If I wish hard enough the server will come back Tech Support |
- If I wish hard enough the server will come back
- He surely does not understand what we are saying!
- “I want you to help me but I don’t want to answer your questions so you can actually help me”
- Why you should triple check before unplugging
- On the job training... or... I'm not perfect!
- Teaching a VP how to browse files..
| If I wish hard enough the server will come back Posted: 28 Aug 2018 09:47 AM PDT The developer opened a ticket, stating "host not found for foo.example.com" . (not the actual hostname, but I like my paycheck.) I did a quick lookup and sure enough, it didn't exist, so I grabbed the ticket and started looking. Shortly after: me: foo.example.com doesn't exist. dev: OK. When was it removed? me: we have no record of it ever being in DNS. dev: OK. But it used to work. me: Can you give me an example of a server where it worked, so I can see if maybe it was in the /etc/hosts file or something? dev: It worked from bar.example.com. me: bar doesn't exist either; it appears to have been decommissioned six months ago. Do you have a server where it worked recently? dev: baz.example.com me: baz was decommed at the same time as bar. Are you saying you haven't used this in six months? dev: Yes. We only run this once in a while. We moved to new servers six months ago but we haven't tested it until now. me: OK. Well, foo has never been in DNS, and we can't look at the host files from bar and baz because they're gone. dev: can you restore them from backup? me: No, those backups are long gone. dev: OK. We need to connect to foo. me: Yes, but it doesn't exist in DNS, so you're not going to be able to. dev: Can you put it in DNS? me: If you tell me what it pointed to. dev: Can you point it to where it used to go? me: No, because it wasn't in DNS. I have no record of where it pointed to. Can you contact the developers of that app and ask them what server you should be pointing to? dev: that's our app. me: .... OK, what server does it run on? dev: foo.example.com me: I'm not going to be able to help you unless you tell me the ACTUAL name of that server. We don't have a server with that name or anything even close to that name. dev: OK. Can you keep the ticket open while I check? me: Sure. I'll probably close it in a couple of weeks after they never respond again. [link] [comments]  |
| He surely does not understand what we are saying! Posted: 29 Aug 2018 02:42 AM PDT Hi TFTS! LTL, FTP, Non-Native Speaker you know the drill. Also sorry if I screw up the formatting, this is my first properly formatted post so please bear with me. (rawr) This is not a story that happened to me, but a colleague of a very good friend when she was working at $SP in the past. Let's introduce our characters for this tale, shall we?
The weather was sunny and the road clear. $FT was pretty happy - $SP had recently released an update to $software and so he was sent out to customers far and wide to bring them
Needless to say $FT was more than a bit surprised - it seemed $GC was one of those customers that bark but don't bite. While he followed $GC to the PC, $GC was having a conversation with $AA.
$FT continued to the PC and not even an hour later $software was updated, he had checked that the printer worked and it properly backed up to the customers local backup solution. While he was doing so $GC and $AA continued cursing him and $SP.
Bear in mind that $GC like many other clients of $SP regularly called in because their stuff is broken. $FT had already helped fix their always working printer back in his days at helpdesk.
It was at this moment $GC and $AA realized they had fucked up - majorly. While $FT did not look like it, he was half troll and even his last name was a typical troll name. As such he also spoke troll natively. With a grin on his face $FT left the premise. The rumors from helpdesk said that $GC had become a rather 'tame' customer after this whole incident. While $SP did not give one single f about how their helpdesk or technicians were treated, if word reached them that a customer talked sh#$ about them, they were dropped like a hot potato. TL;DR: Customer thought he could talk sh#$ about the company and the tech in another language for nearly an hour while the tech was native in said language. [link] [comments]  |
| “I want you to help me but I don’t want to answer your questions so you can actually help me” Posted: 28 Aug 2018 07:30 AM PDT Cross posted from r/talesfromcallcenters Hey all, story time of a fun little call I had a couple weeks back from a lady who was the equivalent of a "can I speak to your manager" haircut, personified. I've posted on here a couple times before, the company I work for makes software that is for body shops and dealerships, so depending on the day I may get spammed with really nice people who "don't really know how to use a computer, but can you please help me" or people that just need a password reset or forgot a username. This call was one of those hellacious calls where I resisted the urge to lose my cool several times over. We're gonna call her "cust" because otherwise I'll think of something much more rude to call her. Me: "customer support, this is X" Cust: "You need to help me use 'the link'" (our software program) Me: "Sure! Have you used it before, or have you watched any of the self help videos in our support section? Was there something specific with it you had questions on?" Cust: (Begins to actually scream into the phone): "I don't have time for this, I don't know how to use the link and you need to help me right now and stop asking me questions!" Me: "Ma'am, I am trying to help you, but I'm trying to figure out if you ever used the link before, or if you're a first time user. Please do not raise your voice to me, as I am simply trying to help." Cust: (Starts yelling even louder): "I AM NOT YELLING AT YOU. YOU NEED TO HELP ME OR GET ME YOUR MANAGER." Me: "Ma'am, you haven't told me what the problem is, how am I supposed to help if I don't know what you need?" Cust: "I told you, I don't know how to use the link and you need to help me!" (At this point I assume she's either a first time user or someone who hasn't used it in a long time, so I prepare to remote in and give her a full walkthrough of the program.) Me: "Okay, can I get your account's phone number so I can pull up your profile? I'm going to remote in to help you." Cust: "Finally! It's 800-FUC-KOFF." (She didn't say that, but damn was I thinking it.) (At this point I pull up their account see they're pretty active, having called in a couple weeks ago for assistance with files not pulling through the link. We also just released a major update to our software so older windows versions like XP and vista are no longer supported.) Me: (walks her through the steps of remoting me in, which normally takes 30-60 seconds tops, and takes us nearly 10 minutes.) "Okay, so I'm in, you have the link installed and running, so what seems to be the problem? You said you didn't know how to use it at all, but you have it installed on here." (Her PC is also slower than hell and looks to be running vista, if the 10 minutes to remote in didn't clue you in.) Cust: "It won't work! I tried to send a file over but it won't come into the website and you need to fix it for me!" Me: "So, when you said you didn't know how to use the system what you really meant is you knew how, but you couldn't get a file through...?" Cust: (Her tone suddenly changes as I trail off and let her sit there and think of how much of an idiot she's being.) "Oh yeah, silly me that's what I meant! It's worked up until the last week or so! Btw, where are you located, how's the weather out there?" (I shit you not, she went to stepford wife cheerful at the drop of a hat. Also, our update came out about a week ago, hmmm.) Me: "Okay, so we did have an update come out about a week ago, did you happen to download and install it? It would have prompted you to do so." Cust: "YES. SO TELL ME WHY IT ISNT WORKING." (Just like that, back to rude and snarky.) Me: "Let me check a couple things -goes through basic verification steps I normally would have done before wasting my time to remote in, she answers okay to all of them-do you happen to know what version of windows you use?" Cust: "No, I don't know that, that shouldn't matter at all." Me: "Actually it does, we upgraded the program so some versions are no longer supported." (I then check the version of our tool and it isn't the latest one.) "Okay, so you didn't actually download the newest version of the tool, so that's why it isn't actually working." I go through the brief process of updating our tool, and lo and behold, it fails and says the operating system isn't supported. Cust: "That's weird, we use vista so I don't know why it wouldn't work." Me: "You just said you didn't know which version you used, and if so, that's why it isn't working anymore. " (I check the system info, it's fucking vista.) "Sorry ma'am, your pc has an unsupported version of windows for our program, due to our recent software upgrade. I'd suggest upgrading the pc as a whole as opposed to just installing the new OS. But I can't fix this for you because it won't work with our tool anymore!" Cust: (Starts swearing at a man in the background and yells at him to upgrade the pc because it's too old and she needs to use our program.) That was a satisfying end to the call, sorry lady, but even if I wanted to help you, and at this point I definitely didn't, I couldn't. [link] [comments]  |
| Why you should triple check before unplugging Posted: 28 Aug 2018 01:16 PM PDT So this happened today, let's start off with a bit of background. The company I work for has 2 racks in a co-location data centre (D and E) and they both have the same code back and front (So 1234 for all the rack doors, not the actual code but I like my job) and both racks have a 4U storage server at the bottom. All will become relevant very soon. I get told to go downstairs and pull a specific cable out of the storage server in rack D. So I went down and unlocked rack E thinking it was rack D. I sit down to look at the server and look for any identifying marks to tell me what cable to unplug (I was told management port on controller 0 I was trying to identify which was 0) there was no identifying marks what so ever not even to identify from device A to device B. So I tell my colleagues to keep an eye on the monitoring software and tell me if I unplug the wrong controller but I think it's this one as there no traffic going through it and the reason we were unplugging and re plugging was due to the controller being frozen. I finally unplug the cable and wait, nothing from my colleagues so I'm pretty happy I unplugged the correct one. I plug it back in and go to check if the controller has come back when I realise I don't have my laptop so I go back upstairs and check but the controller still isn't working. This time I take my laptop with me and unplug the server while looking at the GUI waiting for it to tell me link down but I refresh the page, link up so I refresh again, link up and do this multiple times I've the next 10 minutes but then also notice something else, the controller are showing management and port 1 as up on both controllers but only the first controller has a cable in port 1. At this point I realise something is truly screwed with this server. I walk back upstairs and talk about it with my senior engineer and tell him about all these problems and spend 10 minutes discussing it and this is the first time I start doubting myself and check monitoring to see if anything else went down while doing this but nope nothing and I was pretty sure it was the right server. After doubting myself I have to go down and check and it was at this point that that I realise my mistake so I message my senior engineer letting him know and complete the work on the correct server and saw the link go down almost as soon as I unplug it and back up when I plug it back in. TL;DR make sure you know what your unplugging and hope you don't unplug a live production server [link] [comments]  |
| On the job training... or... I'm not perfect! Posted: 28 Aug 2018 12:02 PM PDT Back to my time offshore. In this case, this was very, VERY early in my offshore career. This is in around 1997 or so. Our setup at this time included a data collection machine that collected data to a 9gb hard drive and a data processing machine that was also the fileserver and backup station. The processing machine had 27gb or so of space in a software RAID... three data drives and a parity drive. The data collector could fill up that 9gb drive in two to three days. Due to storage capacity limitations, we had a policy of archiving the raw data as soon as possible. Every two to three days, I would copy all the data from the collection machine to the processing machine, archive the latest raw data to tape, process the raw data into a smaller processed form, then delete the raw data. Once the raw data was on tape, I would then delete the raw data off of the data collection machine. On one fateful day, I'm asked to dump the contents of a data CD to our "RAID array". I had just finished processing the last dump and had just archived raw data and cleaned off the collection machine. This was a very lucky thing. I ran the command to copy the entire disc to the RAID array and went to the galley to grab a bite to eat. I came back from lunch to see it still crunching away on the disc, which was very odd. About 45 minutes into the copy process, the processing machine crashed. This was also unusal. I had witnessed maybe two workstation crashes. The machine comes back up, but the data drive is not mounted. Hmm... That's not good. I attempt to run an fsck on the data drive, and I get an error from the RAID software that set0 has no members or some such ( I forget the exact error ). After an hour or so of reading manuals and trying everything to resurrect this drive, I admit defeat and call the office. They put me in touch with the local "expert" in recovering software RAIDs. We try several things and after a few hours, he admits defeat. We are now 8ish hours into this mess and about 4 hours after my shift is over. At this point, not only do I have to worry about getting everything up and running before the data collection machine runs out of space, I also need to have processed data so that we can see which areas need more data collected. For reasons that I will never fully understand, it took another twelve hours or so to actually rebuild the software RAID. Now I need to pull data from my latest full backup, which I completed a few hours before the crash. The restore took another 8ish hours. Then I had to pull data from the CD again, but this time I pulled the data across the network from a PC with a cdrom drive. That took another two hours. Then I started processing the last batch of raw data ( I had lost that data ). That took another 6 hours. Now, I need to hurry up and pull the data across from the collection machine, archive it to tape, clean off the data collection machine before it runs out of space, and process the latest batch of raw data. This took another 6 hours. I don't know if I have the math all done correctly, but I basically had to stay up and fight with this disaster for 48 hours straight. When I finally had everything caught up, cleaned up, backed up, and ready to go... I crashed for about 24 hours straight. -- This was not the only time I wiped out a workstation. Again, early in my career, I discovered that operating a vacuum cleaner on the same circuit that the workstation was plugged into was enough to crash the workstation. At least that time, I didn't take out the RAID array. *sigh* [link] [comments]  |
| Teaching a VP how to browse files.. Posted: 28 Aug 2018 08:32 AM PDT Brief introduction, I work for a very large and very well known software company we currently use a bit of backup software that scans your PC and backs up almost everything in your user area (includes certain parts of AppData etc) but 100% all of your folder structure under your user that is default and that you've created and we have had OneDrive available for over a year however we're also now sunsetting this backup software and going forward migrating to OneDrive for a 100% backup / data use solution. So, I had a user come to me as he got an email yesterday stating the above with some pointers of why OneDrive is better than what we currently had however nowhere in this email does it state how to actually move your documents into OneDrive, now, I know what you're thinking "it's literally just copy and paste or cut and paste depending on what you want to do?" - yes, yes it is. However this user then proceeds to tell me he has "loads of stuff" and to show me he has "loads of stuff" says "uhh, let me know you just how much stuff I have to move, however you even do that" and then goes to say "where do I even sho-" - I interrupt him to tell him to click on File Explorer, an icon on his taskbar which he then promptly ignored, opens the start menu, opens up Word, then apologies as if this was an accident when he navigated to Word intentionally, even after apologising then starts go click on open documents then shows me all of his documents.. To which I Kindly then stated, can we please just go to file explorer and then I showed him how to actually browse his files properly. This person is the Vice President of one of our business sectors.. I don't understand how people can do their jobs clearly rather well yet still not know the core basics of looking for files? I understand I grew up with computers, but he has lived through most of the recent iterations of them? He looked lated 40's.. I probably missed a few pointers of what he said or I said but honestly I am still in shock? [link] [comments]  |
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