Wallpaper to differentiate prod or non-prod server

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DogThatGoesBook@reddit

Why would you be running a window manager on a server anyway?

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itskdog@reddit

Despite Microsoft encouraging use of the Server Core install option, which just dumps you into a PowerShell prompt after login, most people are still used to the desktop experience.

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DogThatGoesBook@reddit

Ah Microsoft, that explains a lot. Its barely suitable as a desktop OS for secretarial staff so the closest it should be to a server is an SMB mount through at least 3 sets of firewalls

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schporto@reddit

Yes. Use bginfo with different configs.

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BadSausageFactory@reddit

am I the only one writing on the screen with a sharpie?

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BCIT_Richard@reddit

Bginfo was the first thing that sprang to mind for me. Never used it myself, but have seen the MDT deployment videos from the guy who does and it seems pretty nifty.

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ipreferanothername@reddit

i use it with one config and use a gpo or sccm to set environment variables it can pull

but...yeah, bginfo.

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burundilapp@reddit

That’s my choice as well, free and designed for this type of task.

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jmbpiano@reddit

Still feels like this is very outdated approach.

Fire is old. It's still the best way to make s'mores.

In all seriousness, though, there are plenty of controls you can put in place to reduce "oopsies" depending on the context.

Cautionary wallpaper is just one layer of accident prevention and it's a pretty darn effective one if you've got people remoting into critical servers.

If there's a way to remove the need for them to remote in altogether, that's probably even better, but if not, why not set the wallpaper?

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statikuz@reddit

How can I have some more if I haven't had any yet?

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Umm, actually /s, fire unevenly cooks the marshmallow making it a less than desirable source for evenly melting it for the s'mores. But I'm also allergic to chocolate, so what do i know about making s'mores? :)

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jmbpiano@reddit

It's not uneven if you plunge it fully into the flames. :P

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archnemisis11@reddit

Oooh! Good point. See, I know nothing about making s'mores! lol

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Daphoid@reddit

There's no reason for it feel outdated. Just because a method is old, does not automatically mean you need a "modern approach". You can layer other things on top (permissions, auditing, things of that nature).

But none of those is as instant as "red = prod, blue = dev" and you logging into a DC and seeing a red background "oops, wrong place".

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goronmask@reddit

Having info on the wallpaper is great for debug screen caps

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PositiveHousing4260@reddit

As you become older like myself, you will find simple outdated type things make more sense. Having broken more things then you can imagine, little things like red for prod and green for testing go along way. I still break things and probably always will but Im also really good at fixing them which is how I ended up here in the first place. We tend to overthink things because we should, but the simple stupid little things like this will often save us from ourselves.

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Civil_Inspection579@reddit

Modern teams usually combine visual cues with stronger guardrails though: different terminal prompts, shell colors, MFA for prod access, RBAC separation, read-only defaults, confirmation wrappers for destructive commands, separate bastion hosts, or completely isolated prod environments.

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rthonpm@reddit

Laughs in Server Core...

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KStieers@reddit

We do it in the background for our ERP environments...user served RDP windows have a different background so you cant tell which window is local.

Right up there with email banners... its a tiny signal that might make someone think a second, or quickly confirm a conviction.

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theEvilQuesadilla@reddit

I understand the intention behind this, but I feel like most people I've seen have the windows in the rdp session maximised, thus hiding the background anyway.

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Broccoli_Ultra@reddit

bginfo as others have said but now I want this to be applied to our estate too, its immediately noticeable. Sounds like a good idea imo

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WizardsOfXanthus@reddit

I use SuperPutty, so when I'm in my VMs, blue is test and red is prod. I don't know. Works for me so I don't think twice about it.

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sgtpepper78@reddit

28 years in this field including a time when “remote access” wasn’t even a thing. I’ve never paused on a desktop to look at the color or even read something like BG info… perfunctory and superfluous imho…

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Affectionate-Cat-975@reddit

All the time using bginfo

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tk42967@reddit

I did this with BGInfo also. Red is Prod Green is Test.

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Public_Fucking_Media@reddit

Yeah I've done this before for some media production servers that had to be remoted into, just another helpful reminder - Swiss cheese model and whatnot

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zrad603@reddit

I did this with a GPO, and changed the Windows theme so it was a different color even if you had a window open full screen. But instead of being "production" vs development, we did this for admin accounts.

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223454@reddit

Same. Years ago we made admin accounts obvious.

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hosalabad@reddit

I use a login banner

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TommyVe@reddit

I've brought a similar idea to our company and love it. All the different tiered jump servers have their own colored wallpaper and it helps a ton.

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brispower@reddit

If this is the level your engineers are at you have bigger problems

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Moontoya@reddit

whats that old saying..

"If its stupid, but it works, it AINT stupid"

colour coding your hardwares wallpapers isnt much different to colour coding your ethernet cables - its a quick/simple/easy reference point.

I wonder do I still have the pictures from a jobsite where they had an intern "tidy up the rack" - without knowing the intern was wholly colourblind. *rummages*

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dude_named_will@reddit

The naming convention has so far been my best method for production vs testing. For the web servers (which they often access through a website), a different color and a banner saying it's a test server is what we use.

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GozerDestructor@reddit

I've been color-coding my terminal windows since 1995. Red is always reserved for the most important machines, usually the central database server.

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Easy-Task3001@reddit

bginfo from Sysinternals works pretty well for this. but questioning why direct logging into production servers is allowed might be the first question I ask.

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qwikh1t@reddit

It’s Friday so hot patches are incoming

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Individual_Ad_5333@reddit

This is the correct answer

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Anxious-Science-9184@reddit

I used to administer a school district (NT4 / Win2K) and had to differentiate that background for student/teacher/aid/admin (green/red/yellow/blue) via group policy.

This is not uncommon, but is highly dependent on the industry you're administering.

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Nexzus_@reddit

I used to do that. Red background for production servers.

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angrydeuce@reddit

I do this in my home lab lol

Makes it far easier to know which vm im on when the background is big block letters NAS or SEEDBOX or PLEX or whatever, especially when ive got like 3 or 4 of them open at a time.

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gumbrilla@reddit

Yeah, absolutely. Prod different from non-prod in bash.. it's just one of those signals that you're not in pre-prod, Dorothy.

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Anthropic_Principles@reddit

I used to manage a fleet of about 2,500 servers. We had a server naming convention that uniquely identified each one as to its function, location, status (engineering, qa, training, prod, DR, etc.) It was human and machine readable, so you could tell at a glance what is was and scripts could read it and act based on internal rules.

I suppose we could have used it to apply different wallpapers but seriously whoever looks at a gui on a server?

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