HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ericw@hobbes.amd.com (Eric Wedaa)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 16:43:34 GMT


The moral(s) of the story here:
	-NEVER use 'rm <any pattern>', use rm -i <any pattern>' instead.
	-Do backups more often than you go to church.
	-Read the backup media at least as often as you go to church.
	-Set up your prompt to do a `pwd` everytime you cd.
	-Always do a `cd .` before doing anything.
	-DOCUMENT all your changes to the system (We use a text file 
	 called /Changes)
	-Don't nuke stuff you are not sure about.
	-Do major changes to the system on Saturday morning so you will 
	 have all weekend to fix it.
	-Have a shadow watching you when you do anything major.
	-Don't do systems work on a Friday afternoon. (or any other time
	 when you are tired and not paying attention.)

>>>Ericw
(Paranoia is a "Good Thing" when you can really muck things up!)
--
Eric Wedaa  -  eric.wedaa@amd.com | Two more kinds of lies...
{ames apple uunet}!amd!ericw      |     Release Dates, and Benchmarks
Advanced Micro Devices, M/S 167 PO Box 3453 Sunnyvale, CA 94088-3453
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: mba@controls.ccd.harris.com (Belinda Asbell)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Originator: mba@sp1
Organization: Harris Controls
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 13:00:31 GMT


In article <Bw40Gz.Kw8@cen.ex.ac.uk>, JRowe@cen.ex.ac.uk (J.Rowe) writes:

|> One thing I would like all vendors to do (I know one or two do) is
|> to give root the option of logging in using another shell. Am I the
|> only one to have mangled a root shell?
|> 
|> John Rowe
|> Dept. Physics
|> Exeter University
|> UK.

Probably not.  I learned the hard way to be careful if messing with /etc/passwd. 
One day, for some reason, I couldn't login as root (pretty scary, since I knew
the root passwd and hadn't changed it).  

Turned out that somehow I'd blitzed the first letter of /etc/passwd somehow (vi
does bizarre things sometimes).  So I logged in as 'oot' and fixed it.

NEVER do a "chmod -R u-s .", especially not in /usr....

I think that "mount -o" or something similar will mount a filesystem read-write
if it's come up in singleuser mode and is mounted read-only.....


Just my tuppence....
-- 
=============================================================================
Belinda Asbell        +  System Administrator, Harris Controls Division
mba@ccd.harris.com    +      Any opinions presented are mine alone.
-
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,gnu.misc.discuss
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: BSD print spooling system replacement?
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 16:52:58 GMT

I have repeatedly read/heard that BSD's lpd is "flaky", although I
do not understand specifically why that is so.  But I certainly
have spent an entirely disproportionate amount of system admin work
fixing printing problems that should have been trivial, and integrating
various different types of printers and filters always seemed more 
complex than it should be.  I'm getting sick of it.

So... my questions are:

- What specifically are the problems with BSD's print spooling system,
and how do the BSD-derived programs shipped with third party Unixes
such as SunOS or Ultrix compare?

- Are there any good (free!) replacements available?

- What is the GNU projects intention for providing print spooling?

--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
South Hadley, MA, USA        | Snail Mail: J. Botz, 01075-0629
From: grover@ccai.clv.oh.us (grover davidson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 14 Oct 92 08:32:38 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: CCAI
NNTP-Posting-Host: skybridge.scl.cwru.edu
X-Post-Machine: ccai.clv.oh.us

Several months ago here, we were reoganizing our disk space on an
RS/6000 with AIX 3.1. I have done this many time before, but for some
reason, I was rushing through expanding a file system. Instead of entering
the new file system size where it belongs, I entered it into the mount
point. It also turns out that I was attached 2 levels down in the file 
system. Since the size was entered as a number ('234567') and was 
INTERPRETED as a mount point directory, the result was a 
circular hard link that basicly left the file system unusable. 
IBM was not able to help, and we had done quite a bit of work that day,
we had to somehow recover some of the stuff. We ended up doing a dd of the
raw volume, and the read it back in a couple MB at a time and extracted
the pieces that we needed for the mess. 

The other day while reading Stevens new book, "Advanced Programming in
the UNIX Environment", he stated that he had done the exact same thing
durring the preparation of his book. At least I am not alone.....

-- 
Grover Davidson II               | The opinions expressed here are solely mine
Conley, Canitano, & Assoc., Inc. | and in no way reflect any opinions or 
voice: 216-831-6240              | policies of my employer, even if they may
internet: grover@ccai.clv.oh.us  | agree with them, and especially if they
From: gah@zoo.bt.co.uk (Geoff Hopson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: How do I stop an annoying user?
Date: 14 Oct 92 15:06:55 GMT
Reply-To: gah@zoo.bt.co.uk
Organization: BT Laboratories

A little help from you system admin men is required.

I am suffering with a user who keeps logging onto my machine and playing around. Short of giving him a good kick up the arse, is there anything I can do to prevent him logging on. This user has been on a Sun system administrators course, and has been told various ways of logging onto other peoples machines. Our system manager says there is no way to stop a determined user. There must be a way to stop him. He has been logged on as a root user, on as me, etc etc. I have tried .rhosts, /etc/hosts.equiv, /etc/














passwd entries, all to no avail.

I assume I will need a script or program of some description. Hints, tips and general advice gratefully received.

Please e-mail.

Thanks in advance

"Annoyed"
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories
From: russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell Street)
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 22:45:12 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Not quite a reall _horror_ story but ...

I once had "gnu-emacs" aliased to 'em' (and 'emacs' etc)

One day I wanted to edit the start up file and mistyped

	# rm /etc/rc.local
instead of the obvious.

*Fortunately* I had just finished a backup and was now finding
out the joys of tar and it's love of path names. [./etc/rc.local
and /etc/rc.local and etc/rc.local) are *not* the same for tar
and TK-50s take a *long* time search for non-existant files :(]



Of course the BREAK (Ctrl-P) key on a VAX and an Ultrix manual
and a certain /etc/ttys line are just a horror story waiting
to happen!  Especially when the VAX and manuals are in a
unsupervised place :)

--------------------------------------------------------------
Russell Street (russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz)

Secombe:  Right Mr Greenslade, segergate the sinful sexes ...
Milligan: Wait -- how many sexes are there?
Secombe:  Two.
Milligan: It is not enough, I say! Go out and order some more!




Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: rickf@pmafire.inel.gov (Rick Furniss)
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 07:12:30 GMT
Organization: WINCO
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Summary: 
Followup-To: 
Organization: WINCO
Keywords: 

In article <ericw.718908214@hobbes> ericw@hobbes.amd.com (Eric Wedaa) writes:
>
>The moral(s) of the story here:
>	-NEVER use 'rm <any pattern>', use rm -i <any pattern>' instead.
>	-Do backups more often than you go to church.
>	-Read the backup media at least as often as you go to church.
>	-Set up your prompt to do a `pwd` everytime you cd.
>	-Always do a `cd .` before doing anything.
>	-DOCUMENT all your changes to the system (We use a text file 
>	 called /Changes)
>	-Don't nuke stuff you are not sure about.
>	-Do major changes to the system on Saturday morning so you will 
>	 have all weekend to fix it.
>	-Have a shadow watching you when you do anything major.
>	-Don't do systems work on a Friday afternoon. (or any other time
>	 when you are tired and not paying attention.)
>


   Current backups, usualy means backups of current BAD data.
   Any problem that takes a backups cycle time to locate, is there to stay.
   Better have some old stuff around.

   Backups can be as dangerous as no backups !   CATCH 22.


***** standard DISKclamer *****
personal views of my person only

CPSMEL/IA
C210 N3877Y
rickf@pmafire.inel.gov
rickf@servprod.inel.gov

-- 

***** standard DISKclamer *****
personal views of my person only

Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: ash@ulysses.mr.ams.com (Alan Harder)
Subject: xargs (Was: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !)
Organization: American Math. Society
	<FISCHER.92Oct12004045@steiner.iesd.auc.dk> <168.28180@incc.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 13:50:53 GMT

In article <168.28180@incc.com> jerry@incc.com (Jerry Rocteur) writes:

   In article <FISCHER.92Oct12004045@steiner.iesd.auc.dk>, fischer@iesd.auc.dk (Lars Peter Fischer) writes:

    >- xargs places file names one after each other <whatever file1 file...
    >  which means you can have trouble with large file lists as all files
    >  will not be acted upon

But if you use the -n<number> argument to xargs, then the command is
executed <number> times with one argument each time.  Then you don't
have a problem with the parameter list being too long.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: rik@nella15.cc.monash.edu.au (Rik Harris)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Reply-To: rik.harris@fcit.monash.edu.au
Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 11:55:15 GMT

Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it through the tired brain...

Most of our disks reside on a single, high-powered server.  We decided
this probably wasn't too good an idea, and put a new disk on one of
the workstations (particularly since the w/s has a faster transfer
rate than the server does!).  It's still really useful to be able to
use all disks from the one machine, so I mounted the w/s disk on the
server.  I said to myself (being a Friday afternoon...see previous
post) "it's only temporary.../mnt is already being used...I'll mount
it in /tmp".  So, I mounted on /tmp/a (or something).  This was fine
for a few hours, but then the auto-cleanup script kicked in, and blew
away half of my source (the stuff over 2 weeks old).  I didn't notice
this for a few days, though.  After I figured out what had happened,
and restored the files (we _do_ have a good backup strategy),
everything was OK.

Until a few months later.  We were trying to convince a sysadmin from
another site that he shouldn't NFS export his disks rw,root to everyone,
so I mounted the disk to put a few suid root programs in his home
directory to convince him.  Well, it's only a temporary mount, so....

You guessed it, another Friday afternoon.  I did a umount /tmp/b, and
forgot about it.  I noticed this one about halfway through the next
day.  (NFS over a couple of 64k links is pretty slow).  The disk had
not unmounted because it was busy...busy with two find scripts, happily
checking for suid programs, and deleting anything over a week old.  A
df on the filesystem later showed about 12% full :-(    Sorry Craig.

Now, I create /mnt1, /mnt2, /mnt3.... :-)

Remember....Friday afternoons are BAD news.

rik.
--
Rik Harris - rik.harris@fcit.monash.edu.au
+61 3 571-2895 (AH & ans.mach) +61 3 573-2679 (BH)
Faculty of Computing and Information Technology,
Caulfield Campus, Monash University, Australia
-- 
Rik Harris - rik.harris@fcit.monash.edu.au
+61 3 571-2895 (AH & ans.mach) +61 3 573-2679 (BH)
Faculty of Computing and Information Technology,
Caulfield Campus, Monash University, Australia
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: jrs@zippy.unet.com (John Switzer Frame 3.0)
Subject: Re: Floppy Disk Labels
Organization: Network Equipment Technologies, Redwood City
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 20:35:55 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.194156.26435@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> jona@iscp.bellcore.com (Jon Alperin) writes:
>I once (back when I was working in a college computer center) watched in
>horror as a newbie computer user tried to put a 5 1/4" diskette in a
>machine by very carefully placing his fingers in the round cutout where
>the disk showed through, and then inserting the disk in backwards.
>
>Of course, there was also the student who punched 2 holes into the floppy
>so they could store it in their notebook binder :-))
>
>Ah.. the good ol' days...

I think it was Persoft Communications who shipped their software with a
take-off on the typical disk jacket that showed all the things that you 
shouldn't do to a disk (expose to heat, magnetic fields, touch the disk 
with your fingers, etc.). The Persoft jacket, though, included pictures of
someone eating a disk, putting it in the toaster, etc. This was back in 
1985 or 1986. 
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: rca@Ingres.COM (Bob Arnold)
Subject: Re: xargs (was: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !)
Reply-To: rca@Ingres.COM (Bob Arnold)
Organization: Ask Computer Systems Inc., Ingres Division, Alameda CA 94501
Date: 15 Oct 92 02:59:59 GMT

In article <SIMON.92Oct13141339@liasg2.epfl.ch> simon@lia.di.epfl.ch (Simon Leinen) writes:
>In article <168.28180@incc.com> jerry@incc.com (Jerry Rocteur) writes:
>
>    - xargs is not on all systems
>
>Yeah, well, neither is find I assume.  And there's always GNU xargs...

Out of curiousity, I got out my Version 6 and Version 7 manuals.
"find" is in both of them.  And thus it is probably in virtually every
UNIX variant available today.  Out of curiousity too, does anyone know
of any exceptions?

		Bob

--
  __   _    _   Bob Arnold		Ingres, An ASK Corporation
|/  \ / \  / \| 			1080 Marina Village Parkway
|    /    /   |				Alameda, CA, 94501
|    \__/ \__/| rca@ingres.com		510/748-2819
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: jdell@benazir.mit.edu (John Ellithorpe)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 23:12:07 GMT

On 7 Oct 92 12:02:46 GMT, aras@multix.no (Arne Asplem) said:

> I'm the program chair for a one day conference on Unix system
> administration in Oslo in 3 weeks, including topics like network
> management, system admininistration tools, integration, print/file-servers,
> securitym, etc. 

> I'm looking for actual horror stories of what have gone wrong because
> of bad system administration, as an early morning wakeup.        

> I'll summarise to the net if there is any interest.

>   -- Arne
> -- 
> //  Arne Asplem    //  Office:    Gjerdrums vei 12, N-0486 Oslo, Norway  //
> //  Multix A/S     //  Phone/fax: +47-2-950800 / 950790                  //
> //                 //  Email:     aras@multix.no                         //
> //  NUUG Chairman  //  Email:     aras@nuug.no                           //

Here's a pretty bad story.  I wanted to have root use tcsh instead of the
Bourne shell.  So I decided to copy tcsh to /usr/local/bin.  I created the
file, /etc/shells, and put in /usr/local/bin/tcsh, along with /bin/sh and
/bin/csh.

All seems fine, so I used the chsh command and changed root's shell to
/usr/local/bin/tcsh.  So I logged out and tried to log back in.  Only to find
out that I couldn't get back in.  Every time I tried to log in, I only got
the statement: /usr/local/bin/tcsh: permission denied!

I instantly realized what I had done.  I forgot to check that tcsh has 
execute privileges and I couldn't get in as root!

After about 30 minutes of getting mad at myself, I finally figured out to just
bring the system down to single-user mode, which ONLY uses the /bin/sh,
thankfully, and edited the password file back to /bin/sh.

I'll never do that again.  This wasn't that much of a horror story, but good
enough if you aren't that familiar with the system.

John
--

===============================================================================
John Ellithorpe                           | Internet: jdell@maggie.mit.edu
Dept. of Physics, Rm 26-349               | Phone   : (617) 253-3074  Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology     |           (617) 253-3072  Lab
Cambridge, MA  02139                      |           (617) 236-4910  Home
===============================================================================
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: vulture@carrion.cc.ic.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau)
Subject: Re: How to handle '<exiting>'?
Reply-To: cmaae47@cc.ic.ac.uk
Organization: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 20:20:14 BST

In article <1992Oct14.154801.29066@news.columbia.edu>, dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis) writes:
- 
-    One of our terminals is stuck. The who command shows a login on that
- terminal, but the only process attributed is '<exiting>'. Killing that
- process doesn't give any error, but doesn't kill it.

That means a process (or rather a zombie) waits in kernel satate for 
something that does never happen, or that has happened and the process
missed it.

-    What is 'exiting', and why does it hang the terminal? How can I clear it?

because you cannot interrupt processes in kernel stat in most *x's

- A reboot clears it up, but seems rather drastic.

The only thing, if these zombies become troublesome.

                                       Thomas

-- 
*** This is the operative statement, all previous statements are inoperative.
*   email: cmaae47 @ cc.ic.ac.uk (Thomas Sippel - Dau) (uk.ac.ic.cc on Janet)
*   voice: +44 71 589 5111 x4937 or 4934 (day), or +44 71 823 9497 (fax)
*   snail: Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine
*   The Center for Computing Services, Kensington SW7 2BX, Great Britain
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.sysv386,comp.unix.att
From: measures@cse.uta.edu (Mark Measures)
Subject: Postscript printer problem
Organization: Computer Science Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 18:59:09 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I posted a message about getting an AT&T
593 laser printer to work with my StarServer E, running SVR4.2.
The printer has a PDL (page description language -> postscript)
board in it that should make it work as a postscript printer.
I posted a message asking for help because I could never get it
to print.  By the way, thanks to those who suggested fixes.
It's nice to know people really do care to help when they can.

I'll describe the history, and maybe I can keep someone else
from going through the difficulty I've had.  And maybe someone
who knows the real solution to my problem can set me straight.
I would like nothing better.

I installed the PDL board in the printer and set it to PDL
emulation mode.  I ran the self test and everything seemed fine.
I have the printer connected to the parallel port on the Star-
Server, and the printer knows it's using the parallel port.

I added the printer using:

   lpadmin -p laser -v /dev/lp -T postscript -I postscript

I then enabled and accepted it.  When I would try to print,
though, the printer would display "Processing" in its status
window for a few seconds and then return to "Online."  No
output of any kind.

I fiddled with stty options for a while, tried to set the content
to "simple", and a few other things that were silly and useless.

I then tried to see if the printer would work at all, so I
changed the printer type to "hplaserjet" and set the printer to
HPLJ2 emulation mode.  I then tried to print /etc/motd, and,
voila!, it worked!

Elated with that success, I switched printer type back to
postscript, content type back to postscript, and printer emulation
back to PDL.  Then when I printed a file, I got postscript code.
That's when I posted my message.

The problem, I discovered to my embarrassment, was that when
I changed emulation mode back to PDL, I didn't turn the printer
off and then back on, so it was still doing HP emulation.  That's
why I got raw postscript code.

After working with it off and on for a while, I've come to the
conclusion that either AT&T's postscript filter is screwed or
that their PDL board (postscript board) for their laser printer
doesn't work.  So I'm running the printer as an HP printer and
it's working fine.

If anyone has an AT&T 593 printer with PDL board that you have
successfully configured on a StarServer running SVR4.2, let me
know.  I would love to find out where I went wrong.

Mark


Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.sys.sun.admin
From: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Subject: Re: Admin/User Ratio
Reply-To: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 16:43:59 GMT

In article <1992Oct14.211908.17756@srg.srg.af.mil> mjarriel@atria.srg (Michael Jarriel x4751) writes:
>I am looking for statistics or ratios that correlate
>users to system administrators in a Unix based network.
>
>10:1 20:1: 50:1 or such.  

I think what counts more is the ratio of *systems* to administrators, but it
depends on your configuration, the mix of system (and OS) types, and whether
your users like to ask lots of questions (the ones who don't either figure
things out for themselves or just struggle along grumbling).

We have on the order of 125 users, 85+ Sun workstations, an Auspex, a Sol-
bourne, two Convexes, 6 IBM RS/6000's, a couple of aging VAXes (which don't 
get much attention), and numerous varied peripherals attached to them. Except 
for a few at a remote site and about two standalone ones, all the Suns get all 
of SunOS etc. from the Auspex.

We have 2 sysadmin-type staff, one of whom is essentially responsible only for 
network-related issues (mail, news, our LAN, some other remote-site connec-
tions, and various outside-world links), and the other of whom does the real
system stuff (fixing problems, OS upgrades, configuring new things). This is 
definitely not enough, especially with the recent increase in the number of 
RS/6000's and software packages we have, so I'm adding a third person for soft-
ware support (commercial and public-domain packages; installation, updates, 
and user assistance). 

So depending how you look at it, we will have a ratio of about 40:1 for users 
or 30:1 for systems. If you have good people, this ratio should do nicely.
-- 
Ruth Milner                          NRAO/VLA                  Socorro NM
Computing Division Head      rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu
From: ange@aspect.UUCP (Ange Hampton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: How to delete hard link to a directory?
Keywords: hard link directory rm
Date: 8 Oct 92 23:52:02 GMT
Organization: Aspect Telecommunications, San Jose, Ca

One of my users made a hard link to a directory in that 
directory, as in 

ln wd wd/SCCS

where wd is a directory. How do I delete it? 

Yes, I've tried rm... rm -r... rm -rf... find . -exec rm {} \;
and others too numerous to mention.

Thanks!

ange hampton

uunet!aspect!ange
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin