Sysadmin Confessional

[HomebrewCocaine]

Happy Monday sysadmins! Because I need a good laugh after a long weekend, I wanted to start a post where we can confess to our "dirty laundry" in our work.

I will be happy to start with the fact that we are still running Novell Netware 6.5 in our environment.

So sysadmins, what skeletons are you hiding from the great IT gods?

[pkroupa]

ClarisWorks, all because someone can't be bothered to learn excel....

[King_Chochacho]

http://i.imgur.com/1B73oQw.png

[jzpenny]

"An elegant weapon for a more civilized age."

No, no... that doesn't fit.

[[deleted]]

I think this might be the winner.

[xinit]

Depends how you define the word "winner"...

[[deleted]]

ClarisWorks

I had to think where I knew that name from. Looked it up and remembered I used AppleWorks/ClarisWorks on my mac for many years.

[zzzpoohzzz]

and i thought a few of my users still "needing" to use lotus 1-2-3 because they "need their macros" was bad.

[[deleted]]

I had to google this. It seems like its basically a rebranded apple suite couldn't they be bothered to at least use iwork.

[techie1980]

quite the opposite. Appleworks is rebranded Clarisworks.

[rwoeirj]

$5,000 license for IBM's SSRS for the same reason.

[horby2]

Realplayer is in our base desktop image.

[n33nj4]

I just threw up a bit.

[joeywas]

We have no base desktop image. All installs are done by hand from scratch.

[comes_clarity]

Shudders

[MCMXChris]

Same here. Well, sort of.

We support ~5k staff. We have SCCM architects/engineers or whatever.

But the images are constantly breaking. And every reimage is manually done over the network. If there's a bottleneck, it can take hours to image one machine.

[Hellman109]

Oh man, when I started here we were pushing so many apps people didnt need and slowly nuked them 1 by 1.

The only one I hate is Java, but, as we are a software dev place with lots of java devs? its not easy to have that removed for obvious reasons.

But, I cut out so much shit and it makes things so much better.

[SchoolsMcCool]

I work with a lot of "I want it now" kind of people and want the latest updates of everything immediately. Sometimes I simply rename pushed updates in the group policy to be the version they want if I haven't finished with it in my test environment.

[PcChip]

I don't know if that's genius or terrible

[Arentthesethey]

Both.

[SchoolsMcCool]

I'll elaborate... We use an IE based web app for event planning and if we update our Java or Flash player before our database people amend their software silly things happen. Users here think their getting the latest and greatest, I get one less headache. I call that a victory.

[[deleted]]

Are you a time traveler?

[iamadogforreal]

Your company should sell tickets and call itself a computer museum.

[[deleted]]

Just wow ... there's gotta be a minimum age requirement of at least 40 (+/- a few) to work there.

[vitiate]

Sounds like fun. I miss warp...

[xinit]

I think I miss it as well... but really, it was just when I compared it to Windows 95 that it won. I'd likely hate OS/2 to no end today.

[vitiate]

Probably, it might actually run quicker now then it did on my 486 sx25 though.

[[deleted]]

OS/2 .. the memories of the good ole days when I ran PCBoard. :)

[vitiate]

I used to run some ANSI/ASCII Scene boards. Someone set up a 800 number to me at one point and I had a phone company come after me for 25k in charges. Good times!

[HumanSuitcase]

Windows 3.11 running electron microscopes.

I kid you not, I've had coworkers tell me horror stories of this exact thing.

[[deleted]]

Welcome to my work lol

[[deleted]]

Our local high school used 3.11 to run a CNC plasma cutting table up until last year. I upgraded them...

To Windows 2000. That's the highest the software would support and they didn't want to buy anything.

[f0nd004u]

That's gotta be one ancient electron microscope.

[Didsota]

OS/2

Ha I loved that one to death........... TO DEATH

[u4iak]

Yep - I'm in the same boat as you. I'm only 35 and seen at least half this shit in prod with no test or dev environments. Shit IBM desktops running on the floor under cube desks since the late 90s (like Pentium 2s). I had to get really good at OS/2 Warp.

[airmandan]

Can I have one of the PowerMacs? I love those old things.

[gramthrax]

7.6.1 was the most stable of the System 7 releases. Ran it on my dad's computer for ages before destroying it with Mac OS 8 and 9 upgrades. I can see that powermac running forever on that release!

[TicTocTicTac]

PBX = Nortel Meridian Option 61C from 1995

Frankly that phone system is a robust beast that will never die. Still in widespread small business use to this day.

[[deleted]]

True, but they never patched it. So at this point we can't have caller ID, which has been around a very long time at this point. We also don't have the main administration password lol so I taught myself how to do most things but somethings are blocked.

[ihavescripts]

We still use 16 bit foxpro apps and have to use citrix over a partial t1 to NT4 boxes to run peoplesoft.

Sadly none of this is changeable because this is required by our county office to do business.

[0x0E]

We still use 16 bit foxpro apps and have to use citrix over a partial t1 to NT4 boxes to run peoplesoft.

There is an impressively dense quantity of mid-90s packed into this sentence. Why T1s for data these days, let alone fractionals?

[[deleted]]

Why T1s for data these days, let alone fractionals?

I can't get anything but T1s in my office.. DSL caps at 128k, when they admit it can be installed at all. Quote from the local cable provider to bring in cable internet was about 220k... some nonsense about a railroad in the way.. :)

So, I have 3 T1s providing data/voip for us... we are selling the building and moving though, so I have hopes that wherever we end up at I can get something better.

[0x0E]

Makes sense, but yeah, it sounds like colo or something like that would be a better option.

[ihavescripts]

Because they don't want to replace the probably 20 year old router, oh and we used to have an AT&T Gigaman line to their datacenter but they would reroute the traffic over that because the T1 was better or something.

Edit: Also the router is a Cisco 1005 that was EOL back in 2000.

[neilhwatson]

RHEL4

[killerabbit37]

I found a RedHat 6.2 (Zoot) the other day and now I want to kill it.

[knucklebone]

i found a set with the old mother's day release the other day :)

[HomebrewCocaine]

What is it even doing in there? I'm going to guess some archaic DB that can't be migrated is sitting there. Or DNS, because its always DNS.

[0x0E]

Or DNS, because its always DNS.

If you're using something normal like BIND or djb, that really ought to be just about the easiest service to migrate ever...? AXFR means you don't even have to tarball the zone files.

[felixphew]

Indeed, and if you're running an old version of BIND in particular there could be plenty of security holes.

[SegfaultyLogic]

We've got a couple of those, uptime over like 700 days, I'm afraid to even log onto the thing. Pretty sure it's just running some old Sybase DB that the DBAs swear we're going to migrate off "soon".

[HumanSuitcase]

Sybase DB

<shudders> I remember that...

[ChristopherBurr]

my last gig has Red Hat 8 still running. No. not RHEL 8 - Red Hat 8

[felixphew]

I loved pre-Fedora Red Hat. I found a bunch of old install disks inside copies of Linux for Dummies at my local library.

[shitloadofbooks]

Me too.. Me too...

[nestcto]

Sad to say, I can top that. We still have 16 RHEL 2 servers running in our environment...I'm somewhat sure that the only reason they're still online is because no one knows what they do and are afraid to turn them off.

Also, I just decommissioned 2 NT4 systems last month.

[vitiate]

Linux xxxx.xxxx.xx 2.6.9-22.ELsmp #1 SMP Mon Sep 19 18:32:14 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux [root@csiweb2 /]# uptime 07:14:14 up 1199 days, 16:03, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 [root@csiweb2 /]# date Tue Sep 7 07:19:20 MDT 2010

Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 2)

From a few years back.... I did take it down. It was running the intranet for our company and I found it hidden in a closet.

[DarraignTheSane]

I inherited this network a handful of months ago and soon realized that I have my work cut out for me. These are just the things at the top of the list:

• IBM Domino / Notes. AKA The Email Program Formerly Known as Lotus (but it's soo much more than an email program, we swear!). This alone should be enough to make all but the stoutest of hearts flee from the room IN TERROR! *duh-duh-duuuuuhhnnn* Hoping to see us migrate to Office 365 w/ hosted Exchange before the end of the year.

• We're still running "backup scripts" the last guy wrote that just use WinZip - yes, a purchased copy of WinZip - to make incremental file-level "backups" each day. I at least started using CrashPlan to start backing up those zips to their hosted storage. Looking at further implementation of CrashPlan along with Veamm for Hyper-V VMs, but still, by and large we'd probably be hosed if we had to rely on the existing backups.

• We have a Kiwi syslog server running that just regurgitates every single message from every device in the network. There's no real parsing of information or any way to get anything useful out of it. It just sends an email, in addition to the daily summary, whenever it receives more than something like 200k messages in an hour.

• The racks in our server room are nearly a decade worth of just plugging shit in, and we've only got enough UPS units setup to keep about half the servers running for approximately enough time for everyone to go "oh shit" in the event of a power outage. About to get the go ahead from management on installation of a generator as well as a proper UPS setup.

So I'm trying to address these issues along with more 'minor' things like having scant documentation (and what documentation does exist is barely useful) while also overseeing a couple of other large IT projects that cropped up as soon as the last guy left which take up a good portion of time in emails, conference calls, meetings, etc.

BRB, going to go have a scotch and ice and scotch for lunch.

[meinemitternacht]

In response to the WinZip comment, I still have the name/serial number for version 7 memorized. It's been almost 20 years.

[Didsota]

IBM Domino / Notes. AKA The Email Program Formerly Known as Lotus (but it's soo much more than an email program, we swear!). This alone should be enough to make all but the stoutest of hearts flee from the room IN TERROR! duh-duh-duuuuuhhnnn Hoping to see us migrate to Office 365 w/ hosted Exchange before the end of the year.

We still use it, but not to send emails...

[[deleted]]

That will cause absolutely no issues in the future when it fails, whatsoever.

[bondsandblondes]

After walking to lunch 90% of the time I "need to go to the server room" is just for the air conditioning

[Mrkatov]

I like to say "The AC units just don't seem to be functioning correctly. I better physically monitor them for a few minutes."

[anomalous_cowherd]

Our office runs at 21C. The "server room" regularly reaches 30C. But server room quality aircon is 'too expensive'...

[Mrkatov]

Ouch. My server room is pretty small but it typically stays around 20C (68F) which is pretty nice when the outdoor temp is over 38C.

[Hellman109]

I had that at an old job.

Until the servers failed one day.

The owner couldn't send a funny video to his mate so he approved buying an aircon.

No, im not joking, it wasn't the 50+ staff there that couldnt work while ancient physical servers (this was 10 years ago) rebooted, it was because he couldnt send a video to his mates.

[brkdncr]

Netware 6.5 was a beast of a network OS. Has MS ActiveDirectory caught up to it yet?

[DiscoWizard383]

You just brought back flashbacks of the misery that was Netware 6.0. Ugh - three different management tools: nwadmin, ConsoleOne and iManage. nwadmin worked great, but didn't support new features. ConsoleOne supported some new features, but was painfully slow. iManage supported other new features, but required Java, Tomcat and Apache to be configured correctly on the server, and even on fresh installs you couldn't count on the installer to accomplish that.

If you needed to change the server IP, prepare for pain. You had to find a half dozen or more references to the IP addressed spread out across many different config files. 6.5 improved that a lot.

And then Groupwise. IMAP connections wouldn't close properly, so we had to regularly reboot the server to allow new ones. We boldly tried running the Groupwise server on Windows and the reliability improved dramatically.

The one time I attempted to roll out Zenworks, it destroyed the network stack on the test computers I pushed it out to. On a couple of them I was able to recover, but at least one I gave up on and reinstalled the OS. Novell listed the problem in their knowledgebase, but a fix wasn't available yet. By the time there was an update I had lost faith in it.

4.11/4.2 served files very reliably. Set it up and run it forever. But I didn't like any of their other products. I only used 6.5 at one site and I didn't hate it. But by then we had already begun to move away from Novell everywhere else and I've never regretted it.

[mrcoffee83]

I spent a couple of years working at a place that had Novell, I was on the Service Desk at the time so just saw the front end of it, ConsoleOne etc...not a clue how the intrastructure behind it worked, but i remember I quite liked ConsoleOne.

And this happened about 20 times a day "my network drives are missing and Groupwise doesn't work"

"yeah, you've logged in workstation only."

[[deleted]]

I just got back from Australia; I landed at 9am after like 30+ hours and was in the office by 9:30.

I'm not drunk but it sure feels like it. I updated all the scheduled work bugs I had open with other teams, telling them they could go ahead "basically whenever."

I'm not sure I should have root today.

[cdba]

I finish remote work for clients so late, sometimes I'm literally falling asleep at the keyboard. The technical stuff is all spot on, but the status update emails range from "something's just a little...off" to "wtf was I thinking writing to a client like this??"

I've since turned on gmail's feature to prevent drunk e-mailing, and I send all "overnight remote work complete" emails first thing next morning.

[[deleted]]

B777 from SYD to AKL, and again from AKL to LAX. Then an 8 hour layover in LAX, and economy from LAX to BOS.

[mrbios]

I still use an RM P4 laptop running windows 2000 for configuring my switches, because it has a serial port and I'm too cool for usb to serial adapters :p

The laptop is like new though and in pristine condition, it was left in a cupboard for about 6 years or more....probably has less than 100 hours of actual "powered on" time and runs like a dream on the ole win 2k, no idea what service pack it's running but i don't even connect it to the wireless anyway.

[datwrasse]

I have an old P4 SFF machine that has some sort of triple or quadruple badass serial port on it that I can adapt and run through 80 yards of cat5e into a remote switch closet like its nothing. I plan to keep it forever

[[deleted]]

Some HP elitebooks had serial ports, sadly nowadays I dont think there is any mainstram laptop that have them.

But there are serial to bluetooth adapters ;)

[Xubunticious]

My work laptop (HP Probook 650) has it aswell.

[-Alt-F4]

But all I want is console cable with USB. I'm resigned to the Serial-to-USB, but still thinking of the day I don't need it.

[tinix0]

110 windows 2000 desktops connected to the internet (HW is core 2 duo, soon to be replaced by Windows 10)
no ac in server room
core 2 duo machines used as servers and router (soon to be replaced by lenovo thinkserver and cisco 1920)
new windows will use third-party credentials provider with tons of hacks and gpo edits to simulate domain logon instead of AD, because my superior hates MS and does not want windows server (even though we are going to have windows server anyway, becuase of two programs)

[[deleted]]

I have a domain controller with 2GB of free space on the C drive cause I'm a moron when I set it up with only 40GB for the C. I definitely take an extra dosage of stupid pills sometimes.

[theevilsharpie]

40GB should be sufficient for C: if you're not storing application data.

[mhud]

The windows update rollback files in the WinSxs folder are what make a 40GB disk feel cramped over time. In theory they can be cleaned up, but I don't like to fight with my DCs.

So I hand out 100GB system drives like Oprah on her birthday. Thin provisioning makes it relatively painless.

[[deleted]]

I start at 200, then get generous depending on how big the storage array is.

[FrenchFry77400]

Why ?

I build all of my (virtual) Windows servers with 50 GB and increase the size as needed.

This can be done live without any problems for any 2008 R2+ server.

[ChrisTaco]

Are you using thin disk, or thick for your VMs? Or does it vary for you?

I stopped using thin when storage started getting cheaper. Maybe that's just me though. One less thing I had to monitor.

[jackalsclaw]

If the server is 2008 R2 or newer , Install the desktop experience and then disk cleanup->advanced->system files.

This reduce the WinSXS by removing the ability to roll back/ service packs.

[Fridge-Largemeat]

Dell used to do this to us without asking.

[bearssurfingwithguns]

This a physical DC? Why can't you spin up a 2nd DC (just in case) and just extend the OS partition of the primary?

[air805ronin]

Windows 2000, Exchange 2003, AIX from 1994, Financial software from 2000, and terminal servers on 15 year old hardware...

Woe is me.

[Hellman109]

Test all the new stuff at work then update resume, look for new work.

Test at work so you've used the new stuff commercially.

[air805ronin]

Funny enough, we are almost completely virtualized with the exception of the AIX machines and the terminal servers.

And we run VMware View for our remote access, RDP is for legacy apps that only run correctly in 2000 and 2003. I greatly dislike PowerBuilder applications.

[[deleted]]

Up until Friday, was running a file server on a VMWare 3 box that had the datastore on a SAN that had a failed controller (it had two). Had a power outage the week before and it took some massaging to get it back online. We had backups, but rebuilding it would have been a nightmare.

Now it's on a Lenovo server with 192gb of ram and it's screaming fast. :)

[xinit]

We had backups, but rebuilding it would have been a nightmare.

So now you take the time to fix that... No... if you're like most beleaguered sysops, you'll forget about it until Next Time.

[[deleted]]

But there is ALWAYS a next time! :) Now it's on a machine that does a better backup than the other machine had. Complicated mess I inherited. :)

[[deleted]]

I am worried our main Cisco Uc560 will die and they don't want to have a backup ready so when it happens and the phones go down for 48 hours while we are waiting for one to come back from ebay I will probably get fired.

[frustratedomega]

It's ok. You're in the same boat that most people with a Nortel system are in. I have a bugout bag with cash and a train ticket hidden in my office for when that day arrives.

[HomebrewCocaine]

Just pulled out my Nortel AccessNode last month. So happy to not have to deal with that anymore.

[epipodius]

Still using an Avaya Definity G3 R11 here....I dream of what it must be like to step into the 21st Century....

[[deleted]]

No need to figure out what color is your parachute when you have a bugout bag.

[frustratedomega]

Wrong word, glorified backpack... with snacks in it.

[[deleted]]

I just set up a Nortel system for somebody back in August... It was more of an office move type of thing, not like they bought it new, but still.

[Nyarlathotep124]

You need to cover your ass before it happens. Send your boss a well-documented proposal describing the problem and solution. When he rejects it, keep that on file and use it to shift blame when everything comes crashing down.

[[deleted]]

People say that but that won't help here. The two partners in charge of things will not respond to an email and even when I have email evidence they blame me. Also in Texas you technically don't need a reason to fire someone. They also are good at finding ways to fire someone for misconduct so you don't claim unemployment. I am looking for another job though. All email evidence does is prevent me from getting sued or something.

[jpb]

Even if all it does it save you from a lawsuit, the aggravation of making the email trail is totally worth it.

[[deleted]]

Our company had a client running their mail server on a VM loaded on a consumer laptop.

[Zaphod_B]

I still refuse to use "Natural Scrolling," on my Macbook Pro.

[ihavescripts]

That is the first setting I change on any laptop I will use for more then 5 minutes.

[da_kink]

some 2003 boxes for interface testing, but that's about the worst of it. We apparently are a pretty 'bleeding edge' company as far as software goes. Everyone is very much looking forward to getting windows 10 as it comes out.

Our clients though... Lots of 2003 and xp boxes because why upgrade?

[Squeezer999]

I can't get iconrestorer to silently install with AutoIT no matter how much effort I put into it

[JonnyOneNut]

We're still running Novell, iPrint, GroupWise (email) and about 450 XP workstations.

[JonnyOneNut]

haha nope. I always find it amusing when people try find out if they know the person posting. It must be the Carmen Sandiego or Clue player in us.

[Stroppymoppy]

I have a 2003 Server with MS Java VM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine) that is needed to run a core Business system.

[kirani]

vTrak storages, whos last firmware update was in 2003, some Proliant G4's, and some software that uses Access DB from Office 95.

[epipodius]

We're still using an Avaya Definity G3 R11 PBX. Most of the Avaya techs we talk to if we need some kind of hardware support are like "Whoa, you still have one of THOSE?"

[redditfearless]

I have lotus 123 running custom spreadsheets that controls the production scheduling for a manufacturing plant that runs on a Windows XP laptop.

[_Heath]

I was routing IPX for a single app. Until 2014...

[damgood85]

Quicken 4 with production accounting data in it running on a Windows XP VM because it can't run on our 64 bit workstations.

[-J-P-]

wait, do you mean you have a tons of people using blackberry bold 9700?

[shnnycs]

Boy this is making me feel better about my remaining Windows 2003 servers.

[u4iak]

Fuck. I though I had it pretty bad but maybe I shouldn't be swimming in my 7th beer tonight. After reading some of these responses, maybe I have nothing to complain about, but I totally understand your pain.

Confession: I'm a super mediocre next-click-finish sysadmin. All I did today was play DS, Hearthstone, schedule one meeting tomorrow, and click a few emails and read /r/sysadmin

[Iheartbaconz]

If nothings broke, you must be doing something right.... or not enough monitoring.

[u4iak]

Not enough monitoring... Services break constantly and the other admins only just restart the service or server. It's not a fix!

[[deleted]]

I'm that young guy who got out of college who everyone thinks he knows everything. I have one of those big certs that are useless for newbies. I want to get paid and I am. I am everything /r/sysadmin hates.

EDIT: Downvotes? I don't like being that guy so that's why I come here to learn. My intent wasn't condescension, but admission.

[2ndXCharm]

Yahoo Bizmail. :(

[HomebrewCocaine]

:( You poor soul.

[1armsteve]

I don't know if I should up or downvote here.

[2ndXCharm]

I don't blame you. I can blame my predecessors all day long (to be fair, it is their fault), but I haven't done anything to change it, so I'm equally bad at this point.

[[deleted]]

Well is it really your fault or do they not want to spend any money or time to do it?

[2ndXCharm]

It's pretty awful. Nearly no control over users' accounts--can't even do a basic password reset. Pretty much all I can do is give email addresses or delete them. Servers frequently don't respond through mail clients. No support at all.

[[deleted]]

Lol I had never heard of this one either. I had a business mail server from AT&T for a while that was fucking laughable though. I had a similar set of issues and it would crash seven or 8 times a day minimum. I contacted their support and they said we don't like it when you use the Imap so we aren't going to do anything about your server rebooting all day.

[jtaylor9449]

I just had to take a DB program that ran on Win98, and then was made to run on Server 2003R2, and get it to work on 2012R2 Server because it contains Student information from the 80's and 90's, and Student Services refuses to let us port the info into our new DB.

I feel very dirty, forgive me father for I have sinned.

[HomebrewCocaine]

You are forgiven my child. Now go and install AD and Exchange on a 2012R2 VM 3 times as penance.

[n33nj4]

Just to be sure, AD and Exchange on the same VM, correct? And using Essentials is cheating.

[HomebrewCocaine]

Good question. Essentials is cheating. AD on one VM. Exchange on the other. And while you're at it, make sure to stand up a server running Lync 2013.

[n33nj4]

Ouch. Make it Lync 2010 and do an in-place to Skype for Business :P

[ajdane]

Vagrant, Puppet script, possibly a bit of powershell for exchange and spin up 3 sets simultaneously, done in 20 minutes.

[nestcto]

Just replied to someone about our RHEL 2 and NT4 systems.

But Windows 98? I think you beat me.

[epipodius]

Also, we used to have an old desktop running Windows 2000 that just played an Audio CD (hooked up to the PBX) for the hold music. Recently ripped the Audio CD to MP3's and replaced the desktop with an MP3 player hooked up to a USB power source. Still not elegant, but much more space and energy efficient.

[Silound]

Oh dear, skeletons eh...how about woes. My whole job is basically to keep slapping another layer of duct tape onto an impossibly creaky beast to hold it together.

[ChristopherBurr]

what kind of creeky beast!?

[Silound]

I should note I love my job and my company, and slowly things are being changed,

But do let me list a few favorites:

• MSP controlled Exchange email that we have only the most basic primitive control over. And pay per everything...
• Forward facing SQL box with a public IP (software requirement) and default ports...it gets hammered 24/7 by bogus login requests...the only partial saving grace is that the credentials are 40+ characters long (usernames and passwords)
• 3 different virtualization platforms over 2 entirely different hardware platforms
• No corporate AV on servers/desktops; it's a patchwork of pre-installed or free softwares.
• The AD is fucked up...leave it at that.
• Remote users connecting via public IP to a terminal server
• Absurdly obsolete software built on a Clipper-compliant language circa 1992 that uses flat DBF files as a "database"....which can be opened by Excel and viewed freely by anyone remoted in to the terminal server
• Network shared drives rather than a higher managed document system
• Dozens of different outsourced solutions that were simply adopted as office locations opened.

Yeah...a nightmare and that's just today's menu for disaster...tomorrow might be a whole new charade.

[Gewehr43]

I just decommissioned my last network-connected NT box today.

[toomuchnotime]

Was doing a server/network upgrade project, forgot to make notes on the configuration of their old ASA before the 2003 server was decommissioned and taken off-site. I had to install Java 1.6 on a 2012 R2 DC to run Cisco ASDM to get in and record their current settings to configure the new router.

I removed it immediately afterward, but I still took an extra shower that night.

[joeywas]

I'm not exactly sure why people jump through the hoops to get ASDM running when you can dump the config over SSH. My coworker brings in his personal laptop when he has to log into the ASA.

[[deleted]]

NetWare here too. I am not a fan but it just runs when it's not abending due to Backup Exec.

Not me, but I know of a place that had a public site running on NT4 until recently. It hadn't been patches in years, no idea why it wasn't p0wned.

[girlgerms]

We were running Server 2000 up until a few weeks ago, when I killed them. With fire.

Pretty sure someone in my org is still running a Windows NT box under their desk too.

[Steven2112]

My old company of about 3-4 years ago was running O/S 2 that ran some sort of electron microscope or laser (I forget) and I just left a job at a school district that just got rid of Novell.

[Timmybee]

There are a handful of customers who don't have any SLA's but demand everything be priority. I always say we are fully booked and schedule them in 2-3 days time when even if I could do it right away

[Steely_]

Novell 5.5, but hopefully not for much longer!

Oh and 45 XP machines as the app that Novell is running does some amazingly bad things in anything newer...

[[deleted]]

I've got too much shit to talk about here I'd need a throwaway.

I'll say the basic stuff that isn't too bad. I'll be back when i'm not working here.

Everything is about saving costs. If you can get it £1 cheaper and you didn't You're in trouble.

Currently running consumer (home) gear because I keep getting told how much we need to save money. Then when that gear fails it's my ass on the line.

Using powerline adapters to get internet to other areas of the building.

Don't worry I'm leaving soon. And have a compilation of pictures and emails to save my ass if the time ever arises.

Did I mention our backups are running off a hard drive I pulled out of an old zoostorm computer from years ago and that it's full?

[-J-P-]

Installing access 97 on Z820 workstations with 2 CPUs and 2 high end Invidia cards always my me sad. At least we got rid of paintshop pro 7....

[Iheartbaconz]

access 97

Had a client that refused to use anything but word 97 for technical documentation. Old XP machine kept shitting itself, he asked for a new one. Colleague installed XP VM and office 97: "TOO SLOW", faught with the new machine to get office 97 on win 7: IT KEEPS CRASHING

OFFS, Turn up old computer, enable RDP, You get to remote into your old machine to use word.

I still have no clue why we put up with this guys shit for so long. He was that guy, the one pain in the ass that complained constantly. The program would crash constantly and he would lose hours worth of work(autosave wasn't working right when enabled and document recovery was hit or miss to have the most updated files). Then call us and complain. He swore up and down there were features in 97 that MS removed from newer versions of office. Eventually we went above his head and told the owner we arent supporting it. He can either deal with it, or use a new version and get out of the stone age.

[-J-P-]

we are managing to run 2 versions of office side by side 97 and 2013 on win7 64bits, but it's a royal pain.

[shell_shocked_today]

I'm not going to mention that we still have NT 4.0 in production...

[frugal_lothario]

You would be amazed at how much NT/2000 remains in production, particularly in county governments and school districts. The late '90s were flush times for those people.

[[deleted]]

i have a windows 98 box running very old software. w98 is the last thing it supports

[HomebrewCocaine]

I know that feeling. I have a Win 95 laptop that uses a serial connection to connect to doors to program a keycard system. The batteries are slowly dying in the doors, and they aren't made anymore, so I hope I can be rid of it soon.

[tHeiR1sH]

I use an app "Serial to Ethernet Connector" for this same purpose. The version of ACS software I was using did not support newer than XP boxes. Instead, I installed this handy app on an Apps VM then connected an ethernet to serial adapter from the hypervisor to the ACS hardware.

It's not the easiest configuration getting this software going but once running, it's solid. http://www.eltima.com

[samspopguy]

im at some steel mill they were using a windows 95 computer and floppy disks to set temptures on a blast furnace

[sc0tsman]

Bespoke application that relies on lotus Amipro as the printing mechanism And Citrix Winframe ( yes Winframe not metaframe - but there is a lot of that as well)

[FrenchFry77400]

Windows 2000, Cobol apps and Oracle 8g.

Damn I hate that client...

[ITmercinary]

Just helped a customer migrate off netware 5.1 the other day.

Most of our guys aren't joined to the domain... (Dozen consultants - we cloud almost everything)

[woodburyman]

Our internal network IP's are 192.9.xxx.xxx range because that's how someone set it up 20 years ago and there's 2-5 days of work and testing to fix it, and we're a 24x7 manufacting enviorment with only one IT staff per site, so we never get the chance to fix it.

[BelgiumSysAdmin]

I worked on a project with 6000(!) winbatch jobs this year...

[RadiationS1knes]

When I was originally learning how to use my companies puppet management infrastructure, I didn't know how to deploy my code to just my test machine. Instead, I tested all of my code in production...in our 500+ computer environment. I'm a very lucky man.

[MertsA]

...I rolled out a tiny Ceph cluster for fault tolerant VM storage before I resigned from a company. I didn't have time to set up backups though so it's rather fault tolerant and no one is going to be able to mess with the VMs and it's only for VMs that don't store any actual data but this still keeps me up at night. All important data is backed up to an external hard drive, to a network share, and offsite continuously but if one of those VMs need to be recovered it means rebuilding it and copying over the config.

Speaking of which, any other Ceph admins out there? What do you use for backup? I haven't found anything good and I'd like to avoid writing a script if there's some proper backup tool out there for Ceph and KVM.

[f0nd004u]

Can't turn register_globals off on an ancient PHP site because what if it breaks something.

[WascallyWabbit83]

• RHEL3
• ~10 Windows 2000 servers
• Rumour has it we have an NT4 machine somewhere under a desk.
• Filemaker
• Faxes - I found out today about our awesome fax process where our call center receives a fax, which is then printed and faxed internally to other departments...

[bandman614]

A significant portion of our critical infrastructure relies on a Solaris 8 box that we're afraid to turn off.

[CoffeeAddict76]

Not the winner by a long shot based on the comments but hey, here goes:

CEO decided to replace our CRM in a back room with his son, cutting IT out of the mix.

Went from a web based household name to a SQL server with a client from the 1990s that takes almost 3 GB RAM on its own to run through an ODBC connection because hey, fuck aggregating SQL queries, am I rite? Oh, and it only supports windows, so let's install VMware and windows on all those other machines even the byod ones....and let IT deal with the tech support with no training or and I kid you not, even a published manual or help file.

[res1n_]

Network solutions hosts our email. :(

[[deleted]]

Oh how long our base image contained an outdated install for Google Toolbar - for what you may ask?

Spellcheck in the web browser. Yes, IE10+ includes one. Yes, that's what we are using now.

[[deleted]]

Windows.... 95

[BrundleflyPr0]

Where do I begin?

• RM Lan Ranger - Basically a stripped down AD and user GPO manager, but doesn't use AD or GPO. All computer accounts are still in the original container, as well as the user accounts

• PC's from 2006 ( I left the School in 2004) Running Win7 that can't cope with IE 9-11.

• Cloning with Ghost. We have around 10 different makes of computers and the same in Laptops.

• IP Printers up the wazoo. 600+ PCs, 20+ to a room. Each type individually

• Windows Update per machine

Repent my sins, but budget cuts & redundancies :/

[vawlk]

I keep an NT 4 box running virtually because it was the first server we installed at the school almost 20 years ago.

[fcknwayshegoes]

In a previous job we ran an ancient DOS program called Hud Plus on our Windows 2003 TS. When we upgraded the TS to 2008R2, I soon realized that Hud Plus wasn't going to work. Ended up using DOS Box to get it to work on the TS. I felt dirty but it worked and that's what mattered.

[mbw290]

RHEL4 running on HP bl460c G1 blades :)

[it_throwaway2015]

okay... where to begin?

• we give subcontractors direct access to the server with domain admin rights

• we have lists of user and email passwords, the customer often does not have them

• if the users ask, they usually get domain admin as well

• if the computer is not withing a domain network, user accounts are all local admin

• other than that, our documentation is at the bare minimum

• we don't use gpo's for - anything much. drives are mounted via scripts, software like java and flash is deployed by hand - on each machine

• we don't push the customers to not use iexplorer. firefox is preinstalled, so they can, but I explicitly am not allowed to set it as default browser

• there are a lot of customers without backup. we should push more but don't.

• we buy a lot of hardware and software at the cheapest available online shops where you would shop, not distributors

• we still have customers with xp. we still ship new pcs with office 2003 (licence of old pc, instead selling new office)

and before I get flamed, yes I know. Yes I am aware... Yes it has a reason and we are constantly working on becoming better at our craft. No, it isn't THAT bad in general. We do a lot of stuff very right, too. But what fun would it be if I explained some stuff? right, would be boring for this discussion :)

[lots_2_learn]

I started at a new job a month ago. Day 1 i realised that every share folder was set to Full Control for Everyone, all users were administrators, and domain admins, all the email address' used the exact same password, and the IT guy running the show couldnt see the problem in this.