3 of my internet-lifetimes/startups ago, we had this happen when one of the L2 techs was doing their 'rounds' - but had a backpack on. They swung around and hit the safety cover on the BRS - which got knocked off. They freaked out a bit while putting the cover back on... and managed to activate it. Dead silence followed: "Whoa! What wasn't that?!" (A good story anyway. It wasnt clear from video exactly what happened. More entertaining in review when sped up and backed with Yakety Sax.) Hilarity ensued. Customers irated. Procedures were modified. SLAs were paid. Nicknames were coined. Could also be that it was a bit too red and shiny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NITBfc1EOBo#t=27s /kc On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 10:31:27PM -0700, Aaron C. de Bruyn said:

"???Unfortunately because it was human error we weren???t prepared for it,??? Holmes said."

I'm glad to know they are prepared for errors by deities and squirrels.

-A

On Mon, Aug 29, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Alan Buxey <A.L.M.Buxey@lboro.ac.uk> wrote:

...

...

???Unfortunately because it was human >error we weren???t prepared for it,??? Holmes said.

"But it's elementary!" Watson retorted

:)

alan

-- Ken Chase - Toronto Canada

On 8/30/2016 09:40, Keith Stokes wrote:

At one point in one data center I dealt with a disgruntled employee hit the UPS disconnect button on the way out.

Same story, procedures modified, cover put over switch with a hammer to break the glass, lessons learned, accounts credited.

A very long time ago ("network" involved a fleet of green "wide-band" trucks, hauling tapes to contractors and other offices) the system involved 9 computer centers around the state, built over a period of years, so they had a lot of similarities but some key differences. Many of them had wide, pneumatic sliding doors between the computer room and the unit-record rooms. Some of the doors had floor mats that would pop the doors open when stepped on (or a cart full of card trays was rolled onto). Many of them (for what ever reason--I think I know but it isn't relevant here) had large black buttons on each side of the doors, on each side of the wall. It happened that one had the mats at the sliding doors. but there was an ordinary door near the consoles that had a large black button next to it. It was in this office that a conversion team was running some stuff that ran for hours (in violation of the rule that if a job ran more than thirty minutes it Must Include checkpoint-restart points every 20 minutes) was nearly finished after running all day and all night (as I recall it). One of the team left the computer room via the ordinary door, pushing the big black button. Which was (you saw this coming a long time ago, right?) the Emergency Power Off button. I do not recall any lessons being learned. At all. The group leader (that refused to include checkpoint-restart) years later was conducting a conversion run in a different system but that had many of the same standards ran a job that ran many many hours in a computer center known for flaky power. Without Checkpoint-Restart. We took a power hit when the run had something like 24 records left to process. -- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." --Albert Einstein From Larry's Cox account.

One day, when I ran the Harvard Chemistry computing facility, I was greeted on my way in by panicked profs and grad students that the big VMS VAX (8MB! two memory cabinets! we gave tours!) was behaving strangely I forget what probably crawling. A lot of its use was for long-running jobs, week plus, basically inverting matrices. So I lept into action, whipped off my heavy winter coat and tossed it onto one of the big disk drives and wham the system just halted. Static I guess. Came back ok. Problem solved. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

Wow, since Im in Canada *WE* are the ones who usually don't get to watch anything, and no $vendor has gone and made it available in any way to legally purchase here either. (See stories of proxies being blocked to Netflix US from Canada - to get the tastier US content unavailable to us - and piracy spiking back up here.) oh internet, you great equalizer. this might work: https://vimeo.com/126720159 otherwise we're off to indian and russian websites, de jure. /kc On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 02:43:13PM +0000, A.L.M.Buxey@lboro.ac.uk said:

Hi,

...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NITBfc1EOBo#t=27s

"This video contains content from B_Viacom, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds."

I love YouTube and copyright regional laws :/

alan

-- Ken Chase - math@sizone.org Toronto Canada

About the worst that ever happened to me was a security guy's walkie-talkie setting off an instant Halon drop. Cost about $10,000 to refill and was fairly exciting for those present. That also cut the machine room's power. At least it didn't set off the sprinkler system. We sat down with the Halon system vendor to find out why that happened after proving, on a by-passed system, that yes indeed one of these common walkie-talkies sets the thing off. File under: More Things To Worry About! -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

On August 30, 2016 at 16:26 eric.kuhnke@gmail.com (Eric Kuhnke) wrote:

Does this mean you could drive around with a (illegal, but not difficult to build or obtainl) 20W wide band VHF/UHF jammer radio fed into a 1 meter parabolic dish, aim it at random buildings and set off peoples' halon systems? Wow.

I'd like to think it's been fixed. Then again there are those Blasting Zones one goes thru on highways with big signs ordering drivers: NO CELLPHONE USE! BLASTING ZONE! Sounds like a good plan.

On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 1:46 PM, <bzs@theworld.com> wrote:

...

About the worst that ever happened to me was a security guy's walkie-talkie setting off an instant Halon drop. Cost about $10,000 to refill and was fairly exciting for those present. That also cut the machine room's power.

At least it didn't set off the sprinkler system.

We sat down with the Halon system vendor to find out why that happened after proving, on a by-passed system, that yes indeed one of these common walkie-talkies sets the thing off.

File under: More Things To Worry About!

-- -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

-- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

Ken Chase <math@sizone.org> wrote:

3 of my internet-lifetimes/startups ago, we had this happen when one of the L2 techs was doing their 'rounds' - but had a backpack on. They swung around and hit the safety cover on the BRS - which got knocked off. They freaked out a bit while putting the cover back on... and managed to activate it.

If you get a safety cover for your EPO switch, make sure it is the right kind of cover. Following an accidental EPO outage, we got a safety cover that was actually a latch designed to ensure the switch stays pressed until manually reset. We discoverd this when someone tried to demonstrate that it was now a lot harder to accidentally press the EPO. (it wasn't) Tony. -- f.anthony.n.finch <dot@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ - I xn--zr8h punycode Biscay: Variable 3 or 4. Moderate, occasionally slight. Fair. Moderate or good.