On Fri, 19 Mar 1999, Allan Burrington wrote:
> You must be a Unix sysadmin - presumably, that is why transposing SNMP and
> SMTP is such an issue to you.
Before we get into a religious war, let me paraphrase some Dilbert for you
"Here sonny have a nickel. Go get yourself a better operating system."
Take YOUR condescending posture someplace else, with statements like, "The
person is obviously a Unix sysadmin - take it easy on him..."
> Pointing out the obvious is non-helpful to the other 10,000 people on the
> mailing list.
Are you sure there are exactly 10,001 people on this list? Why do YOU
waste the other 10,000 people's bandwidth, not to mention time?
> Pointing out that the funny numbers were in the MIB without
> telling him where to find the Netapp MIB.
Perhaps you should re-read your mail spool. He referenced the filename of
the mib.
> Then telling him what a tree
> structure is. Looking at a SNMP id and being bewildered is a standard
> newbee experience.
That's why I suggested that he should read a book on TCP/IP so he can
distinguish SMTP from SNMP before contemplating more delicate
distinctions.
> Telling the poor soul to buy a book is beyond
> unhelpful - digests are so you do not have to buy something, and you do not
> have to call tech support.
No, I didn't just tell him to buy a book. I told him which book he should
purchase. In addition, I mentioned that he should read the SNMP RFCs
since SNMP is a very simple protocol. If he didn't feel up to it, then he
should get a book on SNMP. O'Reilly usually has very palatable books.
> The reference to Unix Sysadmin was to account for their approach to life -
> they're Unix Sysadmins because they couldn't pass the civil servent exam.
Apparently proper spelling was not tested on the civil _servant_ exam.
Tom
P.S. I hope this letter provided some comedic relief to this mail list.