💾 Archived View for clemat.is › saccophore › library › ebooks › bofh › newbofh › bofh26nov97.txt captured on 2021-12-17 at 13:26:06.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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It's a dull day on holiday. My newly befriended educational contact is
working, so I duck back to the city for my daily intake of e-mail,
(seaside Internet cafes are a little difficult to get into at the moment
- what with concerned parents picketing them).
Logging-in from home I notice the latest correspondence from the PFY
appears to be a long one, so I crank up my espresso machine and set it
on stun. I open the PFY's dispatches. It's an epic document depicting
the struggle of the competent network engineer in the face of seemingly
insurmountable odds.
Apparently the boss's temporary network supervisor moved quickly from
the 'humble and unassuming' persona to 'sneaking and conniving' persona
in a few short days. True, this is pretty much par for the course and
expected of the position, but he could have waited until I'd been fired.
The PFY realised quickly that the new boy's networking and Unix server
knowledge was second to none - even nearer than that in fact - none
whatsoever.
The PFY's well-tuned nasal instincts detected hint-of-rodent so he
slipped a call monitor on the boss's phone. His instincts proved correct
- his new supervisor and the boss were mates from way back when
electricity was invented.
Further investigation revealed startling similarities between his CV and
my own - word for word apparently.
Almost like the boss had e-mailed it to him. Having identified a
position worth coveting, my stand-in invested every working hour brown-
nosing support and managerial staff, playing up his role to the
detriment of my memory. From the PFY's observations, he was either after
my job, a Nobel Prize, or both.
Operations resumed with the new me wanting to distinguish himself by
discovering evidence of negligence on my part, leading up to a stirring
half-hour that will long be remembered. I have to rely on the PFY's
version of events...
"Something strange has happened on the mail server machine," he blurted
to the PFY, smelling glory, "There's a process running the pop program
coming from outside the company. I think we've got a break in."
"Where's it coming from?" the PFY enquired, already suspecting the
answer.
"A machine called bofh.DieGeekDie.com."
The PFY, recognising my domain name and penchant for keeping abreast of
e-mail, knew it was best to defuse the situation before it got out of
hand.
"Yep, it's a hacker all right," he confirms.
"What should we do?" the temp boss gagged, already thinking about the
book rights for his Internet crime detection novel.
"Should we disable logins on our machines?"
"Hmm no" the PFY advised. "That'd just annoy them. Best run a
disinfectant across the network."
"How?"
"With the spray command. Use spray: HOSTNAME minus c one million minus l
two thousand, AMPERSAND. Do it for all hosts in the hosts file. That
should disinfect the network while I get a coffee."
The PFY returned to anguished cries. "The bloody network's down."
"No, no" the PFY commented "It's still up and running, just very slow,
for some reason."
From then on, it was all downhill. Convincing him that configuring all
the 10/100Mb Ethernet switch ports to 100 non-switched, "for improved
performance reasons", was a masterstroke - although the 10 per cent of
100Meg capable users were quite pleased with the performance that a 90
per cent network outage provided.
In an effort to win back some client goodwill, he proactively upgraded
the router firmware with some new-release software clearly unaware of
the firmware golden rule: never trust an unpatched release of anything.
That accounted for another hefty outage when some obscure bug caused the
slip lines to have the highest priority path to the network. Which came
as a surprise to the PFY as he hadn't had time to login to the routers
to do it manually.
I'm just about to disconnect when a late-breaking news report comes in.
Apparently, there's been a nasty workplace accident involving my phone.
It appears the receiver cable had been rubbing up against a power cable
and had worn through the insulation on both causing my replacement's
professional looking headset to become a boost not only to his ego.
Luckily, it's always been networking operations' policy to have earth
leakage detectors on desktop mains, but unluckily one of the PFY's
extremely heavy manuals was inadvertently leaning on the reset switch at
the time.
The ambulance crew eventually managed to coax him from underneath the
desk with a couple of chocolate biscuits and a warm blanket, but it
looks like I'm going to be called back early. No rest for the wicked. Or
their supervisors.
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