IT Support Guide

[James Deuce]

We're here to help. Honest.

The following is helpful advice for making sure that you don't end up with the BOFH, or Dilbert on the other end of the phone.

If you haven't been able to login to your PC for an entire shift, don't log a high priority call 2 minutes before your shift is over, then go home, leaving your work cellphone in your desk drawer. Makes it hard to know if the fix I just did worked or not, plus you got me out of bed.

The same goes for logging a call with the helpdesk or servicedesk right before morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, or that three day conference in Rarotonga you're just off to now.

[davebullet]

Only one solution for people like that

cd $users\user_id
rm -r *

[James Deuce]

It is tempting.

[Cajun]

know that feeling got woke up three times last week, for idiot end users.

[merv]

Jim you haven't told us much about your new job yet but is it likely to still be much the same as the old one?

[Lias]

Jim you haven't told us much about your new job yet but is it likely to still be much the same as the old one?

When he starts polishing his rifle again and muttering in the corner, we know its like his old one :-)

[discotex]

Time to pull out this all time classic

[youtube]aZQma8t6no4[/youtube]

[Supermac Jr]

cd $users\user_id
rm -r *

what happens when you do this? (honest question)

[ManDownUnder]

what happens when you do this? (honest question)

Their ability to login gets adversely affected.

[ManDownUnder]

Mate of mine kept getting unwelcome phone calls requesting help, ringing his cell, desk and eventually his home so he put on a drunk act, and told them it's ok - he knew what to do and proceded to _nearly_ fix the problem.

I don't recall details but the mess was terrible, and cost the company involved many person hours of 'correction time'....

[discotex]

Their ability to login gets adversely affected.

Probably not... Their home dir would just be empty.

The example is bad sysadmin form anyway. You don't use "*" like that with an rm -r ever. What happens if you're in the wrong dir? Oh fuck moment

Should have been (assuming Linux):

cd /home; rm -r user_id

But then that's still lame. Much better to leave all their files but chown them to root and 600 permissions or for more fun symlink some of them to /dev/random mwaHaHAHAHA

[Sniper]

1234567890

[Gremlin]

I'm currently enjoying this one...



Recent joy was a user getting an iphone, no consultation with IT, and thought it would work straight off for emails etc. First iphone, and I have to figure out how to make it work (Apple can't make the bloody things like Nokia or Windows Mobile can they)

[davebullet]

what happens when you do this? (honest question)

Are you serious? RTFM mate! (just kidding) - or technically "man rm"

On a Unix system, the above removes all files and directories under the current working directory.

If you are a superuser and are used to MS DOS - do not do

rm - r *.*

* pattern matches all files in unix - so the *.* is not necessary to pick up extensions.

I once saw someone attempt an rm - r*.* from /tmp. In Unix (and DOS ) ".." equals the parent directory, so effectively they were telling Unix to go up a folder to root (/) and remove everything on all mounted filesystems! - hahaha.

Needless to say I ran my recursive fork (check man 2 fork) wth nice -20 to quickly fill up the process table with high priority jobs and prevent the rm -r *.* from running.

Ok - enough geeking out.

PS: For those that don't know - BOFH = bastard operator from hell. I recall the series written for this fictional character when I first started in IT many moons ago. Classic reading.

Oh the memories....

[jono035]

Don't trust flatmates around computers either.

When I was a student I was trying to put together a cheap firewall/router box with bits of scavenged parts. Had a stack of questionable hard drives I had been trying to install mandrake on, finally got one to install after about 5-6 duds and had the hard drive sitting on top of the case. Flatmate walks in to see what I was up to while fiddling with a shot glass, flicked it in his fingers, dropped it straight onto the hard drive... Crashed the top head into the platter so bad it gouged a groove into the surface and couldn't seek back out of the groove... Not that being able to seek still would have helped but still...