Our Systems Guys Working Over Christmas

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Been an interesting week at work. We're one of those that replaced everything for Y2K. We use HP stuff and have upwards of 30+ systems scattered about the eastern hemisphere. Within the past 2 weeks, HP sent up an urgent Y2K patch of their UX OS. We had it installed on about a half dozen systems when we got another Urgent message from them, Do Not Apply The Last Patch, it results in more problems than if the patch was not applied. We enquired as to how to back out the patch, they said we had to rebuild the system from scratch. So much for Christmas for those who have to re-build the systems. Everything I am responsible for broke as they moved Apps from one box to another to get ready to re-build. That made for a fun 24-36 hours for me. As a result, the company is observing an IT shutdown from 8:00am today through 12:01 Sunday night, for the holidays.

-- BH (bh_silentvoice@hotmail.com), December 24, 1999

Answers

Groan! I know what a pain it is to rebuild systems. Hang in there guy!

-- Bruce (broeser@ccgnv.net), December 24, 1999.

Jeez! Didn't (can't?) you make a SYSTAPE before you began the upgrade process? When I do O/S upgrades, that's SOP.... If you/it screws up, just boot from the ALT source (tape), and reinstall from that. Takes an hour, tops.

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), December 24, 1999.

Dennis,

I was going to say the same thing. You are just begging for Murphy to f*ck with you if change software, especially the OS, without backing up first.

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), December 24, 1999.


Wasn't me, no longer doing the Systems thing, those are days gone by for me. I did that work for about 17 years, decided a few years ago, I'd just do the App thing until Y2K passed. It was our beloved guys 'downstairs'. I agree, when I did that kind of work, you always covered your a$$. Just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy about what's coming....

-- BH (bh_silentvoice@hotmail.com), December 24, 1999.

BH -

When we had to do a complete system "rip out" for a client, we ALWAYS made a mirrored or ghost disk of the original installation in the event service packs and other software upgrades hosed it up. Reloading from scratch is a time consuming nightmare. I can imagine the hell they are going through reloading OS's on HP's proprietary architecture....no thanks.

-- LZach (lisa@texasnetworks.com), December 24, 1999.



Moderation questions? read the FAQ