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r/sysadmin • … • u/Gnonthgol

Cable documentaton tool

I have been a UNIX sysadmin for ten years and are using tools like RackTables and NetBox almost daily to keep the documentation of the server racks up to date. However recently I have been asked to help out at a volunteer radio station who desperately need some help managing their computers. The first order of business is to map out this place and find out where the cables go. I have done this at a different radio station where they had cat5 cables all converging in a utility closet which made things quite easy to document in RackTables. However in this case there are no patch panels, rooms have names and no numbers and just the network cables are cat5. So you have coax cables for audio and radio waves, both high and low voltage power and signaling cables, usb cables, etc. all over the place connecting different computers, transmitters, mixers, switches, relays, antennas, etc. I would like to simplify things but it is hard considering the different types of signals involved in the current equipment. I was hoping some of you who work more with office buildings and similar facilities would have some idea for a documentation tool for this which does not assume that everything is housed in racks.

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