Who, Me? Greetings and salutations, expensive reader, welcome to yet one more fun-filled Monday at The Register. As you effectively know, every Monday (which is at present) The Register (which you are studying) brings you an instalment of Who, Me? – our reader-contributed tales of tech gone mistaken. That is that very column. To let you know once more would absolutely be redundant.
Because it occurs, redundancy is on the core of at present’s horrifying story – which our hero, whom we will Regomize as “Clint”, known as his “brown trouser day.” We very a lot hope he had a spare pair with him – redundancy, you realize.
Again in his halcyon youth, Clint labored as a community admin for a bank card firm. The biz labored out of two workplaces, proper throughout the highway from one another. They have been joined by a devoted fiber, connecting a pair of Cisco 6509 routers – very fashionable for the time.
After all that meant that there was just one “path” between the 2 buildings. Given each workplaces housed big name facilities and lots of of staff, this was seen as far too dangerous. A second fiber hyperlink was put in, and a second pair of 6509 routers. So if one of many paths between the 2 buildings failed, the opposite may simply deal with the site visitors.
Constructing this second path had been Clint’s particular mission, and he was rightly proud.
Sooner or later, after it had all been arrange and examined, he discovered himself bored – “having completed studying The Register,” Clint wrote, as a result of he is aware of we’re suckers for flattery – and was nosing across the ports through Telnet.
He seen that one of many ports was returning an error situation. After checking that no-one appeared to be having any points with the community, he assumed this meant that the redundancy was working as supposed. All he needed to do was toggle that port, and all can be effectively. No-one else would even discover!
So he typed the suitable command, hit enter, and …
His session instantly ended. And he couldn’t reconnect.
Folks round him began questioning what on the earth was happening with the community. The VoIP-based name heart fell deathly quiet.
Clint immediately realized what he had achieved. He was logged into the mistaken router – the hyperlink to the opposite constructing was clearly down, so he’d been shuffled over to the router within the constructing he was in, with out realizing it. He may see the error on one port, however in making an attempt to allow it he had in reality flipped the mistaken change and disabled the trail that had been working completely effectively. Now there was no strategy to get again in with out bodily connecting.
He grabbed his laptop computer and a serial cable, then sprinted throughout the highway like a person with a mission – for certainly he was a person with a mission.
He reached the router, related to it, typed the suitable magics, and every part got here to life. For good measure he cleared the logs – as a result of no-one wanted to know, proper?
Simply then the top of the IT workforce got here in in search of somebody in charge. He discovered Clint moments after he made the save. Naturally our hero received reward for having acted so shortly to repair this mysterious fault, for which no trigger may very well be discovered. Clint urged extra monitoring on the ports – in case of future unusual dropouts.
As Clint instructed us: “Fail quick, study quick could not come quick sufficient!”
Have you ever ever had a “brown trouser day” like Clint? How did you handle to speak your method out of it – and even find yourself wanting just like the hero? Tell us all about it in an email to Who, Me? and we might share your exploits on a future Monday. ®
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