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battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop

Member

[OT] I've had enough...

This morning in the middle of a customer turn up my Windows 7 box decided that it was more important to reboot after a windows update than it was for me to complete what I was working on. After the 3rd reboot I grab my backup laptop and continue working on what I was and after the 5th reboot I'm able to get my box back on the network.

I've had enough!

So now I'm back from lunch with a new MacBook Pro. The last Apple computer I used was an Apple IIe. I pretty quickly found terminal so I can ssh to boxes. The next thing I need to figure out is how to use my USB to Serial adaptors. For those of you that admin gear with serial ports what is your equivalent to Putty? Are there any other nifty programs for the MAC that are useful to guys who manage Cisco and Adtran networks?
cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC
Westell 6100
Cisco PIX 501

cramer

Premium Member

Wait a few months and you'll be screaming about the same thing(s).

Windows Update is *configurable* (assuming your domain admins aren't overriding your settings.) Set it to "manual" mode only.

As for serial dongles, either buy ones designed for "Mac" or with known drivers for OS-X.

TomS_
Git-r-done
MVM
join:2002-07-19
London, UK

TomS_ to battleop

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I personally use Minicom:

»mac.softpedia.com/get/De ··· om.shtml

You should also be able to use screen, which should be "built in". Run it with something like:

screen /dev/ 9600

To quit, Ctrl-a then k.

Just beware that you might need to download a driver, depending on the chipset used in the adapter.

tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
MVM
join:2008-01-16
Gilbert, AZ

tubbynet to battleop

MVM

to battleop
securecrt is cross-platform -- all i use.

sublime text for text editor.
transmit for ftp/ftps/sftp
diffmerge for config comparison.

just get a bog-standard pl2303 adapter. make sure you get an authentic one. the drivers are free. if you use "less than legit ones" -- you need to pay some money for drivers that are more understanding.

[also -- welcome to the koolaid]
q.

SimplePanda
BSD
Premium Member
join:2003-09-22
Montreal, QC

SimplePanda to cramer

Premium Member

to cramer
said by cramer:

Wait a few months and you'll be screaming about the same thing(s).

Windows Update is *configurable* (assuming your domain admins aren't overriding your settings.) Set it to "manual" mode only.

As for serial dongles, either buy ones designed for "Mac" or with known drivers for OS-X.

Nah. As a mostly Mac users who occassionally has to deal with Windows (real and in VM), the update situation is night and day. Windows can be this strange comedy of reboot / update / reboot / update for some reason.

OS X is generally a lot more streamlined.

Plus, it's basically two computers in one. UNIX for reals + commercial desktop apps.

Each their own though.

As for serial cables; StarTech makes a few that work with Mac. Also remember that the G2 and newer Cisco's have the USB ports that work fine as a standard USB class device; just "screen /dev/XXX" from a Terminal and you're in.

TomS_
Git-r-done
MVM
join:2002-07-19
London, UK

4 edits

TomS_ to cramer

MVM

to cramer
In my 8 or so years of using a Mac Ive never had a forced reboot that wasnt a result of company policy.

Left to its own vices, a Mac will just sit there and at worst nag you to update.

In my own experience, the biggest problem I have had with Macs and being in a hands on network engineering role is that sometimes there can be odd goings on with the networking side of things. It seems much better these days, but there was a period of time where I had to constantly reboot because either a network adapter wouldnt come up after plugging it in, or plugging in the cable, or a VLAN interface wouldnt come up, or something else.

Otherwise Ive been quite happy with my Mac.

The only other things I did was to make some of the keys behave a bit more like what I was used to on other OSes, to that effect I created the file /Users/<me>/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict with the following contents:

{
    /* Home */
    "\UF729"  = "moveToBeginningOfLine:";
    "$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:";
 
    /* End */
    "\UF72B"  = "moveToEndOfLine:";
    "$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:";
 
    /* Page Up/Down */
    "\UF72C"  = "pageUp:";
    "\UF72D"  = "pageDown:";
}
 

(You'll need to log out and in again for it to take effect.)

This does the following:

* Home key moves to beginning of line, rather than beginning of document (also Shift combination to allow selecting text to beginning of line)
* End key moves to end of line, rather than end of document (also Shift combination to allow selecting text to end of line)
* I dont really remember exactly what the Page Up/Down modifiers were for, but the default behavior of these keys was different to what I was used to, and this fixed it up (edit: thinking back about it, I think the Page Up/Down behaviour might have been reversed by default in that Page Up would move the page up i.e. scroll downwards and vice versa, so this kind of set it back to what I always knew was the right way)

This made the transition a LOT more bearable, and my time a LOT more productive.
TomS_

TomS_ to tubbynet

MVM

to tubbynet
For me app wise:

* Built in TextEdit, with lots of the fancy knobs (auto correct/spell check/smart characters) turned off, and set to fixed width text of course!
* Terminal and the ssh/scp commands for transferring files

Smart characters is a big one. Things like quote marks will be turned in to unicode back and forward ticks, which if you are trying to copy and paste config youve written up in to a router will probably result in failure and much angry. I think also ... will be replaced with a unicode character, and possibly some combinatsions of -- too.

Auto correct and spell check just makes sure that it doesnt interfere with what youre trying to do and eliminates lots of red squiggly underlines which are inevitable in config and code etc.

dennismurphy
Put me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium Member
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ

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said by battleop:

So now I'm back from lunch with a new MacBook Pro. The last Apple computer I used was an Apple IIe. I pretty quickly found terminal so I can ssh to boxes. The next thing I need to figure out is how to use my USB to Serial adaptors. For those of you that admin gear with serial ports what is your equivalent to Putty? Are there any other nifty programs for the MAC that are useful to guys who manage Cisco and Adtran networks?

ZOC. It's not free but it's AWESOME. Best terminal emulator ever.

Been using it since my OS/2 days (Seriously.)

»www.emtec.com/zoc/

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop to SimplePanda

Member

to SimplePanda
That's exactly what happened. It rebooted and when it came up if you hit the enter key power management came up. So I initiated the first reboot and it applied more updates. Then it came up and the rebooted and applied more updates. Then after that time I had to reboot it again because I could not grab a DHCP address and kept getting the useless "General Failure" error when I tried to ping anything outside of the network. After a couple more reboots I finally got back online.

I always have a spare laptop laying around but the spares are never customized the way I want them so a lot of things like Ctl+Alt+P for putty won't work.
battleop

battleop to TomS_

Member

to TomS_
Auto correct on an iPhone is a pain for an engineer. It seems to have a hard time with things like T1 PRI DS3 OC3.
bigsy
join:2001-07-18
ireland

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'Serial' has built in support for a range of USB-serial devices, including those with FTDI and Prolific chipsets, without having to install additional drivers.

»www.decisivetactics.com/ ··· /serial/
tired_runner
Premium Member
join:2000-08-25
CT
·Frontier FiberOp..

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I refuse to join the computer I use for work to active directory for this very reason. And the AD "specialist" doesn't know a lick about AD beyond what Google search provides.

Set to manual updates, and at my least inconvenient leisure I'll let Windows install and reboot.

tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
MVM
join:2008-01-16
Gilbert, AZ

tubbynet to dennismurphy

MVM

to dennismurphy
said by dennismurphy:

ZOC. It's not free but it's AWESOME. Best terminal emulator ever.

i've used both.
zoc is solid. i just moved to scrt because of the cross-platform ability. i can share session profiles between my windows vm's, linux computers, and my macs -- in addition to being able to share them within the company (most people internally use scrt as well).

its just handy, but zoc is solid.

q.

dennismurphy
Put me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium Member
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ

dennismurphy

Premium Member

said by tubbynet:

said by dennismurphy:

ZOC. It's not free but it's AWESOME. Best terminal emulator ever.

i've used both.
zoc is solid. i just moved to scrt because of the cross-platform ability. i can share session profiles between my windows vm's, linux computers, and my macs -- in addition to being able to share them within the company (most people internally use scrt as well).

its just handy, but zoc is solid.

ZOC has the best ANSI emulation I've ever seen. Surprisingly hard to do on a Mac, for whatever reason. That, and my 20+ year history with it since OS/2 Warp, is probably why I stick with it
cyclone_z
join:2006-06-19
Ames, IA

1 edit

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I've had enough...

I have a tripp-lite/keyspan brand. I use screen because it's built in. You will just need to check out a quick how-to for screen. For help, press ctrl-a, then type a question mark. I'm sure there are cheat sheets and tutorials out there.

I'm able to do a ls on /dev/tty.* and find the appropriate device:
chriss-macbook-pro:~ Admin$ ls -l /dev/tty.*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 17, 0 Apr 27 12:23 /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 17, 2 Apr 27 12:23 /dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 17, 4 Apr 27 13:13 /dev/tty.KeySerial1
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 17, 6 Apr 27 13:13 /dev/tty.USA19H1d1P1.1

chriss-macbook-pro:~ Admin$screen /dev/tty.KeySerial1

To exit, use ctrl-a ctrl-\

Hope that helps!
Also, I found that the tftp included with OS X doesn't work for Cisco devices (and it's a PiTA to configure to boot). Another FTP server called opentftp does, and it worked better for me than the "industry standard" tftp server everyone uses on Windows. I had to compile it, but that was super easy -- literally "CC -o opentftpd opentftpd.cpp".

I'm using pretty much all the included OS X stuff from terminal. Cisco Network Assistant works on OS X once you get the right version of Java installed.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop

Member

I created a file named consolered.pl. I then added screen /dev/tty.usbserial-FTGQMH92 9600 to the file and changed the permissions. I did something similar for consolable.pl, consoleorange.pl, and console yellow.pl. I carry two of the MJF console cables in my bag and usually leave two on my desk and color coded them with some tape.

So far I am at 98% of what I did with my PC on the MAC. The other 2% is just stuff I've not taken the time to google yet.

TomS_
Git-r-done
MVM
join:2002-07-19
London, UK

TomS_ to cyclone_z

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to cyclone_z
Ive used the built in TFTP server for Cisco devices before, so they are compatible with each other.

You just cant use it for files above 32 meg in size because it doesnt seem to support RFC2348. At least in my experience.

A 3rd party TFTP server might do better.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop

Member

I've got a TFTP sever that runs on the LAN and another one that's publicly accessible. I used to run one locally on my laptop but it's been years since I've been in a situation where I can't get a basic config in a box and hit either TFTP server.

That still is handy to have and would probably do OK at 32Mb and below. Most every box I work on has some sort of small basic image that fits under that. In a pinch I could load a small image and then get the box online and pull down the correct image.
cyclone_z
join:2006-06-19
Ames, IA

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said by battleop:

I created a file named consolered.pl. I then added screen /dev/tty.usbserial-FTGQMH92 9600 to the file and changed the permissions.

I have an even better way: edit .bash_profile in your home directory (you'll likely have to create it). Then put in aliases:
alias consolered='screen /dev/tty.usbserial-FTGQMH92 9600'
etc.

As soon as you open a new terminal window (or type source ~/.bash_profile) your aliases will be in effect.
cramer
Premium Member
join:2007-04-10
Raleigh, NC
Westell 6100
Cisco PIX 501

cramer

Premium Member

*pet peeve* profile is for setting up the ENVIRONMENT (it's loaded once by a login shell) Aliases belong in an rc file that's sourced by each invocation of the shell.

(Of course, there are lots of idiots maintaining packages, so things rarely load the way they should (login shells fail to load "rc" at all), or in the order they should (loading "rc" before "profile"), etc.)

kamikatze
join:2007-11-02

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Re: [OT] I've had enough...

Click for full size
vim_airline
Uh, no love for vim with Airline (»github.com/bling/vim-airline).
Highlight rules need more work but hey you can't complain on free stuff.

battleop
join:2005-09-28
00000

battleop

Member

Oh how I hate vi... I've been using joe for at least 15 years or more.