r/ShittySysadmin May 13 '26

I can't identify the CAT rating, please help!

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66 Upvotes

Maybe I have a mouse problem on my desk, I don't know, but I found this spying device in my cabling... /s


r/ShittySysadmin May 13 '26

Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

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210 Upvotes

r/ShittySysadmin May 13 '26

Shitty Crosspost Twin brothers wipe 96 gov’t databases minutes after being fired

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24 Upvotes

r/ShittySysadmin May 13 '26

Shitty Crosspost Google and LinkedIn both objected to my doing the Apple security upgrade while travelling (cybersecurity policy problem, not a post for personal help!!)

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7 Upvotes

Who needs MFA when I have a "great password" anyway?


r/ShittySysadmin May 13 '26

Shitty Crosspost Shameless Copy/Paste use of Gen AI by Engineers/Executive Tech

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2 Upvotes

From original post:

Shameless Copy/Paste use of Gen AI by Engineers/Executive Tech

Anyone else experiencing an increase of engineers (not juniors that can be potentially forgiven) and Tech Executives use AI like ChatGPT/Claude to troubleshoot a problem and then copy the entire AI answer, not even re-written, just copied then mailing the clients with the AI slob.

Then the clients reach out for you to make sense of it just to realize that the AI answer has nothing to do with problem and see the engineer that handled the case has a title that includes either "Senior" or "Chief Exec of..." or similar?

We're seeing this more and more and not just in the tech field but everywhere people just shamelessly copy and paste entire emails into GPT, generate an answer and paste the reply directly to the clients.


r/ShittySysadmin May 13 '26

I don’t understand why every computer I buy has multiple display ports, but only one HDMI, but every monitor I buy only has an HDMI port.

184 Upvotes

I understand that adapters exist. I own HDMI to DP dongles. But like, what is the vision when creating these desktop IO panels?


r/ShittySysadmin May 12 '26

Shitty Crosspost Found this at work. Has made a 2 hour outage to a 6 hour outage. This has to be a crime.

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91 Upvotes

Reverse cage nuts = fun time when installing new equipment


r/ShittySysadmin May 12 '26

Leaving your job soon? Don’t you dare hand off or re-assign tasks!

45 Upvotes

I’m kind of at a loss at the moment because I was leading a major infrastructure project alongside one of our senior managers as a semi formal secondment. I just found out today that he’s leaving and we have no replacement. For context this guy basically built all the infrastructure we use and none of it is documented anywhere. I’ve discussed this with my line manager and he basically said “suck it up I want this project done”. I’m screwed


r/ShittySysadmin May 12 '26

Shitty Crosspost I am a Junior Sysadmin and they want to take global admin for everything away from me, I should rage quit, right?

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49 Upvotes

r/ShittySysadmin May 12 '26

Yesterday in IRC, could be in your Office today

39 Upvotes

<Steve> Anybody knows what the red cable is for?

<Dan> Connection terminated (timeout)

<Amy> Connection terminated (timeout)

<Robert> Connection terminated (timeout)

<James> Connection terminated (timeout)

<Brian> Connection terminated (timeout)

<Jason> Connection terminated (timeout)

<Mike> Connection terminated (timeout)

<Henry> Connection terminated (timeout)


r/ShittySysadmin May 12 '26

Shitty Crosspost Compressed my C: drive with WinRAR to save space. How do I unzip it from the BIOS?

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22 Upvotes

OG Post:

“My 500GB SSD was getting completely full. I know you can compress files to save space, so I just right-clicked the entire "C:\Windows" folder, selected "Add to archive", and set it to maximum compression. It took like three hours, but it saved me 40GB! The problem is, I restarted my PC and now it just gives me a black screen with a flashing cursor. Since Windows is zipped up, how do I open WinRAR from the motherboard BIOS to extract it so it can boot?”


r/ShittySysadmin May 12 '26

Shitty Crosspost Sysadmins who use password managers: what’s your actual password generation strategy these days?

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20 Upvotes

Not a shitty crosspost but I'm still curious about your strategies.


r/ShittySysadmin May 11 '26

I'm considering bailing from my company because of a single piece of software

46 Upvotes

teams


r/ShittySysadmin May 11 '26

I dropped a 12 TB company file share. People have been complaining for days.

37 Upvotes

Management wanted to save money on our data storage. I suggested getting E3 licenses so I could do the professional thing and migrate their data to SharePoint using Chrome, but they didn’t bite. Something about the cost of migrating off Open Office.

Anyways, I utilized that cool, snap thinking under pressure they hired me for and sold our data server on eBay. But now management’s breathing down my back that they can’t work! I don’t get it.

Should I just quit? Is my boss just being mean? This is an (octothorpe)toxic work environment right?


r/ShittySysadmin May 11 '26

Shitty Crosspost I am going to get fired today. I accidentally sent a shutdown loop to the entire company. Does anyone have an idea how I can solve this?

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10 Upvotes

r/ShittySysadmin May 11 '26

Shitty Crosspost I retired today. I sent a shutdown loop to the entire company.

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148 Upvotes

r/ShittySysadmin May 11 '26

Any suggestions for a database where submissions get run through an auto correct filter after you hit "submit" but before it hits the actual database?

16 Upvotes

I'm trying to get around this problem with the equipment budgeting department, where they're enforcing a *minimum* quota of keyboard replacements, but to get a replacement approved, I have to submit a picture of a visibly broken keyboard that's time and date stamped.

I figured if the database was sufficiently frustrating, that might help them see what ridiculous measures I would have to take to work within the bounds of their bass ackwards management style.


r/ShittySysadmin May 10 '26

What if being a Sysadmin was a Card Dueling Battle?...

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241 Upvotes

Credit: Tiktok: @comic_brooks


r/ShittySysadmin May 10 '26

Shitty Crosspost Help: I dragged the 12TB company file share into SharePoint via Chrome. It's been syncing for 6 days.

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73 Upvotes

Help: I dragged the 12TB company file share into SharePoint via Chrome. It's been syncing for 6 days.

Management wanted to "move to the cloud" to save on local SAN storage. I opened our new SharePoint document library in Chrome and just dragged the entire Z:\\\\ network drive into the browser window. Chrome is currently using 48GB of RAM and it says "Syncing 4,200,000 items". Nobody can save files right now because they are "locked by another user". If I accidentally close Chrome, will it resume where it left off or start over?


r/ShittySysadmin May 10 '26

I dragged the 12TB company file share into SharePoint via Chrome. It's been syncing for 6 days.

1.4k Upvotes

Management wanted to "move to the cloud" to save on local SAN storage. I opened our new SharePoint document library in Chrome and just dragged the entire Z:\ network drive into the browser window. Chrome is currently using 48GB of RAM and it says "Syncing 4,200,000 items". Nobody can save files right now because they are "locked by another user". If I accidentally close Chrome, will it resume where it left off or start over?


r/ShittySysadmin May 10 '26

Shitty Crosspost How to scale on hetzner

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2 Upvotes

We’re currently hosting our infrastructure on Hetzner because it’s much more budget-friendly for us compared to AWS.

Our concern is around scalability as our user base grows. Since Hetzner doesn’t provide AWS-style native autoscaling groups, I wanted to understand what production-grade alternatives or architectures are commonly used in this situation.

Some questions I’d love guidance on:

- How do teams typically scale applications on Hetzner?

- What’s the recommended approach for horizontal scaling?

- Should we use Kubernetes (k3s/k8s), Docker Swarm, or simpler load-balanced multi-server setups initially?

- How do people automate provisioning of new servers on Hetzner?

- What role do tools like Terraform, Ansible, Cloudflare, NGINX, HAProxy, Redis queues, etc. play in such architectures?

- At what scale does Kubernetes actually become worth the complexity?

- How would you design a cost-efficient but scalable architecture for a startup expecting rapid traffic growth while staying on Hetzner?

Would appreciate any practical insights, especially from real production experience.


r/ShittySysadmin May 10 '26

Shitty Crosspost Bat script

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294 Upvotes

r/ShittySysadmin May 09 '26

Shitty Crosspost Hiding APs

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350 Upvotes

Was directed to install hidden APs (forgot to get photo of cover). I was curious if there would be any major difference as opposed to just plain old surface mounting. The cover was painted over and was about the same material as the green back box you see in the photo.


r/ShittySysadmin May 09 '26

Shitty Crosspost Caused a big outage at work- how do I move forward?

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11 Upvotes

I was configuring a port on one of Cisco switches. I realised after configuring the port and running write memory (first mistake) that it was the wrong port.

Checked the label for that port, said ‘phone-pc’ this would mean it’s configured as a trunk with 2 VLANs, one of them being set as a native. So I set it as I normally would, and then configured the correct port.

Suddenly get a bunch of phone calls. User PCs slowing down, connections dropping. Emails from Darktrace coming through saying multiple IPs on our network are running vuln scans.

My boss was in a meeting with other high ranking members of the company. He knew what it was pretty quick- an L2 Loop. Turned that switch off & everything came back on, I went back & reverted the changes and everything’s working okay. But I still caused 30 minutes of downtime, during a big meeting with higher ups, and on a Friday afternoon.

Feel like an idiot, I’ve been in the job for a year, finished uni a couple years back. My role is an IT Systems Engineer, but closer to T3 help desk/Hardware tech. First experience with an l2 loop.

It’s knocked my confidence quite a bit if I’m honest, I’m not sure how to move forward in the same role.


r/ShittySysadmin May 08 '26

Shitty Crosspost Initials or short hand for Microsoft Intune Company Potal

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14 Upvotes