Failed once a year Tech Support |
| Posted: 30 Mar 2020 01:09 PM PDT Not sure this belongs here, Please let me know a better sub. I knew a guy that worked on telephone CDR (Call Detail Reporting) equipment, of course they take glitches pretty seriously. They installed a box in a carrier in the spring, and that fall they got a call from the carrier reporting a glitch. Couldn't find anything wrong, it didn't happen again, so everybody just wrote it off. Until the next fall, it happened again, so this time he looked harder. And noticed that it happened on October 10 (10/10). At 10:10:10 AM. Analysis showed it was a buffer overflow issue! Huh? Buffer overflow? Because of a specific date/time? Are you kidding? No. What I didn't mention, this was back in the 80's, before TCP/IP, back in the days of SDLC/HDLC/Bisync line protocols. Tutorial time: SDLC/HDLC are bit-level protocols. The hardware typically gets confused if there are too many 1 bits or 0 bits in a row (no, I'm not going into why that is, it's beyond my expertise), so these protocols will insert 0's or 1's as needed, and then take them out on the other end. From a user standpoint, you can put any 8-bit byte in one end, *magic happens*, and it comes out the other end. Bisync (invented/used by IBM) is a byte-level protocol (8-bit bytes). It tries to be transparent, but control characters are mixed in with data characters. If you have any data that looks like a control character, then it is preceeded with an DLE character (0x10). You probably see where this is going. Yes, any 0x10 data bytes look like a control character, so they get a 0x10 (DLE) inserted before them. Data of (0x10 0x10) gets converted to (DLE 0x10 DLE 0x10) or (0x10 0x10 0x10 0x10) The more 0x10's in the data stream, the longer the buffer needs to be. On 10/10 at 10:10:10, the buffer wasn't long enough, causing the overflow. Solution: No code change, the allocated buffer just needed to be a few bytes longer. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Mar 2020 04:27 PM PDT Client called me and asked me to help him configure some CCTV software on his server. I log onto teamviewer and within a minute I that see his knowledge of the software or IT in general is almost non-existent because almost nothing is configured and the things that were configured were not correct. "Still, he's been sent by his boss to fix it, so might as well help the poor lad," I thought. Fast forward 30 minutes. We checked everything, we configured everything, we tested everything, all was good. Throughout the configuration he's asking me questions like" Hey why did you do x or y?" It really showed he was willing to learn so I was really glad I could help him out. I was just about to round up the configuration by checking something on my PC, so I look over to the other monitor and I tell him what I'm going to do to finish up the configuration. I hear him agreeing with everything I'm saying. While I'm looking away, he's asking me some more questions about the software and IT in general. Suddenly, the following happens; Client: C. Me: Me.
My face darts back to the other monitor.
And before I could even move my mouse fast enough from my other monitor to the teamviewer session, the dude clicks on continue.
The software rebooted. Everything was gone.
He apologised, said thank you and I hung up. I almost threw my phone at the wall. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Mar 2020 02:13 PM PDT Okay so to start with I worked for about a year in a 0% contract to a company that sells itself to other companies as IT services if they are small companies or just don't have the staff or other, tbh I don't really fully understand it myself, all I know is I took calls for other companies in this company and sent our guys to go fix said issues at the one that called. I confuse myself some days and i apologies. So this happened only 2 years ago, but it makes me laugh to tell it and it comes up frequently when around friends also in IT and/or call centre type work. A new guy started around the same time I did as a technician, only he knew very little about computer hardware and even less about software so lets call him "Brad" and I got a call from one of the companies hiring us lets call it "Basilisk" cause the name sounds cool. "Basilisk" was an old long standing customer of the company I was a temp at, we will now call "Port" and one of the managers of "Basilisk" was asking us to send someone to install some new units as they were upgrading some of their old computers which were starting to show their age as I was told and they needed some help removing one unit because it was making a strange noise, which we later found out was a faulty cable that if someone had touched would of electrocuted someone, or at least I was again told later as such. So i called our technicians and they sent Brad. So Brad gets there and quickly helps remove the dangerous unit not knowing anything about computers specifically, but he knew a lot about electrical engineering I believe and called me as I was the ticket holder and would need to close each part of the job and write up what happened, to tell me he had safely removed the unit and what the issue was, which left me very surprised because it turned out to be the Manager who called me's computer and he had been complaining about this odd buzzing sound for almost a week now and that it only became an issue after he turned his computer on, I shudder to think what may of happened if said manager had started messing with the cables. Then we got to the easy bit, installing the new units and while I was waiting I was doing other paperwork and such, when a call comes in from Brad, one of the computers isn't turning on and he cannot figure out why, I asked him if he plugged the wires in properly, he said "yes" in a huffy, I know what I am doing way. So I said "can you double check?" only to get a long winded sigh and then a defeated "okay" from Brad and everything is silent again for 20 minutes . I get a call 20 minutes later from Brad "Hey I checked all the cables and they are in the unit properly, it still isn't turning on" At this point I am stumped and think its probably a hardware fault and needs to be sent back, BUT THEN, i hear over the phone a voice I do not recognise and guess its an employee who says "Hey is this supposed to be unplugged?" and then silence for what felt like an eternity, then Brad chimes in "Hey so got the unit to work" Curiously and already guessing what may of happened, I ask "Oh? that's great, what was the Issue so I can document it" I get silence again then the earlier voice chimes in again "Are you telling him the issue was you forgot to plug in the last unit to the wall socket?" More silence then Brad says slowly "Yes.... I forgot to plug it into the wall" Then the phone went dead and I had to take a short walk to stop myself from laughing like a lunatic in my cubicle. Sorry for the long post, but the end of it is, I noted down that the cable was either "Tripped on by someone" or "Pulled on too much that it came out the socket during the install" To make Brad's hurting pride, hurt less and the manager was happy with everything else so job well done, but it still makes me laugh to remember it sometimes and I hope this story makes other laugh too. [link] [comments]  |
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