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From: dv@well.UUCP (David W. Vezie)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <699@well.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Feb-86 12:56:14 EST
Article-I.D.: well.699
Posted: Mon Feb 24 12:56:14 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Feb-86 20:37:03 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> <476@mmm.UUCP> <672@amiga.amiga.UUCP> <404@ccivax.UUCP>
Reply-To: dv@well.UUCP (David W. Vezie)
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
Lines: 37

On the subject of "practical jokes" I remember a stunt we pulled on
the system manager at the wonderful time between the last 4.1 dump,
and booting 4.2 for the first time.  A friend of mine wrote a program
called "slaugher" that would read through the /dev disk device,
find a given inode, and change it from a directory to a file
(or vice versa).  We then created a directory in the manager's
home directory called "Twilight_Zone", made some files in it, changed
it to a file, and edited it so that it would act like this:

% cd
% ls
<lots of files> Twilight_Zone
% cd Twilight_Zone (a *BIG* mistake!)
% ls
/etc/passwd	/bin/login	/bin/su		/etc/group
(there were more files than this, but I don't remember all of them)
% dirs
~/Twilight_Zone
% pwd
/
% cd ..
% dirs
~
% pwd
/
% ls
/etc/passwd	/bin/login	/bin/su		/etc/group
(all the files that he saw previously)

We created the files by just editing the directory.  We managed the
"Twilight Zone" effect by giving ".." the same inum as "."

Fortunatelly, he was smart enough to not do anything like "rm *"!!!
--- 
David W. Vezie
	    {dual|hplabs}!well!dv - Whole Earth 'Lectronics Link, Sausalito, CA
(4 lines, 113 chars)