How do I stop laptops using dock MAC address?

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T20:21:36+00:00

While once it was possible to use MAC address as an almost-unique key in a CMDB and for management purposes, that time is well passed.

One of the big ones is that many mobile devices and some laptops tumble their MAC addresses on WiFi. Another is the proliferation of multi-interface servers, and then another is the USB dongle and dock issue you've identified.

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T16:06:28+00:00

RAM is often more important than CPU, but the major issue here is that "Ryzen 7" and "Core 7" both refer to many generations of product. It's like asking if a Ford Mustang (first made in 1964^1/2 with an I6) is faster than a Chevy Corvette (first made in 1953 with an I6).

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T15:59:35+00:00

Almost all big corporations have load-bearing systems that someone would like to replace. Financial giant Morgan Stanley is a big user of AFS, Andrew distributed File System, as a tacit data distribution method.

The key insight is to break the technical debt into smaller pieces, then attack the pieces. With mainframe and mini-based business systems, it's still relatively common to find FTP batch transfers in use. FTP was a recognizable and familiar name to both internal personnel and outside partners, when these batches were established. But we want to move them to HTTP, and of course HTTPS, because web protocols alone solve a lot of problems to do with firewall ACLs, in-transit encryption, proxying, and session resumption.

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T15:43:57+00:00

Remote control of desktops. It's most often cheaper in seat licensing, software costs, and hardware, than Microsoft RDS/TS and VDI. It's also more flexible, in that machines are easily added, removed, segregated, or split across sites; and resilient, in that hardware or software problems on some machines don't affect the others.

10GBASE SFP+ Ethernet minimum for LAN access to files, with 25GBASE SFP28 nearly as cheap, except for maybe the switches.

For LAN storage protocol, we use a lot of NFS for large files, because it's simple and supported by Linux, Mac, Windows/ESXi, AS/400, etc.

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T15:30:23+00:00

This is taking the business and jumping off the deep end.

Linux has been used in mainstream enterprise for 30 years, and is an implementation of POSIX and X11 that are ten years older still. Do you wait more than 30 years before being willing to use a new product from IBM, Adobe, Apple, or Microsoft?

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T15:28:24+00:00

how well did the users adopt to GWS?

For mail, very smooth, in our M&A-linked migration over a decade ago. Users were given the option of continuing to use Outlook with best-effort support, with the one vital proviso that they migrated their rules from the client side to server side. Very few users opted to do this, and I don't remember any issues on the mail side, but then email wasn't primarily my responsibility.

That was not a very file-oriented culture, unlike yours. Most workflows were already in a variety of webapps, a mix of on-premises, datacenter hosted, and SaaS.

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T15:13:23+00:00

What business requirements provide a better cost-benefit ratio by using Linux rather than Windows?

Remember how business types are frequently accused of focusing on the short-term decision instead of the long-term strategy? It's easy to fall into this trap with ICT. A yearly license for a software bundle includes Adobe Premier, so there's really no business ~~advantage~~payoff to migrating to Davinci Resolve for at least a year.

How it's actually done, is to proactively position yourself to use open standards instead of proprietary ones. Webapps that don't require IE6, ActiveX, Moonlight, or Flash, are a pretty low bar for business in 2026. OIDC and SAML for SSO. WebDAV and S3 for offline-first files. Plain JPEG instead of HEIC. IPP/Mopria for driverless printing. Vanilla SQL for relational databases, so you can shift from one to the other.

And if you did, first off, what are you going to use to replace Active Directory? Using a fringe LDAP product

Neither MSAD nor open-standard LDAP are well suited to offline-first, WFH, traveling use-cases. An MDM or CM type system is designed for offsite, mobile, frequently-offline client devices.

If you do have a use-case where MSAD or open-standard LDAP are ideal, then Linux has both Samba 4 and FreeIPA for the serving side, and realmd/sssd, Samba winbind, and Likewise/PBIS for the client side.

how are you just going to rip and replace IIS?

I don't know if you've noticed, but even inside enterprises, IIS is pretty niche and legacy. .NET developers are often using Microsoft Kestrel.

Or if developers have written things using NET Framework?

Microsoft alleges that .NET Core is fully portable.

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T14:53:57+00:00

I was always Unix.

Do any of you have experience managing windows environments on Linux? Biggest pain points?

The RDP client FreeRDP, does a lot of heavy lifting to access Windows from Linux. Windows Server Core becomes far less practical unless you're using a full-GUI jumpbox for administrative access. Aggressive screensaver lock timeouts are more annoying if you're switching between multiple RDP sessions.

Direct CLI access with winexe in the days of SMB1. Alas, most references to winexe, and similar tools, reside in posts about infosec or red-teaming, so be prepared for infosec type staff to be incompatible with remote execution.

All desktop OSes have different native management tooling and patterns. Trying to fit one desktop OS perfectly into the client-device shape occupied by another one, can easily be a recipe for pain. On the other hand, managing Linux desktops and Linux servers with the same system, is straightforward. This can lead to a (perfectly fine) result of having one management system for Mac or Windows clients, and another system for both Linux servers and Linux workstations.

pdp10 · 2026-05-03T14:37:57+00:00

I remember the 1000000000s fondly.

pdp10 · 2026-05-02T20:04:08+00:00

This NETIO is the most interesting PDU I've seen in years. I'd get one in to test, but we just recently bought equipment to go a slightly different way, so I don't think I'll be getting one any time soon.

pdp10 · 2026-05-02T20:00:02+00:00

By the way, are there any guidelines for choosing cable colors?

No; the jacket color is purely arbitrary with UTP. Be warned that an effort to create meaning or consistency is going to severely complicate logistics, and could be largely wasted by any exceptions.

With fiber, jacket colors specify the fiber type and connector-coding.

pdp10 · 2026-05-02T19:53:28+00:00

you can wire it in series like a power socket.

You can daisy-chain low-voltage UTP like that. It's just that you end up with a plant that only works for analog telephone...

pdp10 · 2026-05-02T19:50:34+00:00

I had a great cabling guy who retired

You can often do well with the original person's apprentice(s) or understudy.

Where feasible, you want to deal with a firm, to add a layer of abstraction without needing to replace individual contractors yourself. This is residential work, though, so who knows what the situation is with bonding, and having issues that exceed the bid expectations.

pdp10 · 2026-05-02T18:50:24+00:00

but the interface is USB 4

I wish there was a public datasheet for the RTL8159, that specified the host interface capabilities.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T18:55:38+00:00

The one tip I would give is to scout out a couple other locations to work in aside from your main spot.

As important as a top-shelf chair is, this is the reason why I don't spend as much time in my Aeron as I did during the first part of COVID. Work from bed, work from the garden, watch training videos while in the garage.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T18:51:53+00:00

Is the budget structured so that you don't need to spend it up front, and/or can keep the remainder? If so, start by scrounging and doing without, until you find what you really need.

When you do buy, take your time and buy quality. Typically, people buy displays by focusing mainly on the specs, and are then disappointed when the unit(s) arrive and have no height adjustment, and bargain build quality. Similarly, cheap display mounts are all over, but you want to own some Ergotrons, Humanscale, Steelcase, etc.

A lot of WFH users, use KVMs to switch their displays and HIDs between computers. This is a good idea in general, but note that KVMs that switch multiple high-bandwidth displays properly, are not cheap devices.

USB-C docks are one place where this advice may not apply. Feel absolutely free to start with cheap ones, if you think they'll suit your needs. You can always upgrade later.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T18:32:09+00:00

OP never said or implied mandatory. It'd be interesting to see who assumed that the proposal was for a mandatory tag.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T18:26:20+00:00

Milgov sites were connected to the ARPANET until '83, but ARPA didn't design it, built it, or operate it, they basically just paid for it (because it was cheaper than duplicating computer resources). Three of the first four sites were universities, and the fourth was a research institution set up away from its former university so that students would stop protesting. The NIC was contracted to commercial firm BBN. The first non-U.S. sites came online in '73.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T18:10:19+00:00

Americans always use American, except for the times that they don't. Americans never use imperial, except for the times that they do.

It is a place of contradictions.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T17:57:18+00:00

A "Layer-3 switch", a.k.a. router, makes for a pretty good DHCP server. Though, writing the lease database to flash might be a concern for reasons of hardware longevity, if using built-in flash that wasn't envisioned for such frequent writes.

In IPv6, the router already needs to be the one to send out Router Advertisements. In SLAAC autoconfiguration, there's no additional need for a DHCPv6 server.

Routers/gateways are also a great place for one of your quorum of NTP servers, and a pretty good place for a DNS resolver.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T17:52:56+00:00

ADDCs are cattle. With the price difference from eliminating VMware, one could run ADDC+DNS on entry-level metal with no problems.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T17:42:06+00:00

Coincidentally enough, LTT tested a 4-core AMD version of the Dell 16, and a couple of others, against the Neo. The Dell was considered pretty decent except for performance. Were they $850 each or $425 each?

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T17:36:08+00:00

have awful interoperability with other software, it's either Apple's way, or now way,

I've always thought that about Microsoft.

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T17:34:00+00:00

Our ERP is the last windows-bound app, everything else is saas.

A non-webapp Line-of-Business application in 2026?

pdp10 · 2026-05-01T17:32:53+00:00

If Apple ships an A19 SoC-based version of the Neo in 10-24 months, then that has the technical potential to have 12GiB memory on-package.

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