[1996] in Central_America
New quotes for Mon Nov 27
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Nov 27 01:37:49 1989
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 89 01:38:16 EST
From: root@CHARON.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
To: ca-mtg@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU
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ankleand (The Analog Kid):
{From system: This user's .plan file is not world readable}
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dpeisach (Daniel Peisach):
"A woman drove me to drink, and I never even had the courtesy to thank her."
-W. C. Fields
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jik (Jonathan I. Kamens):
(Traditional end-of-the-term-when-the-computers-just-HAVE-to-stay-up
song.)
"Atlas' HDA"
by Jon Kamens
(with thanks {and apologies} to Arlo Guthrie)
This song is called "Atlas' HDA." It's about Atlas and its
HDA, but "Atlas' HDA" isn't the name of the HDA, that's just the name
of the song. That's why I call this song "Atlas's HDA."
Now it all started about two full backups ago, during the week
before finals, when my friend and I went to login to Project Athena in
building 1. But our files don't live in building 1, they live in
building 11 on Atlas' HDA.
And since Atlas is a 750, there isn't a lot of space free on
it, so they decided they didn't have to make any on-line backups for a
long time.
Well, we got to building 1 and found that we couldn't get to
our files in building 11 on Atlas' HDA, so we decided that it'd be a
friendly gesture to call up hotline and tell them that Atlas was
having problems. So we walked over to the phone with our NFS errors
and serial numbers and usernames and UID's and Kerberos tickets and
other implements of authentication.
Well, we called hotline and there was a long answering message
which told us that we should call extension 3-0168 before reporting
any major service outages. Well, we'd never heard of a hotline which
you couldn't use unless you called another extension first, so with
tears in our eyes, we walked off to find an operations droog.
We didn't find one 'til we came to a little machine room, off
the building 11 hallway, and in that machine room was the Manager of
Operations, logged into Atlas and playing with the HDA. We asked the
operations manager, "Can you restore our files?" and he said, "Kid,
you got any problem sets due tomorrow?" Well, I didn't, but I decided
that being able to get to our zfwrite binaries was better than not, so
I said, "Yes," and he said, "Then I'll restore your files." And
that's what he did.
And we went back to building 1, had a great time using
zfwrite, and went into mboggle-mode, and didn't stop until the next
Kerberos ticket lifetime, when we got a zephyr message from the
Operations Manager. He said, "Kid, we found your network address on a
zfwrite message at the bottom of a half-a-million other zephyr
messages, and I just wanted to know if you had any information about
it."
And I said, "Yes sir, Mr. Operations Manager, I cannot tell a
lie. Someone sent that zfwrite message from my network address."
After conversin' with the Operations Manager for about forty-five
zephyr messages, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and he
said that we had to show him how we sent those zfwrite messages, and
also had go down to e40 and talk to him at Project Athena
headquarters. So we gathered together our serial numbers and
usernames and UID's and Kerberos tickets and other implements of
authentication, and walked over to e40.
Now friends, there waas only one of two things that the
Operations Manager could've done at the Project Athena headquarters,
and the first was that he could've given us a network-address hacked
version of zwrite for bein' so brave and honest over zephyr with him
(which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it), and the other
thing was that he could've flamed at us and told us never to be seen
sending zfwrite messages on the Project Athena network, which is what
we expected.
But when we got to the Project Athena headquarters, there was
a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both
immediately sat down in Earll Murman's office and had our accounts
suspended. And I said to the Operations Manager, "Mr. Operations
Manager, I can't show you how I sent that zfwrite message with this
here suspension on my account." He said, "Shut up, kid, and follow
me," and that's what we did, and walked over to building 11 to look at
Atlas (Remember Atlas? This is a song about Atlas.).
I wanna tell you 'bout Project Athena, where this is
happenin'. They got 800 workstations, all access_off, about about ten
operations droogs. But when we got to building 11 there was about
twenty droogs, five postmasters, and two MIT lawyers, this bein' the
worst lie told to the Operations Manager in the last ten years, and
everybody wanted to get in on yellin' at us about it.
And they was using all kinds of software and hardware that
they had hanging around the machine room. They was taking window
dumps, accounting traces, lastlogs, sulogs, findlogs, messages,
printer dumps, screen dumps and core dumps... And they made seventeen
multi-layered X windows with inverse text and scroll bars on the side
and top of each one with man pages explainin' what each one was, to be
used as evidence against us.
After the ordeal, we followed the Operations Manager back to
e40. He said he was gonna make us proofread Athena documentation for
a while. He said: "Kid, I'm gonna give you some documentation to
proofread. I want your pen and your `r' key."
I said, "Mr. Operations Manager, I can understand your wantin'
my pen so I don't accidentally mark up the documentation, but what do
you want my `r' key for?" and he said, "Kid, we don't want any
accidental rm problems." I said, "Mr. Manager, did you think I was
gonna rm -r * my account for litterin'?"
The Operations Manager said he was just makin' sure, and
friends, he was, 'cause he took my pause key so I couldn't type
ctrl-alt-pause and reboot the workstation (even though it was a VAX),
and he took my telephone, so I couldn't dial in to athena, make 1200
baud sounds with my voice, login as the super-user and eliminate all
the evidence collected against me. The Operations Manager was makin'
sure.
It was about four or five hours later that Jon (remember
Jon?) came by and, with a few nasty looks at the Operations Manager
on the side, told me I could stop proofreading documentation. And we
went back to the SIPB office and had a great Pizza Ring take-out
dinner and didn't logout until the next day, when I had to go talk to
a design review.
I walked into the conference room, sat down, and the
Operations Manager came into view with the seventeen multi-layered X
windows with inverse text and scroll bars on the side and top of each
one with man pages explainin' what each one was, to be used as
evidence against us, and sat down.
Bill Cattey came in, said, "All Rise!" We all stood up. Jerry
came in with his PC and sat down. And we sat down. And the
Operations Manager looked at his seventeen multi-layered X windows
with inverse text and scroll bars on the side and top of each one with
man pages explainin' what each one was, and he looked at the PC, and
then at his seventeen multi-layered X windows with inverse text and
scroll bars on the side and top of each one with man pages explainin'
what each one was, and began to cry.
Because the Operations Manager had come to the realization
that it was a typical case of user interface incompatibilities, and
there wasn't nothin' he could do about it, and Jerry wasn't gonna look
at the seventeen multi-layered X windows with inverse text and scroll
bars on the side and top of each one with man pages explainin' what
each one was, to be used as evidence against us.
And we were fined 50k quota and told to delete the zfwrite
binaries.
But that's not what I'm here to tell you about. I'm here to
tell you about the HDA.
*************************
(continued tomorrow, or when I remember to change my .plan file)
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jsod (Jordi Sod):
Un Ente Congruente.
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jtkohl (John T Kohl):
Grumble. Back to work.
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kksung (Kah Kay Sung):
I have a dream, a Fantasy ...
To help me through, reality ....
If you see the wonder, of a fairy tale ....
You can take the future, even if you fail .....
- ABBA
(defun MIT-LIFE (years-left)
(cond ((= years-left 0)
(graduate))
(t (eat)
(sleep)
(nerd)
(tool)
(power-tool)
(setq *life-expectancy*
(- *life-expectancy* 10))
(MIT-LIFE (- years-left 1)))))
(defun graduate () nil)
You have new mail.
--- End of Central America ---
