Sys-Admin Humor

[Hans van Zijst]

Include "SUPPRESS_BUGS=1" in /etc/rc.config.d/crashconf

[Rita C Workman]

Computer Operator to UNIX Admin >
....yes I know we're supposed to keep an 18 months archive backup...I run it every month

UNIX Admin...then where are they?

Computer Operator....right here..I didn't need all the tapes you set up in that pool, I only needed one tape.....why is there a problem?

...and yes this really did happen...and folks wonder why you feel the need to go behind and check up on things..

/rcw

[Gram Ludlow]

Here's one I've had some *cough* experience with...
"Oops... wrong terminal window..."

[Andy Monks]

For those old enough to remember hp-ux 9.X how about this one.

Customer goes on the hp-ux admin course for series 800 machines, and finds out that device files will be automatically be created by the system at boot time (although true, he actually wasn't paying enough attention as it's only for new devices and not existing devices, but that's not the funny bit).

Anyway, he got back to work and decided to tidy up /dev by removing the entire contents and rebooting. Not surprisingly it didn't. After about 15 mins we got the full story out of him. The machine he did this too was a 735 (which didn't create device files anyway (it's series 700) which didn't at the time.

His manager (who was enjoying this as much as me (and my colleagues)) had a great sense of humour and I suggested I fax them (way before everyone had email), the entire /dev directory from a machine I had so he could type them in again from the support media.

As it turned out he had another 735, so we just saved them off to tape and recovered them from the support media.

[John Bolene]

True story happened this week.
Symptom -> Application programs quit responding to terminals on Monday around 2 AM.
Actions preformed -> searched log files, changes made to system, etc, nothing found. Last resort, decided to reboot to see if that would fix it (kinda foggy that time of the morning anyway). Yup, fixed problem whatever it was.

Same thing happened on Tuesday about the same time. What the heck!!!
Did another search for what I could find, getting more puzzled at this time and thinking a bit more clearly but not clearly enough at it turns out.
Ended up rebooting the machine again, problem fixed for now.

Come into work and start searching deeply for what might be going on since it happened twice around the same time (real tired of being awakened at 2 AM for 2 days straight). Nothing in cron that was different. Wait a minute, something shows up after looking at all the .sh_history files on the machine.

Turns out a user that was newly made administrator had the habit of using hostname -a to get the hostname instead of uname -a. Since he now had more priviledges, this command was now temporarily changing the hostname to -a. Applications look to see where they are executing to know where they are and where they need to go for data.

[Karthik_2]

More ...
* We may need a patch for this ...
* No worries I have the DR document...
* man undelete

Karthik...

[Stefan Schulz]

Here is something a friend of mine found on the console of his Novell Server:

dir
dir *.*
help
edit autoexec.bat

cls
cls
clear
cls


Unfortunately this guy didn't key in his name ;-)

Regards Stefan

[John Bolene]

Now don't go talking bad about me that way, it looked just like another PC to me.
And you wanted me to leave my name?
I would want to do that because?
I thought that Novell was just another novel operating system.

Grins all around.....

[Satish Y]

push the button marked OFF if it won't works hard bootit(take out the battery and put it back in)...:-)

[Satish Y]

push the button marked OFF if it won't works hard bootit(take out the battery and put it back in)...HP-UX is very stable..:-)

[Satish Y]

push the OFF button if it won't works hard bootit(take out the battery and put it back in)...HP-UX is very stable..:-)

[Satish Y]

sorry.. problem with my PC too... not working properly...:)

[John Bolene]

Sounds like you must have that novel operating system installed on it, or was that Novell?

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

I heard once from an RC in germany working on
a HPMC...
CE was on site trying to gather the PIM
no email so he decided to fax it..
there was only one page in the fax so he
could only fax one page off.. so the RC
needed some more info and asked the CE to
read what he saw in it
?There's lots of 3s?
!!

On a similar note I once asked a sysadmin in
troubleshooting environment to switch of a
spanning tree option on a switch.. the email
came back.. I cant find the spanning 3 option!

One more!
From /usr/bin/fortune
If you can sp?ll sysadmin.. you probably are one!

Later
Bill

[Thierry Poels_1]

*ALL* Unix flavours are exactly the same

well ... uh ... for end users anyway.

[Marcel Boon]

Press "return" to continue....
uhhhhh.....Where is that key ?
press the "Enter" key !!!
Why didn't you say that in the first place !

Marcel

[Manuel Plaza]

Have you heard about bruges ... ?

Regards

[Brian Markus]

Another patch ?

[Thierry Poels_1]

some words you don't want to hear from someone you just gave root access :

'Trust me! I know what I'm doing.'

or

'uh ... how recent is your backup?'

[Thierry Poels_1]

Person A: hey, congratulations with your new ITRC Wizzard status!
Person B: thanks
Person A: you must really know everything about HP-UX, don't you.
Person B: well ... uh ... nope, I just posted some jokes on their forum.

[boley janowski]

that's weird, lets patch it.

system board replacement,

(while holding memory carrier) what grounding strap?
----------------------------------------------------------------
now where did i put that CPU?
---------------------------------------------------------------

[John Bolene]

I sorted the passwd file, it was ugly the way it was and I could not easily find who I was looking for. Oh, and I rcp'd the file to all 250 of our servers.

I was logged onto the machine and changing the default route, why was my session terminated and I can't get back into the machine?

[Rita C Workman]

During a job interview:

Employer: Now I have a little test of my own to see if you really do know your UNIX stuff.....tell me how do you spell UNIX?

Applicant: Which would you like me to spell the machine or the man?

/rcw

....(For those of you who didn't get it...UNIX; eunuchs)

This actually was asked of me...and yes I got the job.

[Gram Ludlow]

"Hi I'm your new sysadmin, Simon. What's your login name again?"

[Marcel Boon]

Hi,

Really happend:
------------------
HP-UX Forum member

I just went to look at the new feature "Expert Present". I went to get the preview for Bill Hassel showing me how to tune my HP-UX kernel.

Well, wouldnt you know that its a @#$%^Microsoft windows executable that tries to download for the plugin!
------------------

How could HP do this ??!?? No windowoooozz here !!

Marcel

Thanks to Shannon !!!!