• Iggy (unregistered)

    #!/commonsense err='refuse to learn' echo 1 > /dev/brain echo $err

  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered)

    Hydra frist comment: If you delete it, two new ones will be posted.

  • Iggy (unregistered) in reply to foo AKA fooo
    foo AKA fooo:
    Hydra frist comment: If you delete it, two new ones will be posted.

    3 points: 1: you are second 2: while (comment == frist) { mv comment /dev/null; } 3: perform 1 comment: cat 1 > /dev/brain

  • Summoner (unregistered)

    So called memory optimizers are just as counter-productive in a Windows environment.

  • Black Bart (unregistered) in reply to Summoner
    Summoner:
    So called memory optimizers are just as counter-productive in a Windows environment.

    This... "This reeks of Windows thinking." What Windows Head would do something like this?

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered)
    Erik Gern:
    The script, if the server was running low on available memory, would clear the cache buffers
    The script clears the cache without testing anything. If the server is running low on available memory then the script displays an error message AFTER the counterproducting cache clear. The error reasonably suggests that additional RAM might be a good idea, but that doesn't make up for either of the WTFs.
  • James (unregistered) in reply to Black Bart

    No one.

    What I don't get is why scripts on the Calamari servers would affect other Hydra servers. Surely there is aome sort of SOE that should be applied to 'new' servers that would protect against such shenanigans.

  • faoileag (unregistered)

    I don't get it. Why does a (bad) script on Calamari's servers bring down Hydra's servers? And why didn't the bad script bring down Calamri's servers before Evan integrated them into Hydra's server network?

    Apart from that - today's article is well-written, concise and doesn't drown the wtf in an ocean of book/movie references. That comes as a pleasant surprise, given the author... Keep up the good work, Eric!

  • (cs) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    I don't get it. Why does a (bad) script on Calamari's servers bring down Hydra's servers? And why didn't the bad script bring down Calamri's servers before Evan integrated them into Hydra's server network?

    Apart from that - today's article is well-written, concise and doesn't drown the wtf in an ocean of book/movie references. That comes as a pleasant surprise, given the author... Keep up the good work, Eric!

    Ocean of references, or reference of oceans? Calamari ==> Squid...

    And of course "squid" is a double-headed reference...

  • (cs) in reply to Black Bart
    Black Bart:
    Summoner:
    So called memory optimizers are just as counter-productive in a Windows environment.

    This... "This reeks of Windows thinking." What Windows Head would do something like this?

    If this is about the file/directory cache (a known problem in Windows), then any head whose main software "loads a bunch of files to memory, keep them there, and doesn't access the disc again" would do it. Because the no-longer-actually-used cache forces the server application to page-out its actually useful memory.

  • EvilSnack (unregistered)

    TRWTF in this or any other organization is why ETD&H is allowed to pester the technician who is responsible for fixing the problem. In a well-run organization you hear only from your immediate supervisor, especially when you are working on something important. Exceptions are made only for other people in your supervisory chain, and then only if your supervisor is not available. Everyone else talks to the designated POC for trouble resolution, and they get crickets if they talk to go around this.

    It's like every passenger in an airplane storming into the cockpit, demanding answer, whenever there's turbulence.

  • (cs) in reply to Black Bart
    Black Bart:
    Summoner:
    So called memory optimizers are just as counter-productive in a Windows environment.

    This... "This reeks of Windows thinking." What Windows Head would do something like this?

    There are IT people who are dedicated to learning just enough to be able to do their jobs and not a bit more. In this case, the sysadmin probably searched google/stackoverflow to find out how to clear the cache and stopped before getting to the part of the answer that explained why clearing the cache isn't a good idea.

  • RFoxmich (unregistered)

    Wow I learned a new word:

    "counterproducting"

  • RFoxmich (unregistered) in reply to EvilSnack
    EvilSnack:
    TRWTF in this or any other organization is why ETD&H is allowed to pester the technician who is responsible for fixing the problem. In a well-run organization you hear only from your immediate supervisor, especially when you are working on something important. Exceptions are made only for other people in your supervisory chain, and then only if your supervisor is not available. Everyone else talks to the designated POC for trouble resolution, and they get crickets if they talk to go around this.

    It's like every passenger in an airplane storming into the cockpit, demanding answer, whenever there's turbulence.

    Then TRWTF in the world is that so many organizations do operate in such a counterproducting manner.

  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    faoileag:
    I don't get it. Why does a (bad) script on Calamari's servers bring down Hydra's servers? And why didn't the bad script bring down Calamri's servers before Evan integrated them into Hydra's server network?

    Apart from that - today's article is well-written, concise and doesn't drown the wtf in an ocean of book/movie references. That comes as a pleasant surprise, given the author... Keep up the good work, Eric!

    Ocean of references, or reference of oceans? Calamari ==> Squid...

    And of course "squid" is a double-headed reference...

    Book reference, perhaps there is one lurking in the madness of this mountain of a WTF. Hydra, calamari, ocean, seems almost cthonic to me. Yes yes, get me hooked on cthonics!

  • (cs) in reply to EvilSnack
    EvilSnack:
    TRWTF in this or any other organization is why ETD&H is allowed to pester the technician who is responsible for fixing the problem. In a well-run organization you hear only from your immediate supervisor, especially when you are working on something important. Exceptions are made only for other people in your supervisory chain, and then only if your supervisor is not available. Everyone else talks to the designated POC for trouble resolution, and they get crickets if they talk to go around this.

    It's like every passenger in an airplane storming into the cockpit, demanding answer, whenever there's turbulence.

    There are very few rules that fit for all sizes of organizations in all circumstances.

  • Agent Garrett (unregistered)

    What, nobody? Seriously? Okay then:

    Hail Hydra!

  • (cs)

    But when Hydra's main datacenter linked up Calamari's...

    Linked up Calamari's WHAT?

  • spoon (unregistered) in reply to Agent Garrett

    Came for this - my thoughts exactly.

  • (cs) in reply to EvilSnack
    EvilSnack:
    It's like every passenger in an airplane storming into the cockpit, demanding answer, whenever there's turbulence.

    It's like having eight different bosses who all come to your desk to remind you about the new cover sheets for TPS reports.

  • (cs)

    "LAMP stack"... this reeks of *nix thinking.

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    "LAMP stack"... this reeks of *nix thinking.

    The lesser-known Lindows-AOLServer-Mumps-Postgres stack.

  • saepius (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    "LAMP stack"... this reeks of *nix thinking.
    Given that it's running on a *nix machine, that's perfectly acceptable.
  • quis (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    "LAMP stack"... this reeks of *nix thinking.
    I wonder, if you rub the LAMP stack, will a Genie come out? Even more importantly, will he sound like Jim Backus or will he sound like Robin Williams?
  • (cs) in reply to quis
    quis:
    operagost:
    "LAMP stack"... this reeks of *nix thinking.
    I wonder, if you rub the LAMP stack, will a Genie come out? Even more importantly, will he sound like Jim Backus or will he sound like Robin Williams?
    Barbara Eden
  • (cs) in reply to quis
    quis:
    operagost:
    "LAMP stack"... this reeks of *nix thinking.
    I wonder, if you rub the LAMP stack, will a Genie come out? Even more importantly, will he sound like Jim Backus or will he sound like Robin Williams?
    Hopefully like Barbara Eden.
  • (cs) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    But when Hydra's main datacenter linked up Calamari's...

    Linked up Calamari's WHAT?

    Main datacenter. Perfectly legal sentence structure. Consider "We connected Billy's Gameboy to Jimmy's." In English, most of us would find repeating "Gameboy" to be overkill.

  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Calamari ==> Squid...

    And of course "squid" is a double-headed reference...

    It means something besides Superconducting Quantum Interference Detector ?

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to tharpa
    tharpa:
    EvilSnack:
    TRWTF in this or any other organization is why ETD&H is allowed to pester the technician who is responsible for fixing the problem. In a well-run organization you hear only from your immediate supervisor, especially when you are working on something important. Exceptions are made only for other people in your supervisory chain, and then only if your supervisor is not available. Everyone else talks to the designated POC for trouble resolution, and they get crickets if they talk to go around this.

    It's like every passenger in an airplane storming into the cockpit, demanding answer, whenever there's turbulence.

    There are very few rules that fit for all sizes of organizations in all circumstances.

    And this is one of them.

    You only respond to the closest (hierarchically) supervisor available.

    Otherwise, you end up with help-desk, hr, clients, and the IRS at your desk.

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    Steve The Cynic:
    Calamari ==> Squid...

    And of course "squid" is a double-headed reference...

    It means something besides Superconducting Quantum User Interference Detector ?

  • (cs)

    One word popped to mind when I read that linking up to another datacenter could bring yours down: isolation.

  • MMM (unregistered)
  • Sigivald (unregistered)

    It's not so much "Windows Thinking" (Windows actually uses about the same free/caches/wired setup Unix does; welcome to the Everyone's Been NT For Over A Decade future) as "New To Unix Thinking".

    "Hey, free says we're out of ram! Those "cache" things are using all our memory! Better clear those so we never put anything in swap!"

    I've seen the question come up a hundred times with new Unix users who don't understand (and how would they, when the manpages assume you already know?) what the output of free/top means.

  • (cs) in reply to Black Bart
    Black Bart:
    Summoner:
    So called memory optimizers are just as counter-productive in a Windows environment.

    This... "This reeks of Windows thinking." What Windows Head would do something like this?

    The bad ones. Although that's not saying that bad sysadmins are exclusive to Windows environments. Remember, you can write Fortran in any language.

  • Ralph (unregistered) in reply to Summoner
    Summoner:
    So called memory optimizers are just as counter-productive in a Windows environment.
    Everything is counter-productive in a Windows environment.
  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    tharpa:
    There are very few rules that fit for all sizes of organizations in all circumstances.

    And this is one of them.

    You only respond to the closest (hierarchically) supervisor available.

    Otherwise, you end up with help-desk, hr, clients, and the IRS at your desk.

    That depends on whether your goal is to get a problem resolved, or to keep from being bothered while you work. In a relatively small organization, having Jim walk over to say "hey Bob, X is broken, you have time to fix it?" is faster than having him talk to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to your supervisor's supervisor, who talks to your supervisor, who talks to you. And it usually results in better information since it doesn't get garbled through the telephone game.

    It's only when Jim is in an entirely different department, and possibly a different state that having him talk to you directly can introduce more issues.

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to Snooder
    Snooder:
    Valued Service:
    tharpa:
    There are very few rules that fit for all sizes of organizations in all circumstances.

    And this is one of them.

    You only respond to the closest (hierarchically) supervisor available.

    Otherwise, you end up with help-desk, hr, clients, and the IRS at your desk.

    That depends on whether your goal is to get a problem resolved, or to keep from being bothered while you work. In a relatively small organization, having Jim walk over to say "hey Bob, X is broken, you have time to fix it?" is faster than having him talk to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to your supervisor's supervisor, who talks to your supervisor, who talks to you. And it usually results in better information since it doesn't get garbled through the telephone game.

    It's only when Jim is in an entirely different department, and possibly a different state that having him talk to you directly can introduce more issues.

    And how does a VP come up with something for Tom to do? That's not how you manage projects.

    Unless you're talking a starup of 20 or less, maybe, and even then, it shouldn't happen often. That's a major sign of a lack of trust and micromanagement.

    Because if the VP and/or owner feels the need to hire middle management, then he shouldn't feel the need to have direct control over the bottom level employees.

    If he needs to have that much direct access to a person, he should move that person under himself, or he is going to negatively impact morale.

  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    Snooder:
    Valued Service:
    tharpa:
    There are very few rules that fit for all sizes of organizations in all circumstances.

    And this is one of them.

    You only respond to the closest (hierarchically) supervisor available.

    Otherwise, you end up with help-desk, hr, clients, and the IRS at your desk.

    That depends on whether your goal is to get a problem resolved, or to keep from being bothered while you work. In a relatively small organization, having Jim walk over to say "hey Bob, X is broken, you have time to fix it?" is faster than having him talk to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to your supervisor's supervisor, who talks to your supervisor, who talks to you. And it usually results in better information since it doesn't get garbled through the telephone game.

    It's only when Jim is in an entirely different department, and possibly a different state that having him talk to you directly can introduce more issues.

    And how does a VP come up with something for Tom to do? That's not how you manage projects.

    Unless you're talking a starup of 20 or less, maybe, and even then, it shouldn't happen often. That's a major sign of a lack of trust and micromanagement.

    Because if the VP and/or owner feels the need to hire middle management, then he shouldn't feel the need to have direct control over the bottom level employees.

    If he needs to have that much direct access to a person, he should move that person under himself, or he is going to negatively impact morale.

    If the VP and/or owner is calling someone a few levels down during an emergency, he/she better start the conversation with "Is there anything that I can do to help you?"

  • Mintzberg (unregistered)

    It's funny that some people seem to think that hierarchy is the solution to all organisational issues. It's not and it's proven to be very dependent on organisational culture, which in turn is influenced by things like type of employees (factory worker vs knowledge worker for example), but also country can play a role in this.

    It should be obvious that there is no single solution for every organisation.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to EvilSnack
    EvilSnack:
    TRWTF in this or any other organization is why ETD&H is allowed to pester the technician who is responsible for fixing the problem. In a well-run organization you hear only from your immediate supervisor, especially when you are working on something important. Exceptions are made only for other people in your supervisory chain, and then only if your supervisor is not available. Everyone else talks to the designated POC for trouble resolution, and they get crickets if they talk to go around this.

    It's like every passenger in an airplane storming into the cockpit, demanding answer, whenever there's turbulence.

    I'm sorry, but you are just revealing your ignorance of modern project management techniques.

    If a project is behind schedule, or if there is a problem with a production system, it is well understood today that the way to solve the problem is to hold long daily status meetings where the technical people can explain to management why they are behind schedule and what they are doing to catch up.

    Clearly, spending 40 hours working to solve the problem is much less efficient than spending 30 hours working to solve the problem and 10 hours in meetings explaining what you are doing and why it's not solved yet. Better still to spend 20 hours working on the problem and 20 hours on the phone explaining what happened to various managers and executives one at a time.

  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to Snooder
    Snooder:
    That depends on whether your goal is to get a problem resolved, or to keep from being bothered while you work. In a relatively small organization, having Jim walk over to say "hey Bob, X is broken, you have time to fix it?" is faster than having him talk to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to his supervisor, who talks to your supervisor's supervisor, who talks to your supervisor, who talks to you. And it usually results in better information since it doesn't get garbled through the telephone game.

    It's only when Jim is in an entirely different department, and possibly a different state that having him talk to you directly can introduce more issues.

    Strawman. done badly. 5 levels of management is not a "relatively small organization." "Jim is in an entirely different department." Yes, he has to be or else he would be going straight to you or perhaps through the shared dep't super if you're on different teams. Again, quite the opposite of the image you're attempting to paint.

  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    And how does a VP come up with something for Tom to do? That's not how you manage projects.

    Unless you're talking a starup of 20 or less, maybe, and even then, it shouldn't happen often. That's a major sign of a lack of trust and micromanagement.

    Because if the VP and/or owner feels the need to hire middle management, then he shouldn't feel the need to have direct control over the bottom level employees.

    If he needs to have that much direct access to a person, he should move that person under himself, or he is going to negatively impact morale.

    Ugh that's just the worst sort of hidebound corporate thinking. How would it negatively affect morale if the CEO talks to someone low on the totem-pole once in a blue moon? How is being micromanaged by your immediate supervisor any better than being micromanaged by someone in the C-suite?

    Worse, when you get to a situation where the higher ups never ever interact with the guys lower down, you start having issues. First because the CEO type becomes totally disassociated with the actual day-to-day work in the business. And second because the guy at the bottom feels that he has no stake in the company as a whole.

    I'm not saying that every company would benefit from this. Obviously larger organizations with multi-national operations can't do this. And even then, it's not a good management style for the VP to respond to EVERY emergency by camping out in the cubicle of the guy fixing it. But let's take a small company with about 100 employees. The IT department is about 50 guys and has 5 teams of 10 guys each. Do you really think having a guy in the accounting department filter every single communication through the IT director and the team lead is better than just calling the server guy directly on rare occasions?

    Or, in a situation more like this one, if something horrendous happens and the company owner is fielding angry calls from clients, shouldn't the guy fixing the problem report his progress directly to the owner instead of having the IT director report progress based on what the team lead reported to him based on what the guy actually fixing it reported?

  • (cs)

    IT guys talking about what executives should do.

    (That's the joke.)

  • bob nelson (unregistered)

    The though process that brought him to the creation of that script may not have been entirely wrong, but the implementation obviously was. There are perfectly good reasons why you'd want the filesystem cache and swapping to work differently, of course the proper way to do this is through sysctl with things like:

    vm.swappiness=10 vm.dirty_background_ratio=5 vm.dirty_ratio=80

  • S (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    And of course "squid" is a double-headed reference...

    Only if you have mutant squid... :)

  • F (unregistered) in reply to Ralph
    Ralph:
    Summoner:
    So called memory optimizers are just as counter-productive in a Windows environment.
    Everything is counter-productive in a Windows environment.

    No, no, no ... only Windows.

    (CAPTCHA: sino. Has someone been getting in a fresh stock? I've not seen that one before).

  • YellowOnline (unregistered) in reply to oesor
    oesor:
    operagost:
    "LAMP stack"... this reeks of *nix thinking.

    The lesser-known Lindows-AOLServer-Mumps-Postgres stack.

    +1

    Captcha: you're my haero

  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered) in reply to F
    F:
    (CAPTCHA: sino. Has someone been getting in a fresh stock? I've not seen that one before).
    Let's see ...

    Math homework: If there are N CAPTCHAS, how often (expectation) do you have to post until you've seen all of them?

  • EvilSnack (unregistered) in reply to Snooder
    Snooder:
    Ugh that's just the worst sort of hidebound corporate thinking. How would it negatively affect morale if the CEO talks to someone low on the totem-pole once in a blue moon?
    Straw man. The argument was against every Tom, Dick, and Harry being allowed to pester the person who is working the problem.
    How is being micromanaged by your immediate supervisor any better than being micromanaged by someone in the C-suite?
    Straw man, again. Nobody here is arguing that being continually pestered by a supervisor is any less destructive than constant pestering by other people.
    Worse, when you get to a situation where the higher ups never ever interact with the guys lower down...
    Straw man, again. Nobody here is arguing that the higher-ups should never talk to people lower down.
    Do you really think having a guy in the accounting department filter every single communication through the IT director and the team lead is better than just calling the server guy directly on rare occasions?
    It's not a choice between the guy in accounting calling rarely, or not at all. It's a choice between the guy in accounting calling whenever he {filtered} feels like it, or not at all.
    Or, in a situation more like this one, if something horrendous happens and the company owner is fielding angry calls from clients, shouldn't the guy fixing the problem report his progress directly to the owner instead of having the IT director report progress based on what the team lead reported to him based on what the guy actually fixing it reported?
    No, the guy fixing the problem should be fixing the problem. Reports can wait until there is something to report.
  • Maj najm (unregistered) in reply to cellocgw
    cellocgw:
    Steve The Cynic:
    Calamari ==> Squid...

    And of course "squid" is a double-headed reference...

    It means something besides Superconducting Quantum Interference Detector ?

    Yes, it can mean Stupid, Quick, Underdressed, Imminently Dead motorcyclist as well.

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