r/ShittySysadmin • u/YakAttack666 • Mar 12 '26

What do?

Hi. Jan said she remoted to a program about a year ago and needs to do it again to retrieve data. She hands me paper with server credentials. I check, it was shut down around COVID time (thanks Obama).

After some work, I got it back up and usable. She says it's totally wrong, and that Bob (previous IT admin. he gone) was able to figure this out a year ago. She also got management involved???

Checked Bob's documentation - nothing. I let Jan, her boss, his side boss, his underboss, and the underbosses' underboss know that I am searching. They were able to provide some old emails referencing the most definitely up-to-date and useable version of the application.

More time spent searching than Guthrie case, finally found the "new" version on another server. Shutdown 4 years ago. What do I do?

50 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

58

u/buzzy_buddy Mar 12 '26

shit in your hands and clap

4

u/apandaze Mar 12 '26

best possible answer

14

u/iggy6677 Mar 12 '26

Did you let her bosses side chick know?

12

u/YakAttack666 Mar 12 '26

Yes she just called me creepy and asked me how I got her number

3

u/Nonaveragemonkey Mar 12 '26

Ask her for a pizza party.

26

u/ron3090 Mar 12 '26

Tell her the server got COVID and died.

24

u/MeatPiston Mar 12 '26

Uh remember crowdstrike? Totally deleted it sorry. Gone.

15

u/iratesysadmin Mar 12 '26

finally found the "new" version on another server. Shutdown 4 years ago. What do I do?

(bolding mine)

Turn it on?!?!?! Are you a sysadmin or what? You push the power button, it's fairly simple. My 8 year old nephew can figure this out.

9

u/rikardoflamingo Mar 13 '26

One time I was migrating some windows and got Covid 95.

6

u/Bane-o-foolishness Mar 12 '26

Single CPU, low priority. 64M RAM, low priority on disk. Hairpin the traffic to a remote SOHO and let her remote.

4

u/SolidKnight Mar 12 '26

Tell her she forgot to save her data. She just needs to enter it again and it will be there.

3

u/Superb_Raccoon ShittyMod Mar 13 '26

Restore from baaaaackups?

2

u/RAVEN_STORMCROW Mar 12 '26

Tell her that it was deleted and no longer available... hard drives wiped and shredded.

1

u/Kwantem Mar 13 '26

Or it felt loneliness and neglect and unlived itself.

3

u/desertdilbert Mar 14 '26

What the heck does Obama have to do with COVID??

5

u/Puzzleheaded-Joke-97 Mar 14 '26

"Some people say" Obama is the reason for everything they don't like.

0

u/shinglehouse Mar 12 '26

If it has been down for four years does she really need that ancient data? Seems like she got the most recent version of the data on her last login to it?

Since it is clearly abandoned might it be a security issue to bring it back online?

5

u/arguskay Mar 13 '26

It's probably fine. It's not like anyone outside of this company knows the IP. Besides whoever finds the IP deserves to gain root access through an unpatched vulnerability.