Sun disappoints me….
By Marc • May 3rd, 2005 • Category: Unix, the Geek, the RanterOK….A lot of you know that I just recently started a new job. Well, at this new place they use servers from Sun Microsystems, where I am used to working with Hewlett-Packard at my old job. The names of the operating systems would then be Solaris for Sun and HPUX for Hewlett-Packard.
Well, we’ve got this really old server that is having trouble. All of our servers are on some kind of maintenance, so I needed to open a support tick on it with our vendor. One of the things you need to open a ticket is the servers serial number. This is usually printed on a sticker or some kind of plate on the back. Most variations of platform specific UNIX OS’s also have a command you can type in that will output the system serial number. I say most of them now, where before yesterday I would have assumed all of them do. It turns our Solaris doesn’t. OK…..That sucks. Thinking about how inconvenient it was for me to get up and walk across the street from the building that my office is in, to the building the server room is to visually inspect the serial number on the back of the server, I can only imagine how it would be for my co-workers in the Knoxville office feel, with there server room being ten miles away from their desks….
The situation isn’t helped much by the smarty-pantsed answers you’ll find on Goggle groups. These include such brilliant responses as “sneaker-net” and other such rudeness. When someone asks such a legitimate question, just admit that this deficiency exists in Solaris and move on. It’s not the end of the world…..OK?
BTW – If by chance there is some geek out there that needs their serial number off an HPUX server, use this:
echo “sel path system\ninfolog\nexit”|/usr/sbin/cstm|grep “System Serial Number” | awk ‘/System Serial Number…….:/ {print $4}’
You might need to muck around with the “awk” command a little, depending on which version of HPUX you’re running.
Marc is a Catholic technology geek living in Tennessee. He blogs at Wild Tangents and is the host of the Catholic Vocations Podcast.
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I don’t know what your position is, or if you have any authority, but I used to work for a Sun reseller. I can say with a great deal of confidence that Mike Rutter of Venture Technologies is a great Sun reseller rep. He’s in sales for the company I used to work for, and works out of their Memphis office. He knows all the product lines and all the hoops Sun makes customers jump through to take care of maintenance issues. There were about 20 sales people in the company I worked for, but of all of them, Mike knew his Sun stuff better than anything. No one could hold a cande to him.
Anyway, I don’t know who you work for, or if your happy with where you get Sun stuff from, but you might consider calling Mike some time. Look them up at http://www.ventech.com/ and find the number for the Memphis office.
Thanks Dennis….You’ve got mail…..Or you will soon.