Stupid network setup eats stupid food for lunch

The BBQ Pit
1

Goddam rectal fuckbomb of a piece of shit network. Asswipe network admins who could spell “network” if you gave them an N and followed it up with an ETWORK. Bunch o’ cucking funts.

Let me esplain.

For those of you not familiar with writing code, it goes something like this: You use some sort of application to write some code. Then you run it, and a window pops up that hopefully does what you told it to do. In this way, you can tell if your code worked or if it didn’t. Simple, right? In writing ASP code, it’s slightly different. You write your code in an application, but save it as a file somewhere out there on the network. K:\mycode, for instance. To view the code running, you point a browser to a URL, www dot whatevershit dot com for instance. If the window is already open when you want to view your newly saved changes, you simply refresh the browser.

With me so far? It’s pretty easy, I hope I’m explaining it right.

So how does www dot whatevershit dot com know to run the code on K:\mycode? Search me. That’s Network Asshole stuff. It’s beyond me.

So a few months ago, some Network Asshole told us he was setting up a special server for our code. He told us to create a new net directory, and move our code over to F:\mycode. Same directory, but on a different drive. We were told that www dot whatevershit dot com would now point to F:. Pain in the ass, but no big deal.

Until…

One day I noticed that my changes were not being reflected in the browser. WTF? What was I doing wrong? I checked and rechecked my code. After about 2 hours of troubleshooting, I figured out that the website was pointing back to K:. The hell? And my coworker spent several days on this. But it gets better. After a day of working on K:, suddenly it was pointing back to F:. No warning, nothing. As it turns out, it will switch back and forth unexpectedly several times a day.

The upshot of this is that when it does so, I have to stop what I’m doing and copy several files back to the other drive, then continue working on the copies. Which doesn’t sound so bad, but with all the interruptions in my day, sometimes I forget which files are which, and occasionally I’ll overwrite a newer file with an older one. Bugs that I fixed in November are now back. And the users are getting pissed at me because I’m “writing those bugs again.”

So fuck you, stupid network. I hope you try to establish a handshake with a wrecking ball.

2

Excellent title - absolutely first rate.

I got nothing else.

3

It does sound like the network admins have their heads up their collective asses, but is there any way you can make one of those directories a symlink to the other? Save your files to one place and both directories will have the latest copies.

4

Is your company using any type of version control system like VSS? If not, perhaps you should consider it.

5

Not on that particular project, although I wonder if there is some way to hide a copy there.

One annoying thing I forgot to mention:

Updates to the F: drive don’t post for about 2 minutes. So if I don’t see my changes, it’s because

a) The update hasn’t happened yet
b) I wrote some bad code, or
c) The site is now pointing back to K:.

And it’s usually a few minutes until I know which. Nickels and dimes me out of a good hour every day.

6

Is that something that I, a use with few priveledges, can do myself?

7

Since you’re using drive letters in your descriptions, you’re probably working in Windows. I don’t know that world nearly well enough to tell you if it’s easy or impossible.

And even on the systems I know, I’d have to experiment a little bit to see if there’s a way to make it work. I was just hoping we might be able to figure out a trick to keep things working for you while the network folks get their act together.

If there’s anybody here who knows Windows networks and drive sharing, and how to make one file appear in two different places, speak up.

I wonder what’s making it go so wonky in the first place. Is there some sort of load balancer on the website that directs requests to multiple machines?

8

Symlink? He said he was an ASP devel.

On preview:

I’ve discovered that Windows lets you create a mount point similar to *nix, though it’s not nearly as simple as straightforward.

And it probably wouldn’t work in this situation, because he’s apparently talking about two completely different machines, directories on which get mapped to drive letters on his workstation.

The moral of the story?

Drive letters are goofy.

9

I’d make a batch file to copy files to both drives at the same time. (I have similar stuff here at work, though a *nix script would be waaaay handier).

I’d also try to make some file with a version number I could check, but I might be too lazy to do the work to save me the work. :wink:

10

Am I the only person who thought this was going to be a rant about FOX? :wink:

11

no.

12

Your using drive mappings in your code? You deserve what you get.

13

Huh? No.

14

Have you tried turning it off, then back on again?

15

This line had me in stitches. I so much know what you’re dealing with.

There are two types of techies in the world: code monkeys and network assholes. And by God, their jobs are to make each other’s lives hell.

I’d say throw this crap back at the Network Asshole. Tell him the code is being updated on an ongoing basis and it’s up to him to sync up the two directories. This ain’t some piece of crap code you buy in a shrink wrapped box and install and forget about; it’s ongoing cutting edge development, and his job as a Network Asshole is to support the damn software.

Then again, I’m a code monkey. In my mind we’re a higher species than Network Assholes. The Network Assholes may not agree.

16

What, the network?

17

No, the Internets. Could you reboot it please?

18

Sure.

You may experience a lag in SDMB performance over the next 2-3 days.

19

Having been both, I’d say they would both do well to learn the other side of the fence a little bit. When I worked doing network administration and troubleshooting, many coworkers were fundamentally dense about how applications actually functioned and the subtleties of debugging program code. Of course, now that I’m on the development side of the fence, I see even more stupidity on the part of developers who don’t understand and refuse to learn about the technology they’re developing for. We have web developers who don’t understand how the “web” works and it causes no end of problems they think are not their fault (I’d be willing to bore people with examples…) and want someone else to fix.

But, in any event this sounds the most to me like a mis-managed server, not the network. That would make this a sysadmin problem, and since it’s probably a windows box you know that’s going to be trouble. :slight_smile:

20

Well, the quality of the code monkey/network asshole relationship depends alot on the quality of the people involved, like much else in life. I’m a code monkey myself, and I’ve been in the position of working with talented network assholes (er, so to speak), and it’s a joy. I can briefly describe what I need and BAM, it’s done.

OTOH, I’ve dealt with clueless idiots who were obviously hired from the pool of homeless who were rejected from the jury pool downtown, and that can be sheer hell. I’ve had to tell a NA exactly what to do, step by fucking step, as in what button to click when a particular window comes up. Arrrrrrrrr.

As to tdn’s particular problem: Have you considered setting up a batch file that automatically copies your asp files to BOTH locations at once?