If there is one thing I hate it's automatic updates

Thu. Apr. 10, 2008

Some of the people that read this blog are system admins, this post is written to them. 

I am totally ticked off because I had an automatic update that I couldn't postpone and the system rebooted before I could finish a number of things I was working on.  Yeah, I got the reboot warnings, but that doesn't explain why my IT department think that their automated work is more important than my human blood sweat and tears efforts? Its a crock. And its not like I can do a lot about it, I'm not the administrator of my machine. For instance, I can't do the stuff suggested here because I don't have the authority to.

Now I get to do a bunch of re-work and its late at night and I'm freaking tired.

Can somebody give me some insights as to why things work this way before I go crazy.

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Only published comments... Thursday, April 10, 2008 04:33 AM
by Marc Farley, Inside IT Lead Blogger
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Allen Cole said:

 From task manager you can kill the shutdown task.  I can't remember the name of it, but I have seen it done.

April 10, 2008 12:51 PM
Bob Plankers said:

Automated work should never preempt a logged-in human. The problem is that some users will postpone things forever, and the work doesn't get done. But that's a people problem, and you can't solve a people problem with technology. You can trade a people problem for another people problem using technology, which is what happened here.

The fix is a combination of wake-on-LAN and off-hours scheduling, then. You tell everybody to log off and shut down for a weekend, then wake everything back up, patch it, and shut it all down again. And if the admins don't like weekend work, well, automate it. :-)
April 10, 2008 7:28 PM
Marc Farley, Inside IT Lead Blogger said:

 Thanks guys,

BTW, Bob Plankers has a terrific blog.  He's the Lonesysadmin.  Meat of the table every day. 

April 11, 2008 10:39 AM

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