Them: "There's a beeping coming from the server cabinet! CALL I.T.!!! URGENT URGENT!!"

Me: "I'm not getting any alerts from anything. Any idea where the beeping is coming from?"

** receives video of device with a "worrying flashing orange light" **

Me: "Don't worry about that light, it just means an update is available. Any idea where the beeping is coming from? From the video it sounds like the CCTV system"

Them: "We can see all cameras"

Me: "OK, but are you sure the beeping isn't coming from the CCTV system? Can you check and try to find out exactly what box it is coming from. Just for clarity - I'm not getting alerts from any critical system"

Them: "We can see all cameras. Not the CCTV system"

...

It was the CCTV system (not in my remit)

We had a self-hosted client copy their MariaDB/InnoDB .ibd table files to a new server and then delete the old one -- _without_ also copying the `ibdata1` system tablespace. No SQL backups. Lots of "Table doesn't exist in engine" errors.

Fortunately, the system tablespace could be rebuilt by creating the empty table schemas, using `discard tablespace`, dropping secondary keys, moving .ibd in, `import tablespace`, and adding keys back.

Always use SQL backups!

You decide to take a day of vacation and the red hot issues in production operation decides to happen on the same day, that is life. #devops #sysadmin

Some bad news. Something's gone horribly awry with my #YunoHost deployment. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

This is a two-part issue. First, the smaller of the two issues: Phanpy has gone AWOL. It's visible in some places, but not others.

Phany is listed as an app on the front page of YunoApp.

But go into Admin, and it's not listed as an installed app.

Go to the URL it was installed at, and it's just a blank screen.

And yet. When I SSH in, and see what's in the /etc/yunohost/apps folder, Phanpy's files are still clearly installed on the server.

Now, here's where the Phanpy situation is a big issue... [1/3]

#Fedihelp #Mastodon #GoToSocial #Phanpy #Linux #LinuxHelp #SysAdmin

I think I'm genuinely getting alert fatigue at work

Like. I woke up at 5am this morning thinking I heard the Outlook notification noise

1.3 with exciting and long awaited new features is here

Access Control / Firewall management: https://docs.defguard.net/enterprise/all-enteprise-features/access-control-list

LDAP & Active Directory two-way synchronization: https://docs.defguard.net/enterprise/all-enteprise-features/ldap-and-active-directory-integration/two-way-ldap-and-active-directory-synchronization

More on Github: https://github.com/DefGuard/defguard/releases/tag/v1.3.0

This is so much like the daily Ops morning meetings I'm in that I've taken to ending them with "Hey - let's be careful out there." #sysadmin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCWu3PkjEPQ

We're live!

DevOps/SecOps/SRE Instructor

#owncast #streaming #linux #ruby #sysadmin #systemadministration #unix #devops #development #livecoding #codestream #tech

https://live.monospacementor.com

The Server That Wasn't Meant to Exist

A story from 16 years ago - trust, tech, and a server that had to disappear. They offered me a blank check. I said no.

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/05/13/the_server_that_wasnt_meant_to_exist/

Oh fuck me. It's a #FullMoon on a #PatchTuesday

Any superstitious #sysadmin about?

System stats are important because they allow you to make obvious assessments of your assets through a visual means.

Like this one container that was consuming almost half the CPU on my server for no reason I could determine.

A simple restart kicked it in the pants and got it back to normal.

I love stats! This sure beats the days of MRTG.

so there is something i don't get. gmail requires incoming emails to be sent from an IP with the reverse DNS record pointing to the email domain. but doesn't that mean that shared IPs cannot work at all? how do other services that handle outgoing email do it? something with a 'reputation' like PostmarkTM how do they do it? do they assign every customer a dedicated IP address or something? or maybe they get special exceptions from goggle. or use ipv6?

Sysadmin journal: setting up wireguard on all of my Linux desktops

I had to hack together a few things to use wireguard transparently on my Android phone and all of my Linux laptops and desktop.
#ddclient #Linux #NetworkManager #VPN #wireguard #Ansible #SysAdmin
https://blog.kamens.us/2025/05/10/sysadmin-journal-setting-up-wireguard-on-all-of-my-linux-desktops/

I just passed the Red Hat Certified System Administrator exam!

Okay, #windows #sysadmin folks: what's your favorite native DNS client? One that returns actual NXDOMAIN or NODATA errors?

No, resolve-dnsHost isn't that. It hides details.

No, not on WSL. Native client, for Windows admins. #n4sa2e

Uh...

PS > resolve-DnsName -Name google.com

gives me:

2607:f8b0:4009:81b::200e and 142.251.32.14. Fine.

$ dig google.com @8.8.8.8

gives me six addresses, all in 142.251.163.0/24.

#sysadmin #headdesk

Is consistency too much to ask for?

[edit to add: this is google playing silly buggers, not powershell. see replies]

Oh, hey, Microsoft replaced nslookup with a PowerShell client, Resolve-DnsName -- huzzah!

And... it doesn't show the actual DNS error codes? NODATA vs NXDOMAIN vs SERVFAIL matters, folks.

Sigh. Looks like #n4sa2e will recommend dig for Windows people. AGAIN.