Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sco!rosso
From: rosso@sco.COM (Ross Oliver)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: computer follies
Message-ID: <916@viscous>
Date: 28 Sep 88 08:25:13 GMT
Reply-To: rosso@sco.COM (Ross Oliver)
Organization: SCO Technical Support
Lines: 29

I work in the Tech Support department here at SCO and collect lots
of interesting stories about customer mishaps.  By far and away the
best one is:

A customer calls in and wants to know if there is a way to
run his backups automatically at 1am in the morning.
We explain to him how to set up a cron job to do just that.
He goes away very happy.  The next day, he calls back.
Apparently, his backup did not happen.  After going through
the procedure with him again to make sure there were no mistakes,
the tech support person is at a loss to explain the failure.
Grasping at straws, the tech suggests, "Well, sometimes cron is
a little tempermental, and you have to stop it and start it up
again before it will recognize new jobs."

"How do I do that?" the customer asks.

"The easiest way is to reboot the system."

"Oh, we've already done that."

"Really?" says the tech.

"Yeah, we shut down the machine at 5pm last night,
and brought it back up at 8 this morning."

-------------------
Ross Oliver
SCO Technical Support