4 ms·

I refuse to believe this wasn't just a way to add drama/tension. You can't work in IT and actually believe this.

asdfman123 7y ago
Well, he was afraid he was going to be murdered by criminals. Under those circumstances even slight suspicion would be terrifying.
- klenwell 7y ago
  And he'd been working there long enough to know that this wasn't a common event. He even qualifies it, "You know, it's very hard for that to happen."
Nightshaxx 7y ago
It might have been that the specific server in question usually didn't crash because of the applications being run. Also it could have been that the bad guy wasn't giving any detailed information about what happened so it seemed like a setup.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
They don't "just crash" You need to run stuff you care about on them for that to happen. If you don't they run flawlessly for decades. I know of a switch that was up for 11yr (not a server I know, still a unix/linux based OS though) which is as much a testament to UPSs and backup generators as it is to the OS.
parliament32 7y ago
I mean, it depends. Services crash, sure, that might be what they meant by "the server crashed". But it's very, very difficult for an actual modern kernel to crash and also not auto-reboot and resume whatever it was doing. Hardware failure is always a possibility though.
- duiker101 7y ago
  maybe the disk filled up?
  - parliament32 7y ago
    That would cause any disk-write-dependent service to crash, yeah, but the kernel isn't one of those. Syslog will stop and a bunch of things will complain, but I've always been able to SSH in and free up some disk.
    - jrochkind1 7y ago
      Did you read/listen to the story? A non-tech person called him and said "the server crashed." I am pretty sure they would say that in case of "any disk-write-dependent-services crashed, but you could ssh in and free up some disk." The criminal boss wasn't gonna "ssh in and free up some disk", that's why he had an IT guy! Anyway none of this is particularly important for the story, but I don't think the guy telling it is lying for dramatic effect, I think he's probably being honest that the boss saying "the server crashed" made him suspicious cause that server never crashed, and I too found it amusing for this to be included in the story (as a sort of by-the-by advertisement for linux). (Also, though: it turned out the server really did "crash" in some way).
      - parliament32 7y ago
        I just figured he was talking about an OS-level "crash", considering how he went on about how Linux never crashes.
    - ajuc 7y ago
      Non-IT people may say it's a crash no matter what actually happen. "Crashed" "Freezed" "app not working" "can't print" is the same thing for them often. BTW I've seen an error where app server couldn't write files to a directory but only for specific filenames (that wasn't already created). Turns out if you have dozen thousands of files in one directory the hash table has collisions and some files you can create while some other names you cannot. It was lot of fun to discover that :) And customers described it as "server doesn't work" but when we connected the randomly generated names it was trying to write were different and it worked.
deleted 7y ago
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donkeyd 7y ago
I set up a couple Linux boxes at work a couple of years ago for some new software we were building. A year later, I logged into the box, checked the up-time and realized it hadn't been rebooted since I installed it. So if that's his experience, I understand him. OTOH, we also have an NGINX box that is automatically restarted once a week, because otherwise our API gets really slow. I understand that this isn't good practice, but we've spent too many hours debugging already and at the end of the day, this works.

Well, he was afraid he was going to be murdered by criminals. Under those circumstances even slight suspicion would be terrifying.

klenwell 7y ago
And he'd been working there long enough to know that this wasn't a common event. He even qualifies it, "You know, it's very hard for that to happen."

Nightshaxx 7y ago

It might have been that the specific server in question usually didn't crash because of the applications being run. Also it could have been that the bad guy wasn't giving any detailed information about what happened so it seemed like a setup.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

They don't "just crash" You need to run stuff you care about on them for that to happen. If you don't they run flawlessly for decades. I know of a switch that was up for 11yr (not a server I know, still a unix/linux based OS though) which is as much a testament to UPSs and backup generators as it is to the OS.

parliament32 7y ago

I mean, it depends. Services crash, sure, that might be what they meant by "the server crashed". But it's very, very difficult for an actual modern kernel to crash and also not auto-reboot and resume whatever it was doing. Hardware failure is always a possibility though.

duiker101 7y ago
maybe the disk filled up?
- parliament32 7y ago
  That would cause any disk-write-dependent service to crash, yeah, but the kernel isn't one of those. Syslog will stop and a bunch of things will complain, but I've always been able to SSH in and free up some disk.
  - jrochkind1 7y ago
    Did you read/listen to the story? A non-tech person called him and said "the server crashed." I am pretty sure they would say that in case of "any disk-write-dependent-services crashed, but you could ssh in and free up some disk." The criminal boss wasn't gonna "ssh in and free up some disk", that's why he had an IT guy! Anyway none of this is particularly important for the story, but I don't think the guy telling it is lying for dramatic effect, I think he's probably being honest that the boss saying "the server crashed" made him suspicious cause that server never crashed, and I too found it amusing for this to be included in the story (as a sort of by-the-by advertisement for linux). (Also, though: it turned out the server really did "crash" in some way).
    - parliament32 7y ago
      I just figured he was talking about an OS-level "crash", considering how he went on about how Linux never crashes.
  - ajuc 7y ago
    Non-IT people may say it's a crash no matter what actually happen. "Crashed" "Freezed" "app not working" "can't print" is the same thing for them often. BTW I've seen an error where app server couldn't write files to a directory but only for specific filenames (that wasn't already created). Turns out if you have dozen thousands of files in one directory the hash table has collisions and some files you can create while some other names you cannot. It was lot of fun to discover that :) And customers described it as "server doesn't work" but when we connected the randomly generated names it was trying to write were different and it worked.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

donkeyd 7y ago

I set up a couple Linux boxes at work a couple of years ago for some new software we were building. A year later, I logged into the box, checked the up-time and realized it hadn't been rebooted since I installed it. So if that's his experience, I understand him. OTOH, we also have an NGINX box that is automatically restarted once a week, because otherwise our API gets really slow. I understand that this isn't good practice, but we've spent too many hours debugging already and at the end of the day, this works.