that’s whacked

why light controlled outlets are bad…

Thursday, Aug 26. 2004  –  Category: Sun

oh man…funniest network problem ever. so in our offices here, we have a pair of outlets that are designated as ‘LIGHT CONTROLLED’ outlets, meaning when the lights get turned off, these outlets turn off. They’re for plugging in lamps, and monitors. It’s actually pretty neat, because the light is heat/motion sensored, so when we leave our offices in the evening, they turn off after about 30 minutes or so of no occupancy, thus turning off desk lamps, monitors, etc..

now, for the past few months, a colleague who will remain nameless has been having these annoying network issues where he can’t access his machine from home, and his terminal sessions all die after he leaves work. he hasn’t been able to start off an overnight run of some benchmarks or test suites for this reason. he’s been stumped….every morning he comes in and sees all his terminals with “Connection reset by peer”.

guess what he had plugged into a surge protector which was plugged into one of these ‘LIGHT CONTROLLED’ outlets. that’s right….his network hub/switch.

man… he’s been asking for help on all the Sun Solaris & networking mailing lists… he’s got all these brilliant engineers puzzled as to why his terminals keep getting reset.

well, now we know.