing user accounts.
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I'd be all "Well, I'd walk over and investigate the workstation that's having trouble. Do I see anything obvious?"
Congratulations, you are more skilled than the fellow who considers himself a network admin that applied at @royal_poet's company.
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Yeah, it's not as big of an issue as it used to be but any good netadmin learned about and knows basic subnetting and would be able to answer questions about it. I'd definitely ask about it in the interview.
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assuming that you've already made sure it's plugged in, turned on, etc
I got called to a classroom to fix a "smartboard that wasn't working". At least four people had already had a crack at it before me (I work part-time). Everybody swore up and down that they'd checked all the obvious things - plugs in, switches on and so forth...
I walked in there, looked up at the data projector, pushed the mains cable back into the socket on the back of the projector that it had fallen out of, checked that the projector powered up, walked out. Job done.
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it happens.
I had a customer on the line today who thought he had a complicated problem with his linear accelerator because the treatment table wouldn't move. Helps if you don't physically stand on the break.
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Well, I'd walk over and investigate the workstation that's having trouble. Do I see anything obvious?
No, you don't see anything. The room is dark.
You will probably be eaten by a grue
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I call the electric company and head out to lunch while I wait on hold
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Trust me, I get it about legacy systems. I've worked in hospital IT before, and I now work at a K-12. I get how out of date and backwards it is. I've seen brand new workstations installed only to primarily run SmartTerm to connect to the IDX mainframe (or whatever it's called now). I've seen a hospital spend $10 million on software that had to be run through Citrix because it would only run on Windows NT 3.5 in 2004. The server admins had to configure the Citrix servers to reboot every night because if you didn't they got too slow to function. I've installed clinical applications that require Java 1.3.0_05 only. Clinical applications that use different, incompatible versions of the exact same library that have to be installed side-by-side. And don't get me started on the BME systems that ran as local admin and IT wasn't allowed to manage. Any time the hospital was hit by a virus, it was guaranteed to originate from one of these unmanaged systems.
I'm currently working with POS software that was written for OS/2 that they ported to work in Windows 95 (and XP, and now 7), and the only real update they've made to it is to change it from IPX/SPX only to TCP/IP. However, they didn't bother teaching it how to use DNS, so everything uses IP addresses. Additionally, reports out of the system are entirely run via hard coded executables. If you need a report modified, you've got to notify the vendor so they modify and compile a new report executable for you. We recently updated the system last year because it was still running on Server 2003 (the last such system by far) and when they did it they updated the RDBMS. It went from DB2 LUW 8.1.14 to... DB2 8.1.18. DB2 8.x was end of life'd in 2009.
The point that "nobody uses workgroups" is that no person who works in IT today would think about workgroups as being a thing, and it's very possible that any person who entered the field in the past 8-10 years would not have even seen one before. Nobody (that is, nobody in IT) works with them because the only networks that use them are like you state: too small to have an IT person on staff. You talk about token ring networks, but I wouldn't expect someone to know what a BNC connector is or 10BASE2 or 10BASE5. I'd expect them to be able to learn that (because it's not that much different than twisted pair, although BNC connectors suck) but I wouldn't expect someone to know it.
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Clinical applications that use different, incompatible versions of the exact same library that have to be installed side-by-side.
Oh man. I did IT in a hospital where we had some webapps that requires Microsoft's Java plug, and others that requires Sun's. It was a bitch.
"Write once, run everywhere" my ass.
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I feel the pain.
I am trying to get a site upgraded at the moment who cannot run our application because they still run windows 98 workstations. They currently use a 7 year old version of the software over citrix, because their ws hardware doesnt have the necessary oomph.
And half of the systems the hospitals use need some obscure .net version installed which is a real problem for us because we need the "modern" version of .net 4. But installing that crashes some custs .net 2 only systems.
Some days I need a lot of lavender tea to keep calm.
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The worst think about token ring is how careful you have to be when you unplug it. You don't want the token falling out and getting lost in the carpet.
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each workstation has a matching account
Wouldn't work.
The workstation account would be
WORKSTATION01\Administratorand the server account would beSERVER\Administrator.Even if you named every computer the same thing (which would earn you a
badge), it wouldn't work because the server would attempt to authorize the client against itself and you'd fail more obscurely.The only way to make this work would be having everyone log in as
SERVER\Administratorfrom their workstation. Which would work fine, except it would be an extreme pain.
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App-V, anyone?
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they trained their staff on the old "workflow" and can't justify the cost of changing.
F*U*C*K them in the ass while hanging them upside down from a bridge above a pool of killer sharks while maggots eat our the rest of their brain.
Our biggest pain when trowing out a mainframe app and replacing it with a website (front-ending the mainframe): users who are flabbergasted because of all the information, colleurs and icons on their screen.
I joined a training on the new app earlier this week. Half of the room had to refrain from
-ing while the dev show casing the app tried to explain a mainframe troll how you could ctrl+click to get a new tab. This is the level I expect from the users who have been using the green on black madness for 20 years. It's going to be a funny year.
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I got called to a classroom to fix a "smartboard that wasn't working". At least four people had already had a crack at it before me (I work part-time). Everybody swore up and down that they'd checked all the obvious things - plugs in, switches on and so forth...
I walked in there, looked up at the data projector, pushed the mains cable back into the socket on the back of the projector that it had fallen out of, checked that the projector powered up, walked out. Job done.
Ehhhh... the previous people probably didn't even know that the projector was part of the smartboard. They should've, but I can see how they'd forget to check it.
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it wouldn't work because the server would attempt to authorize the client against itself
Actually it works just fine. If a Windows server sees a matching username and password, it will happily ignore the domain prefixes and allow the connection.
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What I wanted to tell her is that her big ass could stand to walk a bit more so I wasn't too concerned about the printer in her office not working.
Pfft. You missed a chance to say you'd charge a 3-hour minimum or whatever, for drive time for a non-emergency service call.
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You sure?
I'm about 90% sure that I encountered that exact thing and had that exact problem.
I may have been
though
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"It's well known among network professionals that AD is the only cause."
The only cause for a single computer being unable to connect to a server? That's... Yes, priceless.
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if they don't have one on them
That's fascinating. I've never carried one into an interview--but then again I think I've always worked with relatively trustworthy recruiters, who also generally show me the changes they're making to my resume.
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Yes, I'm sure. You can log onto a domain controller from a workstation that isn't joined to the domain, as long as you use a matching username and password. You can log onto one Windows workstation from another the same way, even through the machine names (and therefore the local domain prefixes) are different.
Where this usually comes unstuck is that you can't log onto a remote machine with a username that has no password on the remote end. There's a registry tweak for that, but turning that on is
.
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App-V, anyone?
Yes. You trade your shit for different shit. Out go dependencies in come obscure totally unrelated errors, problems with stuff like bar code scanners and (bar code) printers and don't forget the magic line "Did you clear the application cache?" Stop the app. Delete the virtualisation cache and start the app again. Only up side is that you can script it and that it's faster then a reboot.
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From my experience in Healthcare, doctors loved technology (even old doctors), nurses hated technology (even younger nurses).
So you always had this weird push-and-pull where the doctors would be like, "we need a computerized bar-code drug dispensing system" and the nurses (who actually dispensed drugs) would be like, "no way, jose".
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Hmm.
TIL.It's been a while since I used a computer that wasn't on a domain though, so I haven't really experienced that specific setup in a while.......
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I'd like to see us support that... unfortunately there is a lot of local config on workstations based on specialised uses. And of course clinical validation takes a century or two.
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I've never had any issues with App-V, but it's not widely deployed here yet. ISTM like a good solution to dependency hell.
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until the password expires on the server
Having a couple of small customers who do skip using a domain, I can tell you they just (eventually) disable the password expiration and keep plugging on.
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Wouldn't work
My standalone 2012R2 server and Windows PC beg to differ.
Actually it works just fine
Agreed.
Filed under: Pass-through authentication
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a lot of local config
App-V 5.0+ helps a lot with that sort of thing. You can deploy add-on packages that make changes to the VFS on a per-user basis (i.e. plugins, config files, etc etc).
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In a small office with say 3 to 4 workstations, it's often not worth the trouble to buy a server or even a NAS. Just set each of the machines up with the same small set of user accounts and you're good to go. Logon scripts that map a consistent set of drive letters to the pubdocs share on each machine are a help.
On Windows 7 or later, a homegroup is even easier to set up and also doesn't need a server.
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The 1990s called, they want their copy of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 back.
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3 to 4? I could buy a server for less than $200 and set everything up in half a day. It scales far more nicely, too.
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must set up test system some time and have a look at it - in that parallel universe where I don't have a bunch of people who need my help every two minutes.
One of my teamies manage to break a MSSQL today in a spectacular way. She somehow installed half a service pack and now the clients tools don't match the rest of the db. And of course window's wont roll it back and customer IT found their backups don't work.
I see quality time with regedit in my future.
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The 1990s called, they want their copy of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 back.
Sometimes old ways is best ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEKhJ3CYWz4
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You sure?
I'm about 90% sure that I encountered that exact thing and had that exact problem.
Interesting demo I used to do in class...
Take two servers with the same administrator password, and make them domain controllers. They can both connect to each other without a prompt because they silently log on with the user name and password, ignoring the domain portion. Next, create a trust relationship between the domains. Now that both accounts are valid on both servers, re-authentication isn't necessary and they cannot access each other any more.
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That's fascinating.
yeah, a fair few people don't. I do consider it a slight negative if you don't have a copy of your resume on you, but it's no where near enough to make or break you on your own. it's down there on like fifth or sixth tier sort... maybe eighth tier
The idea for me is i want to verify that the resume i got was one you approve of, and you having a copy shows a level of preparedness that i can reasonably expect to transfer into your day to day working.
so i guess it's more of a plus to you if you have it than a negative if you don't
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From my experience by proxy (know a lot nurses and 1 doctor) the general issue is this:
Doctors always pick the software that is used but rarely use it. (and according to the nurses are idiots and attracted to shiny things)
Nurses always use the software but are not allowed to pick it. (and according to the doctor, just need to embrace the tech)
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And physicists love new things. And try everything. No matter if meant to work together or not. Someone recently ported our application to work on ipad... and it sorta worked except for the real time part. Surprise!
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pubdocs share on each machine
I've had the pleasure of cleaning up 10+ workstations and a couple of servers set up similarly for a charity. After cleaning all of the virii from everything, patching them and retrieving 1,000s of files sprayed across every hard drive, I had them properly joined to their Small Business Server domain with group policy locking everything down to ensure that files were stored on a server that was being backed up.
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Most of our apps are virtualized. It does indeed solve the dependency issues.
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must set up test system some time and have a look at it - in that parallel universe where I don't have a bunch of people who need my help every two minutes.
You might also try the parallel universe where you hire a network guy to do that. Just, uh, don't send him packing when he starts talking about AD and domains, or if he looks at you like you have three heads when you mention that you're currently using a workgroup.
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Ten is too many. Four is probably about as far as I'd ever push it.
