back to article Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

Every Friday, The Register presses the OFF button for the week with a fresh instalment of On Call, our column that recounts readers' experiences of taking on tricky tech support jobs in exotic places. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Edmund" who once worked for a very large internet service provider and was …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    A wasted trip

    Yeah, but 12 hours of overtime.

    This is what would happen in the days before smartphones. Then again, in this case it wouldn't have helped since the numpties mangling this job were idiots.

    I suspect that the one competent guy was the one who sent him out to power cycle the router. Then he went home and the night shift came in without instructions, so they bungled the rest.

    I call that a lack of internal communication.

    1. Joe W Silver badge

      Re: A wasted trip

      What's not to like? Except he should have brought his skis as well ;) then it would have been a good trip. Ski down the mountain, see how many runs you can do before the equipment arrives. And Saturday is a good day for skiing as well, fresh snow etc.

      (I never managed to land that job at WSL, pity, though I'm more for "going on ski" rather than "standing on ski" as the Norwegians say...)

    2. simonlb Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: A wasted trip

      I'd have challenged the decision as to why a power cycle wasn't an option and said, "I'm stood here in front of the bloody thing, you lot aren't. Standard procedure for any hardware issue like this is to reboot. Even the vendor will tell you to do that."

      If there are enough technical people on the call, they'll probably support you as you're being completely sensible. If the router comes back up and there are still concerns about it's functionality, they can schedule a replacement at a later date.

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        Re: A wasted trip

        "I'm stood here in front of the bloody thing, you lot aren't.

        But they are looking at the same thing on a shared screen , so they are in effect there.

        If they're the router experts and a screen of gibbesrish is telling them that , who are you , as a subordinate , to question that?

        Could be many factors you dont know about .

        The gibberish could be telling them "Dangerous heat levels in the PSU" which they have previously seen cause a fire.

        That said a polite enquiry just for enlightenment might be nice ,

        and also because the "turn it off an on" is a rarely not worth trying

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: A wasted trip

          "and also because the "turn it off an on" is a rarely not worth trying"

          Reminds me of an early '80s AI koan ...

          A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

          Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

          Knight turned the machine off and on.

          The machine worked.

          1. Munchausen's proxy
            Pint

            Re: A wasted trip

            And that reminds me of the magic switch:

            https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/1232

            And for more Zen, it was installed by a person named Knight.

            1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

              Re: A wasted trip

              Wasn't that switch revealed to cause a little spike due to earth differences combined with capacitors? Just enough to make the machine crash, but not enough to damage it. I am citing from another El-Reg thread where which I cannot find the link to right now...

              1. collinsl Silver badge

                Re: A wasted trip

                The original story:

                http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

            2. systemBuilder22

              Re: A wasted trip

              Thomas Knight, MIT, co-founder (I think) of LISP Machines, incorporated, killed by the over-capitalized Symbolics, Inc., and later an MIT professor, inventor of the Oculus VLSI chip (forgot what that was but it was pretty cool)

          2. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge

            Re: A wasted trip

            I experience this koan on a regular basis: unless I am the one turning it off and on again, it doesn't work...

        2. OhForF' Silver badge

          Re: A wasted trip

          >The gibberish could be telling them "Dangerous heat levels in the PSU" which they have previously seen cause a fire.<

          In which case the only sensible instruction would be to do the first half of the power cycle - power it off and do it now.

          1. tyrfing

            Re: A wasted trip

            I suppose turning if off and on might make it work again for a short time. I'm thinking it lets off some heat while it's off and it takes a bit for it to come back up.

            Unlikely, but not impossible. And if you say "Right, that's done" and pack up, it might become a problem again when you're halfway down the hill.

          2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: A wasted trip

            >In which case the only sensible instruction would be to do the first half of the power cycle - power it off and do it now.

            In the event of fire consult the operations manual,

            Discover that it doesn't mention fire

            Start the process to request a change to the manual

            This triggers a new testing requirement where you have to set fire to the machine to check the step sin the manual

          3. PC Paul

            Re: A wasted trip

            Or to put it in WWII meme format,

            HAVE YOU TRIED

            TURNING IT OFF

            AND

            LEAVING IT OFF?

        3. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: A wasted trip

          "But they are looking at the same thing on a shared screen , so they are in effect there."

          In effect, except for the inability to push that power switch.

          And...while we're waiting for the replacement router to get here, let's try turning this one off and on again.

          (anyone who has seen The IT Crowd knows that!)

        4. Dvon of Edzore

          Re: A wasted trip

          "Dangerous heat levels in the PSU" would seem to indicate TURNING THE BLOODY THING OFF would be exactly what was needed. But what do I know, with my 40+ years of experience designing, installing and repairing computer hardware, Mr. Random Vogon on the Hypernet.

      2. Mage Silver badge
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: Even the vendor will tell you to do that.

        Everyone always tells you to power off/on-reboot.

        1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

          Re: Even the vendor will tell you to do that.

          For a good reason: It even works with machines from BEFORE the computer age.

      3. VBF
        Happy

        Re: A wasted trip

        Don't be ridiculous....that's FAR too sensible! :-)

    3. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: A wasted trip

      I suspect that the one competent guy was the one who sent him out to power cycle the router. Then he went home and the night shift came in without instructions, so they bungled the rest.

      If they were competent, they would have had the ability to remotely power cycle the router, and the console output would have been syslogged or the equivalent. But then SCADA is an additional cost that rarely gets compared to the cost of despatching a field engineer to push DBRB. On the plus side, if it doesn't come back, there's a warm body there to investigate. On the minus, cost of that field engineer, plus T&S.

      Then again, logging can be FUN!. I still remember a quirk of the good'ol Livingston Portmaster and Sun boxen. Power on the Portmaster, and it sent a break to all ports. Send a break to a Sun box, and it halts it. This was especially fun when one of the Sun servers also happened to be a root.server..

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: A wasted trip

        >Send a break to a Sun box, and it halts it.

        Disconnecting the console terminal also halts it

        Tripping over the RS232 cable to the console monitor also halts it - ask me how I know !

      2. J. Cook Silver badge

        Re: A wasted trip

        Ah, the good ol Livingston PortMonster... Fun memories.

        For [ISP], I did a similar job to "Edmund"- I was a field tech that occasionally got to go to a site at 2 in the morning (or usually catch a red-eye flight with replacement parts in two) to be remote hands for stuff.

        At one point [ISP] had a bunch of Portmaster 2e units connected for dial-in internet to a large quantity of 28.8 modems that were all shelled and put on a custom-built card rail setup, with a heaving large power supply that could run a rack's worth of modems. That was before companies like US Robotics decided to make a rack mount modem bank, and probably a year or three after that 56K came along and [ISP] swapped over to all digital for the landing points

        I did get to play with the portmasters that got pulled from sites as they were decommissioned; fun things, but for only having 20 ports on them, they were bulky. The modems and their custom rack mounts we tossed, I think- the boss wanted at least one of them, because he was the one that built the things.

    4. TheMeerkat Silver badge

      Re: A wasted trip

      According to the text “there was no impact on customers”, so router continued working but something was not right.

      It is quite possible that someone was afraid that the router won’t go back to live after the reboot and did not want to start having an impact on customers without a spare router being on hand in case the old one won’t come back after the restart.

  2. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    I think I'd have said: "Ok, to be electrically safe I'll power it down - could be a short circuit". Then "accidently" powered it back up "for testing purposes".

    1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
      Boffin

      Indeed, or the classic "dust in the power connection", where the only cure is to power down, pull the cable out, blow into the end of it and then reconnect it and test...

      1. ColinPa Silver badge

        Try turning the cable end to end

        My grandfather was the director of a foundations company (putting the concrete in the ground for constructing a building). He started from the ground up as it were.. and ended up as a director.

        One day the pipe to suck water out of the hole was not working, and the newly qualified engineer (university education!) could not get it to work. My grandfather was on site to check progress and said, take the pipe turn it end to end, and try again. The smarty pants said "that will never work". My grandad was the boss so the workers did it - and it worked!

        My father explained to the embarrassed engineer that the pipe has a lining. If the lining becomes detached from one end then the water pushed the lining and causes a blockage. Turn it round, and the lining behaves properly.

        Ive done the same with an electrical cable - it often started working when turned end to end.

        1. Zoopy

          Re: Try turning the cable end to end

          "Ive done the same with an electrical cable - it often started working when turned end to end."

          Must have been DC power. With AC wiring, the changing current direction works the lining loose at both ends over time.

          1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

            Re: Try turning the cable end to end

            >Must have been DC power.

            Probably installed the wrong way round, it's a problem with audiophile grade linear crystal copper power cables

            1. swm

              Re: Try turning the cable end to end

              No - you need digital cables

              1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge

                Re: Try turning the cable end to end

                you need wireless cables to avoid this kind of situation.

                1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

                  Re: Try turning the cable end to end

                  > you need wireless cables to avoid this kind of situation.

                  Which actually exist. You can get it at places you may not even expect...

                  1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
                    Thumb Up

                    Re: Try turning the cable end to end

                    I can just imagine someone plugging an antenna extension lead from a PC to a wireless router to "get a better WiFi signal"

        2. Emir Al Weeq

          Re: Try turning the cable end to end

          >My grandfather was the director of a foundations company ... He started from the ground up

          Upvoted

          1. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

            Re: Try turning the cable end to end

            Surely he started from the ground down?

        3. jake Silver badge

          Re: Try turning the cable end to end

          More likely a bad seal at the pump end caused it to suck air. Turning it around (assuming it works both ways) killed the vacuum leak, allowing the pump to prime (I've seen this four or five times with rental trash pumps).

        4. Anonymous Coward Silver badge

          Re: Try turning the cable end to end

          > "Ive done the same with an electrical cable - it often started working when turned end to end."

          Standard USB-A connectors require rotating 180º twice before they work.

  3. KittenHuffer Silver badge
    WTF?

    I once had ....

    .... a badly designed 10base2 network that I had the misfortune to support.

    Some bright spark had extended the segment that all the servers (in the server room) were connected to into the office outside. The sockets used were a weird (IIRC German) make before break connector. Anyway, one afternoon the whole network started glitching and everyone went into headless chicken mode. I managed to trace the fault to the office portion of the network segment, and informed my boss that it would be necessary to unplug it to find the cause of the issue.

    I was told that I was not allowed to do that during office hours, and then my boss disappeared into a meeting. So I sat around doing nothing for 2 hours while the network ran at about 10% speed.

    Returning to the area after a comfort break I spotted the rear end of my boss exiting the office as he finished his day, without even bothering to check with my on the current emergency situation.

    Finally after everyone else had finished I was allowed to do the 5 minutes of work to identify which of the make before break sockets had failed, replace it, and everything came back up.

    .

    Within a week I had isolated the server room with a router (or bridge) that meant that office network issues only affected that segment rather than the whole network.

    That was one of the few jobs I've ever walked away from because I needed to save my sanity.

    1. Christoph

      Re: I once had ....

      Back in the 80s we had to install a bridge to isolate the consultancy section of the office. They all used the then new Amstrad PC compatibles, which would randomly stop forwarding the tokens on the Token Ring Network and bring down the network for the entire building. We separated them with the bridge and let them get on with it.

    2. GlenP Silver badge

      Re: I once had ....

      Those 10base2 sockets were a boon and a PITA!

      Due to multiple buildings and segment lengths I was stuck with having offices and the computer room on one segment, with one bridge half way down the main building, another at the far end from the computer room and the third in the next building.

      The separate building was occupied by a sister company who had a server of their own as well as using the main AS/400. That was all very well until their support people decided to use two network cards in the server and configure it as another bridge to add a few more PCs onto the system, without actually consulting anybody.

    3. BenDwire Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: I once had ....

      That was one of the few jobs I've ever walked away from because I needed to save my sanity

      And that's the important lesson to learn from all of this: If those above you on the pay grade won't listen to your demonstrably correct opinions, then leave them all to it and get on with something else.

      I know that's easier said than done in many cases, but don't try to put up with it ad infinitum. Your mental health will suffer, and you'll bring your closest people down with you.

      Don't bother to ask me how I know ...

    4. Antron Argaiv Silver badge

      Re: I once had ....

      I do NOT miss shared media networks.

      (though TDRs were quite cool - I still have a roll of RG-58 thinnnet and BNCs. I use them to make RF jumper leads))

      1. David Newall

        Re: I once had ....

        Like WiFi?

      2. Bebu
        Windows

        Re: I once had ....

        《I still have a roll of RG-58 thinnnet and BNCs. I use them to make RF jumper leads))》

        And a couple of BNC 50ohm terminators in my pocket (binary searc) and short (150-200mm) BNC cables to restore connectivity when some genius had abstracted his workststion from his office (oddly never she.)

        10Base2 seemed optimum numpty bait. The chap who grabbed the 75ohm coax from his HP workstation B&W monitor to replace an ethernet connection really deserved defenestration. Twisted pair probably saved decades of support time in a few years. 10Base5 was probably too intimidating - a whack to back of head with 500mm chunk of thicknet carries a lot of conviction and the sharp end of a vampire tap could serious mess with your wellbeing if used with malice and aforethought.

        Repeaters, bridges, routers and gateways were somehow more real back then and you certainly learnt the differences between each rather quickly if unintentionally.

    5. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: I once had ....

      We weren't allowed to reboot the ancient machine serving as a print server for the labs only laser printer - without the permission of the university IT dept, Her Majesty's inspectorate of Print Servers and a letter from at least 3 popes.

      So we would stand up and announce "oh dear I have tripped over the power cable" and then power cycle the machine, fixing the printer.

      1. gnasher729 Silver badge

        Re: I once had ....

        “We weren't allowed to reboot the ancient machine serving as a print server for the labs only laser printer”

        There was a story from an electricity company moving offices. Since they were the electricity company, they didn’t bother paying themselves for electricity, so they had no meters, and all computers were turned on permanently.

        Then they found out the hard way what happens if you have a spinning hard drive that had been spinning for three years 24/7: The lubrication oil changes. It’s fine as long as it spins, but if you stop the drive it turns hard. And when you turn the computer on again it doesn’t spin. Major disaster.

        They found out that if you drop one of these hard drives but not from too high to avoid damage, then the oil becomes fluid for some very short time because of the impact shock. So you turn the computer off, one person drops it from a few inch, and another turns the power on _just_ at the right moment.

        1. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

          Re: I once had ....

          "Since they were the electricity company, they didn’t bother paying themselves for electricity ..."

          I was sure that sentence would end with them cancelling their own service.

  4. jmch Silver badge
    Pint

    I see what you did there!!!

    a reader we'll Regomize as "Edmund"

    >>>>>>>>

    1. Steve Button Silver badge

      Re: I see what you did there!!!

      I don't? But I'm not firing on all cylinders today.

      Could someone spell it out for me.

      1. ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo Silver badge

        Re: I see what you did there!!!

        It's such a Hillary-ous pun, this one.

      2. Martin
        Happy

        Re: I see what you did there!!!

        It's not entirely clear to me either. But possibly a reference to Edmund Hillary, who was famous for climbing a snow-covered hill?

        The only other famous Edmund I can think of is the one in the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and I can't make that fit :)

        1. RockBurner

          Re: I see what you did there!!!

          Also - no Blackadder references.

          1. Dave K

            Re: I see what you did there!!!

            I was expecting that too and was quite disappointed not to find a "cunning plan" buried in the story somewhere...

        2. Admiral Grace Hopper

          Re: I see what you did there!!!

          Oh, but surely we all reach for the words of Edmund Blackadder from time to time?

          "Whatever it was, I’m sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad. I mean, who would have noticed another madman round here?".

        3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: I see what you did there!!!

          "The only other famous Edmund I can think of is the one in the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and I can't make that fit"

          There's also Edmund Ironside but that doesn't fit either. So Hillary it it.

    2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: I see what you did there!!!

      Yeah, cannot be a more obvious German name, combined with "schlepped" :D.

      1. LordZot

        Re: I see what you did there!!!

        It's still peak comedy here at The Register.

        1. Scott 26

          Re: I see what you did there!!!

          .... it's time we knocked the bastard off

          (plus I had to scroll far too far down to get to this comment)

  5. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

    Had a similar thing happen

    Not going to mention names/companies. But I worked for a software developer about 18-19yrs ago. I was sent to Newbury (about a 100 mile trip) to fix an issue with a venue that couldn't be done remotely.

    Upon arriving I was met with a system that kept crashing. As I was told to speak to the higher ups in tech support (who were too busy to go and sort it) before doing anything... I did so.

    I was instructed to do about a dozen different things, none of which worked... and none of the suggestions involved actually opening up the system.... I'd suggested several times that I pull the system and open it up as it could be a hardware issue... This was dismissed and scoffed at, it was absolutely a software issue and they'd figure out what it was eventually. (every crash, they'd spend ages pouring over logs before making the next suggested change)

    By the end of the day, it wasn't fixed... and I was told to find a cheap hotel for the night and be back there at 8am in the morning... because the support team were going home.

    So I took matters into my own hands... pulled the system and stripped it down.

    I took photos on my crappy little phone as evidence of what I found.

    This thing was clogged up with dust, and the fan on the CPU cooler had failed... it was crashing because every time they tried to run tasks on it... it overheated and shut down, or after it was left on for a little while... heat soak caused the same issue.

    I cleaned it out, went through their spares and old systems looking for a compatible heatsink... found one, cleaned it up and installed it. problem solved... support team very pissed at me the following morning.

    But the venue, gave me a glowing report and gave the company a load of crap over the wasted day... I was lucky that one of the venue managers was present for a lot of the calls.

    Sadly the company never learned the lesson... about 6 months later, started laying people off to cut costs. That same support team still held a grudge and kept sticking the knife in at every opportunity because I embarrassed them and I was one of those earmarked to be laid off.

    The day after I was told... I never bothered going in and went straight into job hunt mode.

    That's when I decided to become a contractor, I grabbed a temp job at a place I'd worked before to bring in money and was in a new contract with a 30% pay increase within 6 weeks... I've never looked back.

    1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: Had a similar thing happen

      Yup, as I often say when I'm teaching some of our new recruits on troubleshooting, there's never been an investigative tool or procedure produced which is better than the mk 1 eyeball.

      It's amazing how often we get called in by customers to downed machines that have been that way for days (or even weeks) and they've done all their meetings, model based problem solving, devising of tests to run and analysis of data etc in nice cosy meeting rooms and have never actually ventured into the cleanroom (for background, I work for a semiconductor equipment maker) and looked at the damn thing.

      Then you walk in there, take one look and have a "there's your problem" moment (to quote Adam Savage) when you see something on the floor or hanging off that shouldn't be...

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Not Putting the Cart Before the Horse

        I've seen situations where a cable hanging off the back or side of a piece of machinery or on-the-floor tower computer was cut or yanked out by a bunch of Facilities people moving heavy equipment on one of those very-low-to-the-floor carts. The floors of those carts stick out past the wheels, making it easy to catch things, and the weight and inertia of the cart+thing_on_the_cart ensures the people pushing it usually don't notice the brief impact.

        1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

          Re: Not Putting the Cart Before the Horse

          I worked with a chap who couldn't grasp the concept of inertia and centre-of-gravity. Several times he loaded up one of those sorts of trollies, pushed it out of the lift by its highest edge, a wheel would hit the bump in the floor between the lift car and the corridor, and the whole stack of PCs would go flying off the trolley.

          It seems to be a common brain defect. Think how many times you see people attempting to move furniture by pushing the *HIGHEST* part of it and being completely bemused that the damn thing falls over rather than moves.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Not Putting the Cart Before the Horse

            Pulling rather than pushing is a better option, The impending disaster is more readily perceived in time from that perspective and if it isn't it improves the gene pool.

          2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

            Re: Not Putting the Cart Before the Horse

            Yeah, something normal people learn at the age of building blocks, 'round two or three years. But then we have those which don't learn, and never make it past that point.

      2. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Had a similar thing happen

        Mk I Eyeball is certainly the top tool, but....

        We were having trouble getting a long, large control panel to behave. Spurious trips, intermittent operation. The customer was very irritated, expressing it in prose worthy of an anthology. My younger colleague spent a day reviewing the circuit drawings then travelled to site to investigate but after a couple of days he did an ET (phoned home) looking for more ideas. It was simple logic process, what could possibly go wrong?

        I found him on site still pouring over pages and pages of heavily marked-up diagrams looking for the 'fau lt'. As I ventured into the control room there was that distinctive 'hot electrical' niff.... Sleuth that I was, I followed my nose, opened a single enclosure and located the loose terminal.... For years he suspected that I had prior knowledge of this fault. I ought to add that this is the same guy for whom we left a message to ring Mr. C. Lyon at Whipsnade Zoo only to be told "I'm afraid he's having his tea at the moment."

        1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
          Coffee/keyboard

          Re: Had a similar thing happen

          C. Lyon having his tea......

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Had a similar thing happen

      I'm not professional at this computer malarkey. However I work for a small business, so while my official job is technical sales - I also fix the computers / phones / network (and buy the teabags).

      So when I come across a problem that I both know what it is, and remember how to fix it - then happy days! It's better if I can remember what the problem is, but have to Google the fix - harder to work out what's going wrong and diagnose because, as I said, not professional at this. Which both means I have a lot less experience to fall back on and do things less often so forget stuff.

      But my golden rule is always to remember to bloody reboot it first. From the time I proudly found a fault I knew, did the fix I remembered (go me!), which didn't work. Then of course I tried doing some diagnosing, which also didn't work - and only then decided to reboot it while i went and made a cuppa. Problem solved, except I'd wasted 90 minutes in order to save myself the minute it would have taken to reboot the thing.

      It isn't just the annoying thing techies tell you to do, in order to make you go away.

      It's amazing how hard it is to get people to reboot their mobile to fix weird issues - even though that usually fixes them.

      1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: Had a similar thing happen

        Piece of advice: keep a notebook. In loads of jobs I've built up quick-fix solutions by noting what fixed something last time. Eg:

        "Zoom crashes - give up, reboot computer, don't bother trying get Zoom working, just kill the PC."

        "Paper error XXYX: remove toner, there *will* be a sheet stuck inside."

        "SystmOne *must* have a user's key-card inserted to allow Admin to configure system"

        "If new installtion won't recognise keycard, just replace keyboard, don't bother fiddling with configs."

        etc.

        1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: Had a similar thing happen

          Good advice. Some notes are dead useful. Let me add one from my list:

          Office 365: Don't bother writing anything down. The UI (and possibly the entire set of options) will have changed before you can look at these notes again.

          My written procedures for setting up new users being an example. We hire a new person every 2-4 years - so I will have forgotten almost everything by the next time it happens. So when we switched to O365 I made some notes the first time we I did it. Literally the next month we partnered with another small sales company - a they needed an email address. Back to Microsoft, notes in hand, ooh this'll be easy. Oh well. Start again.

          I still quite like it - but I've looked up MS own documentation on two occasions, and followed the instructions to get a dialog saying this is now the new settings page for this - please click on "classic mode" to keep using the old way. I presume their UI team are all ADHD sufferers with speed in the office coffee machines instead of sugar.

          1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

            Re: Had a similar thing happen

            > Office 365: Don't bother writing anything down. The UI (and possibly the entire set of options) will have changed before you can look at these notes again.

            But at least you will get the "helpful notifications", which block the UI until you klick the "F-off" button.

            I call that disruptive computing, and Microsoft is currently on the way to be the ultimate master, just by that useless overly pushy-needy-attentionseeker nonsense alone.

          2. gnasher729 Silver badge

            Re: Had a similar thing happen

            At one place we had a one page document describing how to set up a machine from scratch. Starting with a freshly purchased computer. The document was stored on some drive and printed.

            Instructions started with “follow these instructions precisely. If something doesn’t work, 1. Ask for help. 2. Write down exactly what you were told to do. 3. Do it. 4. Do NOT leave out step 2.” And at the end it is your job to update the document so it reflects reality again.

      2. Potty Professor
        Devil

        Re: Had a similar thing happen

        I have an app on my phone to act as my shopping list. Sometimes it hangs and the only way I can unfreeze it is to power cycle the phone and restart the app. Very inconvenient if I'm halfway through my weekly shop at the local supermarket.

        1. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Had a similar thing happen

          I'm assuming you've already tried forcibly closing the app alone, not the entire phone? If so, I'm wondering how badly someone can manage to make an app that can cause a persistent crash that still goes away on a power cycle; the process isolation of Android and IOS is supposed to make that hard to do. Not that they don't manage it, but I've usually not had to power cycle mobile devices to deal with a faulty user-level program whereas desktop programs do it with some frequency.

  6. KarMann Silver badge
    Coat

    This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Edmund"....
    Hillary-ous.

    1. Constantly Bewildered

      Hillary-ous

      Don't you Ever rest?

      1. Korev Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Hillary-ous

        That joke was the peak of humour...

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: Hillary-ous

          It has been downhill ever since...

          1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
            Coat

            Re: Hillary-ous

            Yeah these puns are truly mountain up...

            1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
              Coat

              Re: Hillary-ous

              I'm Tenzing up with these awful puns.

            2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

              Re: Hillary-ous

              It' snow joke

              1. dr.k

                Re: Hillary-ous

                So, Edmund was left out in the cold?

    2. OllieJones

      Ok, Ok, we gotta a guy on a mountain regomized as Edmund, after Edmund Hilary. Cool That means we MUST for the sake of history regomize his heavy-lifting colleague as Tenzing, after Hilary's colleague Tenzing Norgay who went on the first ascent of Everest with him.

  7. Mark 78

    Remote people might be right

    Isn't there a chance that the remote people looked at the "gibberish on the screen", and understood that the error message meant that if rebooted the router had a 90% chance of not coming back up again, and as everything was currently working a reboot would likely leave 100's of people unable to work until it was replaced, so it was best not to do anything until a hot swap was available.

    1. ChrisC Silver badge

      Re: Remote people might be right

      In which case, the smart/safe/decent thing to do would be to make this crystal clear to your colleague on the ground so they also know why a power-cycle would be A Really Bad Idea.

      However, as the article actually notes...

      "Our hero reminded his NOC masters that he hadn't yet power cycled the router and was told that didn't matter."

      ...i.e. the feedback "Edmund" was getting from the rest of the team was more along the lines of "it won't make a difference, no need to waste time even trying it" rather than "it'll screw things up even more than they already are, don't even think about doing it once we end this call"

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Remote people might be right

        The reality is that nobody could understand it and there was someone saying "It's more than my job's worth to let him poser down.". To be fair to that attitude I remember a box with a lot of drives which, according to legend, had a reputation for not coming back up once they'd been powered down. This led to major fretting when a re-do of the mains supply was needed. I think the UPS saw it through that without actually being powered down. Then there was more major fretting when it had to be relocated. In the end it all came back up OK.

      2. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: Remote people might be right

        "It won't make a difference". Ok, I'll do it anyway, while I'm filling the job sheet and packing my tools away.

    2. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: Remote people might be right

      If we believe the article, the problem that meant they should do something to this box was happening on a redundant box that was not customer impacting. This means that rebooting it shouldn't have dropped anyone unless the other box was also broken, and that they were doing anything at all suggests that the box concerned might already be in a state where it wasn't dealing with traffic. If the latter is true, then there's no harm in rebooting the box if the redundancy is set up correctly because the worst that can happen is that it still doesn't take any traffic. These are the kind of points that the staff should consider, and when they have, should be willing to explain. If I ask you why I shouldn't take a certain action, I expect some kind of explanation. Not just so I don't leave thinking you might be wrong, but so that I can remember it for the next time something happens.

  8. Red Sceptic

    The Regomiser …

    … played a blinder there - “Edmund” indeed!

    Did he find himself Tenzing up a bit as he talked to his remote colleagues?

  9. Giles C Silver badge

    The puns are reaching new heights today

    1. dr.k

      And no signs of a thaw.

  10. aerogems Silver badge

    Not quite the same, but the end of the article asks if you've ever been sent somewhere unnecessarily.

    First job out of college was working for a small contracting place. I happened to be on the biggest contract, which could cover the entire payroll on its own. Anyway, my manager and the on-site person, absolutely hated each other. No idea why, but the on-site person was shall we say... difficult to get along with. Generally all I'd ever have to do is mention that I work in the department she managed and I'd get a knowing look and nod of sympathy.

    Anyway, one day said on-site person comes along and is quite insistent that I go and look at a specific system. It's out in the guard house for the campus entrance. Like every five minutes it was, "When are you going to go look at that system?" So, I go out there, do my usual bit to see if I can troubleshoot it a bit to determine if there was a hardware failure. Think I spent maybe an hour on it running hardware diagnostics to see if anything popped up. Unbeknownst to me, this was a "time and materials" ticket, which meant basically all I was supposed to do was send it over to the "home office" and they'd send someone else out who could then bill separately for it. I have absolutely no doubt that I was deliberately sent out there just so the on-site person would have an excuse to yell at my manager. It wasn't the last time it would happen, and after I started learning enough about things to not get caught up in as much, I was removed from the contract.

  11. H in The Hague
    Pint

    Book suggestions?

    Speaking of networking: does anyone have suggestions for a good, basic book (or website) about networking for small businesses?

    TIA

    For the weekend -->

    1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: Book suggestions?

      Speaking of networking: does anyone have suggestions for a good, basic book (or website) about networking for small businesses?

      Kinda depends what you're wanting to do. Some of the Cisco Press books are pretty good, although obviously vendor specific. But the CCNA through CCDA books give a decent introduction to concepts and theory. Steven's TCP/IP Illustrated is also one of my essential references.

    2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: Book suggestions?

      Needs more input from your side, especially your knowledge level.

    3. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: Book suggestions?

      Just noticed this article, which may have an answer-

      https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/01/systems_approach_security/?td=rt-3a

      Referencing their book on networking. I haven't read it, but I do agree with the 'systems approach'. If you're an IT person with responsibilities for systems as well as networks, it may be a good read. Especially as it's open source and downloadable. I've been lucky in spending most of my career down at the bottom of the stack, and thus able to blame sysadmins for a lot of 'network' problems. But the biggest challenge is generally the gulf between how things should work, and how they actually work. But that's what happens when the Internet got built from a pile of RFCs, and not standards..

  12. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

    Sort-of Recommendation

    I'd seen and read an excellent book, with many cartoon-like drawings, which explained networking to non-techies in good, non-technical terms. Sadly, I recall neither the title nor the author. But I'd recognize it if ever I saw it again!

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      Re: Sort-of Recommendation

      I'm sure it's been covered somewhere by Dilbert and co.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Sort-of Recommendation

        But whatever you do, don't lose the token from the token ring. You'll end up crawling all over the floor looking for it.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Sort-of Recommendation

          That's why you always put a cap on the end of the cable when you disconnect it

  13. NotAtHomeToday
    FAIL

    Nice day for a trip to Scotland

    I was once finishing up a job on the south cost of England, when I was instructed to drive to a customer site well north of Perth to diagnose and rectify an urgent fault with a router, and I was the only engineer available. The router had dropped off the customer's network, it was "emergency", and they would happily pay the mileage and a night in a hotel.

    The router was connected to an X.25 access circuit, the customer was absolutey adamant that the corresponding router on the English end was fine, alleged that "BT said there were no problems", so it had to be the router in Scotland, and so I headed off north. After much head scratching and furtling around on the router console, and talking directly to BT, it magically burst back into life without me or BT doing anything. The customer eventually revealed, with some reluctance, that they hadn't noticed that "someone" had shut down the interface on the router on the other end. Which was near Gatwick.

    Still, a trip to Scotland beats a trip to Gatwick any day.

    1. GlenP Silver badge

      Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

      without me or BT doing anything

      I never entirely trust BT on that, I've had several WAN failures over the years where BT have come back with No Fault Found but it's mysteriously started working again at the same moment!

      1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

        That'll be Schrodinger's Cat, where the mere act of looking attracts its attention so it stops playing around with the cables and connections...

      2. BartyFartsLast Silver badge

        Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

        Yeah, a regular for some of the more remote leased line connected quarries I used to support.

        The conversation used to go something like:

        Me: 'have BT done a line test/reset?'

        Client IT: "Yes"

        Me: 'Are you sure?'

        Client IT: "yes, you have to go to site, take a modem"

        Get to site, 3-4 hours away, call BT, 'can you do a line test/reset for me please?'

        BT: "sure, hang on"

        Line reconnects.

        Me: 'Thanks'

        Search for nearest pub with rooms.

        1. Is It Me

          Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

          Used to have that at a couple of ADSL sites, once every few months the connection would drop and just doing the automated BT line check (you called a number and asked them to do a test on another phone number) would fix it every time. But if you called and asked if there was a line fault there would be a pause and be told that there are was no errors but the line would have started working anyway.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

      "a trip to Scotland beats a trip to Gatwick any day"

      So does a trip to Mogadishu or Gaza. Or Bracknell.

      1. James Wilson

        Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

        Bracknell? Really?

        1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

          Re: Nice day for a trip to Scotland

          Apparently, Bracknell is where the head software manager for Horizon ran away to and locked himself away from pestering programmers.

  14. DanielsLateToTheParty
    FAIL

    A successful failure?

    In a previous life I worked as a waiter in a hotel which was popular amongst professional sportspeople (the hotel that is, not the job). Personally I have less than zero interest in sport but apparently they are quite superstitious people and our hotel had a reputation for hosting visiting teams. On one occasion a manager pops his head round the door and goes "Daniel I hear you know computers, come with me" and we go off to a footballer's room. Sounds shady at this point but it turned out to be benign.

    The guy was Brazilian and had a routine of calling his wife each night on Skype which is kind of sweet if you don't think of it as checking up on him to make sure he is definitely alone. Now this is happening in early 2000s so internet is not ubiquitous and the guy's laptop was probably an IBM Thinkpad judging by the central nipple thing. He had plugged it into a handy ethernet socket and found no connection. I did my best to cover myself from any mistakes by explaining that every network is different and I don't know anything about this one in particular but would do my best. All I really did was open a prompt and type "ifconfig" but it looked quite unlike my home router so gave up. The footballer instead called his wife the POTS way and all was well.

    The next day he met the boss's boss and explained what had happened. To the uninitiated eye anyone doing anything with a prompt looks like The Matrix and so he was very impressed. The big boss was gleaming with pride, or possibly smugness, and got to say "Yes well of course our staff are the best at everything". The compliment eventually trickled back down to my level. Sometimes just showing good intentions and a broad set of skills is enough, even if you're kind of useless.

    1. Zoopy

      Re: A successful failure?

      "Sometimes just showing good intentions and a broad set of skills is enough, even if you're kind of useless."

      Well that, and you DID work with the hotel's servers.

      1. Anonymous Custard Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: A successful failure?

        Well played sir, I think you just won this week's comments.

  15. Spanners
    Boffin

    What percentage?

    We all know that a power cycle cures a lot of problems but what percentage and does it differ depending on what sort of kit?

    I suspect it is higher for desktop level stuff, PCs etc than servers but they don't let me near them much!

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: What percentage?

      Hard to know. Some problems are solved by a software reboot (if you can get a usable prompt, etc) but that won't always reset the hardware in to known good states.

      A lot of proper high-availability stuff has a watchdog daemon that monitors system health and expected processes, etc, and if it looks bad, forces a reboot. Ideally backed by a hardware timer so if the daemon and/or kernel itself dies, a hard reboot follows not long after. That has saved me a trip and/or manual intervention on a good few occasions.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: What percentage?

      OTOH it it's still sort of working and there are a number of users still poinding away on it a reboot will require a longish warning period to get them logging off including the trip with a 4x2 cluebat to deal with one of them. Even then the server process might need a staged shut-down. Don't just hit the power switch and hope everything will be OK when it comes back. Even if it cleared the original fault you now have more problems than you started with.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What percentage?

      In "ye olde days", a cold restart (full shutdown, wait 5 seconds, and then startup) would clear the contents of memory (due to lack of power to it), which itself would solve many a heisenbug. (Probably from something pointing to the wrong section of memory and either reading or writing; clearing the memory would have it at least looking at zeros.) Oddly enough, a warm reboot (issuing a restart command, but without actually turning the power off) would often NOT clear the memory, causing some bugs to persist across "restarts".

      WARNING! In modern Windows, this behavior is reversed! (Gee, thanks, Microsoft.) Issuing a shutdown saves what you were doing - including the contents of memory - so everything is how it was when you start up again; thus a modern cold restart is the equivalent of a "ye olde" warm restart. (There is a setting to disable this "feature", but it's this way by default.) But issuing a restart command exits the OS without saving memory contents, and modern hardware will zero the memory before booting up again - so a warm restart is the equivalent of a "ye olde" cold start!

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: What percentage?

        You can disable that "modern Windows" behaviour by issuing a

        powercfg.exe -h off

        in an administrative shell.

      2. gnasher729 Silver badge

        Re: What percentage?

        Reading about the five seconds…

        A nightmare bug in a graphics device driver happened if you turned the machine off, then back on between 35 and 45 seconds later. I figured out eventually that the graphics card held memory for 30 seconds, after 50 second it was cleared and that worked. In between memory was in a bad state.

        Then I figured out with a 13 month old driver version. But not with a 6 month old one. And after a long week (no debugging possible without a working graphics driver, just code inspection) it turned out our top developer needed to write proper manly code. An if statement

        If (ptr != 0)

        Is for wimps. So he changed it to how real men do it:

        If (! ptr)

        Which unfortunately does exactly the opposite and as a manly developer, he was so smart he didn’t need code reviews.

    4. J.G.Harston Silver badge

      Re: What percentage?

      And it has to be a proper power cycle. Turn power off. Wait several seconds for electrons to come to a halt. Turn power back on again. After replacing way too many PSUs killed by people flicFLIKflic-ing them, I screamed at one of them STOP KILLING THE ****ING COMPUTERS!!!! THERE IS *NO* REASON TO DO THAT OTHER THAN *DELIBERATELY* TRYING TO DESTROY IT. IF YOU DO IT AGAIN I WILL THROW YOU OUT OF THIS BUILDING.

      WHY do some people think that the way to cycle an electrical device is to try and remove the power for a LITTLE time as possible?

      aaaaaand breathe.....

      1. ChoHag Silver badge

        Re: What percentage?

        And that's why they took our off buttons away.

        I want my off buttons back.

        Although I too destroyed my lovely 17" monitor back in the day of real honest off switches and long before I could afford to replace such luxuries when I pushed the button to turn it off for the night (remember when we did that?) but I thought I'd just check something before bed and flicked it straight back on without waiting for it to settle, only to hear the pop of doom.

        I still want my off buttons back.

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: What percentage?

        > Wait several seconds for electrons to come to a halt.

        That can be dangerous as their momentum then goes to infinity

        1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: What percentage?

          > That can be dangerous as their momentum then goes to infinity

          You've been to Chernobyl?

      3. swm

        Re: What percentage?

        When I was debugging the executive for a 100-user time-sharing system in the '60s I was debugging the shutdown fault. This was a massive CPU. So I power cycled the power repeatedly to cause the fault. The field engineer was not happy and said don't do this more than necessary. No hardware faults were caused by this (fortunately).

    5. I am David Jones Silver badge

      Re: What percentage?

      The chance of succeeding with a reboot is directly proportional to the amount of time already spent pursuing other solutions…

    6. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: What percentage?

      Sometimes you don't just power cycle, you have to wait until all electrons stopped dancing, i.e. at least 30 seconds. I experienced enough cases where BMC firmwares had a "appears after two years of operation" problem. So unless you do a "long power cycle" the problem is not solved since the BMC still gets enough current from capacitors to keep going for quite a while. Once that long cycle is done and power it up, check the firmware versions and update them after checking with makers support (you need your Cover You Base trail).

    7. DS999 Silver badge

      Power cycling can also break stuff

      If someone made changes to the router's running config but didn't save them (all too common if they make changes but "want to make sure my changes don't break anything", then forget to later commit those changes) those changes will be gone after a restart.

      For servers, particularly ones that are almost never restarted (more common in the days some saw patches as a once or twice a year event) someone might make changes that involved config changes to startup files. When rebooted things don't come up properly because that change was botched.

      So power cycling isn't the risk free "might as well try it" thing some people want to believe it is.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Power cycling can also break stuff

        This scenario is why I had a script which checked running vs stored config and flagged differences

  16. Chris Evans

    Power cycling is a bit like fuses

    There are two camps: Power Cycling fixes everything AND Power Cycling is a waste of time you have to find out why it crashed.

    with fuses it is:

    Replacing a blown fuse will fix it AND you have to find out why the fuse went, dismissing a faulty fuse as the cause.

    My philosophy is for none critical equipment: the first time it is necessary to power cycle / replace fuse make a note. If it happens again investigate.

    1. ChoHag Silver badge

      Re: Power cycling is a bit like fuses

      Power cycling is the software equivalent of replacing a fuse. Fuses blow when the current is too high. Computers crash when the confusion is too high. They should be treated more or less the same wrt. when to start investigating.

  17. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    Sent somewhere for a futile job? Well, I'm an auditor... Anyhow, speaking of cold mountain top: unfortunately, it wasn't me but former acquaintances who had to tend to microwave transmission equipment. The (cable-bound) aerial lift to the mountain top was not running at that time and the only (feasible) option left was a helicopter flight. Just to find that something had been "misdiagnosed" and the issue was on the other side of the link.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ohhh, yeah, BTDT

    Kind of in reverse, I knew full well that a power cycle would break the client's network but the 'expert' insisted and the client ignored me because 'the expert' said so.

    So, I spent a happy two hours of overtime (I might have taken my time a bit) tweaking and re-uploading switch configs to a dozen Intel Procurves.

    I did get a nice bottle of red as thanks from the client and a letter of commendation to my manager

  19. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Questionable resolution

    Yeah, doing a power cycle fixed the symptom, but how did it end up there in the first place?

    Without a reasonable answer to that question, it might have been prudent to swap the kit given the remote location, critical infrastructure, and the fact that a tech was already on-site with replacement gear.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Questionable resolution

      But what fixes the tech's hernia after replacing heavy kit at the top of the rack?

    2. Frobbotzim

      Re: Questionable resolution

      Suggestions to swap 7 stone worth of literal top-of-rack kit that has had one crash, quickly cleared by a power cycle, with fresh kit that that has been sitting in a warehouse depot for an indeterminate period of time and may have its own set of interesting problems after having been trucked up a mountain and dragged into the datacenter, maybe or maybe not swapping out all the SFP's, but certainly putting unnecessary strain on the fibers or cat5 cables either way, maybe prompting future intermittent connectivity issues needing diagnosis and extra trips, no matter how well terminated everything may be, nor how careful site engineers necessarily will be, are generally laughed at (while muted, before being politely declined off mute) with all of the above reasons patiently explained where I come from. If escalation deems that it must be so, an email trail must establish accountability. I like that process. It's good at preventing the hernias of which a prior commenter spoke.

      Perhaps you work with equipment that doesn't have quite so many fiddly bits dangling from all the holes though.

      1. Marty McFly Silver badge

        Re: Questionable resolution

        >Perhaps you work with equipment that doesn't have quite so many fiddly bits dangling from all the holes though.

        Since we are making it personal... Perhaps you work in a place where it is considered a wasted effort to fix underlying problems because collecting copious overtime to do a weekend power-cycle is personally beneficial.

        1. Chris 15
          FAIL

          Re: Questionable resolution

          Oh do give it a test with the ad hominem fallacy silliness

          1. Frobbotzim

            Re: Questionable resolution

            Mea culpa, and my apologies. My diplomacy skills have been affected by a transient random cosmic radiation-induced bit flip, and a reboot is pending.

        2. Frobbotzim

          Re: Questionable resolution

          You've missed the point entirely, and it's only personal if you work with servers rather than routers with high port density.

          Server blade crashed and you've got the spare in hand? Go nuts. I would do and have done the same.

          Cisco box flakes out for the first time after a couple of years uptime? Reboot it, then open an SR and be informed that the fault is with the stars (transient random cosmic radiation triggered bit flip, must I quote you the bugID as well?), but for heaven's sake, please don't snip the ties on all those perfectly routed cables and exchange one easily solved problem with a dozen potentially more troublesome ones.

          I am willing to die on this hill. I have had these words with senior engineers more than a few times, expect to have them again, and have found no smugness when proven correct as my team will end up being the ones doing all the investigation and legwork to fix the new problems, but it is immensely rewarding when the light has been seen so that I can quickly close the bridge get back to the remaining dozen or so problem routers waiting for troubleshooting.

          But again, it truly all depends on the quantity of fiddly bits hanging from the holes in your kit.

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Questionable resolution

            "please don't snip the ties"

            Please don't use ties at all. They have a nasty habit of being pulled too tight and messing up cable impedances or causing microcracking in fiber patches

            Velcros are much harder to overtighten AND reusable

    3. Daedalus

      Re: Questionable resolution

      That's what I would have done, if only so as not to come back to do it in the future.

    4. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Questionable resolution

      I think I used a version of UNIX which routinely crashed after something like 240 days, perhaps 248. Reboot and there's no problem... for another 240 days or so.

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: Questionable resolution

        Linux had such a kernel bug for a few versions. Actually a number of those with different uptimes they hit, but many of them were fixed before the timeout would kick in. Unless you don't update often enough, then you get a reminder.

  20. Skiver

    For some reason when I read cold and mountainous, I pictured a shack on a mountain, not a town.

  21. Montreal Sean

    Cold and remote. -27 C with wind.

    I'm currently having a late lunch and waiting for my plane to arrive.

    I'm in Kuujjuarapik, Quebec. I came up here to replace a point of sale PC for our national postal service.

    3 hour flight north from Montreal. 4 hours of work to replace the pc, swap the two drives over, and fix the receipt printer and cashdrawer configuration. Receipt printer had been non functional since November and the problem remained even after the postmaster replaced the printer and cables a couple of weeks ago.

    Cashdrawer had never worked in the 2 years since it was installed.

    I finished my work and headed to my hotel, with many many thanks from the grateful postmaster.

    24 hour wait from the time I finished my work until the plane home arrives.

    1. TimMaher Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: “many thanks from the grateful postmaster”

      Not running Horizon then?

      1. Jan 0

        Re: “many thanks from the grateful postmaster”

        >Not running Horizon then?

        Well it doesn't sound as if the postmaster was under arrest.

  22. Alan Brown Silver badge

    I spent 6 YEARS arguing that a power cycle would solve issues with one piece of SCADA kit which had been locking up regularly due to excess network traffic (I put it on its own VLAN, problem solved). Eventually it overrode manglement itself - and came up happily

    When I left, they were still refusing to power cycle the other one

  23. steviebuk Silver badge

    Much like Dell

    "This story had a strange sequel: three months later, Edmund was asked to locate the defective kit, because he had sent the unused replacement back and the serial numbers didn't match."

    Sent me a monitor replacement and the asset number didn't match. Told them it was the wrong one anyway. They sent replacement, another wrong one but appears to work but again asset tags don't match. Kept it anyway. Wonder if that will come back to byte. Might email them to point it out so there is a record.

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