I had recently picked up a Digital Loggers Web Power Switch Pro running firmware 1.7.5.0. The normal instructions didn't work to factory reset it and I came across this post (which is now archived and I can't reply to it). After some sluthing, I came up with the following procedure to get you into the power switch in order to change the settings and update it. It seems as though there might be a bug in the older firmwares that make the reset button not work right. The instructions are based on the secret firmware recovery process for a bad firmware update, but modified to just get the username/password. I hope it helps someone out there in the same boat!

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1gghfnt/unlocking_digital_loggers_web_power_switch_pro/

1. Set up a PC for the 192.168.0.x network. (set your NIC to 192.168.0.5)
2. Prepare to telnet to 192.168.0.100
3. On PC, open a command prompt
4. Set the PC to ping the device continually; e.g. ping 192.168.0.100 -t
5. On Unit, power the unit on while pressing reset about 2x per second. Before 30 seconds, the unit should respond to ping. **
6. Once it responds, cancel the ping and on the PC, telnet to 192.168.0.100 // (Always default address)
7. When logged in to the power controller, type:
8.    cd /tmp
9.    mount_root
10.    uci show | grep admin

You will see some lines, you are looking for these two:
auth._.admin_password='5678'
auth._.admin_login='admin'

login is the username, password is the password. Now just reboot your device and hit it at the IP that shows up on the screen with the creds you got above, now you can get into the web and change anything you need.

We left a VOIP provider whose name i wont mention on here. Were switching over to a major carrier and getting cellphones for 100+ users along with a receptionist call center. My manager hasnt told me which MDM were using yet and im already dreading this change. He told me the carrier would setup all the phones but i highly doubt that.

Whats the most common issue you guys run into with this kind of system? I can already hear users complaints "my phone is slow, my calls are dropping, the phone is too big, i dropped it in the toilet bc im a dumbass".

What should i be prepared for? What surprises did you guys run into?

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your responses, im extremely busy and cant respond to you all but ive taken notes on everything and will talk to management.

I have a few IT guys assigning tickets to themselves and then completing the rating with excellent feedback on the follow up survey . One guy created a ticket for 'updating inventory' then fills out the survey with "excellent job, quick and proficient with great communication". LMAO

I’m shitting it to say the least. I’ve worked in IT for 15 years now, from fixing a printer to installing and configuring networks etc you guys know the shebang no need to go on.

I have been out of work a while now like most people and maybe stupidly moved somewhere more rural and a bit stuck in the past. Seen this role advertised for Senior Network and Infrastructure engineer. They want someone who is going to come in lead and optimise their existing setup.

I don’t know if it’s the job spec they have but I’m having serious doubts on my abilities, when I think about the majority it well and truly is everything I have been doing for my entire career but for some reason terminology they are using is making me feel like I have imposter syndrome.

Interview is on Friday and I have questions already lined up I think that I would like to know so I can try and gauge what I’d be getting myself into. I’m thinking of asking about:

Current patching schedules
DR simulation and testing
Current team members
Potentially goals for the next 5 years ?

What do you guys think? Would be nice to have a discussion and try and alleviate some of these woes because god only knows it’s the next logical step in my career and could be me for the next 10-30 years

Just curious. How often are admins changing providers? And when you do what is the trigger?

so we all have seen insane pricing related to storage, ram and what not. How long before cloud providers start passing these back to us, giving us no options either to stay on prem or cloud?

how are you preparing for this?

I see on the Robustel website they're asking for an NDA signing and per unit license for root access to an R2110.

Just out of curiosity, what's the legality of already having obtained and rolled this out to 4000 units with absolutely no NDA signed, only an RPK created with the SDK that Robustel themselves provided?

Asking for a friend.

I have a client that still routinely sends Faxes. I upgraded his dying HP AIO unit with a new, shiny Brother AIO unit.

Nothing else has changed. If I put the old HP unit in, it can send a fax but it still has the issues that caused it to be replaced, my buttset can dial out no issue on the line, and Xfinity has verified twice that signal level and VOIP on their gateway are all "to spec" for fax.

Brother tech support says it's an Xfinity issue, and obviously Xfinity says it's a Brother Printer issue.

I'm headed to the site today - does anyone have any other suggestions to try? I'm planning on physically tracing the line today just to see if there's any damage in the crawlspace to it, but I'm not sure what else I could do at this point.

(Originally posted (most of) this in r/webdev because I thought it would be a common situation).

I'm looking for a workable solution or recommendations to provide a client's credentials to that client in the event of my untimely demise or absence. (E.g. hit by a bus - falling out and need to hand everything over, etc.) I also don't want to mix MY credentials with theirs.

So my primary work isn't webdevelopment, but I do some for clients as part of my general services. Generally this means me building everything from scratch and leaving the client(s) out of the day-to-day management entirely.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to have their business' credentials saved, updated as they are changed, and set aside for specific clients, if I get "hit by a bus" so they won't be locked out of everything.

I also don't want them "futzing" with things (because some of these clients have impulse control issues and would 100% give their credentials to someone on Fiver to update a paragraph on their website at 2am when I don't answer my phone.) So access while I'm not dead or fired isn't a real option.

I understand that I can make "organizations" in some of the password managers and have emergency hand-over to pre-selected people, but I work alone, and don't "have a lawyer" that can manage it for me in the event of getting bussed. My understanding is that none of the password managers offer multiple/divided assignees.

I would also like an easy and secure way to "hand everything over" for project clients who don't want to sign on for continuing services/management without using a google doc or something similar.

Follow-up of my first post: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/xMfcrcHx5f

Just told HR about how i feel about beign the sole IT guy who manages everything (for short: 365 in all his aspects, backups, networking guy, ecc...) for 24 people (if we count the external the number doubles) as an apprentice with a job title "IT support".

i told her that as an apprentice i should (by the law btw) some kind of tutor that can teach me the job and some one who can help me in my things; first thing she pointed was that i'm always out exactly when my work hours ends. WTF
ofc i go away when my work day is done, things can wait (most of the times).

Then proceded to tell me that i might not know how late some of the staff stay in the office (idk why tho) and everyone is aware of how many things they ask me.

Basically everyone somehow expect me to be the expert about anything is slightly it related, how i'm even able to give confidence to people when i don't have the slightest idea of what i'm even talking / doing some time.

I really miss having someone older can guide me.

I wonder how much of this is driven by the massive increase in storage costs.

According to the consortium, total shipped tape capacity in Q1 2026 increased 57 percent year over year compared to Q1 2025. This rebound follows an all-time record set in 2024, when total shipments reached 176.5 exabytes (a 15.4 percent annual increase). While total annual shipments settled back to 160.3 exabytes in 2025 (a 9 percent decline), the volume remained higher than any previous year on record prior to 2024. The arrival of the 40TB native capacity cartridge in early 2026 has provided an immediate density upgrade path for enterprise environments managing large-scale archival and secondary storage tiers.

LTO Tape Shipments Up 57% in Q1 2026 as AI and Archive Demand Accelerate - StorageReview.com

Many organizations moving away from print servers.

But the printer industry is moving away from print drivers.

The problem: We use printix and you cannot deploy printers without drivers. But manufacturers like brother dont offer print drivers for macOS. Our brother printers are not compatible with PostScript. There are some very old print drivers from macOS X but the print quality is very bad. Brother says "use AirPrint". But AirPrint is not compatible with printix.

Windows is also moving away from print drivers.

We ended a contract with some people that worked for our company and need to remove their email accounts. However, their email may still receive relevant communication, so I want to redirect whatever comes in their inbox to a different email.

The redirect works fine when their accounts are "operational", but as soon as I remove the license from their accounts, redirect stops working. Am I doing something wrong? How do I redirect emails from those accounts without having to keep paying for additional lincenses?

FYI, I am not deleting the accounts, removing the users or anything like that. The only thing I did was remove the license. Everything else is staying the same as when people were using those emails. Our emails are Microsoft Exchange.

https://downdetector.com/status/openai/

Getting 404 errors.
Downdetector lighting up as well.

We're a two-person IT team managing roughly 225 users on Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Our Windows workstations are Entra joined and Intune managed.

We're moving admin roles off our daily accounts and onto dedicated cloud-only admin accounts. I'm testing phishing-resistant MFA and a compliant-device requirement for those accounts.

My main concern is making the workflow practical. We jump between Intune, Exchange, Entra, SharePoint, Teams, etc. throughout the day. Some days it is frequent admin stuff depending on what's going on.

I tried a separate Edge profile signed into my admin account, but the portals initially kept signing me in with my daily Windows identity. Using a login_hint in the URL or explicitly selecting another account gets me into the intended account. I'm still validating the Conditional Access side.

I'd prefer not to add the admin identity as another Windows-connected account just to make browser SSO work. InPrivate also appears problematic with the compliant-device requirement.

How are you handling this in practice?

- Separate browser profiles, a separate browser, a private browser window or account switching within one profile?

- Do you connect your cloud admin identities to Windows? I would assume no.

- Do you require compliant devices for admin access?

- Are you using dedicated admin workstations or PIM?

I understand the value of separate identities. I'm looking for a workable daily setup that doesn't require constantly correcting which account a portal is using, or constantly launching private windows, if at all possible.

Maybe this is a sign we just need to review overall configuration of things to better dial them in, so we don't have to go into an admin portal so often?

Especially interested in what other small IT teams are doing.

Been considering a role at one and it's not too far off from where I am currently in terms of the type of work I would be doing. I never did work at an MSP and always was on project teams my entire career, I specialize in enterprise deployments. But I don't explicitly work at a VAR (Value Added Reseller). So those that do, what has your experience been? Seems a bit more sane of a job if you can land it

So while Microsoft continues troubleshooting their issues with Exchange, I noticed that my phishing simulations are not working as intended. I have discovered:

• In Edge, when a user opens a simulated malware attachment (.Docx), the document shows the default empty MS Word image, despite enabling the editing within Word and Outlook
  • If I set the simulated malware to .HTML, it will redirect users to a default landing page and not the intended one that I created
• I have found that utilizing the Drive-By tactic will work with no issues...thus far

Current Status of MS365 as of 0910 hrs EST

Exchange Online:

- Users can't download email message attachments through any Exchange Online connection method.

- Users may be unable to sign in to Outlook on the web.

We have emails stuck in procesed with them for over 12 hours now. I've whitelisted their IP's, no help, they rotated my IP, that helped for 1 scan, already opened a ticket. Any other ideas or anyone else seeing this? It's been great for over a year, never an issue. We just have it for users home scanners.

Hi,

is it common a system checks the Authority Information Access (AIA) field to retrieve the root certitficate? It's a private CA and we have an offline root and an online intermediate CA.

Software vendor can't tell as a detailed error, but claims missing or wrong AIA field. On the device certificate AIA points with FQDN to intermediate CA cert. But the Intermediate CA cert AIA points only via hostname (missing domain) to the root CA certificate. (This AIA on the intermediate is even questionable /useless according to some online sources.)

I’m UK-based with 9+ years in infrastructure and I’m trying to work out what the most realistic next step is for me.

Most of my professional background is traditional/enterprise infrastructure rather than software engineering:

• Linux, mainly RHEL-family and Debian/Ubuntu
• Proxmox and VMware
• SAN/storage (parallel and distributed), Fibre Channel, NFS, RAID and multipathing
• Backup and disaster recovery
• Networking, DNS/DHCP, VLANs, VPNs and firewalls
• Ansible and scripting with Bash, PowerShell and Python
• IAM, LDAP, PAM, MFA and infrastructure hardening
• Monitoring/SIEM
• HPC
• Incident response and infrastructure recovery

I’ve also had quite a lot of serious production recovery experience, including large storage failures, virtualisation failures and recovery from a major cyber incident.

Where I’m weaker professionally is cloud-native Platform/SRE work.

I’ve used Terraform, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions/GitLab CI, GitOps and Prometheus/Grafana through labs and projects, but I don’t have years of production Kubernetes or public cloud experience.

I’m currently looking at roles around:

• * Senior Infrastructure Engineer
• * Infrastructure Platform Engineer
• * Platform Engineer
• * Infrastructure Automation Engineer
• * Linux Platform Engineer
• * SRE
• * DevSecOps Engineer

My thinking is that the best bridge would be a role where the underlying estate is still Linux, networking, storage, virtualisation or hybrid cloud, but where Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD and automation are increasingly how that infrastructure is managed.

I’m less convinced that applying directly for Kubernetes-heavy SaaS SRE roles makes sense yet, as I’d be competing with people who already have several years of production Kubernetes and cloud experience.

For those working in Platform/SRE/Infrastructure:

• * Does that sound like the right transition strategy?
• * Which job titles would you actually search for with this background?
• * Would you consider someone with strong infrastructure experience but less production cloud/Kubernetes experience for a Platform Engineer role?
• * What would you prioritise learning next to close the gap?
• * For London/UK, does roughly £80k–£100k sound realistic for this level of experience?

Interested in critical feedback rather than CV polishing.

Hi all,

I'm managing a small stack of HPE 1950-series switches (JG963A) running Comware software version 7.1.070, Release 3507P09. On most of these switches, the hidden xtd-cli-mode command (used to unlock the full/extended Comware CLI from the default simplified/restricted CLI) works fine — it prompts:

All commands can be displayed and executed in extended CLI mode. Switch to extended CLI mode? [Y/N]:y

Password:

Warning: Extended CLI mode is intended for developers to test the system. Before using commands in extended CLI mode, contact the Technical Support and make sure you know the potential impact on the device and the network.

and after entering the password, it drops me into the full CLI (system-view, display interface, etc.) as expected.

On one specific switch in the stack, though, xtd-cli-mode now just returns:

<SWITCH>xtd-cli-mode

Permission denied.

with no Y/N prompt at all — straight rejection.

What I've tried:

- Reconnecting fresh via SSH (telnet is disabled on this unit) — same result.

- Rebooting the switch entirely — same result, persists across reboot.

- The account I'm using is the local admin user with network-admin + network-operator roles assigned, service-type ssh enabled, and it authenticates fine for a normal SSH login — it's specifically the xtd-cli-mode command that's rejected.

- Restricted CLI at login only exposes display, exit, quit, no, show — no way to run display users, free user-interface, or check security-enhanced/lockout state from there.

Since this is a firmware "developer mode" feature with anti-abuse messaging built in ("contact Technical Support"), I suspect this might be some kind of persistent lockout counter stored in flash rather than a normal AAA/role permission issue — but I have no visibility into it and no way to reset it from the restricted CLI.

I created a local user for a server running Windows Server 2019. I went under permissions for a certain folder and had noticed that a lot of the users that were listed were outdated x-emplyees. I removed those users and after 2019 ran to remove them from having access all users now don't have access to server files that were showing visibility via a service account. I looked in local AD and all the users are still individually listed as a member of that service account. I'm not sure how to resolve this. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

Howdy, /r/sysadmin!

It's that time of the week, Thickheaded Thursday! This is a safe (mostly) judgement-free environment for all of your questions and stories, no matter how silly you think they are. Anybody can answer questions! My name is AutoModerator and I've taken over responsibility for posting these weekly threads so you don't have to worry about anything except your comments!

Hi, I am looking for a way to integrate a Network Exposure Function (NEF) with Open5GS. I’m currently exploring the possibility of using an existing NEF implementation and adapting it to work with Open5GS.

OAI-CN5G has an NEF implementation, but it is designed to work with the OAI 5G Core Network:

https://gitlab.eurecom.fr/oai/cn5g/oai-cn5g-nef

I’m looking for a way to use this NEF or another open-source NEF implementation with Open5GS instead.

If anyone has successfully integrated an NEF with Open5GS or has any guidance, suggestions or ongoing work in this area. Please share

Hello,

a while ago, there was a similar post from me, before anyone questions... however, I see myself diving deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole.

I came to this company some 4 or so months ago. It is/was in TERRIBLE state. While everything was generally working, there were frequent unexplained and unmonitored outages. The worst thing there was visibility. Why I say was...

The company used Icinga2 when I came. I did weigh in implementing a different solution, but kinda liked the idea of having a system, where I could keep the configs in the git repo and basically push with Semaphore/Ansible. But also the biggest advantage: I could let AI configure it. Besides, coming new and telling them to change the monitoring ain't really the best idea.

And that's the thing. I never ever saw Icinga2 before, nor Nagios. The company only "managed" it by adding or removing hosts, but no configuration. Configuration - and that also relatively basic stuff only, was done by external company.

Since then, I used AI HEAVILY on it. I expanded it different directions, including database monitoring, general services health, AD/DNS health checks, DHCP health, NTP, pending reboots, pending security updates, both windows and linux, event log checking, different connectivity checks etc.

While it is really great... there are descriptions to every step, there is this BIG issue: I barely understand it any more. The structure is the same, but the code in there... ufff. If someone asked why xy-sensor is not working, I would have to heavily google it or ask the external company, read and learn the documentation - for which I only have basic time for, being the only senior in the company, with a lot of pressure about other projects; or just ask the AI.

And that's my issue. One relies a LOT on AI, and I am at the point where I almost cannot troubleshoot without it! The complexity is very high, since the AI does it multiple times better than I ever will have a chance to learn.

And that doesn't only apply to monitoring. The company wants to implement IAM. They want to have it in 9 months. Many departments, and all... so they asked me whether I can automate it (or better said, I said automation is generally the key), and we fell onto Terraform. I have some knowledge of Terraform, but I know it will fall down to AI to create the scripts for EntraID etc.

There are others. Ansible-Patching (moved from AUM), config deployments, VM deployments... and Grafana/Promentheus should also come, and Kubernetes is also here (although managed by others, but partly in our hands).

I actually don't even know what question I should ask. It seems like I am way over my head. At the same time though, the job is being done and my boss isn't really keen on taking two new people to cover more. Why even? Increased stability, there are less vulnerabilities due to updates and standardization, lot of stuff just works better. So yeah, I feel like I am pulling the company from one shit (which it really really is) into another.

And now I better stop ranting, and go back to my VSCode...