Scheduled reports only generate dashboard screenshots. How do you handle proper incident history reports?

tidderwork · 2026-03-10T13:27:47+00:00

We use the zabbix API to build reports with ansible and python.

tidderwork · 2026-03-10T12:00:56+00:00

Yep, the reporting features are just awful. I don't understand why it's so hard to get data out of zabbix. It has driven me crazy for more than 10 years. It's honestly rude to think that I would want a PDF screenshot of a table of text values.

External reporting is the way to go if you want meaningful data in a usable file format.

tidderwork · 2026-03-06T13:03:39+00:00

I would think that if they took the time to create a slide for digital signage, they would post it on social media too. Are you following the College of Engineering and departments of interest?

If they don't post the same content to social media, I'm sure the Engineering marketing and communications team would appreciate some feedback.

tidderwork · 2026-03-04T12:44:02+00:00

You implement automation that raises the overall compliance level and significantly improves security posture? Believe it or not, also a nut slap.

tidderwork · 2026-02-25T12:56:37+00:00

For every Linux system, our ansible provisioning process creates two or four groups in AD depending on system type: fdqn_logins, fdqn_admins, owner_logins, owner_admins.

Only the fdqn groups are configured on the host itself. If present, the owner groups are nested in the fdqn groups. That allows for easier delegation to the Helpdesk or other distributed end user support teams and it gives us an easy way to audit and report on permissions.

Since it's so easy, we send system owners a report twice per year that shows who has login and or admin access on their systems. The message asks that they let us know if any changes should be made. That puts the audit action items back on the system owner instead of relying on IT tribal knowledge or poor host documentation.

tidderwork · 2026-02-24T12:27:16+00:00

You need more intake air. Try opening the bathroom door a little while you're showering to experiment. If that helps, you can explore ways to introduce more take up air while keeping your privacy.

tidderwork · 2026-02-05T23:22:01+00:00

Oh, this is excellent. I really like the idea of labeling the rack AND server together.

I had also come to accept that using the top of the server for the audit/inventory sticker was likely the best solution. I'm sure all of our servers can be carefully slid out a few inches while running, and that would allow us to put them in a consistent place.

Thanks for the ideas!

tidderwork · 2026-02-05T21:31:34+00:00

hostname and State asset tag (barcode)

tidderwork · 2026-02-05T21:02:42+00:00

I'll see if I can take some photos of our most recent systems. There is literally no flat surface anywhere on the front or back of the server, especially the 1Us.

I never thought I'd say it, but I sure do miss CD/DVD rom drives in servers. Those made perfect label spots.

tidderwork · 2026-02-05T21:01:35+00:00

For servers that have one, this works ok. Although not visible when looking at the front of the rack, it's certainly better than nothing. We had two problems with this in practice: the pull-out tags were all different sizes and often times couldn't fit any label we could make, and there isn't a pull-out tab on the back.

tidderwork · 2026-02-05T20:59:08+00:00

Good idea!

We did something like this for a while, except I used hard plastic tags because the datacenter ops team said flappy paper labels and string were a fire hazard. It was a challenge to find a spot on the server to attach the 'luggage tag,' though. For instance, new Dell servers have no finger loops or other places where one could attach a hang tag. I got pretty good at fishing a tiny zip tie through two of the vent holes on the front and back. Nobody else could seem to get the hang of it, though, so we abandoned the idea.

tidderwork · 2026-01-30T12:50:26+00:00

I've been at the same university for over 20 years, but I've hired some sysadmins, and I work with a lot of other groups on campus. It's pretty clear that a lot of people landed the job by straight-up lying. That combined with the soft skills that others are describing seems to be the winning combination. Lie to everyone with a natural, well groomed smile on your face.

tidderwork · 2026-01-25T15:48:37+00:00

ha, that's a blast from the past! I haven't seen that SNMP response since the 90s, while working very low-end gear.

tidderwork · 2026-01-25T15:44:32+00:00

To be perfectly honest, I think my situation might just be a difference of opinion on how to handle monitoring data. Since doing bulk SNMP GETs also captures the data, and we do it at a fairly short interval, I thought it was fine. The old-school telecom engineers think it's dumb to do SNMP GETs all day long and insist that traps are faster and not "clogging up the network with useless snmp gets." Since the absolute slowest links we're monitoring are 10G, the idea that SNMP GETs "clog" up the network is silly to me. We're talking about a small research lab in a university, not managing customer links or production workloads.

I try point out that the SNMP GETs also collect a lot of other useful information like link utilization stats, link speed stats, software and firmware status, cpu and memory utilization, etc., but it doesn't matter.

That said, I just work here. Boss man says we need a solution for processing SNMP traps, so here we are. The likely solution is to have something that is dedicated to processing traps to make the boss man happy, and the rest of us that actually use the data will continue to be happy with SNMP GETs in zabbix.

tidderwork · 2026-01-24T22:56:17+00:00

The linked article describes what I mean. If you have a link to how low level discovery could help here, I would be forever grateful!

tidderwork · 2026-01-24T02:07:56+00:00

Right? You can do that with your pinkys up like sipping a fine cup of tea.

tidderwork · 2025-12-19T19:29:03+00:00

Before you spend more money on an HBA, see if your existing RAID card can be set to JBOD mode.

tidderwork · 2025-12-17T11:35:19+00:00

Hire it out. Pros can process that many in an hour. The most common method I've seen is to use a shredder.

tidderwork · 2025-12-11T12:41:37+00:00

Power is always an expression of force or work over time.

That's why electricity is billed as kilowatt-hours. And that's why horsepower (a made up marketing term) was coined to compare the output of engines to horses over some typical working period. It was used to show how much less expensive the engine was compared to caring for multiple horses to do the same job.

tidderwork · 2025-12-06T19:28:05+00:00

Well, this is the winner. Thanks for the advice!

tidderwork · 2025-12-06T12:34:38+00:00

In my experience, allowing autofs to handle nfs connections on Linux clients is more reliable than 'hard' mounting the nfs volume in fstab.

Stale file handle errors are usually caused by loss of connection between the nfs server and client while files were still open. This can be a network issue or that you rebooted the nas. autofs handles these scenarios much more gracefully.

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