@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just realized that 2024 will be TWENTY YEARS since IBM shed its Intel server and end point business (sold it to Lenovo.) It's been a full two decades and people still regularly mistake laptops as being IBM devices today. That's like 4-5 IT generations later.

Ha. Was thinking about this the other day. Wasn't one of the big things with that was that Lenovo were a Chinese company?

Oh, I'll never buy one of those.

Being a Chinese company has nothing to do with why I'd never touch Lenovo and recommend any company that has them immediately replace Lenovo gear.

Why is that my good man?

20 years ago it was because they were Chinese and nothing good ever comes out of China, well 20 years ago that was general mood.

They're still loading spyware via drivers. I'll grant that it's been around a year since I was forced to do a factory install to see it for myself, but at this point they've been so bad for so long they can't be trusted.

@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Just realized that 2024 will be TWENTY YEARS since IBM shed its Intel server and end point business (sold it to Lenovo.) It's been a full two decades and people still regularly mistake laptops as being IBM devices today. That's like 4-5 IT generations later.

Ha. Was thinking about this the other day. Wasn't one of the big things with that was that Lenovo were a Chinese company?

Oh, I'll never buy one of those.

Being a Chinese company has nothing to do with why I'd never touch Lenovo and recommend any company that has them immediately replace Lenovo gear.

@gjacobse said in ChromeOS vs Linux:

The topic of ChromeOS and Linux has come up once or twice I believe.

I'm trying to help my brother deal with his 'wants' and 'needs' with using and older laptop for what he wants to do with his streaming provider (some cable company that rarely gets positive comments).

So, I have ChromeOS running on a older HP laptop.. no big deal and easy to have setup. No different than starting with any other Linux based system.

And now I am sitting here at the terminal window and all the commands I would expect to work in Linux are not the same in ChromeOS.

Have I managed to mislead myself in believing that the two - while different - are in a basic manner, the same?

Seems I need to know a different command base to perform things I already do in Linux on the x86 and ARM platforms...

That's why I picked up an Intel based Chromebook when I got one. I can load Ubuntu on it and work the way I normally would.

I've got no useful experience with with the ChromeOS shell.

OpenZFS data loss bug: https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/27/openzfs_2_2_0_data_corruption/

No surprise to anyone paying attention, and not a part of "The Cult of ZFS"

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Ordering yet another printer… and I think I have three more that will be needed in the near future…. Crimmy

Is it the worst of the worst and label printers?

Yup,.. I have a fleet of ZD621 printers and another large model with rewind…

Here, I have the solution for you...

@gjacobse said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Ordering yet another printer… and I think I have three more that will be needed in the near future…. Crimmy

Is it the worst of the worst and label printers?

@Obsolesce said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

SEC files fraud charges against SolarWinds and its CISO...

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/10/31/sec-solarwinds-ciso-accused-fraud-control-failures/

Are companies still using them?

Sadly, yes, we are.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dbeato said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

CloudFlare having issues this morning.

I've been so busy on so many calls, what kind of issues?

Look at your Telgram feed, it's already been posted there.

@JasGot said in Outsourced IT Helpdesk services for IT Providers?:

We have a customer that would like 24/7 helpdesk support. We are not able to provide this. Are there companies how offer helpdesk services as a reseller service?

NTG... @scottalanmiller You'd be the source for this, but sounds like it's something NTG would do.

@JaredBusch Where I've been forced to have hosted Windows, I normally use Viviotech.net.

@Obsolesce said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@siringo said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@nadnerB said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@nadnerB said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Moving from iOS to Android...
Honestly wasn't ready to but events have transpired to move things along.

Not sure how I feel about it.

I liked it when I did it. And then regretted it when the instability and hardware problems came, and the lack of vendor protection. It's weird the things you don't think about in iOS are often the killer features. From an interface and usability standpoint, I liked the Android better.

The whole vendor support thing really irks me, as some vendors support for their phones varies by model.
Luckily(?) I'm got the use of a Pixel phone and updates are good (just got Android 14 today!).

Even Pixel update support sucks monkey ****. They're great at getting updates out for supported devices, but devices are only supported for 3 years from the first day the device was sold in retail. For those of us that don't update phones regularly, that still blows. Apple has Google beat hands down in this area.

I say this while my personal phone is still a Pixel 3a XL. It works fine, but I've been growing more concerned over lack of updates for a while now. While I know I should upgrade, it's working great still.

Root it and install a custom rom? I've done that when I've managed to keep a phone beyond it's usual updates.

I've been looking, but haven't decided on a rom yet.

i've always had android, since smartphones began. just can't make myself get an iphone. now i no longer care, purchasing is based on cost. recently had to get, didn't want to, had to get, a new phone. hard to go past a samsung with more features in it than an iphone for only $AU350.00.

not saying android is better than iOS, I don't care, but I am saying that spending $350 is way better than over $1000.

I go for what is cheapest per year of having a phone.

If you can get a deal on a latest Samsung Android phone, it can be like $120-ish - $200 per year for 4 years (I got a new Samsung S23 for less than $500 locking myself in with TMobile for 2 years after I traded in my old one). I say 4 years because that's how long they (Samsung) typically support phones, providing security updates and such. Being what phones are today, it's a requirement to always use a phone actively receiving security updates.

Sure, you might be able to get an S20-S22 for like $2-300. But then you have to do it again in a year or 2 years or it will go out of support. Thereby increasing the per year cost of having a phone.

https://endoflife.date/samsung-mobile

I saw, after complaining about it, that Google is going to support phones for 5 years now starting with the Pixel 7. So that's vastly improved, but I don't want to pay for one of those yet. The plan we use doesn't comp phones, so it's way cheaper in the long run.

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@travisdh1 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@nadnerB said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@nadnerB said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Moving from iOS to Android...
Honestly wasn't ready to but events have transpired to move things along.

Not sure how I feel about it.

I liked it when I did it. And then regretted it when the instability and hardware problems came, and the lack of vendor protection. It's weird the things you don't think about in iOS are often the killer features. From an interface and usability standpoint, I liked the Android better.

The whole vendor support thing really irks me, as some vendors support for their phones varies by model.
Luckily(?) I'm got the use of a Pixel phone and updates are good (just got Android 14 today!).

Even Pixel update support sucks monkey ****. They're great at getting updates out for supported devices, but devices are only supported for 3 years from the first day the device was sold in retail. For those of us that don't update phones regularly, that still blows. Apple has Google beat hands down in this area.

I say this while my personal phone is still a Pixel 3a XL. It works fine, but I've been growing more concerned over lack of updates for a while now. While I know I should upgrade, it's working great still.

Root it and install a custom rom? I've done that when I've managed to keep a phone beyond it's usual updates.

I've been looking, but haven't decided on a rom yet.

@nadnerB said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@nadnerB said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Moving from iOS to Android...
Honestly wasn't ready to but events have transpired to move things along.

Not sure how I feel about it.

I liked it when I did it. And then regretted it when the instability and hardware problems came, and the lack of vendor protection. It's weird the things you don't think about in iOS are often the killer features. From an interface and usability standpoint, I liked the Android better.

The whole vendor support thing really irks me, as some vendors support for their phones varies by model.
Luckily(?) I'm got the use of a Pixel phone and updates are good (just got Android 14 today!).

Even Pixel update support sucks monkey ****. They're great at getting updates out for supported devices, but devices are only supported for 3 years from the first day the device was sold in retail. For those of us that don't update phones regularly, that still blows. Apple has Google beat hands down in this area.

I say this while my personal phone is still a Pixel 3a XL. It works fine, but I've been growing more concerned over lack of updates for a while now. While I know I should upgrade, it's working great still.

@scottalanmiller said in Raspberry Pi 5 Announced Today:

@IThomeboy80 said in Raspberry Pi 5 Announced Today:

@scottalanmiller Can it run little proxie server with sim card support?

SIM card? You'd need to find a SIM card hardware for that. It's a computer so it can do whatever you want. But does someone make the hardware to add onto it for that?

Lots of add on boards are available to get cellular connectivity with Pi, Arduino, etc.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Obsolesce said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Also, today is yet another day of slowly and expensively helping a company recover both their ProxMox and TrueNAS deployments that were done on ZFS and all was lost and no vendor had any means of recovering anything.

Did they back up their PRoxMox to their TruNAS and they both went under?

no, no backups. Data was all stored on TrueNAS. TrueNAS was stored on ProxMox. "ZFS is so reliable you don't need backups" was the idea, I guess. And no hardware failed. Just ZFS failed. Pure software failure. All hardware is pristine and working great. But ZFS just lost... everything due to internal design fragility that makes it prone to data loss on reboot.

Original IT company seems to have known this and disabled all reboots. Kept them up for 2.5 years. First reboot after going live resulted in total data loss because ZFS on Linux isn't expected to reliably survive reboots in that way!

Dang, and here I thought my ghost story was scarry!

@Obsolesce said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Also, today is yet another day of slowly and expensively helping a company recover both their ProxMox and TrueNAS deployments that were done on ZFS and all was lost and no vendor had any means of recovering anything.

Did they back up their PRoxMox to their TruNAS and they both went under?

Or the ghost story of IT deployments.

ProxMox with main storage on TruNAS... ooooooOOOOOOo scary!

@GUIn00b said in ProxMox Storage Configuration Question (idk how lol):

Quick update: I did this https://help.nodespace.com/knowledgebase.php?article=307 to all 4 drives, then created a 7.0 TB lvm-thin. Is that the right way to go about this? Here's console output:

root@pve:~# wipefs -a /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
/dev/sda: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x00000200 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sda: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x3a3817d5e00 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sda: 2 bytes were erased at offset 0x000001fe (PMBR): 55 aa
/dev/sdb: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x00000200 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sdb: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x3a3817d5e00 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sdb: 2 bytes were erased at offset 0x000001fe (PMBR): 55 aa
/dev/sdc: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x00000200 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sdc: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x3a3817d5e00 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sdc: 2 bytes were erased at offset 0x000001fe (PMBR): 55 aa
/dev/sdd: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x00000200 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sdd: 8 bytes were erased at offset 0x3a3817d5e00 (gpt): 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54
/dev/sdd: 2 bytes were erased at offset 0x000001fe (PMBR): 55 aa
/dev/sdd: calling ioctl to re-read partition table: Success
/dev/sda: calling ioctl to re-read partition table: Success
/dev/sdb: calling ioctl to re-read partition table: Success
/dev/sdc: calling ioctl to re-read partition table: Success
root@pve:~# pvcreate /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
  Physical volume "/dev/sda" successfully created.
  Physical volume "/dev/sdb" successfully created.
  Physical volume "/dev/sdc" successfully created.
  Physical volume "/dev/sdd" successfully created.
root@pve:~# vgcreate hdd-thin /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
  Volume group "hdd-thin" successfully created
root@pve:~# lvcreate -L 7T --thinpool hdd-thin hdd-thin
  Thin pool volume with chunk size 4.00 MiB can address at most <1016.02 TiB of data.
  WARNING: Pool zeroing and 4.00 MiB large chunk size slows down thin provisioning.
  WARNING: Consider disabling zeroing (-Zn) or using smaller chunk size (<512.00 KiB).
  Logical volume "hdd-thin" created.
root@pve:~# 

That looks correct to me. Convincing ProxMox to use it as an lvm-thin pool might be a bit tricky as it wants a blank block device in the gui....

ProxMox's aversion to the best RAID system available is mind blowing to me. They've completely bought into the cult of ZFS and the Windows world of "software RAID is bad".

@AdamF said in COLO Switching & Power:

For those of you that have workloads in a COLO facility, what are you all using for network switching? Ideally, I'd like to upgrade a network switch I have to a new switch with dual power supplies. (1 power supply goes to PDU 1 in the rack and the other goes to PDU2 in the rack) Any product recommendations for a 24 or 48 port managed switch with dual power supplies?

What products/solutions are you using for single corded equipment for power redundancy? An automatic transfer switch of some sort?

My current workplace uses Juniper EX series switches, they've been rock solid. Previous jobs have used lots of HP switches. I'd probably stick with the Juniper EX series of switches for a COLO as they have many fewer failures.

HP always does a good job with the replacements under warranty, but you don't want to be dealing with that with COLO equipment!

Not all of them are going to have the dual power supplies, so double check the specific model. Juniper sells a lot of new switches that have the option for a 2nd power supply, but only include a single PSU. See: https://www.cdw.com/product/juniper-networks-ex-series-ex4300-48p-switch-48-ports-managed-rack/3122418