kj's blog

Repost : Old Memories :p
After my encounter with OS-less firewall.

I got another experience with this super System Engineer from local leading opensource company. Ya… they got a lot projects (i mean money) from Novell and they claim to be THE first class Novell Linux (SUSE and some other crap) techical support. In another word. Novell did not do and local support over here.

I was working outstation (some out city place) and got a phone call from this Super System Engineer. He told me he got some problem with a program that my company sells.

By the way, there were just some other vendor. Not a reseller nor a customer.

It is a simple binary file written in C. It is a file scanning tool.In order to make the file upgrade the its own database and scan the server on every night. I wrote a shell script, which less than 50 lines to do the scanning and the database updates. Yes, we need to use cronjob to make it “auto scan and auto update” at 1:01am in the morning.

So I asked, “What is the problem with the script ?”. He told me .. the script can’t work. I say “Fine, what is the problem then?”. The Engineer told me “When I run the script manually it work, it manage to update and database and scan the system. The log file output is working too, But when i put in to the crontab, the script does not work.” Then he say “Can you get this solve by today”. I told him i will try my best.

I try to be patient and try to guide him around with some simple shell scriptting command. When i mention about “echo $?” .. he told me he got no idea what is that. I say “Fine”.

Then he ask me .. beside cron job, is there any work around for the script. I told him,” The only way to make the scheduler is via UNIX’s cron job”. He says , “NO … we’re not using UNIX, we are using LINUX”.

Then i ask, which distro are you guys using.He remains silent for few seconds and ask me some other questions. When i ask him again .. he told me “We are using LINUX”.

I nearly died.

Then … ealier today .. he sent an email to my boss and whole world (his bosses)that I am a real lame moron. I can’t provide any help to them. Maybe they should say I am lame ass linux user.

*******************************************
This is his email to my boss.

I have sent an e-mail on behalf of *MY CUSTOMER* describing the problem to *MY NAME*
last Friday, but I have yet to receive an e-mail reply or phone call from
him despite his verbal promises. As of now, I do not even have any
troubleshooting steps from *MY NAME*, much less a solution. I feel let down by how
*MY NAME* handled this issue. With all due respect, please allocate an engineer who
is not “in a meeting” or “got no internet access” to attend to this issue.

Thank you.
*******************************************

Cheers :P