The other post about the sadness that comes along with terminating a deceased employee's account made me think of another possible outcome:

What things have you found on deceased employee's equipment or accounts that were...unsettling, illegal, or otherwise just shocking?

I created a new email address with a public and free mail service and sent an email to HR asking for my salary to be transferred to a new bank account. Surprisingly, they didn't ask for any verification on my corporate email address, private mobile number or email address that I provided on the paper form when I was hired, and proceeded with the change.

To spice things up, I:

• thanked them for the self-arranged countryside holiday bonus, the details of which are available on job posting platforms

• used the full corporate external signature containing my name, surname, position, address details and corporate logo, all of which can be found on our webpage.

I will need to wait until the next salary transfer to verify whether it has actually been paid into the other bank account I own. Then, I will notify the Security Team about the incident and arrange a meeting with my supervisor and HR.

Do you have any advice on how to ensure this doesn't backfire on my manager, HR team and me?

First of all, thanks to KillaBoi for his great work!

For days I was reading many threads saying that PHP2Shell is very hard to exploit, with no working public PoC available. Honestly, I patched my servers but had no way to verify if the patches actually worked. And ecently, reading the PoC from KillaBoi gave me the idea to make it easier to verify my servers, so I wanted to share it here with you: https://github.com/MartinPham/php2shell-poc

The exploit requires some specific information to work, like the PHP version, the binary's properties (how it was built, optimizations, etc.) and the runtime configuration. Yes, you can hide these from others, but anyone who knows the Docker image or PHP build can calculate the exact values needed to exploit your servers.

The repository contains:

- The Lab (compose.yml + lab/): a PHP/nginx setup to test against (nginx and PHP versions are not exposed to the client)

- poc.py: a single self-contained script that both calculates the needed values from a Docker image and runs the exploit against the target

I decided to make this public because others will find a way to exploit it anyway, so please patch your servers now.

Greetings all, I am currently level 1 helpdesk at my company and I am looking to move up to level 2, and help the future level 1s along the way. One of the projects I plan on making soon is a gui based tool to either interact with the registry editor, or get logs (for example, if you want logs, the gui app menu would say “are you looking for info” or “looking to make a change, etc):

I wanted to ask if any of you have created custom system utilities for your team.

So I got tasked with looking into a solution for keeping track of deliveries that come in. I used chatgpt & did some research and I found a couple paid options but chatgpt suggested using SharePoint + Power Automate + Microsoft lists. I started looking into that as a solution and made a SharePoint site with a test list for myself. However the CTO would like the system to send an email to whomever is having a package delivered. So the front desk would log the delivery in SharePoint. I'm a little lost on how to trigger the sending of an email to the package receiptent. Is that where power automate comes into play?

Does this plan sound feasible at all? I'm pretty new to SharePoint.

ssh sends no keepalives of its own by default (ServerAliveInterval 0), and Linux waits two idle hours before the first TCP probe, so a script on a frozen host can hang for hours. Set the interval to 15 and a 45-second network blip kills the session. Do you tune keepalives, run commands detached and poll, or wrap them in timeout?

The certificate policy has changed, and SSL certificates will expire in 47 days. Currently, we log in to GoDaddy to renew the certificates, run a script to copy the renewed certificates to the local machine, and bind them to IIS sites across the web servers.

Can we automate certificate renewal through GoDaddy? Alternatively, are there any better options to automate the renewal and deployment process?

Anybody else's Microsoft Bookings page not correlating with their outlook calendar? This is causing HUGE issues right now with bookings appointments when people aren't even available or took vacation. I have already made a ticket with Microsoft and they are 🤷🤷🤷🤷🤷. Yes the check box for "bookable when staff are free" is checked.

As if Microsoft and their software/cloud isn't bad enough in it's current state, it's likely going to get worse with a reduction of about 1/4 of their workforce.

Microsoft makes new 'voluntary exit' offer to about a quarter of its workforce, including some execs – GeekWire

I'm eager to see how many more shit updates get through MS "QA" into production environments and cause unnecessary havoc and stress globally.

I'm trying to transition into IT and would appreciate some advice from people who have made a similar move.

I have an upcoming interview for a Customer/Hardware Specialist position at a dental imaging company. It's a six-month contract-to-hire role paying $17/hr, onsite, Monday through Friday.

The job involves Level I support calls and emails, troubleshooting hardware and software issues, working with medical imaging equipment, installing equipment, training customers, documenting issues, and escalating problems when needed. My background is in education technology, where I've supported devices, printers, software, and end users, but I haven't worked in a dedicated IT support role.

I'm planning to work toward CompTIA certification and stack others.

My situation is that I have about 2.5 months of unemployment benefits remaining at $584 a week, and I'm currently living with family without paying rent. At $17/hr for 40 hours, the job would pay $680/week before taxes, so the financial difference isn't huge.

I'm trying to decide whether to take an opportunity like this to get actual IT experience while studying for certifications, or use the remaining time to study and look for a remote job paying around the same amount or more.

I think the hands-on experience could help me qualify for better IT jobs down the road. Another concern is that a six-month contract could limit my flexibility if a better opportunity comes along, and working onsite might make it harder to study.

Thanks in advance for any insights you guys have!

I've been an IT generalist at a large tech company for a few years and I will be "next in line" for a SysAdmin role soon, however, I don't think the stress and responsibility is worth the reward and opportunity.

I clearly am complacent on some level, but I am still challenged enough in my day to day that I stay engaged and interested while working. I make ~$115k/year gross including bonus, with ~5% raise yearly. I am in HCOL area but feel I am compensated well. I like my team and I like my company, which I think is rare.

In my late 30's, have bachelors in IT, almost 10 years in the field, a couple of basic IT and networking certs. I am married and don't plan to have kids. I have hobbies I am passionate about, but I have zero interest in a home lab or spending free time learning new IT skills. The extra income would be nice, of course, but the trade-off's are real, and unfortunately I don't think I can go back to my current role here if I make the jump. Pressure from management to move up is real.

I'm sure folks can relate - what do you think?

Any stories that people would like to share? I'm interested if TUPE ever worked out or were you just made redundant (valid ETO Reason) straight after the transfer?

Is anyone else's team still recovering from the recent PHP2Shell fire drill (CVE-2026-109618 / 109619)?

How we got here is what scares me the most. The developers knew about a memory issue back in 2024. They ignored it to keep older systems working, thinking no one could actually use it to hack into systems.

But then, someone used a new AI model on the old C codebase. The AI quickly found a complex bug that humans had missed for years. To make things worse, a software company accidentally released the fix 12 hours too early. Because of this mistake, hackers could see exactly what was changed. They started attacking the internet before the official warning even came out.

For 20 years, old open-source code stayed safe mainly because finding memory bugs by hand is incredibly hard, boring work. Now, AI models can easily find hidden flaws in 15-year-old code. Volunteer developers simply can't keep up with this speed.

How are you all handling this at work? If we now have to fix servers in four hours or unplug them completely, I might just move to the woods and raise goats.

When you need an answer to a tech relate issue and don't have a human handy to bounce ideas off of, , where do you go to first? Reddit, AI or something else?

There's a lot going on right now with all the high priority CVEs and as per usual, the net is under a constant attack.

There's a lot on the news such as the French freezer attack, and the UK government is pushing for everyone to make sure they have 3 days worth of food. The dark web and many main stream sites have rumblings of bad things to come.

That leads me to: how good is your DR plan?

If some entity managed to take out M365 in its entirety, or Google Business services, for an extended amount of time, how would you cope? Do you have a real recovery option?

I'm asking because I think I could spin up on prem Exchange and restore our mailboxes, or even go old school and restore to Linux mail server to get us working again. That's easy enough, we're an SMB of 400-500 at any given time. The RTO from a "this isn't coming back" is probably a day to a day and a half. The cyber insurance I have helps, but if half the net went out then that insurance is pretty moot as they'd be overwhelmed.

Some of you are massive and cloud only, so how cooked are you?

​I was let go back in September under the pretense that I "didn't know anything," but the truth is I kept calling out the IT Manager on his lies and missteps.

​For context, I’ve been an IT Manager for small businesses for 12 years. I took a Sysadmin role at this company because I missed being hands-on with my real passion—networking—and wanted to grow into bigger infrastructure. During the interview, I was told I’d be stepping into a position that would allow the IT Manager to focus on high-level strategy. He even admitted he didn't really want to manage, and it showed.

​He was a nightmare manager: total gatekeeper, berated staff when they asked for help, and withheld information. Over my 5 months there, I had to fight just to get assigned basic tasks, only to be told he thought I "didn't know anything" whenever I pushed back.

​In the end, he didn't even fire me himself—he had his boss do it based entirely on his version of events. I could have fought it, but why stay in a toxic department?

​Taking it day by day now and actively looking for my next role. It sucks being back on the job hunt, but I’m ready to leave mom-and-pop shops behind and bring my 12+ years of experience to a mid-sized or larger enterprise team.

Anyone figure out a way to deal with this garbage... We use it to collab with valid vendors but we keep getting these fake calls... This has nothing to do with teams phones just a normal teams call.

... and rats are gnawing the floorboards.

(To be kinda meta, this post isn't seeking anything except commiseration and conversation. I'm just reflecting on the dizzying array of changes within the last ~3 years, and hoping a graybeard out there can relate to feeling ... I don't know, displaced? surreal? anyways, my apologies if this doesn't belong in r/sysadmin*)...*

While the underlying tech has evolved, the core of the Internet and computing remains the same as it was in the 1980s: content is stored on hosts and delivered to clients through multiple layers of protocols.

It makes sense, then, that AI will discover uncontrollable amounts of vulnerabilities. The visionaries who initially drafted the RFCs for DNS, HTTP, and TCP/IP couldn't have possibly imagined our data getting commodified, names and birthdays sold for pennies or held for ransom, financial ruin inevitable. Of course they baked their naiveties into the tech. Of course history is getting sandwiched between OpenAI and Anthropic, with attendant freakouts from suits and normies alike.

It seems like the wooden planks are decaying, but the replacements don't fit anywhere yet. Maybe it's time we transition away from the existing infra and replace it in its entirety with the Semantic web and MCP/agents. Give up the whole ghost.

Can anyone relate? Does this resonate at all?

We're an online shop with a pickup counter. Some customers come with an order already placed, while others place their orders with us. To enable customers to place orders, our employees need the appropriate IT equipment. However, we can't provide a separate device for each employee at the pickup counter; that would be completely impractical. So, we need multi-user devices. These devices need to run our web-based ERP system, our shop CMS, and 1Password. We also need printing capabilities. The problem is, until now, we've been using Windows devices with a single user account. This means everyone has to remember the same password. It's impossible, so they've resorted to hiding Post-it notes. I want to eliminate this. I want to create a single device where multiple users can authenticate themselves securely and quickly (ideally using biometrics). The operating system isn't a major concern; I just need to be able to manage it with Intune. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could achieve this?

Hey everyone!
I’m building a home lab as part of my journey into IT. My current project focuses on Windows security hardening, Docker security, centralized monitoring with Wazuh, and testing whether security controls actually work. Long-term, I’d like to move toward cybersecurity/DFIR, but my immediate goal is to get into IT support or system administration.
I’d also like to build an Active Directory lab, but I’m not particularly interested in just installing Windows Server, creating a domain, adding users, configuring a few GPOs, and calling it done.
I’d like to build something that resembles a small real-world IT environment and gives me actual problems to solve. Something involving troubleshooting, permissions, security misconfigurations, authentication issues, monitoring, incident investigation, or automation.
For those of you working in sysadmin roles, what would make an AD home lab genuinely useful and interesting from a real-world perspective?
Are there any projects or scenarios you’d recommend that go beyond following a setup guide and could demonstrate practical skills to a potential employer?
I’d appreciate ideas based on things you’ve actually encountered in production environments.
Thanks!

Looking at roughly 200 users, and not all users should have the signatures set. Everyone either uses Outlook New or Outlook Web. Right now, everyone is setting their own sigs, but management wants to know if there are any good options to let our Comm team set a unified signature for everyone (which will get some minor changes over time as events come & go).

We're looking at Set-OutlookSignatures, but it seems like it's a bit complex for non-Outlook Classic sigs. Price isn't too bad.

So recently we had some customers who are using their go daddy email to sign into outlook and they are getting redirected to a retired page. There were some steps that go daddy suggested related to registries and regarding web view but nothing seems to be working. I know webmail is an option but my users are very stubborn. The thing is after making those reg changes things started working on the local. When I made same changes on both win 2019 server and 2025 server it did not fixed the issue. Any suggestions to solve this?

Hey everyone!

I'm a junior developer at a small accounting firm, and somehow I ended up being responsible for pretty much all of our IT infrastructure: servers, networking, Active Directory, remote desktops, and software development.

To be honest, this whole thing kinda landed on my lap out of nowhere, and I'm basically learning sysadmin stuff as I go. I have some experience with Linux and development, but I'm definitely not a sysadmin.

Right now, our setup is pretty simple. We have one physical server running Windows Server with Hyper-V, hosting two VMs:

• Domain Controller: Runs Active Directory for managing users, computers, and authentication.
• Remote Desktop Server: Runs Windows RDS, which employees use to access their work desktops remotely.

The thing is, my boss absolutely hates Windows Server, especially Windows RDS, and really wants to move everything to Linux if possible.

For context, we have our own application that does almost everything needed, and the rest of the programs have support for linux. For the clients, the initial ideia is providing them with a machine with linux installed exclusively for our application usage.

So I've been looking into a few options:

• Ubuntu Server for the physical server
• Univention UCS or Samba AD to replace Windows AD
• Ubuntu + XFCE + XRDP for remote desktops
• Samba for file sharing
• Proxmox or KVM for virtualization

But the more I research, the more I'm wondering if replacing Windows AD entirely is actually a good idea, or if I'm just making things harder for myself.

I don't mind learning new stuff, and honestly, I kinda enjoy figuring these things out. But I also don't want to build something that's going to be a nightmare to maintain later.

I'm also wondering if I should keep the same setup with a Linux-based hypervisor and two separate VMs, or if there's a better way to structure everything.

So I wanted to ask you guys for some help. Any tips, ideas, experiences, or insights would be really valuable to me.

Thanks!

EDIT: More context, my boss is the type who hates clouds and stuff that gives our code to "them", so i think cloud is not a option.

Reading some of the comments, came to the conclusion that the AD migrations maybe is not a option haha, so i was thinking in sticking with Windows AD but changing the Physical machine to Ubuntu server (This i know i can handle) and the remote do something like Mint. Is This a viable option?

Hi everyone, I'm handling a Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 Business Standard migration for 18 users and would appreciate some advice.

A few questions:

1. Large mailboxes: Five users have 100–150 GB mailboxes. We want to migrate emails from 2023 onward, but EAC doesn't seem to support date filtering. What's the best approach? Do we need a third-party tool or Microsoft's Large Mailbox Onboarding method?
2. Shared mailboxes: We have two Gmail-only accounts (info@ and billings@) that we want to migrate into M365 shared mailboxes. Is it best to license them during migration, convert them afterward, then remove the licenses if they're under 50 GB?
3. Domain and Google accounts: Our domain is managed through the old Google Domains/Squarespace setup. Should we leave the registrar unchanged during migration? What happens to existing Google accounts and domain access when we eventually cancel Google Workspace?
4. Cutover: We're planning 2–3 migration batches, starting with the shared mailboxes, followed by a weekend cutover. Any tips for minimizing downtime and preparing a rollback plan?

I'm handling the technical implementation myself, so I'd appreciate any practical advice or lessons learned. Thanks!

Have you guys made or worked on something in your homelab and it ended up being something in production at work?

The last thing I did was set up a Speakr container in my homelab and after using it so much I gave access to my boss because he would ask me to transcribe meetings all the time.