|
Tomorrow I get to find out if the self-signed certificates in Avaya IP Office boxes that expired yesterday are actually used for anything in any of the systems we support. They're good for seven years and they're auto-generated when the system is first initialized. When you first turn on an IP Office v2 chassis it defaults to a date of Jan 1st 2011. I regenerated all the ones I could find last week, but I'm sure there's one somewhere that we don't have remote access to that's actually using the cert for something critical. 
|
#
¿
Jan 1, 2018 17:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 12:29 |
|
|
Knormal posted:Tell them you did as requested and ordered the biggest computer you could find. This is a great post for phone browsing because I thought it was one of those chunky little cube towers but then had to keep scrolling and scrolling down.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2018 15:27
|
|
|
I've seen HP laserjets from the mid 90s that are still operational 20 years later. Those things were tanks.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2018 05:59
|
|
|
Jaded Burnout posted:The Register are such smarmy cunts. That’s why they’re great.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2018 15:18
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/952371682588717056
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2018 03:50
|
|
|
So basically everyone’s suspicions about how the Hawaii false alarm happened have been confirmed: https://twitter.com/civilbeat/status/953127542050795520 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2018 14:47
|
|
|
I want to know what kind of confirmation / warning dialog you get (if any) when you click one of the options. I bet that if there even is one it’s a generic “are you sure?” that says nothing specific about the option you chose.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2018 15:44
|
|
|
I mean I guess it’s a good thing we’re finding out the problems and maybe possibly taking steps toward fixing them, but this is like the second-worst possible way to bring attention to UI problems in the early warning system.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2018 16:22
|
|
|
I found the POE switch
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2018 19:18
|
|
|
Proteus Jones posted:2 foot cables? The only *possible* way I can see those working is to connect a VOIP phone in a cubicle where the network ports are desk height. But even then it seems to be a poor choice in length as it really limits phone placement based on personal preference. You've never seen this kind of setup? 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2018 19:48
|
|
|
lambeth posted:Ding ding ding ding ding oh my god now someone please tell whoever did it about Win + CTRL + C
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2018 05:13
|
|
|
MF_James posted:
I’m in the midst of an employer-paid virtual course on Avaya IP Office, and their setup is pretty bad. Lots of minor annoyances like lab exercise instructions written for an earlier version of the software. The whole thing is awful mostly because it’s booooring if you are already familiar with the material but I can imagine it being baffling and unhelpful if you weren’t. It’s 5 days of listening to an instructor read PowerPoint slides nearly verbatim and doing labs in a remote desktop. I figured out the first day I could work ahead in the labs so I’ve basically got them all done now. Highlight so far was when a guy from Alaska got super pissed at not being able to connect to the remote desktop and started yelling borderline racist stuff at the Mexican instructor about how the “lovely Mexican hardware didn’t fuckin work” and then backing down when the instructor pointed out everything was actually being hosted in the US and basically proved the problem was on his end.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2018 19:09
|
|
|
MF_James posted:oh lord lol, no one on our's is talking just typing. Most of us are just typing but every morning there’s someone who forgets to mute their mic and is moving furniture around or arguing with their spouse or something.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2018 19:49
|
|
|
Entropic posted:I’m in the midst of an employer-paid virtual course on Avaya IP Office, and their setup is pretty bad. Oh lord, one of the lab exercises is setting up voicemail pro auto attendants and testing them, but this is all using softphones on a remote desktop with no audio. So you can’t actually record anything but blank silence and you can’t hear anything when you dial in. Really showcasing your world-leading communication and collaboration technology here Avaya.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2018 22:09
|
|
|
I actually like IP office as a phone system for small / medium businesses. Visual voicemail works nice, clients like using it, programming it through the Manager thick client is really nice and easy. It’s way over-priced for what it is, but so is everything aimed at that market. Their partner training stuff is a complete racket though.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2018 22:35
|
|
|
stevewm posted:I really like the IP Office Basic/Partner mode. I know many IP office people hate it, but I like it. It is a perfect replacement for small businesses with basic telecom needs that are coming from a older Partner system. Many of our branch locations use one. Most of what I’ve ended up doing in my current job is to do with installing and supporting Essential edition IPO running the on 500v2 chassis. We generally install them with a little Mikrotik router so we have remote access on the WAN port via our VPN and between Manager and the System Status application it’s super easy to administer remotely. Once we’ve got a site up and running we rarely have to actually go to site for anything that doesn’t involve physically cross-connecting extensions. My only bad experiences with IPO have been when it was programmed by someone, usually the client themselves, who didn’t quite know what they were doing. Like the site where they didn’t want to have a prefix digit to dial outside the system, and didn’t have line appearances, and didn’t plan their internal extension numbering well, and ended up not able to phone certain people because the first four digits of their phone number matched an internal extension. 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2018 23:39
|
|
|
The lightswitch controlling the wireless reminds me of this "light switch" I saw a while back:   Those first three switches control the power for the PLCs that run the large, important industrial equipment in a multi-milllion dollar malting plant that produces a significant fraction of the malted grain used by some of north america's top breweries. The fourth one controls the power for that light bulb that's whiting out the frame in the first picture.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2018 03:29
|
|
|
Thanks Ants posted:That's a good example of how not to label something Those type of breaker boxes are everywhere around here and I’ve never ever seen one labeled well. Usually it’s scrawled in faded pencil in the inscrutable handwriting of some 1980s electrician.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2018 21:25
|
|
|
I really hate the inconsistent version numbering file name conventions AVAYA uses even within the same products. Somehow ADMIN10_1_0_0_3.zip is the more recent version than ADMIN10_1_237.zip I guess there’s an implied _0_0 in the second one. I mean, why would you ever want your files to sort alphabetically by version? 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2018 13:29
|
|
|
I just got back from doing a bunch of out of town network jobs at sites I'd never been to before, and it never ceases to amaze me how people who don't know anything about who you are and why you're there will just give you keys and point you to network closets in important government buildings as long as you walk in with a clipboard and a lanyard and look lost.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2018 02:28
|
|
|
I got sent to an out of town job at the last minute (I was already gonna be driving to another job in the area anyway) and I was joking when I got back about how people will let you in anywhere if you walk in with a clipboard and a lanyard ask them where the network rack is, without asking for any proof that you're actually supposed to be there. Turns out, I actually really wasn't supposed to be there, it was a government site where apparently we're only supposed to send techs with specific background check / security clearance certifications which I don't have yet. Whoops!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2018 23:06
|
|
|
Installed an Avaya phone system today that was shipped up to us "pre-programmed" by the company that was contracting us. "you just have to bring it to the client site and physically install it, it's all set up already", they said. Lies. The first warning sign came when I went to plug in the new digital phones and they came up with no user logged in. I call up the contractor, they tell me, "oh you can log them in with this short code we set up". Which isn't how you're supposed to do it all with digital sets (because they'll all have to be logged in again any time the phone system reboots). I get them to give me the password so I can actually look at the config. Sure enough, it looks like they were originally going to get IP phones and changed their mind at the last minute and never reprogrammed it for digital sets, so none of the users' extension numbers match the numbers actually assigned to the digital ports. Fine, I can fix it, I move the extensions over to the digital ports. Then I go to test the auto attendant and get silence. Ok. I look through the pile of stuff they emailed us, and sure enough they sent us the wav files to upload. Not that they mentioned this in the install checklist. Why didn't they do it themselves before they shipped the "pre-programmed" system to us?  Fine. I go to convert and upload the files, and the Avaya LVM utility chokes on them. They're not encoded in the right wav format. Then I actually listen to the wavs and look at the script and it doesn't match the actual AA programming at all. I ended up re-recording and programming the AA from scratch by myself. Finally I get all their phones and lines cut over, everything's testing fine. I unplug the power for the old Meridian system... and I hear crackle from overhead. Yup. There's a paging speaker on the old system that they have nothing programmed for and didn't ship the transformer you'd need to hook it up to an analog port on the new system. Yet another call to the contractor, oops, they say, we're going to have to go back later to fix that. In the meantime, I set them up so they can page through speakerphone. Finally I get the OK to leave. 20 minutes later while I'm having my lunch, I get a call back from the contractor, saying they can't remotely access the system, and am I sure I plugged into the right LAN port, etc. I bring up a saved copy of the config, and it turns out they had programmed the wrong address and subnet mask on the LAN port, and also didn't have an IP route set up. So I had to go back to the site to change the address and reboot it. Back to the shop. Another 20 minutes later the contracter calls again. Am I sure it's hooked up to the lines right?? They're calling the main number and it's not ringing through to the new phone system! I test calling their main number, and sure enough, it's not working. Which is weird because I'd tested it before I left, and I had phoned the client on their new phone system just a while ago to tell them I had to come back to change the address. I try a couple more times and then it starts working. I call the contractor back, and the tech admits that they accidentally broke it themselves just now because they had messed with the incoming call routes. It's all good now though! I'm betting I get at least one more email by Monday about something else they hosed up or forgot to program in.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2018 05:19
|
|
|
Entropic posted:
Update: they had us send someone back this morning because while trying to remotely update the configuration they managed to wipe the system SD card somehow. Starting to think this company may not entirely know what they’re doing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2018 20:29
|
|
|
Knormal posted:So I just discovered these and don't know how I missed them for so long. I feel very called out by this
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2018 05:01
|
|
|
We just got a demo unit of the fancy new bleeding-edge Avaya touchscreen SIP desk phone. lol this thing is garbage. It's basically a glorified Android tablet except it probably costs twice as much for half the hardware specs, doesn't have a battery in it, is designed to lock you out of the Google Play store by default, and is a pain in the rear end to actually get working with existing Avaya phone systems. Also the default Avaya Vantage dialer app is hastily-thrown-together garbage and actually has fewer features in it than their standard digital phones do. You don't get programmable feature buttons, so there's no Park / Page / group membership toggling / night service toggling / etc functionality. And it doesn't even have visual voicemail, it's straight back to the old-school listen-to-a-recording-that-tells-you-what-numbers-to-press-for-options system. Meanwhile their cheapest digital phones have supported visual voicemail for like a decade at this point.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2018 03:31
|
|
|
I actually really like Avaya’s standard 9508 digital / 9608 IP phones. They’re solid and reliable and easy to set up, and IP Office / VMPro is actually a good platform for programming medium business call flows. And 9508s/9608s have all the basic features that users actually want and like, such as visual voicemail and programmable buttons. It’s their higher end stuff that always seems to be over-complicated, badly performing and difficult to set up or use, with lovely software.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 17, 2018 14:39
|
|
|
mehall posted:My new job seems to be less Telco than my last one, more avaya infrastructure, acr, and other things (bunch of wfm and custom applications but I'll get to them when I get to them) Oh, Avaya. Everything needs a license. And the licenses are all keyed to specific hardware IDs so are non-transferable. I actually like IP Office a lot, but some of the higher end Avaya stuff is a huge pain in the rear end to set up. They do phone systems really well but I've heard mixed reviews of their networking infrastructure product lines. If you have a support.avaya.com account there's actually a ton of useful documentation and install guides and stuff on there. Just be warned that the downloads section can be a nightmare to find what you're looking for in, especially if you're looking for a specific software release that isn't the latest version, or don't know precisely what the thing you're looking for is named. And in older stuff their versioning is all over the place across closely related products.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 30, 2018 05:18
|
|
|
So we had a report from our other location that one of the security camera feeds there kept going down. They’d come in in the morning and the camera monitor screen at the back would have one blank feed and the controller would be beeping about a downed camera. But it seemed to fix itself by the time they opened. They eventually figured out the camera was only working during their open hours of 9-6. This makes no sense because not only are the cameras clearly meant to run 24/7, I don’t think the fairly primitive control software even supports time profiles. We can’t find any reason for it in the config. Finally I get sent over to look at it physically today... That camera was replaced recently. Whoever installed it powered it by plugging it into a conveniently located power plug in the ceiling. The same one that the “Open” sign in the window is plugged into. The one on a circuit that has a light switch toggle for it on the wall that they hit to turn the sign off and on.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2018 16:25
|
|
|
minusX posted:Sounds a lot like our locations that would just flip the main breaker when they left for the night, taking down the whole computer system. No one was there so it wasn't that bad but man that's a weird issue to try to find sometimes. I think I posted here once about the site where the “light switch” for the network closet was a breaker switch on a breaker box where the other switches controlled the power to PLCs running multi million dollar industrial equipment in a processing plant.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2018 18:40
|
|
|
Renegret posted:I'm surprised nobody's thrown it by now. That’s more of a last day on the job thing.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2018 21:17
|
|
|
Ghostlight posted:I'm not down with OPP (other people's programming) Tell me your powershell script doesn't also contain the admin password in plaintext.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2018 05:45
|
|
|
This is always a bad sign when you're trying to trace a wire pair:
|
|
#
¿
Oct 22, 2018 23:49
|
|
|
Arquinsiel posted:Are you familiar with the velcro technique? Do tell.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2018 01:36
|
|
|
That doesn't seem that useful for situations where the run turns out to be hundreds of feet. BTW this is what "the hole" turned out to be: 
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2018 01:57
|
|
|
Don't worry, we had a Junior Tehcnician we could send into The Hole. He even survived the Spiders!
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2018 03:23
|
|
|
suuma posted:I'm a support nerd, can somebody explain what this is? It's BIX block. Similar to 110 block, but it's more common in Canada because it was Nortel's standard forever. It's basically a patch panel for wire pairs. If you have digital phones in your building then chances are there's a bunch of blocks of this type of stuff in a closet somewhere. It's mostly used for digital and analog telephony but you will occasionally see ethernet patch panels using it too. I do a lot of work installing and servicing business phone systems. It's moving towards IP phones, which are way easier to work with because all you care about is that it has power and an ethernet connection. With digital phone systems, every wall jack gets connected to a specific port on the phone system which is programmed for a certain extension. So if you're installing a new phone system using existing cabling, you have to know where on the punchdown block the wire pair for each specific wall jack comes out. If you're very lucky, whoever cabled it in the first place decades ago actually labeled poo poo, and the labeling has been kept legible and up to date. You are never that lucky, which is why you need one of these: https://www.amazon.ca/Fluke-Networks-26000900-Pro3000-Generator/dp/B000FTADX0 Thanks Ants posted:Has someone made a poor-man's ladder tray by zip tying some short lengths of pipe to another pipe? I think the "ladder" was just meant to keep loose piping / cabling off the bare dirt floor. I've never worked with Krone, but gently caress 66-block forever.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2018 22:41
|
|
|
angry armadillo posted:I'm going to ask a dumb question because I've never been taught or met anyone who actually knows: It helps to have an analog buttset with a BIX/110/whatever clip so that once you to know the general area you can tap in on each wire pair and see which once you hear the signal tone on.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 24, 2018 15:11
|
|
|
I end up spending way too much time trying to troubleshoot fax machines and getting them to do the stupid things people want them to do like work through modern PBX systems or over SIP trunks. Lots of government agences, medical and law offices still live and die by their faxes in TYOOL 2018.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2018 01:44
|
|
|
via b3ta:
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2018 05:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 12:29 |
|
|
Another ticket came in from this client who kept reporting the same kind of issue for what seems like a year: they have a voicemail module they call in to to set who is on-call for the night, and it supposedly doesn’t work half the time for one of the options. They call in, hear a menu that says “press 1 to put Alice on call, press 2 to set Bob on call, press 3 to set Carol on call” etc with like six options. You press 2, you hear a recording say “Bob is now on call” and then it disconnects, and now when you call the after-hours line it should forward to Bob’s cell phone. They kept reporting intermittent issues with this system and we’ve double-checked and tested the programming a bunch of times and it always seemed to be set up just fine when we tried it. I finally figured out the actual problem today and it’s super dumb. The way it set up in Voicemail Pro, the “X is now on call” recording is actually the prompt on the node that does the variable change. If you hang up before a prompt is done playing, VMPro doesn’t actually do the associated action. One of the “x is now on call” recordings had like 4 seconds of silence at the end of it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 21, 2018 16:25
|
|