The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout
- Reference: 1610698514
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/15/on_call/
- Source link:
"Dan", for that is not his name, was working as departmental support for a UK local authority "more famous for its wild animal park" than its IT prowess. This was back in the 1990s, and Dan told us "we had only just managed to gain permission to have networked PCs (council rules stated only Unix was allowed for networks)."
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The layout had one server per team, and the open-plan nature of the workspace meant that each server was located within the relevant work area.
On the day in question, Dan was called out to tend to the needs of a Novell NetWare box running a variant of version 3. In our limited support experience, NetWare 3.x was a relatively robust beast (unless one opted to use one of the flakier NetWare Loadable Modules) and an unexpected reboot tended to be the exception rather than the rule.
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"Sure enough, there was the login prompt," Dan told us. A bit odd and, naturally, "the team denied any knowledge of server-related subterfuge. So I sorted and left."
The next morning the same thing happened again. Again there were the same denials, and again Dan brought the server back up. And so it went on – every day a call would come in; the server had rebooted and, no, nobody had been near it.
Tiring of the daily trudge to the NetWare console (this was, after all, in the days before such a chore would be a bonus for a fitness tracker), Dan elected to stakeout the server and turned up ahead of the users.
"The team manager was first to arrive," he said, "and [I] watched him like a hawk – well, a yawning vaguely awake hawk."
As the manager hung up his coat, Dan watched the screen and was rewarded with a spontaneous reboot.
"What did you just do?" he enquired in what he claimed was "the politest tone I could muster."
"Nothing," replied the manager, "I just hung my coat up and put the light on."
"Light?" The room lights were all on by default.
"This fluorescent uplighter – we like the light they give."
Dan examined the uplighter's cable and traced it to its source, which just so happened to be the same socket as the server.
"The back EMF on a fluorescent is known to be 'spiky' to say the least," he explained, "so I grabbed the plug and yanked it out."
"I don't care where you plug this in but not here!"
"No more uplighter equated to no more reboots," he said with satisfaction: "Job's a good 'un."
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The act of leaving the users in the dark is something many in IT have proudly (and not so proudly) accomplished. Ever staked out your users in the hope of solving a seemingly impossible problem? Let us know with an email to [5]On Call . ®
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Re: Fluorescents...
I had the pleasure of meeting a lady from the far east many years ago. She was over on businness with the company I worked for and a few of us took her out for a drink after work. She was very nice (bought a round or two on expenses) and told us a story about her offices. Before they'd first moved in they'd done up the building with an interior designer 'helping'. As a result there was a disgusting multicoloured carpet on each floor. The designer had a specified a different yucky pattern/colour scheme on each floor so you knew you were on your floor. The office design had been done with feng Shui so the Qi energy flowed and other such mumbo jumbo. Only problem was that hadn't helped with the actual energy as the static the carpet generated was considerable. If you touched for example a metal desk after walking across the room you got a sizeable shock. She said it played havoc with the computers too and they had to have the carpets removed and replaced. The replacements were a more sober single colour and generated far less static. Sadly we never got to see any pictures of this multicoloured hell.
Hands up who thought it would be the cleaner again
Towards the end I was thinking static,
Never would have guessed the lighting, but then how often is fluorescent lighting plugged into a plug socket.
Great twist on this tale today.
Re: Hands up who thought it would be the cleaner again
Yep, I had a tenner riding on the cleaner unplugging the server to run the vac. Nice to see it wasn't that for once!
Re: Hands up who thought it would be the cleaner again
My hands are up.
Interesting twist, but I do have fluorescent lighting plugged into a wall socket as I write this. That might explain something...
Re: Hands up who thought it would be the cleaner again
After the spolier in the first sentence?
And this is why...
EMC testing has been introduced ;-)
Re: And this is why...
ESD? Right? Electro Static Discharge?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcRqj9FhgcE
It was my boss' coat.
We had a server that kept shutting down every morning shortly after my boss arrived. Since we weren't allowed in his office none of us could figure out what he might have done to cause the constant FacePlants. Until one morning I'm passing his office with a cuppa & watch him hang up his coat. There's a soft click, his personal ionizer thingy comes on, & I hear the beep of the server going thud.
I asked him to change the outlet it was plugged into, he asked why, I pointed out that the plug on the other side of the wall was the server that wasn't appreciating his ionizer, so he magnimously lets me move the plug. All well & good, right? Not bloody likely.
He comes in the next morning, hangs up his coat, I'm watching out in the hall, & the server goes thud again. WTF? Had he moved the ionizer back? Nope, still on the far wall where I left it. So WTF is causing the problem?
We had to call in a sparky to do his little leccy dance & determine that the boss' coat was essentially a giant static discharge waiting to happen. Which it did every time he hung it up on the coat hook over the switchplate that the ionizer was plugged into. It hadn't been the ionizer, it was his jacket hitting the metal mounting screw, discharging through it, & the unearthed bits taking out the server.
Sparky fixed the grounding issue, the server didn't go thud when the boss came in anymore, but I couldn't figure out how/why such an issue hadn't been found at a much earlier stage - like when the plate had been installed in the first place. FekIfIKnow, not my baliwick, so I'll just be happy that I've convinced the boss to pay for a UPS that can handle the full load of the server & hopefully prevent any further FacePlants...
Fuck me & my wishful thinking.
Dispite being on a different wall, the UPS somehow wound up on the same circuit. The ionizer that had spent months getting zapped by the boss' leccy spewing coat. An ionizer that now played merry hell with the UPS batteries.
I have no idea how, no idea why, nor do I give a flying fuck. I left that job two weeks later when my notice kicked in so I could work for a company closer to home. I was never so glad to cut my commute in half as when leaving that Twilight Zone of a company...
Somewhat similar problem (funny enough, also with a Netware server)
However, the server in my case was (supposedly) protected by an UPS (Smart UPS 600VA). The UPS did a good enough job protecting against power failures (I tested it several times by unplugging its power lead - no trouble). However, when the server monitor (CRT, remember those?) was powered on, it would *sometimes* cause a reboot. Since the console was rarely used, the monitor was kept switched off and only powered when actually needing to use the console. Luckily for us it was a clear direct cause. Increasing the UPS sensitivity (the voltage threshold) did cause the UPS to switch to battery when monitor was switched on, but the reboots still happened.
Powering the monitor from a socket immediately upstrem from the UPS wouldn't help, while powering from a completely different socket would apparently make the problem go away (but introduce a tripping hazard in the form of an extension cord). In the end, it was simpler to instruct everyone to avoid switching the monitor off.
Re: CRT monitors
I used to have 2 21-inch Samsung CRT monitors at the office and learned the hard way not to power them on or off at the same time. The few times I did that I managed to trip the whole floor. And each of those times several angry looks followed my walk of shame from my post to the electrical board to switch it on again.
Space heater
Long ago in another profession, a space heater under a desk was found to make the CRT display have an epileptic fit in a temporary trailer on a construction site. For the first hour or so, the display was crazy, once the trailer warmed, the space heater shut off... After lunch, door opened and closed a lot, cue space heater!
I have to think the quality of electricity wasn't great either!
Of chairs and telephones
Our Phone system was declared non Y2K compliant so we needed a newer one.
The powers that be decided on a Centrix phone system. the biggest POS I have ever used, with the worst sales engineer / project manager it has ever been my misfortune to meet.
Anyway there was an issue with a phone hanging up mid call.
This went on for many months with phones, cables being swapped.
After all that it turned out to be the chair.
Apparently the phones were very susceptible to static discharge (tested in a false teeth factory I was told) and whenever someone stood up / sat down on the chair it created a static charge and killed the call.
One chair meet skip later all was solved.
Fluorescents...
Working for a small software house that used Apricot hardware* we had a laser printer** on the end of an overlong*** parallel cable. Every morning when the fluorescent lights were turned on the printer fired up and spat out a page. It was somewhat disconcerting the first few times until we figured the cause and got used to it.
*Which dates how long ago it was!
**Can't remember the make/model but it was Canon engined.
***About 7m, due to the way the office was laid out the server and printer were at opposite corners of the room.