Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

Maneki Neko: Oct 27, 2000

Misogynist posted:

The law presumes that anything you ask about in an interview is for the purposes of making a decision on whether to hire a candidate, so conduct your interviews appropriately.

I've found that pretty much every place I've worked has done a lousy job of prepping people to do job interviews and frankly I'm surprised more companies aren't sued.

# ? Oct 8, 2014 20:08

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 12:53

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Maneki Neko posted:

I've found that pretty much every place I've worked has done a lousy job of prepping people to do job interviews and frankly I'm surprised more companies aren't sued.

Eh, how are you going to prove the a company did whatever?

He said this! No we didn't!

# ? Oct 8, 2014 20:31

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Tab8715 posted:

Eh, how are you going to prove the a company did whatever?

He said this! No we didn't!

The accuser subpoenas the company for information on their interview training programs, and the interviewer's involvement in them. If there's insufficient proof that the interviewer has proper legal grounding in the matter, the accuser has a good chance of winning in court. It's a major reason we have those stupid quiz based programs in so many companies.

# ? Oct 8, 2014 21:31

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

Stackblocks posted:

Started in on my IT path in March and i'm going to be transitioning from an entry level helldesk at a small-time Television/Phone/Internet provider to entry level helldesk at a reputable web hosting provider. Finally free of helping the elderly program remotes over the phone and "My television doesn't have a dial tone." Time to gear up for an entirely new set of baffling user problems and take advantage of their internal linux courses. Rolling up the corporate ramp!

Any pointers for this kind of shindig?

A few more months of that and onto bigger and better things

# ? Oct 8, 2014 21:43

JHVH-1: Jun 28, 2002

Stackblocks posted:

Started in on my IT path in March and i'm going to be transitioning from an entry level helldesk at a small-time Television/Phone/Internet provider to entry level helldesk at a reputable web hosting provider. Finally free of helping the elderly program remotes over the phone and "My television doesn't have a dial tone." Time to gear up for an entirely new set of baffling user problems and take advantage of their internal linux courses. Rolling up the corporate ramp!

Any pointers for this kind of shindig?

You can learn a lot working at a web host if you have the right opportunity, but you can also stay there forever and waste time in your career you could be advancing. So if you aren't learning don't stick around anywhere. It can sometimes be a good gateway into sys admin starting with customer support (depending on the company and if the opportunity arises).

Also you will get a whole new breed of annoying customers. Some may want to run a website and are way out of their technical expertise. Some may freak out if their stuff is not working. Others will just be pretty cool people and hook you up with free access to their porn site or show up with a 6 pack of beer while dropping of equipment last minute (Ok, maybe not so likely, but those both happened to me)

# ? Oct 8, 2014 22:09

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Thanks Ants posted:

If the DrayTek's are working for you but some of your customers find the price hard to handle then I can't see how that customer is worth having around to be honest. DrayTek routers aren't expensive by any stretch.

A lot of our customers are small companies (10-15 people) and are used to getting a free router from their ISP, or buying a �50 one from PC World/Dixons, so they baulk at a �200+ quote for a Draytek, and it's sometimes difficult to explain why they are 'better' as the 'better' bit helps me rather than them (though they are getting a good product)
So an alternative that has similar features but is cheaper would encourage customers to switch their internet to us, meaning I wouldn't have to drive to their site to admin stuff

(some have routers locked down by their outsourced IT companies, who can be less than helpful ...)

# ? Oct 8, 2014 22:26

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Look at the new Ubiquiti UniFi USG. You'll probably want to buy one and heavily test it before you start to deploy them, but you can spin up the UniFi management thing in Azure/AWS and then manage all your clients centrally. It's a poor-man's Meraki.

# ? Oct 8, 2014 22:34

spiny: May 20, 2004; round and round and round

Thanks Ants posted:

Look at the new Ubiquiti UniFi USG. You'll probably want to buy one and heavily test it before you start to deploy them, but you can spin up the UniFi management thing in Azure/AWS and then manage all your clients centrally. It's a poor-man's Meraki.

cool, I'll take a look. cheers

# ? Oct 8, 2014 22:45

Pudgygiant: Apr 8, 2004; Garnet and black? More like gold and blue or whatever the fuck colors these are

This is probably 50/50 here or the cert thread, who knows. Why do all CBT Nuggets networking courses start with base conversion? I know basically zero about IPv6, I'm watching their course on it, and literally the first hour is converting hex to binary to decimal. 5 years ago I'd have made the case it'd be really useful to memorize the slash notation to decimal conversions, and I agree it's important to know that an IPv4 or IPv6 address is made up of 32 or 128 bits, respectively, but what loving network engineer, ever, in the history of time, has sat down and converted between base for any reason other than masochism?

# ? Oct 8, 2014 22:56

JHVH-1: Jun 28, 2002

Pudgygiant posted:

This is probably 50/50 here or the cert thread, who knows. Why do all CBT Nuggets networking courses start with base conversion? I know basically zero about IPv6, I'm watching their course on it, and literally the first hour is converting hex to binary to decimal. 5 years ago I'd have made the case it'd be really useful to memorize the slash notation to decimal conversions, and I agree it's important to know that an IPv4 or IPv6 address is made up of 32 or 128 bits, respectively, but what loving network engineer, ever, in the history of time, has sat down and converted between base for any reason other than masochism?

Probably the same reason I had to learn calculus without using a calculator and memorizing equations for my BS degree in IT. I guess it helps understand what is going on with regards to things like net masks, but once you actually have to do it you use a calculator or some other tool to do all the conversion for you. They made us do IP addresses in binary in college too when we did IPv4, so it sounds like the next level adding IPv6.

# ? Oct 8, 2014 23:03

High-Water Marx: Dec 30, 2007; History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of gnarly waves

skipdogg / Fiendish Dr. Wu / JHVH-1 posted:

Learn 'n Leave

Good deal. Will take all of that with me. I'm early enough in my path that everything is a learning experience, so i'll stick around until the knowledge/experience well goes dry and then move on to new opportunities.

High-Water Marx fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Oct 8, 2014

# ? Oct 8, 2014 23:13

psydude: Apr 1, 2008; Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

I'm looking for a generic Powershell script to SSH into multiple *nix devices with multiple passwords and execute multiple bash commands. Anyone got one?

# ? Oct 9, 2014 02:22

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

psydude posted:

I'm looking for a generic Powershell script to SSH into multiple *nix devices with multiple passwords and execute multiple bash commands. Anyone got one?

does it have to be powershell? putty has a scripting engine and can use keys.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 02:45

CLAM DOWN: Feb 13, 2007

psydude posted:

I'm looking for a generic Powershell script to SSH into multiple *nix devices with multiple passwords and execute multiple bash commands. Anyone got one?

You can't do that natively in Powershell. Are you looking for a free solution? There are various PS SSH modules out there that you can import, google "powershell ssh module". I've occasionally seen paid products that can do this too.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 03:17

jaegerx: Sep 10, 2012; Maybe this post will get me on your ignore list!

psydude posted:

I'm looking for a generic Powershell script to SSH into multiple *nix devices with multiple passwords and execute multiple bash commands. Anyone got one?

Python an option?

# ? Oct 9, 2014 03:24

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

Methanar fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Aug 6, 2016

# ? Oct 9, 2014 04:27

FISHMANPET: Mar 3, 2007; Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

I know I've written a powershell script that uses an rsync.exe binary to do a thing, I'd imagine if you can get an ssh.exe type thing in cygwin or some such thing, you can use that in a powershell script.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 04:31

dogstile: May 1, 2012; fucking clocks
how do they work?

Can someone explain to me how people sit in a meeting for more than 15 minutes without feeling like they're going to fall asleep? My last one was an hour long and as usual, didn't apply to the team i'm in but because we're still "support" we get dragged in anyway.

I just want to work dammit :smith:

# ? Oct 9, 2014 08:16

evobatman: Jul 30, 2006; it means nothing, but says everything!; Pillbug

dogstile posted:

Can someone explain to me how people sit in a meeting for more than 15 minutes without feeling like they're going to fall asleep? My last one was an hour long and as usual, didn't apply to the team i'm in but because we're still "support" we get dragged in anyway.

I just want to work dammit

Coffee and browsing the web/playing games on your smartphone. If it's a boring meeting that doesn't apply to me I have no problem being very visibly disinterested.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 09:13

psydude: Apr 1, 2008; Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

adorai posted:

does it have to be powershell? putty has a scripting engine and can use keys.

I knew you could pass commands to plink from PS, but I didn't know that putty actually had a scripting engine of its own. I'll check it out.

CLAM DOWN posted:

You can't do that natively in Powershell. Are you looking for a free solution? There are various PS SSH modules out there that you can import, google "powershell ssh module". I've occasionally seen paid products that can do this too.

Yeah, it has to be free.

jaegerx posted:

Python an option?

Possibly. We use VDI to access our management network and our sysadmin/desktop guy is a little skittish about installing things. I guess I could throw it on one of our jump boxes, but I'm trying for a solution that I can just run from Windows.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 11:58

whaam: Mar 18, 2008

Anyone have any real world experience with the new Dell Force10 switches? Looking at the N3000 line for branch office L3 routing and distribution. On paper, we can get the same switch as the 3750X(IP Services) for literally 1/6th the price. Obviously I have some reservations about Dell vs Cisco but I've heard several people have good experiences with this new line.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 13:27

JHVH-1: Jun 28, 2002

psydude posted:

Possibly. We use VDI to access our management network and our sysadmin/desktop guy is a little skittish about installing things. I guess I could throw it on one of our jump boxes, but I'm trying for a solution that I can just run from Windows.

I'm used to doing stuff like that on linux anyway so if it were a windows work machine I would have cygwin installed and write up a bash script or one liner or these days I would leverage ansible.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 16:11

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

JHVH-1 posted:

I'm used to doing stuff like that on linux anyway so if it were a windows work machine I would have cygwin installed and write up a bash script or one liner or these days I would leverage ansible.

Cygwin is awful. Shell scripts are awful. Net::SSH works on Strawberry Perl. Python's paramiko. SSH.Net for .NET/PS. Ansible or salt if you want to roll out a config management system. Mcollective if you want something like it (broadcast to clients on a message queue). Cygwin never

# ? Oct 9, 2014 16:24

JHVH-1: Jun 28, 2002

evol262 posted:

Cygwin is awful. Shell scripts are awful. Net::SSH works on Strawberry Perl. Python's paramiko. SSH.Net for .NET/PS. Ansible or salt if you want to roll out a config management system. Mcollective if you want something like it (broadcast to clients on a message queue). Cygwin never

Well seeing as they just need to run a few commands on a group of servers, and I don't know their level of knowledge and the amount of time to dedicate to the task, to me having cli bash, ssh etc. and banging out something real quick so I can move onto something more important would have a benefit. Some of us are sys admins, and quick and dirty works. We don't have to maintain it, and it doesn't have to be something built to last it just has to get the job done so you go with what you know.
I wanted to learn python in my last job so I went out and did it and started writing all my scripts in that instead. I do prefer it, but now where I am at everything is bash again.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 17:20

ZetsurinPower: Dec 14, 2003; I looooove leftovers!

Update to the SalaryFairy discussion: after another 20 reviews of my profile, it was predicted almost dead-on...like within $1000. I guess it isn't as inflationary as I thought?

# ? Oct 9, 2014 17:57

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

JHVH-1 posted:

Well seeing as they just need to run a few commands on a group of servers, and I don't know their level of knowledge and the amount of time to dedicate to the task, to me having cli bash, ssh etc. and banging out something real quick so I can move onto something more important would have a benefit. Some of us are sys admins, and quick and dirty works. We don't have to maintain it, and it doesn't have to be something built to last it just has to get the job done so you go with what you know.
I wanted to learn python in my last job so I went out and did it and started writing all my scripts in that instead. I do prefer it, but now where I am at everything is bash again.

I was a sysadmin for years before I was a developer. Quick and dirty is great for one-off stuff. It's a complete cluster if your quick and dirty (or script that was never dirty in the first place) ends up staying around for years, and the next guy inherits a shitload of "quick and dirty" scripts that are barely documented and do everything.

Regardless of the amount of time to dedicate to the task, how long this script is going to stay around for matters a whole lot when choosing tools.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 18:14

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

Anybody here rolled out any ~*~hyperconverged~*~ storage appliance / virtualized SAN / virtual computing platform stuff like Nutanix / Pernix / Simplivity? We're looking into this as it appears to merge the best of on-prem storage with the perks of cloud IaaS such as Azure.

edit: also this

# ? Oct 9, 2014 18:53

YOLOsubmarine: Oct 19, 2004; When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

Anybody here rolled out any ~*~hyperconverged~*~ storage appliance / virtualized SAN / virtual computing platform stuff like Nutanix / Pernix / Simplivity? We're looking into this as it appears to merge the best of on-prem storage with the perks of cloud IaaS such as Azure.

edit: also this

Management-wise it's slightly quicker to set up than dedicated servers and SAN (and only very slightly if you're talking about something like Nimble) and architecturally it's more complex due to IO running through a VM, at least on Nutanix. You still have to do independent storage and compute sizing, and you can still overrun one or the other bucket independently, so it's not like things get simpler operationally. What's the appeal?

My company did some testing on Nutanix prior to my getting there and found the performance to be pretty horrible. It wasn't just one benchmark either, it was reads, writes, random, sequential, mixed, etc...it just wasn't impressive at all and they decided to pass on partnering with them based on that.

I'd also worry about the longevity of companies that are competing directly with VSAN. What's the differentiator? Why buy their hardware instead of VSAN that runs in the hypervisor?

# ? Oct 9, 2014 20:33

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

NippleFloss posted:

Management-wise it's slightly quicker to set up than dedicated servers and SAN (and only very slightly if you're talking about something like Nimble) and architecturally it's more complex due to IO running through a VM, at least on Nutanix. You still have to do independent storage and compute sizing, and you can still overrun one or the other bucket independently, so it's not like things get simpler operationally. What's the appeal?

My company did some testing on Nutanix prior to my getting there and found the performance to be pretty horrible. It wasn't just one benchmark either, it was reads, writes, random, sequential, mixed, etc...it just wasn't impressive at all and they decided to pass on partnering with them based on that.

I'd also worry about the longevity of companies that are competing directly with VSAN. What's the differentiator? Why buy their hardware instead of VSAN that runs in the hypervisor?

Thanks for the reply. I'm about to leave work but want to do a quick reply.

Basically this stems from talking with them at the booth at VMUG yesterday (along with Simplivity and Pernix).

We are looking at setting up a hadoop data lake, and have been directly comparing IBM blades (won our hardware battle mostly due to politics) with Azure (won the IaaS battle also mostly due to politics... old company, politics and religion runs deep). vSAN (and the like) seems to get the best of both worlds.

I get what you're saying - why go with the new/little guy that hasn't really proven themselves yet? I agree longevity is an issue. I think this mostly comes down to cost right now, and rack space (nearly halved the rack space required for the IBM blades by looking into Nutanix.) If we can halve rack space, and halve cost, and fractionalize the initial buy-in (compared to IBM blades contracts) then it sounds alright.

As I said, we haven't looked too deep into it yet so I'm glad you replied with that post, it gave better info than I found online and in reports. We haven't even gotten close to testing so it's good to hear your experience.

# ? Oct 9, 2014 22:03

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

psydude posted:

I knew you could pass commands to plink from PS, but I didn't know that putty actually had a scripting engine of its own. I'll check it out.

I was pretty much referencing plink. I didn't mean to imply it was a powerful engine that could make decisions.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 02:12

Richard Noggin: Jun 6, 2005; Redneck By Default

whaam posted:

Anyone have any real world experience with the new Dell Force10 switches? Looking at the N3000 line for branch office L3 routing and distribution. On paper, we can get the same switch as the 3750X(IP Services) for literally 1/6th the price. Obviously I have some reservations about Dell vs Cisco but I've heard several people have good experiences with this new line.

I'd post this in the Cisco Questions thread - despite the title, it's really enterprise networking questions.

edit: I'm not sure where you got the 1/6th of the price figure from. Going on list price alone, a Force10 N3024 is $2400 while a WS-C3750X-24T-S is $6500. Also, I'd recommend Cisco refurb if you want the brand but don't want to pay full price. The refurb stuff is great, and is covered by the same warranty/SMARTnet that the new ones are, but you save about 30%. For reference my pricing on a refurb WS-C3750X-24T-S is the same price as a new Force10.

Richard Noggin fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Oct 10, 2014

# ? Oct 10, 2014 21:14

Happiness Commando: Feb 1, 2002; $$ joy at gunpoint $$

We currently have three different KB systems - 1)an excel spreadsheet for each client (each of which has grown progressively more sprawling and out of date) listing various network details and account info, 2) ticket notes, and 3)a sharepoint doc repository with nested folders for each client like

code:

Sharepoint\Client1:
   Antivirus
   Backup
   Email
   Firewalls
   ISP
   Password policies
   Wifi info

Most of those folders are empty or have one document in them, and I abridged the list by at least half. It's terrible to find something there unless I know exactly where it is, and even then it can be tricky. There's no standardization on what gets stored where. And carving out time for proactive documentation is hard when I'm buried under reactive tickets. Anyone have suggestions?

Happiness Commando fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Oct 11, 2014

# ? Oct 11, 2014 18:14

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

You mentioned ticket notes... I don't know much about ticketing systems but Right Now Web had a decent kb system

# ? Oct 12, 2014 00:34

Old Man Pants: Nov 22, 2010; Strippers are people too!

Happiness Commando posted:

We currently have three different KB systems - 1)an excel spreadsheet for each client (each of which has grown progressively more sprawling and out of date) listing various network details and account info, 2) ticket notes, and 3)a sharepoint doc repository with nested folders for each client like
code:
Sharepoint\Client1:
   Antivirus
   Backup
   Email
   Firewalls
   ISP
   Password policies
   Wifi info
Most of those folders are empty or have one document in them, and I abridged the list by at least half. It's terrible to find something there unless I know exactly where it is, and even then it can be tricky. There's no standardization on what gets stored where. And carving out time for proactive documentation is hard when I'm buried under reactive tickets. Anyone have suggestions?

You could get your company to move all this data from a stupid spreadsheet in 2014 to a real system, ticketing or otherwise?? this costs money they won't do it

# ? Oct 13, 2014 09:43

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

Old Man Pants posted:

You could get your company to move all this data from a stupid spreadsheet in 2014 to a real system, ticketing or otherwise?? this costs money they won't do it

I think he's looking for more specific suggestions here.

# ? Oct 13, 2014 13:46

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Can we talk about remote assist apps again?

We're using LogMeIn which is great, it let's us not only do remote control but some scripting and stuff, open command prompts remotely and such.

But they are loving us on pricing. They want to license it per user so for 100 users it's over $3,200 a year.

I'm getting a demo of Teamviewer this week, I've used it a bit before and they offer unlimited users for like $2,800. Also have a demo of GoToAssist coming.

We're almost all Windows with 2 Macs, and we have 3 admin users (2 of which will actually use it)

# ? Oct 13, 2014 14:23

CloFan: Nov 6, 2004

I use TeamViewer for personal use, and it's pretty great. Join.me sucks but is ok in a pinch. We need a remote program on campus here, so bring on the discussion!

# ? Oct 13, 2014 15:21

fluppet: Feb 10, 2009

I liked bomgar but not sure what its like pricing wise

# ? Oct 13, 2014 15:36

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

fluppet posted:

I liked bomgar but not sure what its like pricing wise

Bomgar requires an appliance and starts at like, 5 digits, doesn't it?

# ? Oct 13, 2014 15:41

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# ? Apr 23, 2024 12:53

Feral Bueller: Apr 23, 2004; Fun is important.; Nap Ghost

There's a virtual appliance. The B200 equivalent (in 2004) was about $5000 with a 20 seat license. It was excellent, but not cheap.

http://www.bomgar.com/docs/content/appliance/comparison.htm

# ? Oct 13, 2014 15:51

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