Potentially dangerous elevated cabinet

Would you work or have anyone working for you work in this cabinet? Its 25+ feet off the ground.

https://i.postimg.cc/qMz8GGW2/IMG-2022.jpg

Background:

I took over a manufacturing facility last year that has its IDF for the production floor elevated about 25 feet off the ground. At some point before my time the cabinet was located in an office but they needed more floor space so they demoed the office and brought the cabinet straight up so they wouldn't have to rewire everything.

The network switches and UPSes in this cabinet are 10+ years old. I put in a budget request to rewire the plant and install a new cabinet and replace all switches and firewall with new units under support. I was denied the cost to rewire the facility but approved to replace the hardware.

My problem:

I have expressed concerns to my boss that its unsafe to work in the cabinet, that the plywood could break causing the whole cabinet to come crashing down taking down the facility. I was told "no one qualified has said this is a safety concern, we get audited by safety vendors all the time and no one has flagged this".

I actually haven't been in this cabinet since I am not a fan of heights and would prefer to not touch the thing. My low voltage vendor that was going to do the swap out said they wouldn't touch it as they consider it a safety hazard.

This thing is also located over a main walk way in the facility and while people are working on it will be roped off I just have a feeling that this thing could fall at any time.

My only course of action is to find someone to do the swap out for me and have a Cover Your Ass Email sent to my boss and his boss saying there is a potential risk for the cabinet to fall and against my better judgement we are going to replace the equipment in it rather than rewiring.

https://redd.it/1ool3ng
@r_systemadmin

How do you deal with general incompetence and failing from management?

90% certain colleagues read this sub and to be honest, if you're my colleague reading this, I don't care, I just hope you support these view points.


I've been working in the Defence sector for a while now, left a pretty prestigious company to go join a systems integrator who is running a project to create private clouds. And **everything** is a shit show.

* Architecture refuse to make LLDs.
* HLDs are scattered all over the place and when they're in the right place they're out of date.
* The project is 2 years old and there's **no monitoring**.
* Domain Admins is prevelant and some people use it as a daily driver.
* Tiering models exist however Domain Admins can login to everything which defeats the point of tiering and allows lateral movement exploitations.
* Barely anything is documented yet on the skills matrix most people are listed as 5/5.
* Management pretend to listen and do absolutely fuck all.
* Some "standards" exist but they're wholly inconsistent.
* Solution Architects are treating this project as their own homelab and trainset, getting defensive if people propose changes or try to enact a degree of change.


The job market is total shit. I'm being paid well here but it's just so fucking soul destroying sitting at a desk, being hired as an expert whilst you can't change anything meaningful because some power tripping asshole architect won't allow you to.


What do I actually do here? My attitude is getting more and more negative and it's going to get to the point where I tell them fuck you I quit.

https://redd.it/1ookzd9
@r_systemadmin

I think I have to leave

After being a member of this subreddit for a quite a while I feel stress when I see a thread from this subreddit pop up. It’s the same stress I feel while at work. Even through this is one of my favorite places to be on Reddit, I feel it’s best to leave. It’s been fun and Its great to have a community to share our opportunities with. However self care should come first.

https://redd.it/1ootjxy
@r_systemadmin

How do you guys do bare metal provisioning?

I recently started working with my dad who runs a small MSP. We have a few hundred active clients with each having anywhere from 10 to 300 devices. Around 90% of devices are Window machines. We often have 5 new machines to provision each week, although sometimes we do closer to 30. Currently I use a win 11 usb with unattend to install then a ps noscript to install apps. Some clients we have we setup with Datto rmm, but that's maybe 1/3 of them. I know a common recommendation is to use intune, but 0% chance we can move everyone there.

Any recommendations to speed up the process? Ideally something that is not another subnoscription.

https://redd.it/1ooqh9k
@r_systemadmin

Burnout signals I ignored

If any of you recognize yourself from this post, please take a step back and evaluate how you work and go through life. I write this because I want to save you before this happens to you.

I think I had a burnout at the start of this year. I still kind of think I had somekind of virus or something that just enabled my lingering burnout to surface rapidly.

It all started like a switch was turned on while I was in a Teams meeting. I thought I was having a heart attack. I had this weird sensation in my stomach while I was talking and I was beginning to feel strange. Then suddenly my heart was starting to pound really hard and I was starting to panic. I also felt this adrenaline rush to the brain. I had to exit the meeting. I was able to calm down after 5 minutes but after this I was really tired and still felt little bit of that anxiety. I've never ever in my life had any kind of anxiety or anything like that.

I won't write everything that happened after this but all in all the next months I had multiple "panic attacks/adrenaline rushes" where my pupils went huge because of the adrenaline (I did not know they can do this and It freaked me out even more at the time), my general health declined (I've always been really athletic and now I could not do sports), crazy brain fog (I could not think straight and I was in constant stage of lingering fear that could consume me anytime), neurological problems (muscle twitches, irregular heart beat, cold feet and hands, IBS problems etc.), Dreams about dying and having a heart attack almost every night, chest pain etc. and now I still have somatic tinnitus.

Of course I have made almost every possible test available to rule out other health issues (MRI,Blood labs, Ultrasound etc.) but everything has turned out to be perfect.

Now looking back before this all happened there were signs that I was in the verge of burnout. Every time I got a Teams message I got super irritated. I could not read anything like this subreddit. I got weird anxiety when I was trying to sleep (sometimes about work, sometimes just random things). I could not remember what I was working on or talking earlier. I never wanted to go to the office because I couldn’t work there uninterrupted for a full day, and people generally annoyed me (I work remotely). During our last datacenter meltdown I had this one weird feeling where my heart started to race a little bit and I felt weird. And I pretty much felt trapped because I thought that all the work is on me and nobody could help and there is no way out. I had teams meetings + other work nonstop everyday without breaks for months or even years. I was tired often (not so much physically but mentally). I started to get really interested and consumed about stuff that would kind of realize me from this reality (I've always been interested in "strange things" but this was kind of a cry for help). There were many more signs that I don't even remember.

My symptoms have gotten much better but I'm still not the same. Still recovering. And I still have this fear that there is something wrong with me. But even if there is I know that it still enabled the burnout to surface and I had to make some changes.

The good thing that came out of all of this is that I realized there is really more to life than work. And that I'm not responsible for everything. I was able to change my work calendar and really make some ground rules that I stick to. No matter what the boss or everyone else says. But to do this I had to take a sick leave and go through all of this. It was impossible to see any other way to work before this happened.

So please, if you recognize yourself or maybe some of your coworker from this post, speak up. When you are in the verge of burnout it's really hard to see a way out or even that you are going to have a burnout.

You can save a person.

Remember stress is a silent killer.

https://redd.it/1ooz097
@r_systemadmin

User gets wrong password when logging in, but he swears that the password is correct.

Hello everyone, I just need to check if anyone had a similar situation, because I'm going insane here.

Remote user is swearing that he is typing correct password to VPN, RDP and M365, but he always get the message that the password is incorrect. So I temporarily reset his password to something we will both know.

When he types it, password is incorrect, when I type it it is correct. Even when I type it from his user account when I'm remotely connected to his home-office PC with Quick Assist.

Somehow I'm flamed for this and "this new Windows 11", but I'm pretty sure that he has a broken key on his keyboard and he is not showing the password before hitting Enter. But he swears that the password is correct.

He calls me 3 mornings in a row with this problem, and knowing him I'm pretty sure he will escalate the issue to the management if it happens again. Is there any chance that this can be some unknown IT issue, or he is 100% mistyping his password?

https://redd.it/1oozg3h
@r_systemadmin

Spare a thought for these IT admins

UK dept spent £312M moving to Win 10 as support D-day hits • The Register

They just finished removing Windows 7 and now have to start all over again.

https://redd.it/1op04gm
@r_systemadmin

How to handle salary increase request as noscriptd IT Sysadmin when I am doing IT Manager work

Hey all,

Looking for advice from fellow sysadmins and IT managers on how you go about requesting a significant salary increase.

I’m currently an IT Systems Administrator at a small-to-medium sized business in Ohio, making $92k/year with a $10k bonus option. My official noscript is “IT Systems Administrator,” but I’m basically doing everything an IT Manager does and more:

* First-tier help desk
* Network/server admin
* Vendor management
* Setting up new buildings (network, infrastructure, etc.)
* Security, documentation, you name it
* Implemented a new phone system
* Swapped out EOL machines to prevent security breaches
* IT team consists of myself and an ERP admin
* Migrated all devices to Intune by myself
* Migrated all devices to Microsoft 365 by myself
* Migrated all Exchange mailboxes by myself
* Set up SSO for various vendor sites
* Modernized the IT environment so we can now function as a modern company
* Reduced spam emails and vulnerability to threats significantly through modernization of IT Infrastructure
* Updated legacy software

I feel like my responsibilities and impact are well beyond the typical sysadmin role and current salary, and I’m looking to ask for a salary that matches what an IT Manager would make in this market.

Don't get me wrong, I like my job and what I do. I also realize the job market is shit right now. So I came to Reddit seeking opinions on what to do.

**Questions:**

* How do you approach the conversation for a big raise (not just a cost-of-living bump)?
* What salary would be a reasonable ask for my situation? (Ohio, SMB, handling everything from help desk to full network builds and modernization projects)
* Any tips for making the case, or pitfalls to avoid?
* Is it better to push for a noscript change first, or just focus on compensation?

Would love to hear how others have navigated this, especially if you’ve successfully moved from sysadmin to IT manager pay (or noscript) without switching companies.

Thanks!

https://redd.it/1op5mu5
@r_systemadmin

Microsoft: October Windows updates trigger BitLocker recovery

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-october-windows-updates-trigger-bitlocker-recovery/

This has not happened to any machines where I work at currently. Thought I'd share in case folks start seeing issues with BitLocker after updates.

https://redd.it/1op5nx0
@r_systemadmin

In the buildings you guys manage IT for, where are MDFs and IDFs at?

I work at a K12 school district in WA. We have 37, soon to be 38 schools (if the bond passes we will build a new school and replace some super old buildings that are falling apart). We have 22,305 students roughly. We have 2000 teachers, not sure the total amount of staff, but there is at least 1000 more. Where are the MDFs/ IDFs in your buildings. Some of ours are random closets in the back of the counselor’s office that aren’t even locked and closed because there isn’t proper ventilation (that building is falling apart). But we also have another one where it is in the back of the biology room hidden by a random curtain. We also ended up still having a Windows XP system in the janitors office at that school with sticky notes that said “do not turn off” and the cooling vents were so dirty. Even a CRT monitor! That was hilarious to take that out when we upgraded to Windows 11 this summer.

https://redd.it/1op6d34
@r_systemadmin

Anybody here specializing in an operating system that's not Windows?

Curious as it seems like the sub is 90% Windows people supporting office functionality. Any UNIX / Linux / HP-UX / Solaris / mainframe admins?

https://redd.it/1op9tql
@r_systemadmin

Password Managers easy enough for end users

I’m a one man IT team for a company of around 75 people. The previous IT was very lax with enforcing any type of policies, so it’s been an upward battle to convince people that keeping passwords in places like a plain text file on their desktop is a bad idea.

I tried slowly rolling out NordPass a year ago but not everyone is using it. I often get complaints about it being too difficult or confusing to use. People are getting tripped up by having an account password and a master password, and when to use which. Also any inconsistency with when it autofills or auto saves will cause them issues if they’re too reliant on it.

Anyone have some recommendations on password managers that could be more user friendly but without sacrificing security?

https://redd.it/1opa7wm
@r_systemadmin

Is it poor practice to blast people who don't use BCC when sending bulk email to external recipients?

My absolute biggest pet peeve in the communication world is people who send bulk emails and don't use BCC (or a bulk email service for that matter). I know it's not the grandest hill to die on, but I am more privacy/security minded and seeing my email in a sea of god knows who other emails on a marketing email from a vendor just absolutely sends me up the wall.

Recently happened to me and the senders position was "VP Technology & Cybersecurity" certainly a VP of Cybersecurity should know better than to CC 500 competitor emails in a marketing update.

It's been my (toxic trait) practice to reply all to these emails from an email alias and say something along the lines of a professional but passive-aggressive, 'wtf are you doing. Don't be dumb.'

I'll also CC the offending senders company IT/HR/support team. I usually link some article that talks about (professionally) not being a douche and properly BCC'ing bulk emails, especially if it's external and to competitors/customers.

My spouse recently suggested that may be over the top, and chatgpt said "reply-all is… spicy." and "a choice".

I know that it is a little karen-ish and over the top, and probably better done in just a reply email to the sender, but, I really want to drill it home that sending a bulk email with everyone's email on display is not a polite thing to do.

My question is, What are your thoughts? AITA? How do you handle vendors, coworkers, companies sending bulk email? Should I give up my public shaming reply-all emails and be more professional?

https://redd.it/1opcct6
@r_systemadmin

What’s the weirdest or funniest ticket noscript you’ve seen?

Mine was:
“Internet broken — please advise.”

(Turned out their monitor was unplugged.)

I swear 80 % of our day is just polite detective work.
What’s yours? Bonus points if it was marked P1 😂

I’ll go first — another gem:
“Computer screaming, please send help.” (The fan.)

https://redd.it/1opdvfs
@r_systemadmin

Finally got a new job

After 7 months of interviews and applying to 5+ places every day I finally got an offer. If you are struggling and still looking for work don't give up, you'll get something eventually.

https://redd.it/1opapvg
@r_systemadmin

Setting up new Active Directory - best practice for passwords?

OK so I have a bit of a conundrum.

Company has never used AD. Everyone logs in with a local account on their machine. Shared machines and servers have multiple local accounts, one for each person.

For example ServerA will have four accounts for John, Jude, Mary and April.
Workstation A will also have four local accounts John, Jude, Mary and April.

John logs into WorkstationA with his username and password. He tries to access a resource on ServerA, as long as that server also has a local account "John" with the same password as his workstation, the authentication "passes through" and he gets access.

So, now we're finally getting M365 and setting up Azure AD. CTO wants to setup each user's machine himself. I create account, assign random password, give CTO the password, he logs into their workstation using the new Azure AD account and "gets things setup" for them.

Then he stores the users credentials in LastPass. For every user.

Uhm, what? Am I taking crazy pills? He says it's best practice to keep track of every user's password in a password manager but this just sounds like a huge security risk to me.

https://redd.it/1opih6o
@r_systemadmin

Thickheaded Thursday - November 06, 2025

Howdy, /r/sysadmin!

It's that time of the week, Thickheaded Thursday! This is a safe (mostly) judgement-free environment for all of your questions and stories, no matter how silly you think they are. Anybody can answer questions! My name is AutoModerator and I've taken over responsibility for posting these weekly threads so you don't have to worry about anything except your comments!

https://redd.it/1opuyfa
@r_systemadmin

What's your company policy on adblockers?

Do you install for whole company? Block them? Allow people to install them?

https://redd.it/1opsnxa
@r_systemadmin

HP seems to be disabling HEVC Hardware Decode support on their laptops, creating problems.

Hi all,

Wanted to cross-post a post I made at /r/Hewlett-Packard, but it seems I cannot. Making this post here mostly as an FYI in case anyone happens to run across this at their company, and to be aware of / stay clear of the issue.

Yesterday I spent the better part of my afternoon diagnosing an issue with the playback of HEVC / H.265 content on a machine. The device would experience infinite loading whenever HEVC Content would be accessed through a web browser (Edge, Firefox, Chrome, etc), but would seemingly have no issue with playback from Windows Media Player, VLC, and other local players. Another symptom is that the local media players play HEVC back in Software decoding mode, as evident by no GPU load appearing, and DXVAChecker shows APIs such as AV1, VP9, VP8, and H.264 being available, but no HEVC.

After going down an entire rabbit hole of troubleshooting, I identified that HP seems to be intentionally disabling hardware decoding of H.265 / HEVC content, and this has introduced software breaking bugs in my organization. People with older hardware were not experiencing problems, whereas those with newer machines needed to either have the HEVC codec from the Microsoft Store removed entirely from MediaFoundation, or have Hardware Acceleration disabled in their web browser/web app, which causes a number of other problems / feature degredations. For example, no background blurring in conference programs, significantly degraded system performance (Intel's hybrid architecture chips are slow as heck with E-Cores), etc.


After some digging, I've found affected models such as the HP ProBook 460 G11 and the ProBook 465 G11. HPs Quick Specs sheet call out under the Graphics section that H.265 Hardware Decoding is disabled on the platform.

Sources: https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c08915560

https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c08908497

I've also seen it on the EliteBook 665 G11...

https://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c08927104

This is pretty ridiculous, given these systems are $800+ a machine, are part of a "Pro" line (jabs at branding names are warranted - HEVC is used professionally), and more applications these days outside of Netflix and streaming TV are getting around to adopting HEVC.

So just posting this as an FYI, to either continue to avoid HEVC due to the licensing mess it has been (and I assume HP isn't paying the license fees on these machines), or to pay extra attention to what you're buying from HP and to avoid these models for being "broken by design."

https://redd.it/1opxue7
@r_systemadmin

Looking for the most efficient GRC platform?

I am a CISO for a SME and we already have quite a few frameworks under our belt. We used a company to help us get compliant but now that we are scaling but it feels like they are more catered to startups. we need something a bit more comprehensive now.

Some of the things my team would be looking for:

\- Cross framework control mapping We are adding new frameworks at a fast pace as we are expanding into more regions. So many of the controls overlap but I still find that we are duplicating work unnecessarily.

\- Real time visibility: I want to be able to view all our compliance activities/status etc in one centralized place but still have all the necessary evidence collection etc going on in the backgroubd

\- Real time threat detection: We want to stay compliant year round so when the audit rolls around it's smooth sailing. So something that identifies gaps and vulnerabilities immediately so we can remediate asap.

Any tools out there that are focused on that next "step" of compliance?

https://redd.it/1opy1kj
@r_systemadmin

Enterprise solutions to linux as a mainstream user desktop

This recent post made me think about it..

Is it even viable to utilize linux in a business full of end users? Are you (or your company) doing this? I mean, on one hand with so many services shifting to the cloud, many of those old, proprietary windows only applications are now cloud based services, so anything with a browser can access them, however what about things like:

Group policy control for various departments

SCCM's Software Center

AppLocker-esque services to prevent unwanted apps from installing

Bridges/etc/ to IAM systems potentially being used to replace the user logon and force mfa (I believe Duo might support this, but are there others?)

etc..

Do you work for a company who either has shifted to Linux for 'all' users or always been a linux shop? If so how's that been working for you?



https://redd.it/1opyk05
@r_systemadmin