2 replies to this topic

[Lethe]

Weekly brainstorm meeting with all the the IT people (manager and dev included), harsh discussion about how to manage the permission thing (read my preivous post) after whcih follow the next point : Centralize Linux workstations management. A big issue a funny story.

Manager : Ok we should find a way to manage all the Linux clients we have, Geek any idea?

Geek (which is me) : Well this is a problem we should approach in steps, first of all stop installing the first Linux cd you find on this or that desktop or installing what the user prefer. You know it can be a bit difficult to manage 437894279982479382 different distributions

M. : Hmmm ok go on

G. : Next when we have some kind of standardization we have a few choices both commercial and free, just to trhow some ideas Landscape, Red Hat Network, Cfengine, Puppet. More or less all will accomplish the goal.

M. : Wait a minute we have Active Directory!

G. : Yes but I don't see the link?

M. : Yeah Active Directory has policies and you can do everything with those!

G. : Err... Well the story is that AD is used only as an authentication Back end to the Linux and Windows machines. Keep in mind Linux does not understand the full feature set of AD, they join the machine through a third party agent which add some features but not as much

M. : We paid money for that agent (how smart!!!!) and the sales person said that it'll make Linux support Active Directory features

G. : And that's true, but elaborate "...Support AD features...". This does not include GPOs. you see Polciies are just registry settings passed down to the WINDOWS client and applied to get a specific configuration applied in a consistent way, as linux does not have a registry (and fundamental different structure) it does not support Windows GPO (you should guess as much from the name already).

M. : But they say it is supported I know it is this way

G. At this point I start to lose patience but say : No it does not

M . : And how you know this?

G. : Maybe because it is my job knownig how Linux and Windows works?

M. : Maybe they are partially supported?

G. : Silence

M. : Maybe we can find a way? We paid for that and that have to work, we have to find a way to make it work.

After this I gave up and even stopped listening to the conversation as it was not bringing anything to the table and to be honest I don't know what they said

Why to be a manager of something you have to be totally ignorant on the matter you should "manage"?

Lethe.

[freestuff212]

LOL, I love it:

M. : We paid money for that agent (how smart!!!!) and the sales person said that it'll make Linux support Active Directory features

and

M. : But they say it is supported I know it is this way

Of course they did they are in "sales", they get paid to sell things, really it's in there job title.

I love managers 90% of the time they have no idea what's going on.

Great post it made my night!

[Lethe]

Lol yeah absolutely right, 99.9% of managers don't have a freaking idea of what is going on can't usually discern between the "sales person" lies and the geek honestly (aka the technical side of the problem).

The remaining 0.1% are usually people coming to you and saying "You know before being a manager I was a teechie like you (kind of 50 years ago) so I have a very good understanding of what the problems are and what is going on" which basically means "I owned a computer 40 years ago, I tried to be a geek but I failed and then turned to be a manager".

Yesterday I've got a new good one, we're having serious storage space issues in here, I'm been screaming for that sayin "We need more storage open the damn wallet" (read my post on permissions) yesterday :

M. How do we solve the storage space problem?
G. Maybe we need to buy some more storage capacity and maybe switch to a proper SAN instead of insiting using NASes?
M. Hmmm let me see.

After 30 minutes he sends me a thousand sales papers by 2 or 3 companies making storage stuff and sayin "Which one is the best according to you?"
G. Well all are the same shit, all are NAS with the problems of a NAS
M. Hey but here they say they can do coffee as well!
G. Well they are sales papers what do you expect from them? Saying their solutions sucks?
M. To me they look good, read this company they are leader in the market (according to them)
G. Silence. I took my backpack and walked out of the office.

It's always like that! Until the next update

Cheer Lethe.