bsd src comments "don't understand"
Douglas Ray
Anyone know the story of a file in the bsd 4.2/4.3 source
releases, whose only comment was:
4.2: /* I don't understand this */
4.3: /* I still don't understand this */
apocrophal? or anyone know which file?
- douglas ray
networks & comms
unimelb
Francis Stracke
>Anyone know the story of a file in the bsd 4.2/4.3 source
>releases, whose only comment was:
>
>4.2: /* I don't understand this */
>4.3: /* I still don't understand this */
What is this? Are you & Warren working together? :-)
--
/============================================================================\
| Francis Stracke | My opinions are my own. I don't steal them.|
| Department of Mathematics |=============================================|
| University of Chicago | Welcome to the Real World. Enjoy the |
| fra...@zaphod.uchicago.edu | show. |
\============================================================================/
j...@sequent.com
r...@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au (Douglas Ray) writes:
>Anyone know the story of a file in the bsd 4.2/4.3 source
>releases, whose only comment was:
>
>4.2: /* I don't understand this */
>4.3: /* I still don't understand this */
Well believe it or not we still have an ancient copy of 4.2 available,
and I grepped the kernel sources, and the string "nderstand" didn't
show up. Might not have been in the kernel, of course.
I love these. In the SunOS 3.0 source code, somewhere in the VM
system I think, there was a line that said:
panic ("Shannon and Bill say this can't happen");
I saw this one for myself, in 1986, working for a now-defunct company
that was a Sun source licensee at the time. (Saw it in the source,
that is - never saw it happen :-).
A funnier one (that I can't personally vouch for) supposedly was in
the kernel of a very early 68000 based "small business UNIX" machine
sold by Tandy (I can't recall the name of the machine, can anybody
else?).
Anyway, the machine had a Z80 for an I/O processor. Communications
between the 68000 and the Z80 would break down sometimes, and when
the host detected this it would die with
panic: Z80 panic: she's sucking mud again Scotty, beam us up.
A DEC oldtimer told me that a DEC-10 once printed
PUNT
after a particularly misguided attempt to get it to boot, is this
one apocryphal?
Does anyone collect these things?
--
Jeff Berkowitz N6QOM uunet!sequent!jjb | If you can't trust the comics,
Sequent Computer Systems j...@sequent.com | what can you trust? -Bullwinkle
Guy Harris
>I love these. In the SunOS 3.0 source code, somewhere in the VM
>system I think, there was a line that said:
>
> panic ("Shannon and Bill say this can't happen");
Bill *who*? Presumably not Bill Shannon....
There was a panic with something on the order of "Shannon and Dan say
this can't happen", "Dan" being Dan Walsh. And yes, it *did* happen at
one point; I don't remember whether it was bad hardware or an incorrect
assumption being made by Mr. Shannon and Mr. Walsh....
Ken Wallewein
"you aren't expected to understand this". Seems to me it was in TCP/IP.
/kenw
--
/kenw
Ken Wallewein A L B E R T A
ke...@noah.arc.ab.ca <- replies (if mailed) here, please R E S E A R C H
(403)297-2660 C O U N C I L
mailhost
>
> A funnier one (that I can't personally vouch for) supposedly was in
> the kernel of a very early 68000 based "small business UNIX" machine
> sold by Tandy (I can't recall the name of the machine, can anybody
> else?).
>
> Anyway, the machine had a Z80 for an I/O processor. Communications
> between the 68000 and the Z80 would break down sometimes, and when
> the host detected this it would die with
>
> panic: Z80 panic: she's sucking mud again Scotty, beam us up.
>
I can vouch for that one, I've seen it (in fact I posted it to
rec.humor a few years ago, so maybe you heard it from me).
Anyway it was a Tandy 6000 (their successor to the Tandy 16)
running XENIX (a beta version I believe). The memory has gotten
a little foggy over the years, but I recall the wording as:
panic: Z80 panic: shut her down Scotty, she's sucking mud again.
Of course, maybe yours was a production copy of the XENIX kernel. :-)
Mark B. Kaminsky mkam...@cvbnet.prime.com
Computervision/Prime Computer, Bedford, Massachusetts, USA
My goal is a simple one: To live forever - or die trying.
mailhost
> I've heard -- or read, I think -- about some code that contained the comment
> "you aren't expected to understand this". Seems to me it was in TCP/IP.
Some of the funniest comments can be found in /etc/termcap from Berkeley,
just grep for "rain" as in braindamaged. A sample:
# Note: the h1552 appears to be the first Hazeltine terminal which
# is not braindamaged. It has tildes and backprimes and everything!
Some systems have more than others, some of the older ones had tons.
Chris Arthur
> A funnier one (that I can't personally vouch for) supposedly was in
> the kernel of a very early 68000 based "small business UNIX" machine
> sold by Tandy (I can't recall the name of the machine, can anybody
> else?).
>
> Anyway, the machine had a Z80 for an I/O processor. Communications
> between the 68000 and the Z80 would break down sometimes, and when
> the host detected this it would die with
>
> panic: Z80 panic: she's sucking mud again Scotty, beam us up.
I can vouch for this. A friend of mine used to be a repair tech for Tandy/
Radio Shack, and he had a repair manual for the machine (the Model 16, I
think), and the chapter that listed all the panics and other horrible error
messages included this one; I remember him showing it to me.
Version 2 of the Logitech Modula-2 compiler for MSDOS included a syntax-
sensitive editor (called "mod")...for some reason I searched the code of
the editor for text strings one time, and ran across one that made a
reference to "compiler dryrot"...
I don't collect these, but I like them...anyone have more?
Chris Arthur
c...@sw.stratus.com
Steve Lamont
>A DEC oldtimer told me that a DEC-10 once printed
>
> PUNT
>
>after a particularly misguided attempt to get it to boot, is this
>one apocryphal?
... I dunno about DEC-10s but I know that Cray X-MP IOSes used to issue PUNT
codes when they crashed (The IOS, for those who don't Cray, is basically a
Cray-1 without the floating point and vector hardware). I once asked our local
Cray-on what the PUNT stood for and he said that it wasn't really an acronym
or anything... just meant that the system had to fall back 10 yards and punt.
Are there any Cray-ons reading this that can shed any further light on this?
spl (the p stands for
PUNTing from deep
inside my own
territory)--
Steve Lamont, SciViGuy -- (619) 534-7978 (Yes, another new job!)
UCSD Microscope and Imaging Resource/9500 Gilman Drive/La Jolla, CA 92093-608
I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration which this .signature is too
small to contain...
sl...@cc.usu.edu
The version of DISSPLA that we used to have on the VAX here reportedly gave
the error message:
Out of memory. Choke, gasp, wheeze
once in a while.
Roger Ivie
sl...@cc.usu.edu
Michael Ardai
> I've heard -- or read, I think -- about some code that contained the comment
> "you aren't expected to understand this". Seems to me it was in TCP/IP.
Deep inside the Teradyne hardware modeler code is a routine that feeds a
whole bunch of hex numbers into a SYS$QIO call. The only comment is
'Weird magic happens here'.
/mike
--
\|/ Michael L. Ardai N1IST (617) 254-3420
--- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
/|\ ar...@teda.teradyne.com ar...@bu-pub.bu.edu Teradyne EDA East
....What Is?....
>
> PUNT
>
>after a particularly misguided attempt to get it to boot, is this
>one apocryphal?
>
>Does anyone collect these things?
I don't collect these things, but I have one to add, and I'm hoping
someone has an Earthly explanation for it. This happened on a
VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. We've all seen the "You have new mail."
message after the csh prompt, but ONCE it actually said instead
"Thou hast new mail." It's only happened once! And I swear it
happened! Has anyone else ever seen this? I don't even know what
triggered it!
--
Steve Boswell | This opinion is distributed in the hopes that it
wha...@ucsd.edu | will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY...
wha...@gnu.ai.mit.edu |
Magnus Olsson
>... I dunno about DEC-10s but I know that Cray X-MP IOSes used to issue PUNT
>codes when they crashed (The IOS, for those who don't Cray, is basically a
>Cray-1 without the floating point and vector hardware). I once asked our local
>Cray-on what the PUNT stood for and he said that it wasn't really an acronym
>or anything... just meant that the system had to fall back 10 yards and punt.
And in version 2.8.2 of the Jargon File, it says:
>punt: [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American
> football: "Drop back 15 yards and punt"] vt. 1. To give up,
> typically without any intention of retrying. [...]
Could some kind soul please explain to me what is meant by "punting" in
American football? We don't know very much about the mysteries of that
sport here on this side of the Atlantic...
Magnus Olsson | \e+ /_
Dept. of Theoretical Physics | \ Z / q
University of Lund, Sweden | >----<
Internet: mag...@thep.lu.se | / \===== g
Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 | /e- \q
fis...@qut.edu.au
The Algol compiler for the ICL 1900 used very occasionally collapse with
the message:
"The impossible has happened!"
Bill
Kevin Fitzpatrick
>Anyway it was a Tandy 6000 (their successor to the Tandy 16)
>running XENIX (a beta version I believe). The memory has gotten
>a little foggy over the years, but I recall the wording as:
> panic: Z80 panic: shut her down Scotty, she's sucking mud again.
Tandy was big on the hidden Trek messages. On of their TRS-80 6.x
upgrades had an ASCII quote buried way out on an unused track.
Something like...
Beam me up Scotty, there's no life out here.
--
==============================================================================
Kevin Fitzpatrick | kfitzpa @hubcap.clemson.edu
Computer Science Dept. |
Clemson University | (803)-656-2847
David Barr
Is?....) says:
>I don't collect these things, but I have one to add, and I'm hoping
>someone has an Earthly explanation for it. This happened on a
>VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. We've all seen the "You have new mail."
>message after the csh prompt, but ONCE it actually said instead
>"Thou hast new mail." It's only happened once! And I swear it
>happened! Has anyone else ever seen this? I don't even know what
>triggered it!
Yes, I have seen this as well. I think I had two copies of 'mail'
running at once on different screens. I had read all my mail in one,
and when i exited out of the second one, i got that message.
It threw me for a loop too. I'm pretty sure I was on a NeXT.
---
David Barr - Penn State CAC Student Consultant, Student Programmer
DSB...@psuvm.psu.edu | dsb...@vivaldi.psu.edu
dsb...@psusun03.psu.edu | ...psuvax1!hogbbs!barrstl!barr
Ethan R Dicks
In article <17...@life.ai.mit.edu>, wha...@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (....What
Is?....) says:
>
>I don't collect these things, but I have one to add, and I'm hoping
>someone has an Earthly explanation for it. This happened on a
>VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. We've all seen the "You have new mail."
>message after the csh prompt, but ONCE it actually said instead
>"Thou hast new mail." It's only happened once! And I swear it
I just typed
strings /usr/ucb/mail | grep Thou
on SunOS 4.1 and did, in fact, see the string "Thou hast new mail."
It's real! The question of the day is, how to trigger it. Perhaps
some source code guru could enlighten the rest of us.
-ethan
--
Ethan R. Dicks | ###### This signifies that the poster is a member in
Software Results Corp| ## good sitting of Inertia House: Bodies at rest.
940 Freeway Drive N. | ##
Columbus OH 43229 | ###### "You get it, you're closer."
Dave Bowen
>codes when they crashed (The IOS, for those who don't Cray, is basically a
>Cray-1 without the floating point and vector hardware). I once asked our local
>Cray-on what the PUNT stood for and he said that it wasn't really an acronym
>or anything... just meant that the system had to fall back 10 yards and punt.
>Are there any Cray-ons reading this that can shed any further light on this?
One correction first, the IOS bears absolutely no resemblance to a Cray-1
without the floating point and vector hardware. It's a 16-bit processor
with an accumulator, an adder, an ander, 512 registers and a bunch of I/O
channels. A strange beastie, but nice one you get used to it.
The actual error message is something like "IOP-3 Halt 262 in BMXSIO",
the word "punt" does not occur in the message. However, the symbols defining
the error codes all begin with PT$ (punt type) and the macro that does
the dirty work is $PUNTIF. Even so, I'm more likely to talk about halts
than punts, but I still work with COS. Our UNICOS people seem more likely
to talk about the system punting.
BU...@livid.uib.no
Looks like mere mortals are trying to enter the Twilight Zone
FATAL: Major security hack. Notify Administrator.
Identity problems, eh ?
Bad Craziness
'tis is no game for mere mortals
Go away and get a life
Death before dishonour ?
Dave, don't do that...
Good afternoon, gentelman, I'm a HAL 9000 Computer
Only few mortals may try to enter the Twiligth Zone
Only real wizzards know the spells to open the gate of paradize
Trying to unlock the door twice eh ?
Use the force, Luke !
Change balls, please
My favorite is definitivly the "Bad Craziness" ... :-)
/Ruben
Alan Krantz
->>someone has an Earthly explanation for it. This happened on a
->>VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. We've all seen the "You have new mail."
->>message after the csh prompt, but ONCE it actually said instead
->>"Thou hast new mail." It's only happened once! And I swear it
->>happened! Has anyone else ever seen this? I don't even know what
->>triggered it!
->
I don't know what triggers it - but if you do a
"strings /usr/ucb/mail | grep Thou" you will find
the text message!!
atk
John Dumptruck Sheley
>In article <17...@life.ai.mit.edu>, wha...@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (....What
>Is?....) says:
>>
>>I don't collect these things, but I have one to add, and I'm hoping
>>someone has an Earthly explanation for it. This happened on a
>>VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. We've all seen the "You have new mail."
>>message after the csh prompt, but ONCE it actually said instead
>>"Thou hast new mail." It's only happened once! And I swear it
>
>I just typed
>
>strings /usr/ucb/mail | grep Thou
>
>on SunOS 4.1 and did, in fact, see the string "Thou hast new mail."
>
>It's real! The question of the day is, how to trigger it. Perhaps
>some source code guru could enlighten the rest of us.
>
>-ethan
>--
It's in the quit() code. As far as I can tell (not being a mail code guru),
the only way to get this message is for the current mbox to be unreadable
(NULL return from fopen(mbox, "r")), or for the per-process mail temp file
(/tmp/RqXXXXXX) to be unwriteable or unreadable.
I suppose one way to get it would be to get into mail, go to some mailbox,
(from another shell) remove all permissions for yourself to that mailbox
file, and quit. Another way would be to set permissions to /tmp such that
you cannot write to or read from it. Probably not a good idea.
John Sheley "There you have it"
Convex Computer Corp - Rich Adkisson
she...@convex.com
Jamie Mason
>
>on SunOS 4.1 and did, in fact, see the string "Thou hast new mail."
It is from BSD mail. It is in the quit.c, in the quit function.
FLAME: ON
The mail code is some of the *worst* code I have seen in a long
while. It is badly structured, and it uses meaningless variables. It
is full of *GOTOs*! There are precious few comments. Take a look at the
code yourself in quit.c, and tell me how it makes your stomach feel.
I would have expected MUCH better from the boys at Berkeley! :-)
FLAME: OFF
As far as I can tell from the code, it gives this message when
it pukes due to one of the mail files being messed up. Either it can't
read something it should be able to read, it can't write something it
should be able to write, something else (another copy of mail) has a lock
on the file it wants, or the size of the mail file is changing *WHILE* it
is working. I think printf("Thou hast new mail.\n"); is a little
cryptic.
FLAME: 0.5
Geez, I wish people would write readable code. :-)
FLAME: OFF
Jamie ... Lurker in the Process Table
Written On Wednesday, July 17, 1991 at 11:25:39pm EDT
Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.
> I don't collect these things, but I have one to add, and I'm hoping
> someone has an Earthly explanation for it. This happened on a
> VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. We've all seen the "You have new mail."
> message after the csh prompt, but ONCE it actually said instead
> "Thou hast new mail." It's only happened once! And I swear it
> happened! Has anyone else ever seen this? I don't even know what
> triggered it!
Well, I don't have that one, but our fortune cookie file has "You might have
mail." in it. This actually faked out one of our system programmers (which was
odd, since it happened on a VAX, which says "You have N new mail messages").
Is it possible you were the victim of a fortune cookie?
Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
te...@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, US
te...@spcvxa.spc.edu (201) 915-9381
Alan Krantz
>
> It's in the quit() code. As far as I can tell (not being a mail code guru),
>the only way to get this message is for the current mbox to be unreadable
>(NULL return from fopen(mbox, "r")), or for the per-process mail temp file
>(/tmp/RqXXXXXX) to be unwriteable or unreadable.
>
The following triggers it: mail/^Z/chmod 000 /usr/spool/mail/username/q
don't forget to reset your mailbox to 600....
atk
....What Is?....
>The following triggers it: mail/^Z/chmod 000 /usr/spool/mail/username/q
>don't forget to reset your mailbox to 600....
Oh well, all the mystery is gone now. :)
Nathan Torkington
Oh well, all the mystery is gone now. :)
Aaah, but then I want to know about *these* strings, found
(here) in /usr/local/bin/mail:
Too much "sourcing" going on.
Okie dokie
Mail's idea of conditions is screwed up
~h: no can do!?
Too many regrets
detract asked to insert commas
metoo
Somethings amiss -- no @ or % in arpafix
Made up bad net name
ubluit
Who are you!?
; why =
Nat.
(gn...@kauri.vuw.ac.nz // Nathan Torkington \\ CSC MS-DOS + etext archive admin)
(C/- Computing Services Centre, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand )
(This is not an official communication of any part of Victoria University )
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell
Adrian J Ho
>In article <17...@life.ai.mit.edu> wha...@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (....What Is?....) writes:
> Oh well, all the mystery is gone now. :)
>Aaah, but then I want to know about *these* strings, found
>(here) in /usr/local/bin/mail:
Use the source, Luke/Nathan/cookie-monsters:
wuarchive.wustl.edu:/unix/4.3bsd-reno/usr.bin/mail [128.252.135.4]
pa...@lsl.co.uk
but to mention an old one ...
First some background folklore:
In about 1974 at Cambridge University (the real one, in England :^) ),
there was written a Cartographic Editor. This is like a CAD system, but
designed to handle maps. The program was written for a Phd thesis, and the
author was Hugh Stewart (hello Hugh, are you on the net ?) It ran on a PDP/11
under DOS (remember DOS, before RSX). Single user, no memory mapping support.
It drove a Laser-Scan HRD-1 display (high resolution = 140,000 by 100,000
addressable points, you weenies with 1000 line screens have some way to go).
The program was called GROTTY (and was), but achieved the near impossible in
handling maps on a machine with minute memory. Incidentally it had a subroutine
called MAGIC which did wondrous things with memory management behind DOS's
back. GROTTY inspired a line of programs from Laser-Scan, on PDPs and then
VAXen, the latest of which (LITES2) is still in very active use.
Now on to the error messages. This program was a real time interactive graphics
system, and had a whole series of messages telling the user that he had done
something wrong, like extending one line to meet another and missing.
The catch was that he was *really* short of memory, so all the messages were
rather terse, and of the form "Can't!", "Doesn't!", "Isn't!", "Shouldn't!",
"Couldn't!", "Mustn't!", and my favourite - "Won't!".
As a further piece of inspired memory saving, these were in fact stored
without their closing "n't!" which was added as a suffix!
--
Paul Hardy, Chief Programmer,
Laser-Scan Ltd, Science Park, Milton Rd, Cambridge CB4 4FY, UK
Tel (+44) 223 420414; Fax (+44) 223 420044; Telex 817346 LSLCAM G
Email: pa...@lsl.co.uk via JANET, or VAX PSImail DTE 234222300203::PAUL.
Mike Wojcik
> The mail code is some of the *worst* code I have seen in a long
>while. It is badly structured, and it uses meaningless variables.
Having fixed a few bugs (like "unset metoo" not working for host-qualified
names) in BSD Mail myself, I have to agree with Jamie. Just compiling the
source is unpleasant. There are lovely little bits like
unsigned h;
if (h < 0) . . .
(from vars.c, line 172, Mail ver. 5.3)
All in all, I made 34 changes to the code in the process of fixing one bug.
--
Michael "J" Wojcik
--------------
Represent IBM? They can't even get my middle initial right.
". . . I said, 'I need to put my soul into my work and it is well known that
computers haven't got a soul.' My father said, 'The Americans are working
on it.'" Sue Townsend, _The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4_
Garrett Wollman
Even better ones (maybe Encore /usr/ucb/mail-specific?):
Sorry, dumping now. Alert K. Shoens.
Strange arg to optiboth
Actually, when looking for easter eggs, it's not a bad idea
(especially if your code was compiled by a lousy compiler) to do a:
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
strings `type -path $*` | sort -u | more
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman - wol...@emily.uvm.edu - kira!wollman
Disclaimer: I'm not even sure this represents *my* opinion, never
mind UVM's, EMBA's, EMBA-CF's, or indeed anyone else's.
Alan M. Carroll
Some of them are:
"Holy Panes Batman, the window's missing!" - when a X window structure
isn't there.
"Holy PH, Batman, the buffer's missing!" - a window without a buffer.
This one has actually been seen outside the lab.
"Holy Vectors Batman, I can't get more lines!" - malloc failed.
The error message I want to put in, but never have had the chance, is
"System Error - Sureness out of Bounds". You PLATO heads know what I
mean.
--
Alan M. Carroll <-- Another casualty of applied metaphysics
Epoch Development Team
Urbana Il. "I hate shopping with the reality-impaired" - Susan
Nigel Stanger
following error messages in it:
Mysterious Error -nnn
Internal Error: Illegal hedge TV number. (huh?? what?!)
Internal Error: BlinkThere or HiliteThere messed up.
Bad External File System: Boy, is your system messed up. :)
--
See ya
Nigel.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nigel Stanger, Internet: sta...@otago.ac.nz
c/o University of Otago,
P.O. Box 56, Phone: +64 3 479-8179
Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND. Fax: +64 3 479-8311
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"If I had a quote, I'd be wearing it." -- Bob Dylan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joshua 10% Brandon
>
> Oh well, all the mystery is gone now. :)
>
>Aaah, but then I want to know about *these* strings, found
>(here) in /usr/local/bin/mail:
>
>Too much "sourcing" going on.
>Okie dokie
>Mail's idea of conditions is screwed up
>~h: no can do!?
>Too many regrets
>detract asked to insert commas
>metoo
>Somethings amiss -- no @ or % in arpafix
>Made up bad net name
>ubluit
>Who are you!?
>; why =
>
>Nat.
>(gn...@kauri.vuw.ac.nz // Nathan Torkington \\ CSC MS-DOS + etext archive admin)
i think i've gotten "Who are you!?", if i remember, it had something to do
with the yellow pages server machine going down while i was logged in somewhere
else...
--- joshua brandon
Kevin Draz
"Too many errors on line xx (make fewer!)."
--
----
kev...@pogo.wv.tek.com | For most software publishers, quality is job 1.01.
Tektronix Color Printers| -- MacWeek Magazine
Otto J. Makela
I just typed
strings /usr/ucb/mail | grep Thou
on SunOS 4.1 and did, in fact, see the string "Thou hast new mail."
It's real! The question of the day is, how to trigger it. Perhaps
some source code guru could enlighten the rest of us.
Sniff. They've "fixed" that in SunOS 4.1.1 !
% strings /usr/ucb/mail
(((((
DDDDDDDDDD
AAAAAA
BBBBBB
%
Or are executables somehow compressed, shared lib'd nowadays ?
--
/* * * Otto J. Makela <ot...@jyu.fi> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */
/* Phone: +358 41 613 847, BBS: +358 41 211 562 (USR HST/V.32, 24h/d) */
/* Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE */
/* * * Computers Rule 01001111 01001011 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */
Leif Andrew Rump
>I don't collect these things, but I have one to add, and I'm hoping
>someone has an Earthly explanation for it. This happened on a
>VAX 11/750 running 4.3 BSD. We've all seen the "You have new mail."
>message after the csh prompt, but ONCE it actually said instead
>"Thou hast new mail." It's only happened once! And I swear it
>happened! Has anyone else ever seen this? I don't even know what
>triggered it!
I had access to a PDP-11 when I studied computer science. You had to
create (make) a file before you could edit it. I wanted to create a
file with the danish name love so I entered the command: "make love"
and the machine responded "Not war?" before it gave me the prompt!
Andrew
The only thing I got when I returned from SAS was this lousy signature...
Leif Andrew Rump, AmbraSoft A/S, Stroedamvej 50, DK-2100 Copenhagen OE, Denmark
UUCP: and...@ambra.dk, phone: +45 39 27 11 77
DJ Delorie
> Sniff. They've "fixed" that in SunOS 4.1.1 !
>
> % strings /usr/ucb/mail
> (((((
> DDDDDDDDDD
> AAAAAA
> BBBBBB
> %
>
> Or are executables somehow compressed, shared lib'd nowadays ?
Fluke on strings' part.
22 $ strings /usr/ucb/mail
(((((
DDDDDDDDDD
AAAAAA
BBBBBB
23 $ fgrep Thou /usr/ucb/mail
Thou hast new mail.
[try cat -vet /usr/ucb/mail someday]
Rob Peglar
(deletions)
>
>Two important points to emphasize about this metaphor:
>
> 1. Punting is an unequivocal surrender. (A team which punts automatically
> loses possession of the ball.)
Not so. There is nothing automatic about it. The other team could receive
(make a legal catch) the ball, and then lose possession (i.e. fumble).
Punting is just an exercise in probability; the kicking team (usually) only
has one more chance (down) to advance the ball the proper amount. Realizing
that they probably won't succeed, they let the other team legally take
possession of the ball by kicking it from behind the line of scrimmage. All
the other team has to do it let the ball roll until it stops, or indicate
they would like to catch the ball and not take the chance on advancing it
(a 'fair catch'). Again, an exercise in probability. The kicking team has
decided it has a better outcome by kicking. The receiving team has to make
a decision, also, about the kicked ball.
Probably enough to make the original poster stay away from American
football.
Rob
>
> 2. Punting is completely voluntary. (Although it is usually advisable to
> punt on the fourth play, it is certainly not done every time.)
>
>--
>Jim Olsen ol...@mit.edu
--
Rob Peglar Network Systems Corporation
Internetwork Group 7600 Boone Avenue North
ro...@anubis.network.com Minneapolis MN 55428 (612)424-4888 x1028
Stephen R. van den Berg
> strings /usr/ucb/mail | grep Thou
> on SunOS 4.1 and did, in fact, see the string "Thou hast new mail."
>Sniff. They've "fixed" that in SunOS 4.1.1 !
>
>% strings /usr/ucb/mail
> (((((
>DDDDDDDDDD
>AAAAAA
>BBBBBB
>%
>Or are executables somehow compressed, shared lib'd nowadays ?
Try: strings - /usr/ucb/mail
--
Sincerely, be...@messua.informatik.rwth-aachen.de
Stephen R. van den Berg. be...@physik.tu-muenchen.de
"Good moaning!"
Juergen Nickelsen
- on SunOS 4.1 and did, in fact, see the string "Thou hast new mail."
-
- It's real! The question of the day is, how to trigger it. Perhaps
- some source code guru could enlighten the rest of us.
-
- Sniff. They've "fixed" that in SunOS 4.1.1 !
-
- % strings /usr/ucb/mail
- (((((
- DDDDDDDDDD
- AAAAAA
- BBBBBB
- %
-
- Or are executables somehow compressed, shared lib'd nowadays ?
No, they did not "fix" it. The strings promgram seems to be confused
about /usr/ucb/mail, but if you load it into (e.g.) Emacs, you can see
a *lot* of strings. And even "Thou hast new mail."
--
Juergen Nickelsen nic...@cs.tu-berlin.de
Jyrki Kuoppala
--
--% strings /usr/ucb/mail
-- (((((
--DDDDDDDDDD
--AAAAAA
--BBBBBB
--%
-
--Or are executables somehow compressed, shared lib'd nowadays ?
-
-Try: strings - /usr/ucb/mail
Hmm, have they compiled /usr/ucb/mail with gcc on 4.1.1 ? Gcc puts
strings in the text segment. Nah, couldn't be, they're so proud of
their compiler technology .. that would've been admitting their defeat ;-)
//Jyrki
Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.
> The catch was that he was *really* short of memory, so all the messages were
> rather terse, and of the form "Can't!", "Doesn't!", "Isn't!", "Shouldn't!",
> "Couldn't!", "Mustn't!", and my favourite - "Won't!".
A company I was consulting for was awarded a contract to port a piece of
VAX-based animation software to a Gould SEL under their native operating
system (in other words, not SEL Unix). Now, we had never seen this partic-
ular software package running, and were attempting to port several hundred
thousand lines of Fortran (at an average of 150 lines/source file) to the
SEL.
The actual programmer doing the port had all sorts of problems with the
SEL - the machine is actively hostile to programmers. Finally, after Gould
had rewritten the linker to make it work, and fixed some glaring Fortran
bugs, we were all ready to try it out. I wasn't there, being in night mode
at the time 8-). They are all standing around looking puzzled as I wander
in and ask how it's working. The programmer said "well, every time I start
it up it prints this _weird_ error message, thrashes the disk like mad, and
just hangs". I asked to see the log, and sure enough, there is the error
message:
Arfur mo
So, I think about this for a few seconds, and say "it's telling us to wait
- just let it go". Everybody wanted to know how I figured that out - I guess
their English English was rusty. Anyway, that was the "wait a sec..." message
the package printed on startup - the SEL was so slow at this (compared to the
VAX 750 the package was written for) that the startup would run for several
hours. Lots of work on tuning brough it down to under 30 minutes, but by then
it was obvious the port was a loss...
Don Stokes
> The catch was that he was *really* short of memory, so all the messages were
> rather terse, and of the form "Can't!", "Doesn't!", "Isn't!", "Shouldn't!",
> "Couldn't!", "Mustn't!", and my favourite - "Won't!".
Ah, time for a reminder of TRS-80 Level 1 BASIC. Three error messages:
What? (Syntactical muck-up)
How? (Run time error, like divide by zero)
Sorry (Out of memory)
Then there's "?Program lost-Sorry" in RSTS/E BASIC-PLUS; it's still
mentioned in the help for VAX BASIC, but alas the message for ERT$(103)
has been changed to "?Internal error in VAX BASIC Run-Time Library.
Please submit an SPR". The change was relatively recent,
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM / / d...@zl2tnm.gp.co.nz (home)
Systems Programmer /GP/ GP PRINT LIMITED Wellington, d...@gp.co.nz (work)
__________________/ / ---------------- New_Zealand__________________________
Christopher Samuel
mag...@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) doodled:
> And in version 2.8.2 of the Jargon File, it says:
>
> >punt: [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American
> > football: "Drop back 15 yards and punt"] vt. 1. To give up,
> > typically without any intention of retrying. [...]
>
> Could some kind soul please explain to me what is meant by "punting" in
> American football? We don't know very much about the mysteries of that
> sport here on this side of the Atlantic...
>
Punting is to kick the ball, sort of like a drop kick in rugby but the
ball is kicked before it hits the floor.
- Chris
------------------+------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher Samuel| JANET: cc...@uk.ac.aber | INTERNET: cc...@aber.ac.uk
c/o Physics Dept.,| *!mcsun!ukc!aber!ccs7
UCW Aberystwyth, | ccs7%uk.ac.aber@ukacrl | ccs7%uk.ac.aber@nsfnet-relay
Aberystwyth, +------------------------------------------------------------
Dyfed, WALES | Disclaimer: I mean nothing I say, and say nothing I mean.
------------------+------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher Samuel
gn...@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Nathan Torkington) doodled:
> Aaah, but then I want to know about *these* strings, found
> (here) in /usr/local/bin/mail:
>
... [stuff delete] ...
> Who are you!?
I think this one occurs when it can't find you in either utmp or the
passwd file, not sure which one.
Christopher Samuel
ke...@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) doodled:
> I've heard -- or read, I think -- about some code that contained the comment
> "you aren't expected to understand this". Seems to me it was in TCP/IP.
> /kenw
I always thought that it was in or just before the sheduler algorithm.
Danny Griffin
>In article <GNAT.91Ju...@kauri.kauri.vuw.ac.nz>
> gn...@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Nathan Torkington) doodled:
>> Who are you!?
>I think this one occurs when it can't find you in either utmp or the
>passwd file, not sure which one.
You can get these types of messages when your shell is not named (is
running on a PTY), so you cannot talk, and you also do not show up in
finger or who. You can, of course, do an rlogin to get to a named shell.
--
Dan Griffin
gri...@frith.egr.msu.edu
Robert Krawitz
]--Sniff. They've "fixed" that in SunOS 4.1.1 !
]--
]--% strings /usr/ucb/mail
]-- (((((
]--DDDDDDDDDD
]--AAAAAA
]--BBBBBB
]--%
This brings up a question that I haven't figured out. What are the
(((((, DDDDDDDDDD, AAAAAA, and BBBBBB strings in all BSD binaries for?
--
ames >>>>>>>>> | Robert Krawitz <r...@think.com> 245 First St.
bloom-beacon > |think!rlk (postmaster) Cambridge, MA 02142
harvard >>>>>> . Thinking Machines Corp. (617)234-2116
Raymond Chen
>What are the (((((, DDDDDDDDDD, AAAAAA, and BBBBBB strings in all BSD
>binaries for?
It's the _ctype_[] array, used by the isdigit(), isupper(), etc. family of
functions.
'(' is 0050 == _S | _C, which means `whitespace and control character'.
'D' is 0104 == _X | _N, which means `numeric and valid hex digit'.
'A' is 0101 == _X | _U, which means `uppercase and valid hex digit'.
'B' is 0120 == _X | _L, which means `lowercase and valid hex digit'.
Easy exercise:
Which ASCII characters do '(', 'D', 'A', and 'B' correspond to, and why
are there five, ten, six, and six of them, respectively?
The Grey Wolf
its panics with the message
"Well, you ran into something and the game is over."
--
# "Religion is a weapon invented by the sheep to keep the wolves in line."
# grey...@unisoft.com
John Hawkinson
>pa...@lsl.co.uk writes:
>> The catch was that he was *really* short of memory, so all the messages were
>> rather terse, and of the form "Can't!", "Doesn't!", "Isn't!", "Shouldn't!",
>> "Couldn't!", "Mustn't!", and my favourite - "Won't!".
>Ah, time for a reminder of TRS-80 Level 1 BASIC. Three error messages:
> What? (Syntactical muck-up)
> How? (Run time error, like divide by zero)
> Sorry (Out of memory)
>Then there's "?Program lost-Sorry" in RSTS/E BASIC-PLUS; it's still
My favorite RSTS/E error message is "Unused error message #xxx". Somehow
I managed to get these when hitting ^C as a certain program loads.
>Don Stokes, ZL2TNM / / d...@zl2tnm.gp.co.nz (home)
>Systems Programmer /GP/ GP PRINT LIMITED Wellington, d...@gp.co.nz (work)
>__________________/ / ---------------- New_Zealand_____________________
--
--
John Hawkinson
jh...@panix.com
Otto J. Makela
In article <OTTO.91Ju...@kalikka.jyu.fi>, ot...@kalikka.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) writes:
Fluke on strings' part.
22 $ strings /usr/ucb/mail
(((((
DDDDDDDDDD
AAAAAA
BBBBBB
23 $ fgrep Thou /usr/ucb/mail
Thou hast new mail.
[try cat -vet /usr/ucb/mail someday]
Yes, I just found out that SunOS 4.1.1 strings needs a '-' argument to make
it look outside the initialized data region of executable binary files.
Talk about feeping creaturism !
Ken Wallewein
Take this for what it's worth, but at a shop where I once worked, an
overnight processing run would sometime fail with the error message:
"FALL DOWN GO BOOM"
/kenw
--
/kenw
Ken Wallewein A L B E R T A
ke...@noah.arc.ab.ca R E S E A R C H
(403)297-2660 C O U N C I L
David Fetrow
>
> Take this for what it's worth, but at a shop where I once worked, an
>overnight processing run would sometime fail with the error message:
>
> "FALL DOWN GO BOOM"
>
This was probably from an obscure comedy sketch (Steve Allen? 1968?) regarding
a robot marrying into the family (It was the punchline). It is incredibly
annoying I can remember this but not useful stuff regarding Hewitt's Theorem...
--
-dave fetrow- fet...@biostat.washington.edu (internet)
Unix Anti-Exclusion Principle:
Any single major standard will split into at least two semi-compatable
standards within the cycle-time of the fastest existing computer.
Eric S. Raymond
> In article <KENW.91Ju...@skyler.arc.ab.ca>
> ke...@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) doodled:
>
> > I've heard -- or read, I think -- about some code that contained the comment
> > "you aren't expected to understand this". Seems to me it was in TCP/IP.
> > /kenw
>
> I always thought that it was in or just before the sheduler algorithm.
From the Jargon File:
You are not expected to understand this: cav. [UNIX] The canonical
comment describing something {magic} or too complicated to
bother explaining properly. From an infamous comment in the
context-switching code of the V6 UNIX kernel.
--
Eric S. Raymond = er...@snark.thyrsus.com (mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
Andy Newman
>
>Hmm, have they compiled /usr/ucb/mail with gcc on 4.1.1 ? Gcc puts
>strings in the text segment. Nah, couldn't be, they're so proud of
>their compiler technology .. that would've been admitting their defeat ;-)
>
>//Jyrki
The newer Sun compilers can do the same thing with the -strconst option.
--
Andy Newman (an...@research.canon.oz.au)
Malcolm Ray
>In article <KENW.91Ju...@skyler.arc.ab.ca>
> ke...@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) doodled:
>
>> I've heard -- or read, I think -- about some code that contained the comment
>> "you aren't expected to understand this". Seems to me it was in TCP/IP.
>> /kenw
>
>I always thought that it was in or just before the sheduler algorithm.
>
>- Chris
>
It was in the swtch() function, which was indeed part of the scheduler.
The full text of the comment (I trust that no-one is going to complain about
copyright - that's already been broken by this thread) was:
"If the new process paused because it was swapped out, set the stack
level to the last call to savu(u_ssav). This means that the return
which is executed immediately after the call to aretu actually
returns from the last routine which did the savu.
You are not expected to understand this."
Well, you can see what they mean! :-) I remember being well chuffed that
I *did* understand it, but don't expect me to now...
Incidentally, is this the only C comment ever to be published as a t-shirt?
I seem to remember that the VMS source had some good comments too,
including at least one poem. Does anyone have these?
--
Malcolm Ray
Poly of Central London IRS, 115 New Cavendish Street, London W1M 8JS
JANET: malc...@uk.ac.pcl.sun
Most of the rest: malc...@sun.pcl.ac.uk
pooh 'Ernst' Mulder
When you type your mail and type ~C (typo for ~c) my unix mail tells me:
Okie dokie, core dumped.
pooh
--
/*********************************************************************
* Everything stated above is absolutely true.
* Only the facts have been changed to protect the people involved.
***/
Jim Davis
But it's older than that. There's an early "Tweetie" cartoon -- WW2
or so -- where Tweetie does in a rather large number of cats. This
isn't the later, lovable Tweetie; he scurries about with a deadpan
expression, dispatching cats right and left. At least once in the
cartoon, Mel Blanc does the "...fall down, go" in his bird voice, and
then bellow "BOOM!". Did the writers dream the phrase up, or was it
in the air already?
Alan J Rosenthal
>>The catch was that he was *really* short of memory, so all the messages were
>>rather terse, and of the form "Can't!", "Doesn't!", "Isn't!", "Shouldn't!",
>>"Couldn't!", "Mustn't!", and my favourite - "Won't!".
>
>Ah, time for a reminder of TRS-80 Level 1 BASIC. Three error messages:
>
> What? (Syntactical muck-up)
> How? (Run time error, like divide by zero)
> Sorry (Out of memory)
The opposite extreme occurred in pdp-10 basic, in which the catch-all syntax
error was (approximately):
?STATEMENT NEITHER BEGINS WITH A RECOGNIZED KEYWORD NOR MATCHES THE CORRECT FO
RM FOR AN IMPLIED LET--CHECK FOR MISSPELLING IN LINE xxx
[wraparound simulated]
Al Wesolowsky
+From article <1991Jul19....@spcvxb.spc.edu>,
+ te...@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.):
+>
+> just hangs". I asked to see the log, and sure enough, there is the error
+> message:
+>
+> Arfur mo
+>
+> So, I think about this for a few seconds, and say "it's telling us to wait
+> - just let it go". Everybody wanted to know how I figured that out - I guess
+> their English English was rusty. Anyway, that was the "wait a sec..." message
+ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+I guess mine is too. Wanna clue me in?
British/Cockney expression:
"Arfur mo" <= "'arf a mo" <= "half a mo" <= "half a moment"
Imagine the reverse with: "Inner jif"
--
| Al B. Wesolowsky a...@bucrsb.bu.edu or arc...@buacca.bitnet |
| Managing Editor, Journal of Field Archaeology, Boston University |
| 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215 (617) 353-2357 |
Shane Bouslough
> message:
>
> Arfur mo
>
> So, I think about this for a few seconds, and say "it's telling us to wait
> - just let it go". Everybody wanted to know how I figured that out - I guess
> their English English was rusty. Anyway, that was the "wait a sec..." message
I guess mine is too. Wanna clue me in?
> Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
> te...@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, US
> te...@spcvxa.spc.edu (201) 915-9381
--
Periphonics Corp. | Shane Bouslough is: sh...@inferno.peri.com Ride Bike!
4000 Veterans Hwy. | or: ...uunet!mcdhup!inferno!shane
Bohemia, NY 11716 | "Anyone without 2,000,000 sunblock is gonna
516-467-0500 | have a really bad day!" -Sarah Connor
Jyrki Kuoppala
>
> Okie dokie, core dumped.
bash$ cat > x.c
main() { execl ("/bin/mail", 0); }
^D
bash$ gcc x.c
bash$ ./a.out
puke
bash$
//Jyrki
Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.
>> Arfur mo
> I guess mine is too. Wanna clue me in?
Try expanding it out:
"Half a moment"
and pronouncing it with a Cockney accent...
Steve Marsh
>From article <1991Jul19....@spcvxb.spc.edu>,
> te...@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.):
>>
>> just hangs". I asked to see the log, and sure enough, there is the error
>> message:
>>
>> Arfur mo
>>
>> So, I think about this for a few seconds, and say "it's telling us to wait
>> - just let it go". Everybody wanted to know how I figured that out - I guess
>> their English English was rusty. Anyway, that was the "wait a sec..." message
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>I guess mine is too. Wanna clue me in?
That's easy - arfur mo == half a mo == wait a wee while :-)
>> Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
>> te...@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, US
>> te...@spcvxa.spc.edu (201) 915-9381
>--
>Periphonics Corp. | Shane Bouslough is: sh...@inferno.peri.com Ride Bike!
>4000 Veterans Hwy. | or: ...uunet!mcdhup!inferno!shane
>Bohemia, NY 11716 | "Anyone without 2,000,000 sunblock is gonna
>516-467-0500 | have a really bad day!" -Sarah Connor
--
Steve Marsh. Temporarily in residence at st...@canon.co.uk.
(But really I'm s...@cs.stir.ac.uk, honest!)
:-x A Virtual Kiss, from the makers of SloppyLips (tm).
Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.
>
> The opposite extreme occurred in pdp-10 basic, in which the catch-all syntax
Data General Extended BASIC had a catch-all error:
Error 4 - System
which was later extended to:
Error 4 - Hardware or software failure
This was generally emitted when the interpreter had painted itself into a
corner. This interpreter was the product of some _truly_ warped minds. Since
the system it ran on was a real-time OS, the interpreter was multithreaded
with some per-user tasks and some common shared tasks. An amazing piece of
code, but very hard to debug. We were running the largest installation of
this interpreter known to DG in the late 70's - we had patched it to double
the number of terminals from 32 to 64.
We found some weird bugs in the code (so did lots of other customers - the
"other" DG BASIC - Business BASIC - was actually written by another customer
and purchased by DG), and DG was really getting tired of hearing about our
bug reports, especially since we found some that would have required a re-
design of the interpreter to fix. [A race condition in the ENTER statement
is one that comes to mind]. Finally, instead of a response, they sent us a
magtape with the sources and said _you_ fix it! We actually fixed most of our
bugs and sent the fixes back. What did I get for my troubles? A whole stack
of bug reports from _other_ customers with a note that said "want to tackle
these?"!
Needless to say, we're not a DG customer any more.
Robin Fairbairns
> te...@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.):
>>
>> just hangs". I asked to see the log, and sure enough, there is the error
>> message:
>>
>> Arfur mo
>>
>> So, I think about this for a few seconds, and say "it's telling us to wait
>> - just let it go". Everybody wanted to know how I figured that out - I guess
>> their English English was rusty. Anyway, that was the "wait a sec..." message
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> I guess mine is too. Wanna clue me in?
>
>> Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
>> te...@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, US
>> te...@spcvxa.spc.edu (201) 915-9381
There's already been a detailed explanation of Arfur mo->Half a moment.
In addition, there was once ('30s? 2nd WW? - predates me, anyway) a
delightful complete alphabet, of which I only remember bits:
B fer pork Beef or (not entirely sure about this one)
F fer vescence
L fer leather Hell for leather, i.e., recklessly fast
M fer sis
R fer mo
My mother occasionally recites bits of it...
--
Robin Fairbairns, Senior Consultant, postmaster and general dogsbody
Laser-Scan Ltd., Science Park, Milton Rd., Cambridge CB4 4FY, UK
Email: ro...@lsl.co.uk --or-- r...@cl.cam.ac.uk
Anthony J. Stuckey
>But it's older than that. There's an early "Tweetie" cartoon -- WW2
>or so -- where Tweetie does in a rather large number of cats. This
>isn't the later, lovable Tweetie; he scurries about with a deadpan
>expression, dispatching cats right and left. At least once in the
>cartoon, Mel Blanc does the "...fall down, go" in his bird voice, and
>then bellow "BOOM!". Did the writers dream the phrase up, or was it
>in the air already?
I personally remember seeing one Tweety/Sylvester cartoon in which
Sylvester falls from some great height (like a telphone pole or something)
and Tweety immediately hovers near his head and says:
"Awwww... poor puddy tat fall down and go boom."
This was late 70's or early 80's.
--
Anthony J. Stuckey
stu...@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu
"And if you frisbee-throw a universe where does it go?"
Turquoise, Steve Blunt.
mailhost
console whenever someone on a terminal would hold down the left
(or right - I forget which) arrow key:
spurious multibus interrupt
It took us a long time to figure out what was causing the messages
since nothing else bad happened and the people on the terminals
would be looking at their own screens while typing. Anyone on the
console, on the other hand, would look at the process table for
suspicious processes, etc.
NCR took the bug report with a great deal of disbelief, but their next
release of UNIX didn't have the problem.
Mark B. Kaminsky mkam...@cvbnet.prime.com
Computervision/Prime Computer, Bedford, Massachusetts, USA
My goal is a simple one: To live forever - or die trying.
Nigel Stanger
> te...@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.):
>>
>> just hangs". I asked to see the log, and sure enough, there is the error
>> message:
>>
>> Arfur mo
>>
>> So, I think about this for a few seconds, and say "it's telling us to wait
>> - just let it go". Everybody wanted to know how I figured that out - I guess
>> their English English was rusty. Anyway, that was the "wait a sec..." message
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> I guess mine is too. Wanna clue me in?
It's a mutation of the phrase "half a mo'", which is short for
"half a moment", i.e. "hang on, I'll just be a moment".
--
See ya
Nigel.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nigel Stanger, Internet: sta...@otago.ac.nz
c/o University of Otago,
P.O. Box 56, Phone: +64 3 479-8179
Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND. Fax: +64 3 479-8311
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"If I had a quote, I'd be wearing it." -- Bob Dylan
----------------------------------------------------------------------
John Whitmore
>In addition, there was once ('30s? 2nd WW? - predates me, anyway) a
>delightful complete alphabet, of which I only remember bits:
>B fer pork Beef or (not entirely sure about this one)
>F fer vescence
>L fer leather Hell for leather, i.e., recklessly fast
>M fer sis
>R fer mo
E fer net
N fer home
Q fer I/O
R fer LSB
*sorry* just had to post that.
John Whitmore
Luc Rooijakkers
>In article <1991Jul20.1...@aber.ac.uk> cc...@aber.ac.uk (Christopher Samuel) writes:
>>In article <KENW.91Ju...@skyler.arc.ab.ca>
>> ke...@skyler.arc.ab.ca (Ken Wallewein) doodled:
>>
>>> I've heard -- or read, I think -- about some code that contained the comment
>>> "you aren't expected to understand this". Seems to me it was in TCP/IP.
>>> /kenw
>>
>>I always thought that it was in or just before the sheduler algorithm.
>It was in the swtch() function, which was indeed part of the scheduler.
[Gives edited full text of the comment]
>Well, you can see what they mean! :-) I remember being well chuffed that
>I *did* understand it, but don't expect me to now...
It was not terribly complicated, though, but you had to read the machine
language also... An excerpt of my submission for the jargon file:
I looked it up in my photocopy of `UNIX(tm) Operating System Source Code,
Level Six', from J. Lions from the University of New South Wales.
The full text of the comment from V6 slp.c (context-switching code) was
If the new process paused because is was swapped out,
set the stack level to the last call to savu(u_ssav).
This means that the return which is executed immediately after
the call to aretu actually returns from the last routine which
did the savu.
You are not expected to understand this.
The difficulty with V6 context switching was that the assembly language
routines for restoring context changed the stack pointer but
nevertheless returned to their calling routine, leaving it with an invalid
stack frame (actually, the stack frame of the routine which did the
original context save). This was changed in V7 to routines more like
setjmp/longjmp. Even the authors of V6 had trouble with it, as
exemplified by
Finally, the most basic routines for multi-programming, those
that pass control from one process to another, turned out
(after causing months of nagging problems) to be incorrectly
specified and actually unimplementable correctly on the
Interdata, because they depended improperly on details of the
register-saving mechanism of the calling sequence generated
by the compiler. These primitives had to be redesigned; they
are of special interest not only because of the problems they
caused, but because they represent the only part of the
system that had to be significantly changed, as distinct from
expressed properly, to achieve portability.
(from S. C. Johnson and D. M. Ritchie, `Portability of C Programs and the
UNIX System', UNIX System Readings and Applications, Bell System Technical
Journal special issue on UNIX, Vol 57, No 6, July-August, also available
from Prentice-Hall). This article discusses the porting of Research Unix
from the PDP-11 to the Interdata 8/32 during 1977, somewhere between V6
and V7.
--
Luc Rooijakkers Internet: l...@cs.kun.nl
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science UUCP: uunet!cs.kun.nl!lwj
University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands tel. +3180652271
Alec David Muffett
>In article <OTTO.91Ju...@kalikka.jyu.fi> ot...@kalikka.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) writes:
>
>- on SunOS 4.1 and did, in fact, see the string "Thou hast new mail."
You think THATS funny (it is), but strings "/usr/lib/sendmail" for a few laughs:
From the silly:-
You wascal wabbit! Wandering wizards won't win!
savemail: HELP!!!!
to the plausible but still silly:-
Who are you ?
Can't parse myself!
to the plain ridiculous:-
MAIL DELETED BECAUSE OF LACK OF DISK SPACE
- not to mention all the SMTP "HELO" dialogue...
*8-) alec
The_Mad_Hatter
>There's already been a detailed explanation of Arfur mo->Half a moment.
>
>delightful complete alphabet, of which I only remember bits:
>
>B fer pork Beef or (not entirely sure about this one)
>F fer vescence
>L fer leather Hell for leather, i.e., recklessly fast
>M fer sis
>R fer mo
just on the offchance that anyone's interested, esp. all the yanks who couldn't
work the original one out, here's what i can remember of it
A for 'orses B for mutton C for miles D for cate
E for brick F for vescent G,H?? I for one
J,K?? L for leather M for sis Bleedin' N for
O for the wings of a dove P for relief Q for the bus
R for mo S?? T for two U for me
V,W?? X for breakfast Y,Z??
sorry about the missing ones. N takes some thought, i shall shed some light on
it below but the others you'll have to work out for yourselves! also, my
apologies if any of those quoted above are wrong - i'd be interested to have
corrections / missing letters.
Bleedin' N for = Bleeding enfer = Bleeding Hell
(enfer is french for hell; it managed to make its way to england, once upon
a time, which is more than their lamb ever did 8-] .)
tom
Coming to you from the keyboard of The Mad Hatter (Tom Yates)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Space Physics Group, Imperial College, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom |
| JANet email: madh...@uk.ac.ic.ph.spva | 'phone: +44 (0)71 589 5111 x 6757 |
| ICBMnet: 51 29' 48" N 0 10' 48" W +25m | DoD#0135 | MAG#65061 | 1987 GT750 |
------------- Rule 1: Keep on the black bit between the trees. ---------------
David Brooks
version of the enclosed...
MADH...@SPVA.PHYSICS.IMPERIAL.AC.UK (The_Mad_Hatter) writes:
|> ro...@lsl.co.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
|> >There's already been a detailed explanation of Arfur mo->Half a moment.
|> >
|> >In addition, there was once ('30s? 2nd WW? - predates me, anyway) a
|> >delightful complete alphabet, of which I only remember bits:
...
|> ...here's what i can remember of it
|> A for 'orses
|> B for mutton
Or B for Stroganoff
|> C for miles
|> D for cate
D for z'post (not so scatalogical...)
|> E for brick
|> F for vescent
|> G,H??
G for police
|> I for one
I for an eye
|> J,K??
J for oranges
|> L for leather
|> M for sis
(the best one!)
|> Bleedin' N for
Or N for sment
|> O for the wings of a dove
Or O for the rainbow
|> P for relief
|> Q for the bus
|> R for mo
|> S??
S for Rantzen? Naaaah...
|> T for two
|> U for me
or U for mism
|> V,W??
|> X for breakfast
|> Y,Z??
Y for runts
Z for winds, especially for yanks.
|> sorry about the missing ones. N takes some thought...
|>
|> Bleedin' N for = Bleeding enfer = Bleeding Hell
|> (enfer is french for hell; it managed to make its way to england, once upon
|> a time, which is more than their lamb ever did 8-] .)
--
David Brooks dbr...@osf.org
Systems Engineering, OSF uunet!osf.org!dbrooks
Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE! the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Malcolm Beattie
> In <8uXc6...@zl2tnm.gp.co.nz> d...@zl2tnm.gp.co.nz (Don Stokes) writes:
>
>>pa...@lsl.co.uk writes:
>
> My favorite RSTS/E error message is "Unused error message #xxx". Somehow
> I managed to get these when hitting ^C as a certain program loads.
>
each with an accompanying helpful (?) explanatory message.
There was a SYS call taking an error number as parameter which would
generate the required error number and message and some of the appropriate
effects in the standard RSTS format. From my memory of the summary card,
the top 20 or so error numbers weren't needed and their accompanying
messages was "Unused error message #"+appropriate number.
(It was rather fun frightening the naive by generating realistic-looking
errors of the "Fatal" variety. :-)
--Malcolm
****************************************************************************
Malcolm I.C. Beattie
Mathematical Institute | If I need a | E-mail: MBEA...@VAX.OXFORD.AC.UK
24-29 St. Giles' | disclaimer, | JANET: MBEA...@UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX
Oxford OX1 3LB (U.K.) | then this is it| Phone: + 44 865 273565
John Francis
C for looking
D for sa post
E for brick
F for vescent
G for goodness
H for wrinkles
I for lutin
J for orange
K for ancis (Kay Francis, entertainer)
L for leather
M for ever blowing bubbles
N fra dig
O for there
P for ???
Q for a song
R for mo
S for eezin
T fow two
U for gotten
V for la france
W for tunes
X for breakfast
Y for naggin
Z for winds
Its amazing what you can remember, isn't it? It must be 30 years (more
likely 35) since I last heard my grandfather run through this alphabet.
Joseph Malcolm
>to the plausible but still silly:-
>
What *does* this message mean?
--
jmal...@sura.net "Ia! Ia!"
John Hughes
...
Finally, the most basic routines for multi-programming, those
that pass control from one process to another, turned out
(after causing months of nagging problems) to be incorrectly
specified and actually unimplementable correctly on the
Interdata, ...
(from S. C. Johnson and D. M. Ritchie, `Portability of C Programs and the
UNIX System', UNIX System Readings and Applications, Bell System Technical
Journal special issue on UNIX, Vol 57, No 6, July-August, also available
from Prentice-Hall). This article discusses the porting of Research Unix
from the PDP-11 to the Interdata 8/32 during 1977, somewhere between V6
and V7.
The only place I ever heard the Interdata 8/32 mentioned before was on page
2 of K&R (the pre-ansi version).
Just who were they? What was the machine like? Are there legions of people
out there bemoaning ther passing like I bemoan the Harris 125 and the ICL
1903T ?
--
John Hughes,
11 rue Castex, F-75004 Paris, FRANCE.
bespoke fax publishing systems while-U-wait.
Jeremy J. Epstein
> The only place I ever heard the Interdata 8/32 mentioned before was on page
> 2 of K&R (the pre-ansi version).
>
> Just who were they? What was the machine like? Are there legions of people
> out there bemoaning ther passing like I bemoan the Harris 125 and the ICL
> 1903T ?
Interdata was a New Jersey based mini-computer company. They specialized
in building real-time systems. They (and their successor companies) were
the first in a number of areas:
* First 32 bit mini (the 7/32 came out in 1973, while the VAX
wasn't until about 1978)
* First commercial Ada compiler (don't remember the year)...it
was a dog, but it was the first
* First commercial UNIX system (about 1978)...there were UNIX
lookalikes, but their version 7 system (called Edition VII)
beat everyone else. AT&T was only selling source code,
not supported systems at this point.
* Second commercial UNIX System V Release 2 (1983)...there were
other SVR1 versions, but it was the first SVR2 other than
AT&T on the VAX (no, the 3B2 wasn't supported until later).
With all these advantages, they successfully pissed away their lead.
They failed to understand the importance of standards (e.g., UNIX,
off-the-shelf CPUs) or broadening their real-time niche.
From a corporate perspective, Interdata was purchased by Perkin-Elmer
in about 1980, and was run as Computer Systems Division. In about 1986
it was partially spun off as Concurrent Computer Corporation, which
subsequently merged with Masscomp in one of the strangest financial
arrangements of all times (as I understand it, Masscomp's money was
used to buy Concurrent from Perkin-Elmer, but Concurrent ended up
owning Masscomp, not vica-versa). Most (virtually all?) of what was
originally Interdata was subsequently abandoned, and Concurrent is now
mostly the Masscomp side of the house.
So to answer a short question with a long answer, that's who Interdata was!
--Jeremy
[I spent two years working for them in the Perkin-Elmer phase. I was
responsible for Edition VII maintenance, and parts of the System V product.
As an aside, when it came time to roll out the System V product, we were
looking for a catchy name. Marketing rejected engineering's suggestion:
Perkin-Elmer UNIX, or PENIX, in favor of XELOS (prounounced like "zealous"),
which didn't do much to ignite people's imagination.]
--
Jeremy Epstein
TRW Systems Division
703-876-8776
jje%vir...@uunet.uu.net
Database Work
when attempting to use the csh builtin 'suspend' from a login shell:
Can't suspend a login shell (yet).
What's that supposed to mean??? Not until later in the afternoon? Not
until they rewrite the shell? Not until you get rid of stopped jobs?
:-) I got quite a chuckle out of that one.
Tod McQuillin
dw3w+...@andrew.cmu.edu
Rob Spray
>...
>Interdata was a New Jersey based mini-computer company. They specialized
> * First commercial Ada compiler (don't remember the year)...it
> was a dog, but it was the first
The first commercial Ada compiler validated (and the second ever
validated) was the Rolm/Data General compiler. What definition of
'first' was Interdata's marketing department using?
--Rob Spray
--sp...@convex.com
Lynn Gold
based on (and very similar to) Interdata 32-bit assembler.
If everything else of theirs was as friendly and easy-to-use as that
assembly language was, I can see why they went kablooie.
--Lynn
--
ARPA: fi...@eris.Berkeley.Edu UUCP: ...!eris.Berkeley.Edu!figmo
QUOTE OF THE MONTH: (asked to RMS at a free software conference at NASA)
"Have you ever used any free software word processors?
David Cornutt
>The opposite extreme occurred in pdp-10 basic, in which the catch-all syntax
>error was (approximately):
>?STATEMENT NEITHER BEGINS WITH A RECOGNIZED KEYWORD NOR MATCHES THE CORRECT FO
>RM FOR AN IMPLIED LET--CHECK FOR MISSPELLING IN LINE xxx
Univac EXEC-8 had some error messages that were entire paragraphs. I'll
have to go home and get my manuals and dig up some of them.
--
David Cornutt, New Technology Inc., Huntsville, AL (205) 461-6457
(cor...@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov; some insane route applies)
"The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my employer,
not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary."
John Tombs
A fer orses
>B fer pork Beef or (not entirely sure about this one)
>F fer vescence
G fer police
I fer Novello
>L fer leather Hell for leather, i.e., recklessly fast
>M fer sis
>R fer mo
>Robin Fairbairns, Senior Consultant, postmaster and general dogsbody
17 to go: any takers?
--
John Tombs at Teltronics/TCT <j...@tct.com>, <uunet!pdn!tct!jtt>
Peter Chubb,x114,6982322,3982735
> ro...@lsl.co.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
>>There's already been a detailed explanation of Arfur mo->Half a moment.
>>
>
> work the original one out, here's what i can remember of it
> A for 'orses B for mutton C for miles D for cate
> E for brick F for vescent G,H?? I for one
> J,K?? L for leather M for sis Bleedin' N for
> O for the wings of a dove P for relief Q for the bus
> R for mo S?? T for two U for me
> V,W?? X for breakfast Y,Z??
>
J for oranges
G for crying out loud
Y for girlfriend?
Z fer wind (I think -- can't remember properly).
Can anyone remember the rest?
Regards,
- Peter Chubb
Softway Pty Ltd, P.O. Box 305, Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012, AUSTRALIA
Phone: +61 2 698 2322; Fax: +61 2 699 9174; Telex: AA27987
Internet: pet...@softway.oz.au UUCP: ...!uunet!softway.oz!peterc
Malcolm Beattie
> In addition, there was once ('30s? 2nd WW? - predates me, anyway) a
> delightful complete alphabet, of which I only remember bits:
>
> B fer pork Beef or (not entirely sure about this one)
> F fer vescence
> L fer leather Hell for leather, i.e., recklessly fast
> M fer sis
> R fer mo
>
> My mother occasionally recites bits of it...
Here are some of the other ones I remember:
A for 'orses
B for mutton
C for th' highlanders
D for dumb
E for brick
I for an eye
J for cake
O for a cup of tea
Q for a song
T for two
Z for breezes (British pronounciation or it doesn't work!)
To counter charges of wasting bandwith on such trivia, a question:
Does anyone following the "Thou hast mail" thread know if a similar
message can be provoked under VAX MAIL?
der Mouse
> [about strings not finding a certain message in /usr/ucb/mail]
> Yes, I just found out that SunOS 4.1.1 strings needs a '-' argument
> to make it look outside the initialized data region of executable
> binary files. Talk about feeping creaturism !
I don't think it's that much of a feeping creature; BSD strings has
done this for quite some time, certainly ever since 4.3....
der Mouse
old: mcgill-vision!mouse
new: mo...@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
Jeremy J. Epstein
> When I worked at Tymshare/Tymnet, I was told our assembly language was
> based on (and very similar to) Interdata 32-bit assembler.
Interdata assembler (and the entire machine architecture) was based
very closely on the IBM 360. If you knew 360 assembly, there was almost
no learning curve (except for the system calls, which were entirely
different).
The architecture was a mini-computer version of the 360: 16 general
purpose registers, 4/8 floating point (4 if used double precision,
8 if used single precision), 24 bit address space. It had real I/O
channels (up to about 8, I think), rather than buses, so I/O was *much*
faster than on other computers of the day, and overall throughput was
much better than machines with more MIPS but less I/O (e.g., the VAX).
The virtual memory subsystem was a segmented/paged architecture.
Unfortunately, the page sizes and segment layouts were different on
different models, which made building generic kernels difficult.
--Jeremy
-Pete French.
> Keywords:
>
> Sounds like DEC have continued the tradition. From time to time I can coax
> VMS into giving me %NONAME-W-NOMSG messages.....
>
> Informative or what?!
And what abot the one that we used to get from bishop (a VAX 11/750 running
a very hacked 32V (I think))... it would occasionally spit out an error
message in VMS format saying something like "No clock - please ensure that
the swith in the bottom lefthand corner of cabinet 2 is in the DOWN
position".
I can just imagine myself walking over to the machine room and asking to be
allowed in to open cabinet 2 and play with the switches...
-bat.
--
-Pete French. (the -bat. ) / "Two wrongs don't make a right,
Adaptive Systems Engineering / - but three lefts do !"
"Look here, a Brit who has obviously been driving in California!"
Charlie Gibbs
A friend of mine has an ancient 78 rpm record with a song
called "I faw down and go boom." ("Aww," say the backing singers.)
A very cute little number that must be 60 years old.
Charli...@mindlink.bc.ca
Help! I've fallen down and can't go boom!
David Cornutt
>Univac EXEC-8 had some error messages that were entire paragraphs. I'll
>have to go home and get my manuals and dig up some of them.
Here's a nifty little message that I once got when I was playing around
with the unbuffered disk I/O exec requests (sort of the equivalent of
doing direct "read" and "write" in Unix.) I got an address in the wrong
place in my parameter packet, and when I ran it the following issued
forth, just as you see it here, in glorius upper case (except that your
terminal probably isn't the right shade of sickly, high-persistance,
Uniscope-100 green :-). I now quote, chapter and verse, from the EXEC-8
Hardware/Software Summary, rev 1.0, copyright 1974:
THE I/O ACCESS WORD REFERS TO A BUFFER WHICH IS WHOLLY OR
PARTIALLY OUTSIDE OF THE PROGRAM AREA OR SPLIT BETEEEN THE
INSTRUCTION AND DATA BANK OF THE PROGRAM. FOR GW$, SCR$,
AND SCRB$ FUNCTIONS, THIS ERROR CODE IS GIVEN IF THE NUMBER
OF ACCESS WORDS IS 0, OR MORE THAN 50 OR IF THE TOTAL WORD
COUNT IS MORE THAN 65535.
ADH ONLY - IF DEVICE BEING REFERENCED IS ATTACHED TO AN
MSA, A MONITOR OPERATION WAS ENCOUNTERED IN THE STRING.
OTHERWISE AN ACCESS WORD WITHIN THE PACKET WAS FOUND COM-
PLETELY OR PARTIALLY OUTSIDE OF PROGRAM LIMITS.
It took me a while to realize that this was actually an error message
from the system, and not an operator trying to pull a prank on me!
(I knew some of the operators, and they were not adverse to sending
phony error messages to people who they knew had a sense of humor.
They got pretty good at it, and one frequently had to go back to the
manual to see if it was a real error or not.) The really annoying
thing was that it made the accompanying register dump, which was what
I really wanted to see, scroll off the screen.
Greg Limes
| Sniff. They've "fixed" that in SunOS 4.1.1 !
Funny, it's still in the source ... this is weird.
I would try to reproduce it, but I don't want to
mess with my mailbox and risk losing important
incoming mail ...
David Cornutt
> Data General Extended BASIC had a catch-all error:
> Error 4 - System
or, more properly:
ERROR 04 - SYSTEM
Ah yes, the Data General Nova series! You've done it now. I could tell
you a million stories. Another exasperating one:
ERROR 54 - DIR NOT INITIALIZED
> This was generally emitted when the interpreter had painted itself into a
>corner. This interpreter was the product of some _truly_ warped minds. Since
>the system it ran on was a real-time OS, the interpreter was multithreaded
>with some per-user tasks and some common shared tasks.
One of the amazing things was that, even though RDOS (Realtime Disk
Operating System) had a perfectly good mechanism for creating threads,
the BASIC interpreter didn't use it, but instead had a mechanism of its
own creation.
>An amazing piece of
>code, but very hard to debug.
Yep. I learned a lot about how interpreters worked from studying that
thing. I also learned a lot about how *not* to write code.
>We were running the largest installation of
>this interpreter known to DG in the late 70's - we had patched it to double
>the number of terminals from 32 to 64.
I *am* impressed. How did you get that many async ports into one machine?
Was there an Eclipse with more than 12 slots or something? Or did you
have async boards with more than 4 ports apiece?
> We found some weird bugs in the code (so did lots of other customers - the
>"other" DG BASIC - Business BASIC - was actually written by another customer
>and purchased by DG), and DG was really getting tired of hearing about our
>bug reports, especially since we found some that would have required a re-
>design of the interpreter to fix. [A race condition in the ENTER statement
>is one that comes to mind].
Yep, I ran into the same thing. I had a program with "overlays"
implemented with ENTER statements. Periodically it choked for no
apparent reason. Eventually, a friend and I found the problem, but
we never figured out what to do about it.
I'm sure you know their way of handling race conditions. For the
unitiated, it was: disable interrupts! (Mind you this is user-mode
code, not in the kernel. The Nova II was unmapped and had no protection
hardware.) They sometimes left interrupts off for quite a long time,
and nasty things like missed real-time clock interrupts occurred. (When
this happened, the interpreter had to reinitialize the clock. You could
always tell how much of an average load the machine had been under
during the day by how much the time of day had fallen behind due to
repeated reinitialization.) It had some other quirky things too; for
instance, when they did I/O, they didn't like things getting in their
way, like drivers. :-) That's why we used to say:
"BASIC doesn't run under RDOS, it runs *around* RDOS!"
>Finally, instead of a response, they sent us a
>magtape with the sources and said _you_ fix it! We actually fixed most of our
>bugs and sent the fixes back. What did I get for my troubles? A whole stack
>of bug reports from _other_ customers with a note that said "want to tackle
>these?"!
A bunch of those were probably ours! :-)
We had the same thing happen eventually. A service person "accidentally"
left a disk pack containing source for RDOS, the CLI, the BASIC
interpreter, and several utilities. We had great fun modifying all
of the prompts. From there on, we just fixed a lot of things ourselves.
There's lots more I can tell, but I only get so many hours a day to
sneak off and play with Usenet.
Jim Davis
>From article <1991Jul25....@vax.oxford.ac.uk>, by mbea...@vax.oxford.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie):
>
>> Does anyone following the "Thou hast mail" thread know if a similar
>> message can be provoked under VAX MAIL?
>
>months ago, but never repeated -- it's possible to screw up the header
>of an outgoing message in such a way that VMS will tell you, "You are
>a charlatan." Sounds like urban legend material to me.
>
>--
>____ Tim Pierce \ "I am full of life and don't need
>\ / w1...@arnor.UUCP (<- mail HERE!) \ that sort of sick stimulation."
> \/ (twpi...@amh.amherst.edu) \ -- Neal C. Wickham
Well, I've seen the "You are a charlatan" in a mail context before,
though only on a DEC-20. Lessee, any DEC-20s left... :-(
Oh yeah, sri-nic ..err.. nic.ddn.mil.
bordeaux$ telnet nic.ddn.mil 25
Trying 192.67.67.20 ...
Connected to nic.ddn.mil.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-NIC.DDN.MIL SMTP Service 6.1 at Fri, 26 Jul 91 18:21:06 PDT
220 Don't Worry.
helo nonesuch.noao.edu
250 NIC.DDN.MIL - Never heard of that name, bordeaux.kpno.noao.edu
helo cc.utah.edu
250 NIC.DDN.MIL - You are a charlatan, bordeaux.kpno.noao.edu
quit
221 NIC.DDN.MIL -- Be Happy!
Tim Pierce
> Does anyone following the "Thou hast mail" thread know if a similar
> message can be provoked under VAX MAIL?
I posted this a while ago. Supposedly -- a rumor I heard months and
Paul Nash
> |> Y,Z??
> Y for runts
Y for secretary?
---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---=---
Paul Nash Free Range Computer Systems cc
pa...@frcs.Alt.ZA ...!uunet!{m2xenix,ddsw1}!frcs!paul
Ken Wallewein
I used to do a lot of applications development in BASIC-PLUS under RSTS.
My favorite error messsage was "Illegal expression". I always tried to
picture one. :-d
--
/kenw
Ken Wallewein A L B E R T A
ke...@noah.arc.ab.ca R E S E A R C H
(403)297-2660 C O U N C I L
Guy Harris
Which you get if you send the "wiz" command over an SMTP connection, and
the remote site doesn't have a version compiled with WIZ defined.
> savemail: HELP!!!!
Which you get if "sendmail" couldn't even save undeliverable mail in
"/usr/tmp/dead.letter".
> Who are you ?
Which you get if the routine that tries to find out your login name
fails (because there's no "utmp" file entry *and* no entry in the
password database for the effective user ID)
> Can't parse myself!
Which you get if, when it's trying to mail undeliverable mail back to
the sender, it can't manage to parse the address of the sender of the
message.
> MAIL DELETED BECAUSE OF LACK OF DISK SPACE
Which it gives if, well, it runs out of disk space to hold the file
containing the body of the message it's collecting.
Steve Lamont
>Univac EXEC-8 had some error messages that were entire paragraphs. I'll
>have to go home and get my manuals and dig up some of them.
Hell, IBM's PL/I has error messages that are entire *pages*!!!
When I first encountered PL/I many years ago, I was impressed by the
fact that the error message manual was larger than the language manual
and the programmer's guide put together.
spl (the p stands for
PL/I, ack!)
--
Steve Lamont, SciViGuy -- (619) 534-7978 (Yes, another new job!)
UCSD Microscope and Imaging Resource/9500 Gilman Drive/La Jolla, CA 92093-608
I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration which this .signature is too
small to contain...