Scotland Yard still have no idea why their network fell over

The Metropolitan Police Service is still trying to get to the bottom of the outage that prevented staff accessing some IT services nearly a month after it first emerged. The "major network issue" surfaced on 9 June preventing coppers from accessing a number of ICT services including printer services and systems access for MPS …

[Anonymous Coward]

Not hard...

just look at the change control logs and see what was done prior to the issue and roll back...

Either that, isolate and investigate.

[Elmer Phud]

Captain's Log

Do they have to meet up first to make sure the logs all match up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a cynic..

They just throw the servers down the stairs until they agree with the pre-written logs

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...

I'm going out on a limb, but I think they may have already thought of that... After all, it only takes one eejit to make a change without change control or not properly specifying their change in the change control system to really balls things up for everyone. I've seen it many times in heavily change controlled environments. There is always one person who can't be arsed with process.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fit up?

"Whilst we understand the issue, due to its complexity, investigation will continue into its root cause. We cannot provide further detail until this work in complete".... or in police reality, It's obviously the work of some malicious hacker, we need more powers to deal with this threat to our security, and if you don't agree with us, you might accidently hit your head in our cells.

[CaptainHook]

Have they tried

switching it off and on again?

[CADmonkey]

Speaking of power...

Have they tried turning it off, then turning it on again?

(Soz, been watching IT crowd..)

[Captain Scarlet]

But

What if they are using Windows Vista?

[Michael Mokrysz]

Robot

Then we're all going to die.

[adnim]

Perhaps

a cleaner unplugged critical hardware in order to plug in a vacuum cleaner.

A series of backup failures at a site I was based was traced back to new cleaning staff doing just that.

[Suburban Inmate]

Ah that old chestnut

Come on people, by now we have learned to allow for ANY kind of FUBAR, not just the logically sensible kinds... Right?

Should be in the curriculum and then some.

[Robert E A Harvey]

kettle

Go look for a kettle not plugged into the wall, quite near something important that is.

it's usually a kettle.

[BristolBachelor]

Easy solution

Push a server down the stairs during the investigation. Further investigations will show that it is not functioning correctly; you can pin all the blame there.

When exactly the same fault occurs later, you can claim that it is unrelated...

[Red Bren]

Helping with enquiries

Maybe it fell down the stairs?

Or maybe the network can't cope with the volume of personal data that the police would like to store on each of us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Help

They do have the address of a good hacker they could call on for help in solving the problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But #

The Met uses Windows XP Pro, which works well. Although there are still print issues, we do have a backup system which allows printing, just without our individual print preferences. Considering the security requirements and restrictions with a most police applications, the system is remarkably robust.

[Jacqui]

Re: Re: But#

The BOFH team is "Working around the clock" but the PFY's currently employed (BOFH's are too expensive) have been told by thier mums to be home by 11pm or they get locked out. Which is sort of cramping the "around the clock" bit :-)

[Boris Winkle]

Police Story

Apparently they're working around the clock to get this fixed.

[Fat Northerner]

Journalists?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world

Could it be the news of the world?

[Will Godfrey]

The IT bods found a hole

and the police are looking into it.

The old ones are the best!

[json]

I supposed they've heard of wireshark?

..just asking

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm...

Perhapse they could try plugging the clock back in, and see if it was providing NTP sync for the s3ervers in quest.

[kain preacher]

Examine ?

Examine ?? In America the servers would go missing . Records altered to show that these servers never exist .

[Dave Cheetham]

Obvious response!

Bet their immediate response was " 'Ello, 'ello, 'ello. What's going on 'ere then?"

[Linker3000]

Canon

Well, if their Canon printers behave anything like our LBP5050N they have a strong suspect.

We bought our printer in November and it hasn't worked reliably for a day since. We've had three engineering call outs, they have replaced the comms board and have just foisted some new drivers on us that make sod all difference.

Only one person in an office of 50 has managed to print to it (from XP) and to make that happen the printer has to be switched off/on as it doesn't come out of sleep mode properly.

In deperation we bought a Brother printer that sits beside the Canon and 'just works'.

[Leeroy]

50 users ?

Why the hell are you using a shitty consumer grade laser printer for an office that size, it would cost you a fortune (if it actually worked:) for new toner / drum / itb / fuser etc.

Just bite the bullet and get a colour copier ffs.

[bleh_meh]

It's the Canon crap

After over 10 years of having HP hardware to work with I left that job went to another outfit who decided to buy Canon printers, well.... it only took me 30 minutes on each and every desktop to install a convoluted proprietary printer network driver... and that was before trying to get online scanning from the MFP's. Scanning simply won't work unless the computer AND printer are on the same physical network switch.

[Winkypop]

Maybe they should convert to:

...iPlods

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohhhh...

...the Lulz, the Lulzzzzz.

(I'm Anonymous, I am)

[The Morgan Doctrine]

Supply chain EPROM virus, as reported by the Register in 2003

The Register's March 10, 2003 story on how the Baghdad air defense system was brought down by a virus hidden in a printer's EPROM (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/03/10/one_printer_one_virus_one/) might be a clue that more is at work here than meets the eye.