Questionable Linux Support

There are details related to the original support ticket which I have not mentioned on purpose, nor am I going to.

What is the point of having logs (56Mb in directory usage) if no one is going to read them?

I know that the analisys of these logs will reveal IP address patterns which could then be used to block DNS access, but that would require access to the DNS server, and I doubt any support staff would be permitted such low level write access to a network.

“Expert” is misleading in this case, as it implys more that than their position allows, which I find offensive because that puts the onus of technical resolution on me “a user” (implying not an expert).

Like I said, I misunderstood the interpretaion of “support”, and realise that the staff have conveyed themselves totally within the realm of “user support”, with a web interface that restricts the abuse and stupidity of “potential users”, which can easily get out of hand when taken on a large scale.

I was writing web support interfaces in 1999 that were more useful to technical support than the widespread and various interfaces available today, but then I would also say that the level of “technical expertise” of the personel I was writing those interfaces for was of a different scale, as they were usually the network administrators as well as being the technical support staff.

I guess my idea of “providing solutions” doesn’t include “a non pro-active” approach, meaning that you dont “fix a leaking tap” by constantly telling people “how to wrap tape around the leak” when you know they are goning to have the same problem in the future, and you know what needs to be done to stop the leak in the first place.

  • in basketball, the best defense is a good offence
  • in networking, the best offence is a good defense

Niether of which can be won without “expertise”.

Its just a log file why did you get so upset?

Hold on, you’re asking a helpdesk to provide a log analysis service for you?

Sounds like you should be paying for that.

Helpdesk will help you if you can’t log in.
Helpdesk will help you if you can’t figure out how to do something in their control panel
Helpdesk will not do your job, as a sysadmin, for you.

Just use WeTransfer or something, then they can see what file format it is before downloading.

Would it help to know that when I was support logged into my Thin Client Citrix Windows Server 2016 session I, too, would refuse to open your log file?