585 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
585 lines
22 KiB
Plaintext
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Fri Feb 21 13:02:09 1992
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Message : #2835701 From: Steve Summit
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Address : scs@adam.mit.edu
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Group : NETCOMP.FolkLore
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Length : 713 words
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Subject : Re: Adminstration Horror Stories
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Msg-ID: <1992Feb21.194543.10478@athena.mit.edu>
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Posted: 21 Feb 92 19:45:43 GMT
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Org. : none, at the moment
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[enough "can you top this /unix compression ratio?" already...]
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A friend was once visiting the University of Hawaii and was
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given a temporary account on a Unix machine for the duration of
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his stay. While acclimating himself to the machine, he chanced
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to notice several of those charming little
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::0:0:::
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turds in /etc/passwd, and dutifully reported them to the system
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manager, who blew up, insisting that those lines were in the
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password file for good and technical reasons, and that users
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should NOT be poking around in that file.
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Joe: "But it's world readable!"
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Admin: "I though I could trust users not to meddle where
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they're not supposed to. I don't have time to check
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the permissions on every system file. It was probably
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distributed that way by the incompetent people who wrote
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Unix in the first place."
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Joe: "Maybe you should fix it." (Smirk evidently too subtle
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for this blowhard to notice.)
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Admin: "You're think you're so smart, I will!"
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He had no sooner typed chmod 600 /etc/passwd than other users
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started coming in the door, wondering why ls -l had suddenly
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started printing numbers instead of user names...
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[Disclaimer: this is the way it's the most fun to tell the story,
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but since I wasn't there, I can't remember if the permissions
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actually got changed, and if so, if Joe had really goaded the
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guy into it.]
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Here's one I know is true: As an undergraduate, I didn't always
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have time for the more troublesome tasks that occasionally
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cropped up in the maintenance of this system I worked on (the
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same one with the "popcorn" disk drives). One day I finally had
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some free time, and sat down to:
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1. rebuild the bootable removable pack I kept around in case
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of emergencies, which had stopped working, and
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2. reformat the disk containing the root partition, which
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had a few bad blocks which hadn't gotten serious (yet).
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I didn't really feel like rebuilding the emergency boot pack,
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because it was a real pain, and at about the limits of my
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abilities at the time. (I had spent several days learning how to
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build it at all: compiling a kernel with different root, swap,
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and pipe devices; finding and assembling a boot block for the
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removable drive; etc.)
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So I figured, what the heck, I'll perform task 2 first.
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The low-level reformat takes about ten minutes. Five minutes
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later, while wandering around the room waiting for it to finish,
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my mind finally thought about the precedence which was lurking
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in what I had been absent-mindedly assuming to be two unrelated
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tasks. ("The word `bulldozer' wandered through Arthur's mind
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for a moment in search of something to connect with.") I didn't
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even make a mad dash for the halt switch; it was, of course, far
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too late.
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The really galling thing was that my whole reason for building
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the bootable removable pack in the first place had been my
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realization, seconds before initiating a previous reformat of
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drive 0, that the backup tapes I had made wouldn't do me much
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good without a bootable system with which to read them back on
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to drive 0.
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I learned a lot more over the next day or so: how to load in a
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system from the (damaged) 2.8bsd distribution tape, how to toggle
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in a bootstrap loader from the front panel, how to deal with the
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fact that the distribution kernel used different partition sizes
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than we did, why it was a bad idea to use non-default partition
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sizes...
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The next day I learned how to order a DEC magtape boot prom. (It
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didn't arrive until after I left. Years later, when I came back
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to help move the system to Princeton, there was still this little
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envelope kicking around with a prom in it which nobody knew what
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was for...)
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* * *
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Does anyone collect these stupid user/administrator/field service
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person stories? They're the best part of this newsgroup.
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Steve Summit
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scs@adam.mit.edu
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Thu Oct 15 14:04:17 1992
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Message : #4671628 From: Erkka Sutinen
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Address : eps@siivu.oulu.fi
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Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
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Length : 1073 words
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Subject : Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
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Msg-ID: <1992Oct15.183747.24196@ousrvr.oulu.fi>
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Posted: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 18:37:4
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Org. : University of Oulu
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In article <1992Oct12.080944.23519@jet.uk> djs@jet.uk (David J Stevenson)
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writes:
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> When this happened to a colleague (when I worked somewhere else) he
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restored
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> vmunix by copying from another machine. Unfortunately, a 68000 kernel
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does
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> not run very well on a Sparc...
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Uh. This reminds me of an long and hard day couple of weeks ago.....
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I was walking merrily towards my room while world was beautiful and
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sun was shining. I got the first hint that something may be wrong
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when I saw our sysadmin banging his head on a nearby door. I asked
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if something might be wrong, and he told me so while continuing
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banging. He had made backups of our old faithful, tolsun (sun3/160)
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and made a minor typo. Instead of tar cf /dev/rst0, he had written
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tar xf /dev/rst0. (Scripts?? We don't use any bleeding scripts!!
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They restrict creativity and make improvising impossible!) Oh well.
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And the tape happened to be an old backup from a sparc.
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So. No binaries worked, execpt that one could login as box. inetd had
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crashed (at which point it did is irrelevant). There was no active
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sessions for that system and there was no way to get in.....
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Lets take a break, have some coffee and think it over. There was a
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lighter side: all of the disks were mounted to another system via nfs,
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and that daemon was still working. List of the files overwritten was
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on a log file, and there wasn'y very many of them. Backups were on 8mm
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tapes and our only 8mm drive was on our server, but with nfs, that
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wasn't a problem. On the other hand we had lost /usr/bin, /usr/etc,
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/usr/kvm and /ucb. Ugh! I think I don't like this.
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Fine. Lets take everything back from tape.... Wait a minute... We had
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just installed new operating system, which had taken several days since
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additional upgrade hadn't worked due to lack of disk space and we had
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a rather unorthodox system running, which worked fine with our add-ons,
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such as appletalk box... And we hadn't make backups of this new system
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yet... Aww shit. We couldn't afford to lose this system, it had too much
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sweat already in it.
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Fortunately we had all the binaries of the upgraded system on our
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server's disks, and with nfs we copied everything to the faulty system.
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Blessed is the network, who rules our lives!
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Nothing happened. Nothing worked. Ah! We just have to restart inetd.
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Hmmmm. But how? Do not worry, this is Unix, full of possibilities! First
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cron, but the clock of that system was totally out of this world showing
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probably the time of Ouagadougou and we didn't know where was that! Ah!
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making some false login attempts will bring error messages to the
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console.
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Nothing happened... I guess syslog had died too.... When daemons are in
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agony, no program can stand without feeling some sympathy towards those
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who suffer so....
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Oh no... But of course. Removing root's password.... Why are your brain
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cells sometimes so slow.... This made it.... But still..... Nothing
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worked... Ah, we had the upgraded binaries... Hm. Ahh. the sun's
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unupgrade option was used while upgrading the system, so we just
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reunupgraded the system. No problem. Everything is fine again... ??
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Why doesn't that system work?? Why our server doesn't let anyone in...
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Awwww...Jesus Christ. What had I done!!! Unupgraded our SparcServer
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with sun3's binaries.... Awww shit and <add your favourite curses here.
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Mine is sys V curses>.
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At this point I was trying to find an good way to get rid of all of our
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computers.... Would anyone notice if I just dumped our systems to river
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and claimed that we have never had any computers.... No hope. Back to
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work.
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And at the same moment, the cron miraculously worked, and we had two
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inetd's running. No harm done. It is just a nuisance.
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No problem. Don't panic. Both of the systems are up and running....
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Well aware of the fact that if there are any more mistakes, the systems
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will crash and they will not come up. We didn't even have our server's
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operating system handy (one disk in whole unversity...). I took
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the most recent backup of our server and carefully extracted the
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rpc.passwdauth and couple of other files from the tape, and lo...
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everything worked again.
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The reunupgrade procedure was made at this time at the right computer,
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and at our suprise it started to work again.... The world is a
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miraculous place......While ps again operational, we checked the
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daemons still running.... nfsd and getty were only systems that had
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stayed up in addition to the usual bunch (init etc...)
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At this point we thought everything was fine... Let's make the backup
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now and take a good care not to touch anything..... It worked....
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Couple of days later I noticed that the restoring of our server's
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daemons had gone to a wrong directory and the mail hadn't been running
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for two days... No problem... Execpt that delivering two days worth of
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mail brought our server to its knees... Fortunately it didn't crash but
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it was ssslllllooooowwwwww for couple of hours....
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.....and once again our heroes had defeated evil nazis and were heading
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home for meal.......
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Moral of the story: DON'T PANIC. There are several ways to handle unix
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as long as it is running. Do NOT try to reboot
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it. It only brings sorrow with it.
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Moral of the story 2: Double-check every command you give. If one of
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your commands has an error, it is the one which
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causes biggest damage.
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Moral of the story 3: Check the machine you are in, before you give any
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even possibly destructive commands... Networks
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can be a real nuisance you know.....
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--
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======================================#=====================================
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==
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Erkka Pietari Sutinen #Eke what availeth Maner and
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Gentlinesse
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eps@rieska.oulu.fi / sutinen@csc.fi # Without yow, benygne creature?
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University of Oulu. Finland # Shal Cruelte be your governesse?
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Dep. of Information Prosessing Science# -Chaucher
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Fri Oct 16 07:02:39 1992
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Message : #4679040 From: Anthony DeBoer
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Address : adb@geac.com
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Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
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Length : 211 words
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Subject : Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
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Msg-ID: <1992Oct16.133943.24670@geac.com>
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Posted: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 13:39:4
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Org. : Geac Computer Corporation
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In article <1992Oct10.010412.3448@waggen.twuug.com>
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broberts@waggen.twuug.com
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(Bill Roberts) writes:
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>My most interesting in the reguard was when I deleted "/dev/null". Of
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>course it was soon recreated as a "regular file", then permission problems
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>started to show up.
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I was once called in to save a system where most things worked, but the
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main application package being used on it hung the moment you entered it
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(leaving the system more than a little useless for getting things done).
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I poked around for awhile, verified that the application's files were
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all present, undamaged, and had the right permissions. The folks who
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normally used the machine had also discovered that all was well if root
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tried to run it. But nothing was visibly wrong anywhere. So, being
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a bit hungry by then, I took a break for supper, and about halfway
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through, the little voice at the back of my head that sometimes helps
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me said, "/dev/tty". Sure enough, somebody had chmod'ded it to 0644,
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and the application directed (or tried to direct, in this case) all its
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I/O through it rather than just using stdin/stdout like a sane normal
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process.
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--
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Anthony DeBoer adb@geac.com | uunet!geac!adb | GEM: ANTHONY.DEBOER
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Fri Oct 16 20:02:59 1992
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Message : #4685077 From: Ian Chard
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Address : chardi@p4.cs.man.ac.uk
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Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
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Length : 413 words
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Subject : Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
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Msg-ID: <1992Oct16.140521@p4.cs.man.ac.uk>
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Posted: 16 Oct 92 13:05:21 GMT
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Org. : Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester
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I had the dubious honour of administrating a 3B2/300. No manual pages,
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no nothing. Lovely. Anyway, back to the story.
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The company in question _survives_ because it has a mailing list with x
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thousand names and addresses (where x is a constant the value of which I
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have forgotten). The very nasty DBMS being used can remain anonymous as
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I don't really want to get sued into the Earth's core. Suffice it to
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say that there was no direct access to the database other than building
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a form and some code, and someone had asked me to delete one record (a
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previous sysadm had removed the "delete" option from the user form,
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along with all the source code, just before he walked out :-) ).
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I set about writing a very short program in the DBMS's 4GL which looked
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something like:
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use file 'fmlist'
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if c_name = 'Foo Inc' then
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delete;
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...or similar. You get the idea. Unfortunately the DBMS didn't, and
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set about deleting every record. Thirty seconds later (the box had 16
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terminals; our maintenance people recommended no more than 6) I realised
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that something was wrong and interrupted it. A quick query revealed
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that the world no longer contained anyone whose name starts with A or
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B. Damn. Oh God, damn, damn, erm, oh, damn, {face turns white} etc.
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I reach for the backup tapes. Oh God, damn, no, please, not that.
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The tapes were there. Unfortunately they were not numbered, and the
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somewhat hacked-together backup software we were using core dumped
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if it came across a tape that was out of sequence. Now there were
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six tapes, giving a total of... oh GOD! combinations. The users are
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beginning to jump up and down, asking why "routine maintenance" (all
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I could think of under pressure) was taking so damn long, and why I
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was looking so pale.
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Finally I hit the right combination at 2:15am the following morning.
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I thought I never wanted to see another backup tape ever again.
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And then, six weeks later, the disk crashed.
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I changed my mind very quickly.
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Ian.
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--
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[ Ian Chard, Systems Integration | "Kryten, unpack Rachel and get out the
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]
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[ University of Manchester, UK | puncture repair kit."
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]
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[ Email: chardi@cs.man.ac.uk | -- Rimmer (un-H), Red
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Dwarf ]
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Fri Oct 16 21:03:39 1992
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Message : #4685612 From: Rob Slade
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Address : rslade@cue.bc.ca
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Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
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Length : 245 words
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Subject : Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
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Msg-ID: <1992Oct17.000456.18891@softwords.bc.ca>
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Posted: Sat, 17 Oct 92 00:04:56
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Org. : Computer Using Educators of B.C., Canada
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Hope this fits.
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I had a job one time teaching Pascal at a "visa school". The machine
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was a multi-user micro that ran UNIX. I have enough stories from that
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one course to keep a group of computer educators in stitches for at
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least half an hour.
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The finale of the course was on the last day of classes. When I showed
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up and powered up the system, it refused to boot. Since all the
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students' term projects and papers were in the computer, it was fairly
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important. After a few hours of work, and consultation with the other
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teacher, who did the sysadmin and maintenance, we were finally informed
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that the new admin assistant around the place had decided that the
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layout of the computer lab was unsuitable. (I had noticed that all
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the desk were repositioned: I thought the other teacher had done it, he
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thought I had.) The AA had, the night before, moved all the furniture,
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including the terminals and the micro. She did not know anything about
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parking hard disks.
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We knew now, that we were in trouble, but we didn't realize how much
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until we started reading up on emergency procedures. For some unknown
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reason, booting the micro from the original system disks would
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automatically reformat the hard disk.
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(The visa school refunded the tuition for all the students in that
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course.)
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Mon Nov 2 22:02:51 1992
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Message : #4845067 From: Lars Peter Fischer
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Address : fischer@iesd.auc.dk
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Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
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Length : 122 words
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Subject : Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
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Msg-ID: <FISCHER.92Nov3011533@steiner.iesd.auc.dk>
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Posted: 3 Nov 92 01:15:33
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Org. : Mathematics and Computer Science, Aalborg University
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[ Our news server has been badly broken, so I'm resending this.
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Sorry if you've seen it before. ]
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>>>>> "Alan" == Alan Saunders (alan@spuddy.uucp)
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Alan> On his return, he decided to put what he had learned
|
||
|
Alan> into practice, and changed the ownership of all files in /bin,
|
||
|
/usr/bin
|
||
|
Alan> to bin.bin!
|
||
|
|
||
|
In a related move, a new computing center sysadmin here once decided
|
||
|
that there was no reason for people to be able to copy system
|
||
|
commands, so he did a "chmod a-r /bin/* /usr/bin/*".
|
||
|
|
||
|
/Lars
|
||
|
--
|
||
|
Lars Fischer, fischer@iesd.auc.dk | It takes an uncommon mind to think of
|
||
|
CS Dept., Aalborg Univ., DENMARK. | these things. -- Calvin
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thu Jun 17 20:03:59 1993
|
||
|
Message : #7333870 From: Doug Siebert
|
||
|
Address : dsiebert@icaen.uiowa.edu
|
||
|
Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
|
||
|
Length : 415 words
|
||
|
Subject : Re: Worst Bugs (was Re: About the Internet Worm
|
||
|
|
||
|
Msg-ID: <1993Jun18.015647.13167@icaen.uiowa.edu>
|
||
|
Posted: Fri, 18 Jun 1993 01:56:4
|
||
|
|
||
|
Org. : Iowa Computer Aided Engineering Network, University of Iowa
|
||
|
|
||
|
S947460@UMSLVMA.UMSL.EDU (Andrew Zaitsev) writes:
|
||
|
|
||
|
>When I was experimenting with fork() for the first time, I managed
|
||
|
>to (mistakenly) write a program that spawns a child and then dies.
|
||
|
>After that child will spawn grandchild and die, etc.
|
||
|
>
|
||
|
>I ended up with an infinite process with constantly changing PID.
|
||
|
>I couldn't kill it, because by the time I entered 'kill -9',
|
||
|
>the PID I specified would be already non-existent.
|
||
|
>
|
||
|
>So, I wrote 'hunter' program that would track down that infinite process
|
||
|
>and kill it. No luck again - it was spawning too fast, 'hunter' couldn't
|
||
|
>get it.
|
||
|
>
|
||
|
>Then I gave up. I hopelessly looked up at my directory, saw 'a.out'
|
||
|
>file in there, thought 'why would I need it now?' and deleted it.
|
||
|
>Tada! Infinite process has stopped - it was reading a.out every time
|
||
|
>fork() was executed!
|
||
|
|
||
|
I did something similar but even stupider....I created a program which
|
||
|
by accident did the fork/die thing moving through the process table,
|
||
|
and I quickly hacked up a 'killer' program to track backwards through
|
||
|
the pids and kill it for me. I got extra-clever and, since I was on
|
||
|
a system running HP-UX where I had real-time processes available to me
|
||
|
and could become root, and ran the killer in real-time. When it failed
|
||
|
to kill the program I was mystified, but eventually figured out I had
|
||
|
filled the process table with zombies and so I couldn't fork anymore so
|
||
|
the chain was finally broken.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Here comes the stupider part: I made a fix to my program to correct
|
||
|
the problem that had made it fork endlessly, compiled it, ran....the
|
||
|
OLD version by mistake. Unfortunately I did so from my shell that had
|
||
|
real-time priority so now I had the same thing happening in real-time
|
||
|
priority! Needless to say, the machine locked up tight as a drum!
|
||
|
Luckily the process table again filled up and I was able to delete
|
||
|
the evil offending program and run the fixed version which did in fact
|
||
|
behave as I wanted :-)
|
||
|
|
||
|
--
|
||
|
Doug Siebert | "I don't have to take this
|
||
|
abuse
|
||
|
Internet: dsiebert@isca.uiowa.edu | from you - I've got hundreds
|
||
|
of
|
||
|
NeXTMail: dsiebert@chop.isca.uiowa.edu | people waiting in line to
|
||
|
abuse
|
||
|
ICBM: 41d 39m 55s N, 91d 30m 43s W | me!" Bill Murray,
|
||
|
Ghostbusters
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Tue Sep 21 18:52:31 1993
|
||
|
Message : #8575086 From: Wayne Hathaway
|
||
|
Address : wayne@Auspex.COM
|
||
|
Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
|
||
|
Length : 124 words
|
||
|
Subject : Re: The Programmer's Handy Guide to the Languages (humor)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Msg-ID: <18657@auspex-gw.auspex.com>
|
||
|
Posted: 18 Sep 93 22:27:27 GMT
|
||
|
|
||
|
Org. : Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
|
||
|
|
||
|
> >Unix:
|
||
|
> >% ls
|
||
|
> >foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
|
||
|
> >% rm *.o
|
||
|
>
|
||
|
> That should be:
|
||
|
> %rm * .o
|
||
|
> which is how most Unix neophytes manage to shoot themselves in the foot.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Actually I almost never introduce a space like that; too
|
||
|
unnatural. What I *DO*, however, is leave my finger on the shift
|
||
|
key just a hair too long, so that the period is shifted along
|
||
|
with the asterisk. This of course produces
|
||
|
|
||
|
%rm *>o
|
||
|
|
||
|
Pretty much the same joyful effect. :-(
|
||
|
|
||
|
Wayne Hathaway Internet: wayne@auspex.com
|
||
|
Auspex Systems Phone: 408-986-2044
|
||
|
5200 Great America Parkway FAX: 408-986-2020
|
||
|
Santa Clara, CA 95054
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Tue Sep 21 18:54:08 1993
|
||
|
Message : #8575187 From: William Gladnick
|
||
|
Address : wglad@nexus6.org
|
||
|
Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
|
||
|
Length : 181 words
|
||
|
Subject : Re: The Programmer's Handy Guide to the Languages (humor)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Msg-ID: <1993Sep18.125403.16257@nexus6.org>
|
||
|
Posted: Sat, 18 Sep 1993 12:54:0
|
||
|
|
||
|
Org. : Nexus 6 - New Orleans Public Access Unix
|
||
|
|
||
|
Dino Dini (amiga@hosta.dircon.co.uk) wrote:
|
||
|
: In <27bj41$287@nwfocus.wa.com> David Ruggiero <osiris@halcyon.com>
|
||
|
writes:
|
||
|
: >Unix:
|
||
|
: >% ls
|
||
|
: >foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
|
||
|
: >% rm *.o
|
||
|
: >rm:.o no such file or directory
|
||
|
: >% ls
|
||
|
: >%
|
||
|
|
||
|
: Should have been
|
||
|
|
||
|
: % ls
|
||
|
: foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
|
||
|
: % rm * .o
|
||
|
: rm:.o no such file or directory
|
||
|
: % ls
|
||
|
: %
|
||
|
|
||
|
: It is very easy to shoot yourself in the foot with UNIX.
|
||
|
|
||
|
: Fortunately, it is also very easy to make a new one :)
|
||
|
|
||
|
: --
|
||
|
:
|
||
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
-
|
||
|
: Dino Dini Dini & Dini Productions amiga@hosta.dircon.co.uk
|
||
|
: "The opinions expressed here *are* those of the company... I am the
|
||
|
company."
|
||
|
:
|
||
|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
-
|
||
|
|
||
|
Or how about:
|
||
|
|
||
|
# pwd
|
||
|
/
|
||
|
# rm * .o
|
||
|
rm: .o: No such file or directory
|
||
|
# ls
|
||
|
ls: command not found
|
||
|
#
|
||
|
|
||
|
--
|
||
|
______
|
||
|
William Gladnick
|
||
|
wglad@nexus6.org
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Thu Sep 30 07:05:24 1993
|
||
|
Message : #8753942 From: Patrick Mann
|
||
|
Address : mann@munich.ixos.de
|
||
|
Group : Usenet.alt.folklore.computers
|
||
|
Length : 32 words
|
||
|
Subject : Re: The Programmer's Handy Guide to the Languages (humor)
|
||
|
|
||
|
Msg-ID: <28elkq$45q@munich.ixos.de>
|
||
|
Posted: 30 Sep 1993 14:06:34 +01
|
||
|
|
||
|
Org. : iXOS Software GmbH, Munich, Germany
|
||
|
|
||
|
Here's another interesting twist I was privileged to experience:
|
||
|
rm -rf when executed on an auto-mounter mount point blithely
|
||
|
goes off to rm all of the mounted directories...
|
||
|
|
||
|
Patrick.
|
||
|
|