+xunil | when I was the CS lab UNIX admin, we literally lost a server
+xunil | we could ping it, and SSH to it, but we had no idea where it was physically located
wallmani | check the walls
+xunil | we eventually found that it had been walled in by contractors
+xunil | VT had contractors convert one of the old proctor rooms in McBryde into just an empty space, and the server was in there but the contractors just assumed it was garbage
+xunil | we had to get a student to climb over the wall through the false ceiling
mhazinsk | why would you convert a room to an empty space?
wallmani | "we weren't explicitly told what this is so let's assume it is whatever involves the least work for us"
+xunil | mhazinsk: it was too expensive to tear down, but they didn't want the room to exist b/c it required administrative overhead. so they just removed the door and window and dry-walled up the holes
+xunil | didn't remove the eletrical or networking
+xunil | large institutions do stupid shit; news at 11
Timelord | they couldn't just leave the door closed?
+xunil | the hilarious end to this story is we actually left the machine where it was b/c after going to all that effort to find it we realized we didn't have a spare port for it
+xunil | Timelord: the door had one of those button locks on it, and *all* the button locks on that floor shared the key combo
+xunil | so every time they changed the combo (every semesters), they'd have to change that door's combo, too
+xunil | we eventually moved the server out of the space once we freed up a port