The computing stuff rant thread

[Afasoas]

Windows. 

I have a "lab" I use for testing - it's a set of VMs on a Windows domain - there's a DC with DHCP/DNS - pffft, standard stuff. I have robot scripts that reset the VM states prior to automated testing, driven by Jenkins jobs from another server; and all is good.
Except... when the VMs get a new DHCP lease after a reset back to baseline, they randomly "untrust" the network; so the "Domain Network" suddenly becomes "Public (Untrusted) Network" and the VM drops off the Domain resources - it no longer appears in DNS, and so on. The only way to fix this at this point is to leave/re-join the VM to the domain. Which means I the have to take a new baseline snapshot of the VM. It's all VERY tedious.

A solution would be to have all the lab VMs with static addresses. FFS  .

What does reset back to baseline mean? Are you restoring a snapshot?
I don't think this is necessarily a DHCP issue, although it's worth checking the DHCP scope is within an Active Directory Site and that site is associated to the correct domain.
The machines are dropping off the domain and switching to a non-domain network profile because the machine itself is out of sync with it's Active Directory account. There's something inherently wrong with your setup and without further information about what you are doing, it's going to be hard to diagnose.

It might be worth checking NTP is setup correctly, and that you haven't got time sync issues between the hypervisor and guest OSes.

[Feanor]

Yes, I read this yesterday on my phone, and didn't respond.

AD domains use Kerberos tickets to set up their secure channels.
Amongst other things, they are very sensitive to time-skew between the clients and the DC.
This is to avoid 'replay attacks', where a Man-in -the Middle can replay historical security transactions and authenticate himself.
This is why DCs are usually SNTP servers ( getting time from the Internet ), and the clients take their time from them.
If you start messing about and re-winding time, then I'd not be surprised if the clients drop off the domain because their secure channel is broken.
All the machines will have probably picked up current time, and all the Kerberos tickets are stale.

Also, just like Users, Machines also have 'passwords' onto the domain, which you don't see.
These automatically renew in the background normally.
But if the machine has been off the domain in excess of a certain time, the machine credentials will have expired, and you need to remove it and re-join it to the domain.
So again, if you start messing about with re-winding time, you're going to break this.

This is all by-design, to prevent network replay attacks.
TBH, I'm surprised it even works at all.
The only way I think you could re-wind time would be if all the VMs ( DCs and Clients ) re-set to a common Historical Time, and could all remain synced to the Historical Time somehow.

[Chris S]

Thanks for the input, folks! It's a major PITA,when it happens - but a lot of the time it just works, so I might just reserve the right to bellyache about it when it falls apart; in exchange for enjoying the days when it all works seamlessly.

There was an automated build over the weekend (someone else must have made some source changes - wasn't me  ), and all the VMs reset several times (different test scenarios) and all was good - lots of green on the dashboard this morning  .

[Mr Larrington]

Even leaving it in hairyplane mode so it doesn't waste voles looking for wi-fi networks which it never finds, my wretched Kindle is running out of voles after less than half a Discworld novel   I fear it is on it's last elbows chiz.

[David Martin]

Microsoft. What have you done to Skype? WHy do I have to sign up to goodness knows what with unhelpful screens that don't actually explain what you want?

A complete pain in the backside.

[SoreTween]

Jeezus H Christ onna bike.  Must be 10 years since I last seriously tried Linux, in that time the installers have improved, the desktop has been polished to a beautiful shine but as soon as you want to do anything real it's back to the fucking command line to sudo this and mv that and well shag my old boots the carefully followed instruction DON'T FUCKING WORK AGAIN.

I like the command line, I love it in fact.  A keyboard is so much faster than a wimp.  But I should not have to search umpteen sites for instruction to install a simple package (Java), it should by now be click to install or select from the package manager.  There's a zillion different things in the Mint package manager when you search for Java and none of them IS FUCKING JAVA.  Then I need drivers, here we go round the sudo merry-go-round again.  Yet more opportunities to correct mistakes in the commands I'm issuing umpty umm times because Case FUCKING Sensitive and tab auto complete only works once in a blue FUCKING moon.

And at the end of all that.... It. Doesn't. Fucking. Work.

[Bledlow]

WTF has Microsoft done to language support? Under Windows 7, it was easy-peasy to set Japanese as an alternative language, & switch between typing in English & Japanese. Built-in, wasn't it? Just go to Control Panel & tell it you wanted to use extra languages. Just as easy under XP, & IIRC under our previous version of Windows. A few machines, 15 years - no trouble at all.

Being newer, of course Win 10 must be better, mustn't it? Like hell. I've been fighting this for ages. I look at Help. I look at Microsoft support. I look on the internet. I follow the instructions I find there. What do I end up with? A stupid bloody little tag in the bar at the bottom of the screen which as far as I can see has absolutely no fucking effect on anything!

Windows 10 - why, oh why?

[SoreTween]

Java - installed
OneWireViewer - installed
Thermochons & Hygrochrons - brain dumped & reset.

On Windows.  Sigh :-(

[Canardly]

ATM the price of graphics cards in the UK seem to exceed manufacturers recommended prices by about 50%. Does anyone know why this should be other than being due to simple greed?

[ian]

Cisco Insecure Desktop.

Giant steaming turd mountain.

[SoreTween]

Yeeeeouch!

4 years ago I bought 12 thermochrons and 3 hygrochrons and have had them logging around the place ever since.  Very interesting to see the effect of the considerable volume of insulation I've put in the loft, a new hard floor this time with insulation under and a sanely located thermostat among other small changes.  They were a quite wallet wilting £277 but I could justify getting them on my company as I had a sniff of a contract vaguely 1-wireish.  1 thermo got lost a good while ago and now one hygro has gone senile, presumably the battery failing and so the rest will surely follow.  A replacement set will be £519    I don't think I can bring myself to spend that even if it is company money.

Poo.

[Wombat]

Not 100% sure what you mean by thermochrons and hygrochrons, but do you mean dataloggers?

I habitually use Omega USB dataloggers that record temp and humidity, and used to cost about £50 a throw.  I've had 3 of them for about 3 years, with no trouble at all.

Ah, they seem to have gone down in price.   http://www.omega.co.uk/pptst/OM-EL-USB-1.html

[SoreTween]

Not 100% sure what you mean by thermochrons and hygrochrons, but do you mean dataloggers?

Yes, formerly Dallas but now Maxim iButton devices.  Very tiny beasts:

http://www.homechip.com/ibuttons.html

I habitually use Omega USB dataloggers that record temp and humidity, and used to cost about £50 a throw.  I've had 3 of them for about 3 years, with no trouble at all.

Thanks, these look a good alternative    Much deeper memory means less frequent downloading.  I run the 'chrons at 20 minute intervals which means I download every four weeks (the hygro could go to 8 but if I'm emptying the thermo anyway...).  These I could go to 31 weeks but I would probably empty at 20 or 24.  I can certainly switch two of the hygros to those instead, outside and Mrs Tweens studio (the senile one).  The third hygro in the house would be a tad conspicuous unless I can think of a better hiding place.  The thermo in the loft can switch too, that gets all the long walk & awkward access ones on a usefully long cycle time making the 4 week job much easier.

Ah, they seem to have gone down in price.   http://www.omega.co.uk/pptst/OM-EL-USB-1.html

Scroll down, £35 is temp only.  T&H are £50 or £63 which still beats a hygrochron at £88

[Mr Larrington]

Been away for two weeks.  Need to copy Stuffs from lapdancer to NAS, that it might propagate around the Larrington Towers network like molecules demonstrating Brownian motion.

"Access denied" says the Photos directory on the NAS, followed by some guff about failing to enumerate objects in container.  Internets no help because whatever they suggest doesn't work.

"Error 112" says the Mail directory.  Not enough disk space.  Wait, what?  You are telling me I can't copy a 5,000 byte file onto a disk with five times as much free space as the TOTAL size of the HDD in the laptop?  Get tae fuck!  Internets no help because whatever they suggest doesn't work.

Solution: rename target directories, create new ones, zip source directories, copy to NAS, unzip, delete old ones with glee.  This, as you can imagine, takes a Very Long Time.

Dear Microsith, plz to be not doing this sort of thing.

[woollypigs]

@Kim you need to update your saying to: printers only understand violence!

Fecking thing used tones of paper and ink just to print out one page and then moan there isn't any ink left.

When can we get to the point where printing is not needed anymore. They said back when PCs etc kicked off that we would safe so much paper and therefore the forests of the world! Have anyone ever tried to feed a printer successfully with paper that have gone through it once before, I think not!

As much as I hate .pdf can we just get to a point where at least we could send that to and fro as an accepted documents.

[Kim]

There's a painful slice in my scrollwheel finger after being bitten by a fan during yesterday's UPS fettle.  Hoping the fan wasn't radioactive, lest this end in a crap superhero origin story.

[TheLurker]

{snip}
Have anyone ever tried to feed a printer successfully with paper that have gone through it once before, I think not!

Yeah, ooooooh ages* ago. The old DEC LN03 laser printers would happily print on the unused side of  previously used paper without jamming.  This was back before double-sided printing was a thing on small printers and when printer / photocopier paper was expensive enough to warrant doing this. It was a right bugger if you put the paper the wrong way up in the tray.



*30 years.

[Kim]

When can we get to the point where printing is not needed anymore. They said back when PCs etc kicked off that we would safe so much paper and therefore the forests of the world!

Your industry may vary, but I think we have in fact achieved much of that, cancelled out by a general increase in what paperwork remains as computers enable more people do ever more (arguably pointless) clerical work.

I can't remember the last time I wrote someone a letter on paper, or wrote something down in order to store information.  I will occasionally resort to paper for sketching diagrams or equations as I work on something.

Paper is of course alive and well for labelling things, making information portable or disposable^[1], and communicating with large bureaucratic organisations that don't believe in email.  Our printer mostly gets used for leaflets, posters and address labels.

Fax has almost died out completely (except in Japan and the NHS, it seems).  Filing cabinets aren't quite on the endangered species list, but are much less prolific than they once were.

Original (paper) documents are often required for legal purposes, even if they just get scanned into a document management system.

Forms seem to be a sticking point in a lot of places.  Too many people are creating paper-only forms for things because they don't know how to do it electroncially, even if they're distributing the blanks as PDF.

Have anyone ever tried to feed a printer successfully with paper that have gone through it once before, I think not!

Assuming the paper isn't bent or creased, I've found it works okayish on inkjets with an uncomplicated paper path, and I never met an impact dot-matrix (that didn't rely on tractor feed) that cared.  Lasers not so much, as the fuser tends to give the paper a curl, and they tend to have paper paths that will jam if you so much as look at them wrongly.  Even the venerable Laserjet 4000 series is a bit dodgy at duplexing.


_{[1] For fairly obvious reasons, while I'm happy to refer to PDFs of datasheets on a tablet or computer while doing electronics, I'll print out the instructions for servicing a suspension fork...}

[ian]

I manually duplex paper in my HP Laserjet without issue. That said the toner cartridge ran out about two years ago so I've mostly gone paperless by default. I've yet to raise the courage to order a replacement. Involves SAP. On the few occasions I've needed to print something, shaking the toner cartridge with sufficient vigour eeks out another page or three and makes for a convenient in-office aerobic workout.

[Kim]

I manually duplex paper in my HP Laserjet without issue.

Yeah, it's the auto-duplexer that's a bit dodgy.  Every couple of years I take it apart and bend a critical pingfuckit slightly, which improves the jam-rate.

That said the toner cartridge ran out about two years ago so I've mostly gone paperless by default. I've yet to raise the courage to order a replacement.

Ah, thanks for the reminder...

[caerau]

Printers live a special hell of their own.  They are number 1 on my list of communal office hatreds.


Fortunately I have a private office now, but I still hate my printer.  But at least no-one can leave it empty of paper or toner and just think it is someone else's job to sort out.


Or not bother to get more paper from the stores...


... or print a 10000 page document remotely when I've just put some acetates in there to do a talk (that's an old petty hate incident clearly - acetates?  Me--> Dinosaur)


or just randomly jam etc...




... Grr blood boiling just thinking about it!

[Feanor]

Ah, shared network printers in an office.

<USAnian visitor, with documents set to Yankedoodle Letter size>
"Say, bud, my document didn't print! It's asking to load Letter! Don't you guys have regular paper over here?"

Printer is stalled, waiting for lemon-soaked paper napkins Letter-sized paper.

Meanwhile, over in Sales, someone is doing this:
<Print>.
Hmm, nothing came out. Perhaps it didn't 'take'. I'll try again.
<Print>.
<Print>.
<Print><Print><Print><Print><Print>.

I cancel the blocking Letter job on the printer, and Woosh. 20 copies of a dozen peoples print jobs.

[Kim]

You don't even need an real USAnian for that to happen, just one of their PDFs...

[Jaded]

Ha! Network printers FTW

Phone rings from London. "We've got several copies of this document printed out, did one of your staff print it?!"

[Bledlow]

Have anyone ever tried to feed a printer successfully with paper that have gone through it once before, I think not!

Assuming the paper isn't bent or creased, I've found it works okayish on inkjets with an uncomplicated paper path, and I never met an impact dot-matrix (that didn't rely on tractor feed) that cared.  Lasers not so much, as the fuser tends to give the paper a curl, and they tend to have paper paths that will jam if you so much as look at them wrongly.  Even the venerable Laserjet 4000 series is a bit dodgy at duplexing.

I use the reverse of printed-one-side paper all the time for semi-scrap uses in a very old HP Laserjet 2018, so feeding paper back into a laser for another run doesn't necessarily cause any problems.