Sun lusers and stop-A.

[reddragdiva]

Stop-A is the Vulcan Nerve Pinch on SPARC systems. It's much more dire than Control-Alt-Delete. It's like hitting 'reset' except the system is only mostly dead afterwards and can be brought back to life. Just.

Sometimes, foolish people teach even more foolish people that it exists, and suggest it's a good idea when things seem to have locked up. This is pretty much never the case.

The user in question called in a ticket saying he couldn't see the outboard disk pack. Moreover, he was not pleased that responding to this ticket took over 18 hours (I was away ill on the day he called), and opined that we had some problems to overcome in our responsiveness.

Close questioning (oh, what a lovely phrase that is) revealed that he had done stop-A, boot; the disks in the disk pack were inconsistent (the same thing that happens when you kill Windows without shutting down properly), and he didn't have the root password to run the fsck (Unix equivalent of Scandisk), so he just told it to boot without mounting them at all. Then he called us.

"WHO told you about stop-A? WHO said this would be a good idea?"
"I - I - don't recall ... I, er, read it somewhere."

A likely story. In any case, the fear of God has been reinstalled in the luser in question.

It's down to direct, personal, hands-on reinstallation of religion. One luser at a time.

I have another work rant brewing, but it will be fully developed by tomorrow evening. Suffice to say that I am deeply displeased this evening and expect to be even more displeased tomorrow.

Photo update: First public works of camera up: Deathboy and Spermwhale band photos. Just the bands, people shots to come later.

Comments

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Friend of mine got so pissed off with users thinking they were being clever with stop-A that he remapped it to something innocuous... apparently it's bloody difficult, but he managed it. Can't remember how off the top of my head though, unfortunately.

Thank any god you care to name that I don't have to deal with users anymore *smug* :)

[reddragdiva]

It's fairly easy to disable; I disabled it on that luser's workstation. I prefer to leave it, though, for those exceedingly rare occasions when it's actually needed.

The keyboard power switch, however ... I kill that everywhere. PARTICULARLY all the servers.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Power keys on keyboards should only turn on, or at worst invoke the normal confirm box that says "You've asked to shut down this machine. Are you really sure you want to do this? (No) ((Cancel))"

If at least it'd work when I need it..

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

..I'd attach keyboards to my Suns. But since Murphys Laws still hold true, it doesn't.

[medusa.livejournal.com]

Just the bands, people shots to come later.

Nothing like a bit of ominosity and fear to get you through the day....

[reddragdiva]

Remember that ominosity and fear are what I do for a living.

[pir.livejournal.com]

That is what they do on Solaris boxes by default. I don't trust people to make the right choice given that dialog box (and control-power, from memory, does it without the confirmation box).

Not that any of my sparcs have keyboards on them anyway, serial console is far more sensible.

[pir.livejournal.com]

Stop-A isn't as bad as control-alt-delete. At least you can type go and it will usually continue on from wher eit left off.

If people need graphics console, give them graphics via xdm or similar. The serial port can still be serial console and be more useful as well :)