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From: rb@ccivax.UUCP (rex ballard)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <404@ccivax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 18:12:38 EST
Article-I.D.: ccivax.404
Posted: Fri Feb 14 18:12:38 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Feb-86 05:27:08 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> <476@mmm.UUCP> <672@amiga.amiga.UUCP>
Reply-To: rb@ccivax.UUCP (Rex Ballard)
Organization: CCI Telephony Systems Group,  Rochester NY
Lines: 38

In article <672@amiga.amiga.UUCP> jimm@homer.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) writes:
>::
>the venerable rsmith told a story about a consultant who once worked at a
>site which had somehow made 'cd' stand for 'clear disk'.  Punchline is
>obvious.

In the 'practical jokes department', one wiley programmer set thing up
so that the victims 'ls' would mail a love note to the victims boss!
(as well as the normal ls)
Very interesting when both boss and victim were men.

In the 'follow the bouncing VAX department'  when a programmer executed
a shell script named test from the root directory that read like this:

mkdir ./fdir
cp ./* fdir
   .
   .
if test -f file
   .
   .

And roots .profile contained:
date >> /(some path)/.log
tty >>& /(some path)/.log
(both the cwd of 'test' and the log file were on the same device)

system would lock up for lack of i-nodes, lack of space, or lack of processes
(whichever came first) and root couldn't log in to fix it.

corrective measures have been taken.

And of course, there's always the time when two programmers were running
'vi' on the same 20000 line source file and hit the ^Z^Z at the same time....
(thank goodness for rcs/sccs, when will unix provide automatic file
locking)

Waiting for System 9 - 	Rex Ballard