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    That is really not what technology is for Tech Support

    June 04, 2022

    That is really not what technology is for Tech Support

    That is really not what technology is for

    Posted: 04 Jun 2022 06:50 AM PDT

    About a year ago - I got a call from a user that had a picture sent to them from a customer that they could not open. She just was double clicking on the file and it would not open in the standard Photo program that they used. They emailed it to me to resolve. I told them that I did not recognized the extension and to please ask the customer to resend the photo in a different format. They asked me how to do that. I said simply email the customer back and ask them to change the format to something like a GIF or JPG format. They said that did not work and that they still could not open it.

    I asked: "So what did the customer format it to this time?"

    She said "I changed it to a jpg."

    I asked "How could you reformat it if you can not open it?"

    She said "I renamed it to pic1.jpg"

    Shaking my head I said. "That is not how reformatting works."

    She asked "Can't you just do it?"

    I said "No I do not know how. I am not familiar with that format. I will have to research it a minute."

    After about 2 minutes of reading up on the HEIC format after a quick duckduckgo search, I see that it is a simple IPhone picture format. Two minutes more and I find a free online converter and (bingo!) was able to convert the file. I then emailed the new jpg back to the user and sent them a link and instructions how to use the website (which was basically upload the file, press a "convert" button, and then download the jpg.)

    She responded "Thanks. But I will just send it to you to convert from now on."

    I retorted, "I am sorry but that not is what technology is for. I will be glad to locate a codex so your program can open it or a small program that can perform this on your computer and even give you training on how to do this yourself, but I will not be taking on the added responsibility of opening problematic files for you on an ongoing basis without approval from my boss and yours. Would you like me to go ahead and contact them to discuss the matter?"

    She ended with "No thanks."

    PS: The company did not want to spend the 99 cent that it would take to purchase an addin to Photos in Windows 11 to handle the file format easily. So, I downloaded a small app that would reformat the file easily, installed it, and taught the user how to use it. Her response was "That's it? That is all I have to do?" Yep, yes, it is.

    submitted by /u/BushcraftHatchet
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    Make sure to inform your IT department before doing any major remodeling.

    Posted: 03 Jun 2022 01:44 PM PDT

    tl;dr: If you tear out all the network cables, your network won't work. Who knew, am I right?

    I work for a decently sized chain of repair shops. One day, we got a ticket from one of the newer locations, a location we acquired six months prior.

    Subject: Two of our computers are offline

    Text of the ticket: Everything was working fine when we left on Friday. But when we got back, two of our computers and our xerox were down. We have customers waiting in the lobby. Please address.

    This kind of thing happens pretty often in our stores. The cleaning crew comes in over the weekends and sometimes they'll bump the power cable to the switch in the front office, knocking the machines offline. I figured that was the case and called them, expecting this to be an easy fix.

    Here's how that conversation went:

    Me: "Hey, this is IT, calling about that ticket about the offline PCs. Can you tell me a little more about what's happening?"

    The store manager: "Yeah man, two of our modems (this is what half of our employees call computers, for some reason) are down and we got a lobby full of customers. What do you need me to do?"

    Me: "Can you go trace the ethernet cables on the computers that are affected? The box they're connected to probably got unplugged." Once I described the ethernet cable for him, he did so.

    Manager: "They're all unplugged, man. Where should they go?" That one stumped me.

    Me, shocked and surprised: "Unplugged? What? Um, they should go into either the wall or the switch. Why are they unplugged?"

    Manager: "Oh, they probably did that over the weekend when they were remodeling."

    Me: "Hold up. Remodeling? What all got remodeled?"

    Manager: "The entire front office. They ripped the walls out completely and moved a ton of stuff. It looks like a whole new building now, at least inside."

    Me: "Who did the wiring?" I'm not the head of our department, so I don't know everything going on, but I knew we didn't have our wiring crew scheduled to go to that store over the weekend.

    Manager: "I dunno, the electricians? Look, where do I need to plug these in?"

    Me: "Let me call my manager real quick..."

    I end up calling and talking to our IT director, who told me he had no idea the store was being remodeled. He called the person in charge of remodeling and asked her what was up. Here's how that went:

    IT director: "So, who did the wiring in that store that got remodeled this weekend?"

    Her: "Kenny, the company electrician."

    IT director: "No, who did the network cabling? Who ran the ethernet cables?"

    Her: "What's an ethernet cable?" Note that this isn't the first time we've had this conversation with her. She was notorious for pulling this crap. This right here was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

    IT director: "Hold on a moment, let me call someone real quick..."

    He proceeded to call the CEO and tell him the full story of what's going on. A few minutes later, we're all CC'd on an email to the head of the remodeling team that basically said "Inform the IT department before you do any remodeling".

    The store itself was half a day's drive for our wiring crew at the time, so we hired some local contractors and paid an emergency fee to get them there the same day to run wires. The story doesn't end there, though. The same store was scheduled for more remodeling, which we were made aware of. We just weren't told when it was going to happen...

    Until we got a ticket on a Friday at 4:45 Central that the store was being remodeled over the weekend and that we needed to have it wired and ready to go by Monday morning. The store in question was in Eastern time, which meant it was already closed by the time we were notified.

    This resulted in another call to the CEO, who sent out yet another email. This time it said something along the lines of "Inform the IT department two weeks before you do any remodeling".

    We never had issues with that lady again.

    submitted by /u/whatmustido
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    Good thing we have backup. Or do we?

    Posted: 03 Jun 2022 07:37 AM PDT

    Let's start off by saying that I generally don't have a high opinion of my various predecessors... It could be because they've sometimes been arseholes, but it's usually because they don't really know what they're doing. They've either fallen into their roles, or they have arrogantly believed they're king shit and are too good to research, develop and reach out to professional networks, and use consultants when necessary.

    ​

    So recently I've been doing this gig where I have taken over a recently retired long-timer who never had any real training or experience in IT but sort of fell into it.. A real nice guy, had a good "management" vibe, but didn't really know how to run IT systems. On the surface, all the stuff was working.. But scratch a bit, and you'll find a critical production system running on a Windows 7 desktop behind a random desk.. Or an undocumented mail server with an unpatched legacy OS that had all ports punched through the consumer grade firewall.. So after taking on the job, I estimate there is literally 12 months worth of triaging the shit into piles to work out what will break first, what will cause the most user drama, and what is the biggest cyber security risk... And then working through remediation based on that triaging... I'm slowly getting through it, and bringing along my inherited staff for the ride..

    ​

    So today it's a server that serves both downloadable ISO's on a samba share for convenience, and a critical application.. Let's consider that one for a moment.. Documentation exists for the machine, which is great.. Backup is a hackjob and untested but seems to be enough to get out of strife. The hardware is an antique Intel rackmount server.. So it's better than the usual whitebox we have, but not as good as a HPE or Dell server and certainly no maintenance.. Disks are a hodge-podge of consumer and SMB grade sata units but at least the critical application and OS is on RAID, even if the ISO's are not.. Goes in the "short-term but not immediate" pile.

    But let's scratch the surface a bit.

    - That's RAID 0 thanks. Yikes. On closer inspection, there are 2 RAID 0 arrays of one disk each... eh?

    - Backup doesn't include the critical application. There's actually no backup of it... Ever. But we do have backups of the ISO's that can be downloaded again.

    - Those striped, critical, un-backed-up disks are consumer sata disks, over 15 years old, and they're actually recycled from another machine. One of the other disks is actually formatted with ntfs.. In a linux box.

    - The application has integration with AD.. And the service account is the domain administrator. And the config file has no encryption and a plain-text password. And a samba share is giving it to everyone in the office.

    ​

    So this gets upgraded to the "holy shit" pile.. Cue a brief planning session with the team. Immediate backup rectification, give it a test, then we can split the application out from the shares and put it in some virtual infrastructure. Then we can address the security issues. The shares will move across to a cheap, but modern NAS.

    ​

    While having this discussion, users alert that the application has gone offline. Both RAID "arrays" crashed and the OS has crapped itself over. While we were literally talking about it. Well fuck.

    ​

    6 hours later, I have it running again. The top end of each array was trashed... Luckily that was linux swap-space on one array, and clear space on the other... But it still caused the OS to panic and took a while to rectify and validate. Backup is running on the unprotected volumes, and once tested, it'll have a P2V migration onto some reasonably modern hardware while we deal with proper remediation... But that's tomorrow's job.

    ​

    It did make me curious enough to do a full and granular audit of the backup situation... It's not pretty. Most "backup" is just tarballing linux servers onto themselves, and some basic Windows file replication with robocopy. And that's only on about 1/3 of systems - the others don't even have that. We're perhaps really running backup on about 4tb worth of stuff... Out of about 100tb. And I use the term "backup" in the loosest possible sense.

    ​

    A few weeks later, I cut a PO for about $100k worth of backup solution to upgrade 2 USB hard disks.. Never waste a good emergency.

    submitted by /u/airzonesama
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    Rules of Tech Support - Techs - 2022-05-03

    Posted: 03 Jun 2022 08:27 AM PDT

    Main site: https://github.com/morriscox/Rules-of-Tech-Support

    GitHub: https://github.com/morriscox/Rules-of-Tech-Support/blob/master/Rules%20of%20Tech%20Support%20-%20techs.md

    Credits are listed there. The requirements for being listed here is dealing with other techs. Some of them could be in the main Rules section but that is already long.

    Dealing (primarily) with other techs

    Rule T1 - CYA

    Rule T1A - Always have someone else to blame it on.

    Rule T2 - Never lie to another tech.

    Rule T2A - Unless that tech is the person you're about to blame. See Rule T1A and Rule T13.

    Rule T2B - Sometimes you will need to lie in order to deal with things like warranty repairs or getting ISPs to do the right thing.

    Rule T3 - Never assume anything.

    Rule T3A - Does the issue even exist?

    Rule T3B - Is it even plugged in?

    Rule T3C - Is it turned on?

    Rule T4 - Don't expect your boss or coworkers or users to understand just what it is that you do.

    Rule T4A - Even if they are a tech.

    Rule T5 - Sometimes, you will be the one who is wrong.

    Rule T6 - Don't try to do work over the Internet while in a moving airplane.

    Rule T7 - Never call support with your cellphone if you can help it. Otherwise, you won't be able to drop the problem in someone else's lap.

    Rule T8 - You will really screw up eventually and it is going to be a doozy.

    Rule T9 - Backup following the Rule of Three. A backup, a copy of the backup, and a copy of the copy. Test them.

    Rule T9A - Consider using other backup strategies. See Link TL1 (https://www.unitrends.com/blog/3-2-1-backup-sucks).

    Rule T9B - There is no backup. If there is a backup, it is either corrupt or years out of date.

    Rule T9C - If you can't restore from it, you don't have a backup.

    Rule T9D - If you haven't tested your backup recently, you don't have a backup.

    Rule T9E - A year ago is not "recently".

    Rule T10 - Assume that there are also inside threats, even inside IT. It's not paranoia if they really are after you (or your stuff).

    Rule T10A - Don't trust your coworkers. They might be using Rule T2A.

    Rule T10B - Don't even trust yourself. One error and you might cause serious damage or become a security leak.

    Rule T10C - The new member on your team will send critical sensitive information to anyone who asks without trying to do any verification.

    Rule T11 - When you need tech support, the tech support person is likely to be clueless.

    Rule T11A - Whenever you have a problem, you will be unable to find a solution until just before the tech you called for help arrives.

    Rule T11B - If the tech you called in isn't clueless, then you were and your problem has an obvious solution that you completely missed that they will point out seconds after they arrive.

    Rule T11C - If none of these apply, the solution will be something random that will make no sense whatsoever to you or the technician.

    Rule T12 - Every tech has their own set of Rules, even if they don't know it.

    Rule T13 - Every tech is also a user.

    Rule T13A - Techs will treat you like you are a user.

    Rule T14 - Make sure your coworkers don't make changes before going on vacation.

    Rule T15 - No technical person reads all of the rules. They will act like they know them until the place catches fire, then complain about incomplete documentation.

    Rule T15A - Especially if it was the documentation that went up in flames first.

    Rule T16 - Womprats aren't much larger than two meters.

    Rule T17 - Third-Party IT will make configuration overhauls without notifying your company's IT department, and then blame your company for problems caused by their configuration mishap.

    Rule T18 - You are incompetent. You just don't know it. At least, that's what your replacement will think.

    Rule T18A - You will have to deal with techs who are incompetent.

    Rule T18B - Sometimes, you really are incompetent.

    Rule T19 - You might find people who support you. Reciprocate.

    Rule T20 - Always verify who you are corresponding with. This includes not using Reply All.

    Rule T21 - Use your inner laziness to do the most elegant solution possible.

    Rule T21A - Know the difference between "truly lazy" and "plain laziness".

    Rule T22 - If nothing seems to work, reboot.

    Rule T23 - Cables can and will be used as ropes.

    Rule T24 - Other techs will never read the manual.

    Rule T24A - Neither will you.

    Rule T25 - Your fellow techs will expect you to be their tech support.

    Rule T568A - white green, green, white orange, blue, white blue, orange, white brown, brown

    Rule T568B - white orange, orange, white green, blue, white blue, green, white brown, brown

    Rule T1000 - Buy stock in Boston Dynamics but sell all of it before 2029.

    submitted by /u/morriscox
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