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Admin
What's the WTF? We've been trained to disbelieve all but the core of the submitted story, so the only thing that I believe from this story is that there was a motherboard with a broken clock, but that's really scraping the barrel.
Admin
I assume having identified a fault bad enough to take the server away from one service, they just put the bad server on a different (previously working) service.
Oh, and (temporially) FRIST
Admin
No, it's an infrastructure configuration bodge which was diagnosed (incorrectly) as being a broken motherboard clock.
As in: when you can't apply the appropriate problem-solving techniques to debugging your substandard software, blame it on the hardware.
Admin
Sorry, ignore me -- I misread (and, ahem, misunderstood) the story.
Admin
Expected some retarded script that changed the time a bit whenever it ran. Was let down. F-, would not read again.
Admin
I've never known computers to query the hardware real-time clock except at power on. The kernel clock is generally much more accurate that the RTC.
Wherever the problem is, it isn't the motherboard's RTC.
Admin
The temporal lab people actually made a buggy time machine that keeps traveling between those two times?
Admin
Strange open ending. Reminds me of the president's sick daughter.
Admin
Admin
If I got a bobcat instead of a chair, I would definately buy it again.
Admin
I would definitely sit on a bobcat. One of the few things I've not sat on. I mean I've sat on Bob, and I've sat on a cat. This has the potential to combine the advantages of both.
Admin
Isn't the ending missing? If not, not mentioning the "cutting corners" bit would have given the whole story a more complete feel.
Admin
http://www.nba.com/bobcats/2013-14-lady-cats :-)
Admin
From Linux System Administrator's Guide @ about.com: "date only shows or sets the software clock" (emphasis by me).
A hardware problem? Unlikely. A kernel problem? Unlikely. Some homegrown script trying to keep several servers synced on the same system time? Unlikely, after all two successive "date" calls deliver two different timestamps and the pattern looks too regular for a race condition (date calls vs. script).
An executable named "date" that only serves one of two hardcoded dates alternatively? Now that's the most plausible scenario so far.
Anyone with a better idea?
Admin
Admin
Well, y'see, getting a new mo-board in would require a manager to sign off on the purchase, which would require said manager to admit that there was a problem and, more to the point, that there was a problem which had not been anticipated. Now, any good manager knows that they should budget for the problems they anticipate having - this is just good management. But there is, of course, no need to budget for unanticipated problems because you can't see them coming, so you can't plan for them, so you can't budget for them, so there really isn't a problem, now is there? Thus, the occurrence of an unanticipated problem is a direct statement that the manager did not anticipate this problem occurring and is, therefore, a poor manager. Now, even the poorest manager knows that the road to happiness and mega-bonus-bucks does NOT traverse the dreaded Desert of Truth. No, the road to happiness and etc is a sixteen-lane expressway that runs across the fecund Mud Plains of Creative Expressivity (also known as the Swamp of Bullsh*t), with a possible side excursion into the Back Alley of CoverUp. Now, imagine the quandary into which our manager is thrown by this occurrence. On one hand, there's a VPN server with a busted clock which keeps chucking a user off. OK, it's only one user - but you know how some of these people are - pretty soon she'll be mentioning it to her manager, who will mention it to his VP, who will talk to the VP over our particular manager, who will land on said manager like a ton of bricks. Thus, there's plenty of reasons to get the problem fixed on the quiet-and-cheap. So, what's a harried manager to do? Sign the PO for a new motherboard? NO! That would raise Questions. Words would be Spoken. Looks would be Looked. And before you know it our poor manager would be out on the streets, looking for a new career in the Fast Food Industry from whence he/she/it came. No! This cannot be! There must be Another Way - and lo, Another Way was found!
So they just switched the VPN and FTP servers.
CATCHA: haero - And in the end the manager was a big haero.
Admin
Are we there yet? And are we having fun yet?
CAPTCHA: iusto - We'll be there in iusto minute.
Admin
CAPTCHA: suscipit - IT department suscipit nullam?
Admin
It's simple. They reused the server because they needed one that was bigger on the inside.
Admin
Also, most time synchronization software, certainly *nix ntp clients, will only ever set the clock backwards when very explicitly told to do so. On *nix monotonic time is considered almost axiomatic and something a programmer will assume (s)he can rely on. Do not confuse this with the way the clock is apparently changed backwards once a year due to DST - this only changes the result of system calls that you use when you WANT time already translated to your local time zone and DST rules, and will NEVER mess with what time(2) returns. Setting the actual clock backwards on a production *nix machine is something you [i]would preferrably want to reboot it after[i], there are more and worse things than VPN software that can crash or misbehave (for example, a classically implemented cron or atd will become confused and execute things [i]out of order[i]).
The whole thing looks like someone inexpertly jury rigged a time synchronization mechanism from something like rdate and a loop...
Admin
Rule number two for the president's sick daughter: write a bad article with no clear WTF and an ending that redefines open endings to move the discussion away from the president's sick daughter.
Admin
Frist?
(Reference to the time travel stuff!)
Admin
I was expecting the screen scraping scripts to mess about with the network interface/routes/whatever so they could connect to the target server (thus killing the VPN connection temporarily), then change it back again.
As it is I don't see a wtf.
Admin
Tanks for explaining that. It makes it a lot more funny.
Admin
Admin
"What's costing Chronos so much they can't even afford a new server that can keep time?"
You know, for an used roadworthy DeLorean you have to pay at least 30.000$. Not to mention the plutonium costs. The last time the deal with the Lybians got awry, so we had to contact more expensive suppliers.
Admin
Admin
Admin
The problem was simple really. Someone has a job setup to sync the clock every hour using two different time sources to be sure. However, they used ntpdate instead of setting up a proper ntpd configuration.
Captcha: letatio - How to make a salad really happy.
Admin
I see Erik's not got the hang of writing complete stories yet.
Admin
If it was a script I never found it and it must have been installed at the dc.
Admin
You were expecting a problem caused by a brain-dead hack, and what do you know, it's an Erik Gern story.
Admin
This! And the reason they happened on that solution is that they were running the server in a primitive virtualization environment which didn't properly implement the timekeeping resources that the OS uses for RTC. It was probably too unstable and too far off so that NTP refused to correct it. So they just did the periodic rdate trick with all the associated problems.
Admin
Since you as the supplier take care to answer me, this theory can now be best described as being "obviously wrong".
But since you are here: care to shed some light on how much of the story is your submission and how much is embellishment?
Admin
"We'll order a new chassis" Yeah, because when a motherboard has a problem the fix is always to replace the box it lives in...
Admin
Surprised that they didn't just abandon VPN and or FTP support.
Admin
Well, the screenshot is fake for sure, because on it the submitter has root access, and no sane person would grant him that. Or if someone did, they would at least blame them for all the problems that occur with that system afterwards.
Admin
The "frist" posters really aren't dedicated to their craft enough. Would it have killed somebody to make the same "frist" post twice, 1 minute and 7 seconds apart from each other?
Admin
I'm surprised that with all of the time travel jokes, no one has noticed the subtle(?) Doctor Who reference: the machine name is "river" (as in River Song, the Doctor's wife), and the subject of the story is named Alex (as in Alex Kingston, the actress who plays River).
(Oh God, I'm such a geek...)
Admin
Let me see if I can guess how this all got started.
"The time on this server is off. Fix it!" "Um, okay... I usually right click on the clock for that but... um... here's a command I can use. I'll just paste that in and run it."
"Huh. The time still keeps slipping. Maybe I should just put it in one of those loopy things I saw."
"There. Fixed."
(Time passes.)
"Y'know, I just read about a scheduled job thingy called cron. Maybe I should put that rdate-ily-doodle into there and run it every half hour."
(More time passes. Sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards.)
"Time's wrong. Do that scripty thing that you did to fix it."
"Um, okay. Didn't I already do that? Oh well, guess it isn't working. Here goes..."
"Done. I'm sure that this will fix the problem and never create any other issues."
(Despite the best efforts of three different time changing processes, time still passes)
"Say... What's a 'Tier 1 NTP server'? Maybe I should get time from that too..."
Admin
Admin
The WTF is taking a known to be malfunctioning server that causes disconnects and using for a service that requires connections be maintained. IE from FTP to VPN. So now instead of disconnecting when you try to download a large file, have remoting in for the day as you'll be disconnected every hour.
Thats a WTF.
Admin
Admin
Everything else is embellishment!
Admin
I suspect virtualisation, some versions of Xen run time backwards occasionally.
https://wiki.debian.org/Xen/Clocksource
Admin
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Admin
Issue at Erik's company that he's trying to have us solve? Probably.
Admin
I accidentally wrote #*$% as source for the feline, but then went in my time machine to correct it; that's also how I finally finished my highschool with good grades next year.
Admin
Admin
It was the other way around. They replaced a perfectly good VPN server with a broken server that disconnects all the time.