5 ms·

I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights

I love bugs like this. As a developer or Sysadmin you'd think the users are crazy again but then you dig deeper until you lose all hope and already book flights to become a farmer in the midwest and then you find something like thís

sdrothrock 7y ago
Maybe you've already seen this one, but maybe there are some people who haven't... I get a kick out of it every time I reread it, anyway. :) http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles Edit: And the FAQ: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago
  Probably my fifth read through and still love it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- torstenvl 7y ago
  Wait. How come it wasn't ~280 miles then? EDIT: Never mind, answered in the FAQ.
- horomeme 7y ago
  My first time. Absolutely hilarious!
- ascar 7y ago
  Fun to read. Thanks for sharing! With the risk of sounding a bit arrogant, am I the only one who immediately thought about a timeout issue on the first description of the problem? As a fan of online gaming I'm painfully aware that ping (and distance to server) matter. Especially when I was in Japan and tried to play with my friends in Germany, the fact that packets were routed over the US to Europe resulting in ~250ms pings was a constant annoyance.
nabla9 7y ago
My favorite one is the one where engineer notices that he can login on terminal only when sitting down. When standing up, login fails.
- philefstat 7y ago
  wait really?
- arcturus17 7y ago
  Ok don’t leave us hanging here what was the cause?
  - drewbug 7y ago
    > Turns out that some joker pulled out two keys from the keyboard and switched their places. [...] They were both relatively good at typing and didn't look down at the keyboard when typing when sitting. But typing when standing is something they weren't used to and had to look down at the keyboard which made them press the wrong keys.
    - mark-r 7y ago
      Once in college, somebody thought they'd be clever and remove all the keytops on the only CRT in one small timesharing computer lab. Didn't bother me, because I was a touch typist - didn't need to see the keys at all.
  - geoah 7y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52pw/i_cant_log_in_when_i_stand_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p... Not as interesting as initially hoped for :D
- willvarfar 7y ago
  Not the same one, but very recently, this problem has been cropping up for real all over the place! https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/1214162400666103808?s=21 https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/1214162400666103808?s=... People having screens that turn off when you sit down or stand up. SPOILER: its the gas compression in the shockabsorber causing an EM spike or something like that.
numlock86 7y ago
I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were guessing it was about static electricity from the specific clothing(-style) or similar in the early process. Maybe someone else had heard of this or can find it?
- kimjongtrill 7y ago
  That sounds like a feature if I could somehow tie it to my boss
- stazz1 7y ago
  https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-blanks-due-to-static-electricity-in-my-chair/1406146 https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-... Also, some reddit makes it seem like a Titanium pin in his shoulder was to blame: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2rsivw/monitor_shuts_off_briefly_when_i_stand_up_from_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2rsivw/monitor...
  - DagAgren 7y ago
    At university, we once built a networked doorbell system for the offices. Lots of small displays with a button outside the doors, connected on a CAN bus to a controller, that you could configure, and another device in the office to make noise and control the screen. We had a problem, though: The door display devices would randomly crash and require somebody to go over and reboot them. This was very annoying, and we could never reproduce it. We added monitoring for it, and after a while the problem mostly went away on its own. But half a year later, it was back. It seems the system worked fine in summer, but started crashing in winter. We finally, after much testing and deliberation, realised it was caused by the devices having a metal front plate which would easily attract static shocks, which would crash the device. And in winter, the dry air and wooly clothing would cause a lot more static discharges.
jaclaz 7y ago
The best hardware related one remains the classic Magic/More Magic switch: http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
- gmfawcett 7y ago
  This one, and the 500-mile email story, are my all-time favourites. :)
aidenn0 7y ago
My most recent one was that 3 minutes after someone else would SSH into my workstation, my X11 session would crash, but when I would SSH into my workstation, there was no error. It turns out the default configuration for systemd-logind is to sandbox it away from networking; it's an NIS setup where I am, but I had a local passwd entry for myself so that my home directory would be local. There was a 3 minute timeout on something NIS related, which would cause an error. Then systemd-logind would restart system-wide, including my local login.
the_watcher 7y ago
Last Friday's xkcd happens to be very relevant! https://xkcd.com/2259/ https://xkcd.com/2259/
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  And that XKCD reminded me of a couple other seminal debugging stories: - "The Case of the 500-mile email" https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html - Brendan Gregg demonstrates the effect of screaming at hard drives: https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4 https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4

sdrothrock 7y ago

Maybe you've already seen this one, but maybe there are some people who haven't... I get a kick out of it every time I reread it, anyway. :) http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles Edit: And the FAQ: https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html

CathedralBorrow 7y ago
Probably my fifth read through and still love it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
torstenvl 7y ago
Wait. How come it wasn't ~280 miles then? EDIT: Never mind, answered in the FAQ.
horomeme 7y ago
My first time. Absolutely hilarious!
ascar 7y ago
Fun to read. Thanks for sharing! With the risk of sounding a bit arrogant, am I the only one who immediately thought about a timeout issue on the first description of the problem? As a fan of online gaming I'm painfully aware that ping (and distance to server) matter. Especially when I was in Japan and tried to play with my friends in Germany, the fact that packets were routed over the US to Europe resulting in ~250ms pings was a constant annoyance.

nabla9 7y ago

My favorite one is the one where engineer notices that he can login on terminal only when sitting down. When standing up, login fails.

philefstat 7y ago
wait really?
arcturus17 7y ago
Ok don’t leave us hanging here what was the cause?
- drewbug 7y ago
  > Turns out that some joker pulled out two keys from the keyboard and switched their places. [...] They were both relatively good at typing and didn't look down at the keyboard when typing when sitting. But typing when standing is something they weren't used to and had to look down at the keyboard which made them press the wrong keys.
  - mark-r 7y ago
    Once in college, somebody thought they'd be clever and remove all the keytops on the only CRT in one small timesharing computer lab. Didn't bother me, because I was a touch typist - didn't need to see the keys at all.
- geoah 7y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52pw/i_cant_log_in_when_i_stand_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p... Not as interesting as initially hoped for :D
willvarfar 7y ago
Not the same one, but very recently, this problem has been cropping up for real all over the place! https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/1214162400666103808?s=21 https://twitter.com/royvanrijn/status/1214162400666103808?s=... People having screens that turn off when you sit down or stand up. SPOILER: its the gas compression in the shockabsorber causing an EM spike or something like that.

numlock86 7y ago

I can't find it, but a while ago there was a post on some StackExchange page (SuperUser maybe?) and reddit that had the following problem: Whenever a specific person passed a specific cubicle, one of the monitors would turn black/lose signal and turned back on after the person was away again. I don't remember how it got resolved or rather what the problem was. Since it only happened on a specific person people were guessing it was about static electricity from the specific clothing(-style) or similar in the early process. Maybe someone else had heard of this or can find it?

kimjongtrill 7y ago
That sounds like a feature if I could somehow tie it to my boss
stazz1 7y ago
https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-blanks-due-to-static-electricity-in-my-chair/1406146 https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-... Also, some reddit makes it seem like a Titanium pin in his shoulder was to blame: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2rsivw/monitor_shuts_off_briefly_when_i_stand_up_from_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/2rsivw/monitor...
- DagAgren 7y ago
  At university, we once built a networked doorbell system for the offices. Lots of small displays with a button outside the doors, connected on a CAN bus to a controller, that you could configure, and another device in the office to make noise and control the screen. We had a problem, though: The door display devices would randomly crash and require somebody to go over and reboot them. This was very annoying, and we could never reproduce it. We added monitoring for it, and after a while the problem mostly went away on its own. But half a year later, it was back. It seems the system worked fine in summer, but started crashing in winter. We finally, after much testing and deliberation, realised it was caused by the devices having a metal front plate which would easily attract static shocks, which would crash the device. And in winter, the dry air and wooly clothing would cause a lot more static discharges.

jaclaz 7y ago

The best hardware related one remains the classic Magic/More Magic switch: http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

gmfawcett 7y ago
This one, and the 500-mile email story, are my all-time favourites. :)

aidenn0 7y ago

My most recent one was that 3 minutes after someone else would SSH into my workstation, my X11 session would crash, but when I would SSH into my workstation, there was no error. It turns out the default configuration for systemd-logind is to sandbox it away from networking; it's an NIS setup where I am, but I had a local passwd entry for myself so that my home directory would be local. There was a 3 minute timeout on something NIS related, which would cause an error. Then systemd-logind would restart system-wide, including my local login.

the_watcher 7y ago

Last Friday's xkcd happens to be very relevant! https://xkcd.com/2259/ https://xkcd.com/2259/

AceJohnny2 7y ago
And that XKCD reminded me of a couple other seminal debugging stories: - "The Case of the 500-mile email" https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html - Brendan Gregg demonstrates the effect of screaming at hard drives: https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4 https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4