The computing stuff rant thread

[Afasoas]

It's nearly 2020 and still we can't get the basics right.

Despite being born in 2006, Microsoft Windows DHCP Server doesn't support RFC4361. Which means DHCP reservations are broken for anything running modern Linux, unless you hack dhclient on said Linux boxen first. Which is bloody difficult when you want said Linux boxen to network boot, install and configure themselves.  And your configuration is designed to take the dynamically assigned IP address and make it static. 

[Kim]

This completely fails to surprise me, but tbh, anyone using Windows for a DHCP server when there are Linux boxen available was probably in for a world of pain from the outset...

[Afasoas]

This completely fails to surprise me, but tbh, anyone using Windows for a DHCP server when there are Linux boxen available was probably in for a world of pain from the outset...

DHCP is AD integrated for the Winboxen. Heterogeneous networks are not uncommon.
Besides which, Windows DHCP Server does HA a more easily and more flexibly than dhcpd. Roundabouts and swings...

[Pingu]

I've been watching Pingu trying to install Ubuntu, that failing, then trying to restore Win 7, that failing, then trying to install Win 10, then nuking it all from orbit before starting again.
All weekend.
It's been quite tense in here.

Hah! I have been updating Windows10 on an old laptop which also boots into Ubuntu.
Every Win10 restart boots into Ubuntu by default and waits for me to change back to Win. I've been at it since Saturday lunchtime.

Lapdog nuked from orbit and now running on Win 10. We'll see how long that lasts 

Well, that's been 2 weeks and it's still working, FLW. I employed the technique as described Polar Bear, entering the Windows 7 product key that came with this lapdog.

[TheLurker]

Oh merciful heavens. M$ for once, just once in your miserable sodding existance would you please provide a meaningful sodding exception message.  Yes I know it's effing accurate, but it doesn't bloody well give me any useful information. It may as well be +++OUT OF CHEESE+++ or the first five verses of the Illiad.  Idiots.

[Kim]

NullPointerException

[Greenbank]

+++OUT OF CHEESE+++

I used that in something I wrote years ago (2001!).

If end users did something specifically stupid and theoretically impossible it would throw an error that I wasn't to capture logs for easily. I put "If you encounter this problem please contact <email address> with details." and got nothing.

After a while I replaced it with, where is it (dredges code from ancient backup):-

                print "Internal error #47 [+++MELON MELON MELON - OUT OF CHEESE ERROR]\n";

and I got the reports I needed within a few days.

[vorsprung]

It's nearly 2020 and still we can't get the basics right.

Despite being born in 2006, Microsoft Windows...

Can't we have a Godwin's law for IT problems?  If your comment features the phrase "Microsoft" or "Billyware" then basically the world of pain and hurt has a known, accepted and trivially understood cause.  So any said complaint, winge, moan etc is invalid due to the billy-mention

[TheLurker]

...  So any said complaint, winge, moan etc is invalid due to the billy-mention

You have a choice.  Either let those of us forced to work with or use BillyWare* let off steam here or... be prepared to duck when we take to the clock towers with high powered rifles. 



*Good name.  Will be stolen.

[ian]

Webex. Honestly, any software or service by Cisco's main driver is the urgent need to make users cry. First the bloody thing won't start. Why? Oh, wait, what's that hidden little window with a crawling progress bar. Oh, it's updating the desktop client in the background. Did I say do that? Did I authorize that? Did I click a bloody button that said 'spend fifteen minutes updating' at the very point of starting a webinar?

No, I didn't.

Then, of course, having finally sorted that shit out while two hundred people twiddle their thumbs, I click share desktop and it highlights and looks peachy. Share away, dear presenter, and off I go.

Except it's not sharing, because it's updated, my Mac is now asking me to authorize the 'new' app to allow it to share screen and keyboard. But I can't see that window, of course, because I'm in presentation mode.

I fucking hate computers.

[pcolbeck]

Wait till you have to work with Microsoft Teams. That will give you a heart attack Ian.

[ian]

I think our Webex contract runs through to next year, but Slack ends at the end of Nov, so we're supposed to be using Teams for everything come December. It's nothing to do with the fact that it's free, it just helps (well, it's included with the Mothership's Microsoft MSA for Office 365 and the like).

I'm about 8 years into trying to get my AnyConnect VPN back. If I am asked to fucking reinstall my profiles again (which were never broke, I just needed the bloody 64-bit client, but anyway) I'm going off like a recently kicked Krakatoa.

[ian]

Although, after no fewer than two unrequested and unstoppable complete restarts this morning, the VPN is back. A process that involved something called the JAMF Self-Service portal (which mostly seems to exist to randomly restart my computer at inopportune moments, and really if I wanted that, I've have ordered a Windows PC and not a Macbook).

I assume JAMF is short for 'jam-filled babbage engine.'

[Mr Larrington]

"LAMF", according to Johnny Thunders, stands for "Like A ["Samuel L Jackson" - The Invigilator]", so you can guess the rest.

[fuaran]

123 Reg are a bunch of scammers.
If you registered a .co.uk domain with them, they will add on a matching .uk domain for free. Except after 2 years when the renewal is due, they charge you £11.99 to renew it, as well as the domain you actually want.
They have agreed to refund it after I complained anyway.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/16/123reg_namesco_uk_domains/

Seems they have gone downhill since the takeover by GoDaddy. Any other decent webhosts/registrars around?

[ian]

Although, after no fewer than two unrequested and unstoppable complete restarts this morning, the VPN is back. A process that involved something called the JAMF Self-Service portal (which mostly seems to exist to randomly restart my computer at inopportune moments, and really if I wanted that, I've have ordered a Windows PC and not a Macbook).

I assume JAMF is short for 'jam-filled babbage engine.'

Rather marvellously, it takes over the update progress. In the Mac-verse, updates lets you choose when to do it. Now. In an hour. Tonight. You know, whenever it's convenient.

Now, it pops up a 'your computer will restart in 5 minutes, please save all your work and log out' with no other option. Which if you're in the middle of a presentation and you're the presenter and it's your computer, this is less than optimal. How amused we were. Ah, but it'll be brief interlude, I say, all frothy with computational optimism.

Anyway, the audience got twenty minutes of crawling progress bar because it was downloading and installing the entire 10.15.1 update, which basically is the entire OS 8.3 GB OS from scratch.

[DaveReading]

123 Reg are a bunch of scammers.
If you registered a .co.uk domain with them, they will add on a matching .uk domain for free. Except after 2 years when the renewal is due, they charge you £11.99 to renew it, as well as the domain you actually want.
They have agreed to refund it after I complained anyway.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/16/123reg_namesco_uk_domains/

Seems they have gone downhill since the takeover by GoDaddy. Any other decent webhosts/registrars around?

If it's any consolation, Easyspace are just as devious - except that they wanted £19.99 to "renew" a "free" .uk domain that I'd never asked for and don't want or need.

[Mr Larrington]

Dateline: Sunday.

Me: Onoz! I haz not Internetz!  Perhaps it will come back?

(It doesn't; contact ISP)

Them: All looks OK at our end.  Must be ur hardware, or ur router configuration!  Try factory reset, or other router.

(Tries factory reset, buys new router and installs same)

Me: Onoz!  I still haz not Internetz!  Perchance it is the string from the router 2 the wall?

(Move router into hall, spend evening tripping over network cable, haz not Internetz)

Me: Iz vanishingly unlikely 2 be mi hardware.  Ur move!

(Time passes; it is now Tuesday.  Peers at blinkenlights through uncaffeinated blur)

Me: Yay!  I haz Internetz!
Them: ...

Bah!

[ian]

Apple. Every release you mung smb. It's like someone in Cupertino has dedicated themselves to this. Every. Fucking. Release.

As such, I just spent an hour trying to back up my bloody music.

The issue, it turns out, is that for some reason (laffs probs) they turned off smbd's entire-disk-access for the external drive. Which is, of course, where the tunes live. They could have, of course, have given an error message to that effect. But that wouldn't be computer networking now would it? It has to fail for reasons that you can't know, because the plan is, of course, to send you – dear user – scurrying to find both new expletives and a fucking USB stick. It's been like this since time forgot. Screaming people ripping through their desk drawer looking for a bloody floppy.

So instead of simply saying what the problem is, instead why not have it vamoose with a breathy 'the original item can't be found' and a virtual shrug. It can be found because I'm clicking on it. Right there. In the Finder. Click. Click. Click. It can fucking well be found you ephalaladoofus of a computer.

Ironically, the fix was literally to turn it (file sharing) off and back on. Two clicks of a checkbox. Less than a second.

[vorsprung]

123 Reg are a bunch of scammers.
If you registered a .co.uk domain with them, they will add on a matching .uk domain for free. Except after 2 years when the renewal is due, they charge you £11.99 to renew it, as well as the domain you actually want.
They have agreed to refund it after I complained anyway.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/16/123reg_namesco_uk_domains/

Seems they have gone downhill since the takeover by GoDaddy. Any other decent webhosts/registrars around?

haha

No

[Ham]

123 Reg are a bunch of scammers.
If you registered a .co.uk domain with them, they will add on a matching .uk domain for free. Except after 2 years when the renewal is due, they charge you £11.99 to renew it, as well as the domain you actually want.
They have agreed to refund it after I complained anyway.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/16/123reg_namesco_uk_domains/

Seems they have gone downhill since the takeover by GoDaddy. Any other decent webhosts/registrars around?

haha

No

Well, not quite.

EVO Hosting were a UK company, now part of Paragon group/TSO Hosts https://www.tsohost.com/

I've used them for years*, and despite a recent shift in emphasis, they still have manned UK support (answered by a techie) 07:00-00:00, which counts for a huge bunch in my book.

Whether they meet your criteria I don't know, but they fit the bill of "decent".

*On checking, 15 years

[fuaran]

Paragon/TSO Host are also owned by GoDaddy now.

[grams]

Paragon/TSO Host are also owned by GoDaddy now.

Fuck. Back to Joker.com it is then (shame they can't bill in GBP).

[vorsprung]

Hey, I actually have a valid complaint

The macbook won't STFU

Notifications off in the notification centre, Slack told to not notify, other apps with notify off, the volume set to zero, the lid shut, do not distrub settings in the systems preferences "when the display is sleeping", do not disturb is set to 24h a day

It's still making ding noises like it's trying to notify about something

Obviously a Macbook notification is more important than anything else

This generation of Macbook doesn't have an on-off switch for power either.  So the only solution is to put it in a sound proof thing.  Ie, your suitcase with spare clothes if you are sharing a hotel room with it

[Ham]

Paragon/TSO Host are also owned by GoDaddy now.

Oh bum, I missed that. As yet, hasn't trickled down to their operations, but I'm sure it will.