HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: How to delete hard link to a directory?
Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 01:18:59 GMT

In article <1992Oct11.124058.6070@osnbe.Olivetti.ch> rheiger@renext.open.ch writes:

>I find it difficult to understand how your user got to create a HARD link to a 
>directory to begin with. This is usually not possible. Anyways, if it is a hard
>link, the only method I could think of is to write a program to get rid of it.  

One of the first *IX machines I used was a Radio Shack 16 with their
Xenix, derived from version 7.

There was a serious problem in the lpd printer command.    I have seen
at least 2 machines that had linked directories. By executing the
command with the wrong parameter you didn't print anything but caused
links under their /usr/spool/lpd directory.

But the real fun was that they were cirucularly linked.
You went to the directory, and you went down about 2 levels and you were back
where you started.   If you tried to removed a sub-directory you were also
trying to remove a directory 2 levels above you.


-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.oau.org  bill.vermillion@oau.org
                - bill@bilver.uucp 
                - ..!{peora|ge-dab|tous|tarpit}!bilver!bill

Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:5674 news.software.nntp:1332
From: elitman@nxstep.com (Eric A. Litman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: NNTP via dialup link
Date: 15 Oct 92 15:28:55 GMT
Article-I.D.: wam.1992Oct15.152855.7822
Organization: NXSTEP Ventures
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Thad Phetteplace x4461 (tdphette@mke.ab.com) wrote:
: elitman@nxstep.com (Eric A. Litman) writes:
: > I have been commissioned with setting up a limited newsfeed for a site
: > with minimal available resources. What I would like to do is allow the
: > users at the site to open a dialup connection to an internet-connected
: > machine and emulate a real NNTP connection using perl scripts.
: [ context deleted... ]
: 
: If you have a dial up connection and all you need to run over it is a News
: feed I  would recommend using UUCP.

I probably should have been more clear on this - by limited resources
I meant that they have little available disk space for the news
articles, nor do they have someone on site technically capable of
maintaining a functional UUCP feed. I'm not at all averse to using
UUCP (I use it myself), it simply does not suit the needs of this
project.

I appreciate your response, however. 

--
Eric A. Litman  #import <std/disclaimer.h> | NeXTMail, MIME accepted - please 
Federal Region, NeXT Campus Consultant     | indicate in Subject line.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: djm@eng.umd.edu (David J. MacKenzie)
Subject: Re: xargs (was: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !)
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 03:34:16 GMT
Organization: Project GLUE, University of Maryland
	<1992Oct13.150955.22695@fwi.uva.nl>
	<1992Oct14.165252.18293@netlabs.com>

   : >A problem with find ... -print | xargs ... is that it has trouble with
   : >filenames containing whitespace.  GNU find/xargs have options to use
   : >ASCII NUL as the separator, which is much safer (since it is difficult
   : >to create files with NULs in their names).
   : 
   : Not difficult, impossible.

   Yes, this is infinitely more secure.  Note that you can also feed such
   filename lists to Perl using the -0 switch.

Credit where credit is due . . . Dan Bernstein originated the idea,
in October '90.  GNU got it from him, and Perl got it from GNU, I believe.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: jarocki@dvorak.amd.com (John Jarocki)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Austin, Texas
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 19:02:45 GMT

In article <63@ocdis01.UUCP> robjohn@ocdis01.UUCP (Contractor Bob Johnson) writes:
>
>Management told us to email a security notice to every user on the our
>system (at that time, around 3000 users).  A certain novice administrator
>on our system wanted to do it, so I instructed them to extract a list of
>users from /etc/passwd, write a simple shell loop to do the job, and
>throw it in the background.  Here's what they wrote (bourne shell)...
>
>       for USER in `cat user.list`; do
>          mail $USER <message.text &
>       done 
>
>Have you ever seen a load average of over 300 ???
>
>Bob Johnson, Systems Administrator
>Tinker AFB, Oklahoma

Oh, (tee-hee) that reminds me of what I did as a student on a old
Sun 3 (or was it a Sun 2?) once.

This was *way* before anyone let me do any administration ;-), and
just after I had learned UNIX (because I needed to write a resume in
troff).  I was curious as to how many users out there had troff source
that I could look at as an example, and so I thought: "Hey, I'll just
generate a list of who has what files"  (please, no flames, I know all
about privacy issues now).

Well (being a novice) I typed:

% foreach i in ( /home/*/*/* )
? ll $i &
? end

Well, since the University had a *lot* of user directories NFS 
mounted on that machine, it *really* began to crawl.  Can you 
believe it? -- It actually *crashed* eventually.

The best part was:  I went over to look at the console right before
it crashed and it looked like television static.  ;)s  I never *did*
find out if that was related, or not.  I can just see the bug report:
"Spawning hundreds of background processes causes console to wig out".

<sigh>, I can't laugh about stuff like this as much anymore, now that
it's my job to make sure the machines are up. :-)

--john

-- 
John Jarocki - john.jarocki@amd.com
Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:5679 news.software.nntp:1334
From: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: NNTP via dialup link
Date: 15 Oct 1992 17:58:40 GMT
Organization: Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, Michigan
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.msen.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Eric A. Litman (elitman@nxstep.com) wrote:
: Thad Phetteplace x4461 (tdphette@mke.ab.com) wrote:
: : elitman@nxstep.com (Eric A. Litman) writes:
: : > I have been commissioned with setting up a limited newsfeed for a site
: : > with minimal available resources. What I would like to do is allow the
: : > users at the site to open a dialup connection to an internet-connected
: : > machine and emulate a real NNTP connection using perl scripts.
: : [ context deleted... ]
: : 
: : If you have a dial up connection and all you need to run over it is a News
: : feed I  would recommend using UUCP.
: 
: I probably should have been more clear on this - by limited resources
: I meant that they have little available disk space for the news
: articles, nor do they have someone on site technically capable of
: maintaining a functional UUCP feed. I'm not at all averse to using
: UUCP (I use it myself), it simply does not suit the needs of this
: project.
: 
: I appreciate your response, however. 
: 
: --
: Eric A. Litman  #import <std/disclaimer.h> | NeXTMail, MIME accepted - please 
: Federal Region, NeXT Campus Consultant     | indicate in Subject line.
Xref: sparky comp.unix.admin:5493 comp.periphs.scsi:4922
From: montjoy@thor.ece.uc.edu (Robert Montjoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: Exabyte 8500 drives and Sony P6-120MP tapes
Date: 11 Oct 92 02:58:34 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Cincinnati, ECE Dept


HI.

The new type of SONY 8-mm tape  definatily is not as good as the
old. We have only gotten about 15 of them and they all exhibit
the same behavior.

The percent of re-writes is much higher than the old. The old tapes
generally had re-writes less than .4 percent. However, with
the new tapes the percent of re-writes is much higher over 1 %.

Other brands(including exabyte and maxell) are all consistently
less than .4 %. 

We are probably going to try to use data certified from now on
out. We can get 3M's for $11 or SONYs and Exabytes for $13.00.

Has anyone had experience with using the 3M data certified tapes?
How do they hold up?

Thanks.


-- 
Rob Montjoy                   		- Rob.Montjoy@UC.Edu
Computer Engineer    	      		- montjoy@ucbeh.BITNET
University of Cincinnati      		- montjoy@babbage.ece.uc.edu
Electrical and Computer Engineering	- uunet!uceng!rmontjoy

-- The "Enviromental Destruction" President or a "Tax and Spend" President. 
   This is a choice?
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: miles@Chaos.mcs.kent.edu (Roger Miles)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: Kent State University
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 19:33:04 GMT

A year ago we moved to a brand spanking new building.  All the equipment
was moved by professional movers.  The last piece of equipment I wanted
moved was the computer (a Zilog s8000, 6ft. tall, with 3 disk drives, 
cartridge drive and reel tape drive all mounted in one cabinet. It must have 
weighed 250 to 300 lbs) because I wanted to keep an eye on the movers.  
Actually, I was hoping they'd drop it so I could get a new computer.  Anyway, 
much to my surprize the movers said they would not move the computer because 
of the liability.  One of my co-workers owned a Ford pickup so we hoisted it 
up and drove off with me riding in the back hanging on to the Zilog.  It
was the longest 15 minute drive I was ever on in my life.

Roger Miles
KSU

Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: del@fnx.uucp (Dag Erik Lindberg)
Subject: Re: crontab disabled?
Organization: I/Ovations
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 09:05:41 GMT

In <21652@rpp386.lonestar.org> jfh@rpp386.lonestar.org (John F. Haugh II) writes:
>In article <1992Oct01.203453.14960@ux1.cts.eiu.edu> cfwpm@ux1.cts.eiu.edu (Bill McGown) writes:
>>On one system here at EIU crontab has been "restricted" so that
>>it is not available to regular users. The reason given is that
>>it has the potential to interfere with backups. Is this a real
>>concern (i.e., can it do so)? If it can screwup backups is there
>>some fix/patch/kludge that can avoid the problem?

>Most backup schemes don't work well if processes are altering
>data in the filesystems that are being backed up.  This is
>probably the basis for their concern.

The solution I have always preferred is just to make it known that any
user files modified during hours when backups are being made are
probably not properly backed up.

To answer the original question, there is always more than one way to
skin a cat under Unix.  Just put something like this in a script:

#!/bin/csh
while (true)
	sleep 300       # Use 60 if you really *need* 1 minute resolution
			# Insert test for time of day here if desired.
	# Insert code to be executed here.
end


then (from csh):

nohup script >& /dev/null


-- 
del AKA Erik Lindberg                             uunet!pilchuck!fnx!del
                          Who is John Galt?
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: rca@Ingres.COM (Bob Arnold)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Reply-To: rca@Ingres.COM (Bob Arnold)
Organization: Ask Computer Systems Inc., Ingres Division, Alameda CA 94501
Date: 13 Oct 92 00:34:48 GMT

In article <1992Oct12.233524.13463@pony.Ingres.COM> I wrote:
>I was brave and bold, not to mention boneheaded, and formatted the user disk.
>
> [ rest of story deleted ... Bob ]
>
>Morals:
>	1) The "man" pages don't tell you everything you need to know.
>	2) Don't do backups to floppies.
>	3) Test your backups to make sure they are readable.
>	4) Handle the format program (and anything else that writes directly
>	   to disk devices) like nitroglycerine.
>	5) Strenuously avoid systems with inadequate backup and restore
>	   programs wherever possible (thank goodness for "restore" with
>	   an "e"!).
>	6) If you've never done sysadmin work before, take a formal
>	   training class.

Just thought of a few more related morals (managers pay attention now):

	7) You get what you pay for.
	8) There's no substutite for experience.
	9) It's a lot less painful to learn from someone else's experience
	   than your own (that's what this thread is about, I guess :-) )

Part of the story I should tell here.  My employer had been looking for
a way to cut costs.  I was 15% cheaper than their previous sysadmin so
they let him go and hired me.  It wasn't as nasty as it sounds, since
they kept him on as a consultant at 4 hours a week and he ended up with
a better job too (so did I).  Everyone benefited in the end.  I leaned
heavily on his consulting, which was great.  He was older and wiser, and
probably had his own horror stories to tell.  After this one, so did I!

		Bob
--
  __   _    _   Bob Arnold		Ingres, An ASK Corporation
|/  \ / \  / \| 			1080 Marina Village Parkway
|    /    /   |				Alameda, CA, 94501
|    \__/ \__/| rca@ingres.com		510/748-2819
From: dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: How to handle '<exiting>'?
Date: 14 Oct 92 15:48:01 GMT
Organization: Columbia University, Dept. of Biological Sciences.


   I hope this isn't a really stupid question, but I don't know the
answer, and I think this is the right group.

   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. Turning off the terminal
doesn't work.

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

   This sort of thing has happened a few times in the past, and we never
figured out what was going on. A reboot clears it up, but seems rather
drastic.

   E-mail if you think you can help but need more information. If you have
suggestions, e-mail or post.

DanZ

-- 
    "I think it is a little premature to attribute the failures of American
     foriegn policy to Carl Kadie."
                                                     -Mike Godwin
This article for entertainment purposes only.
From: luu@npg-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (Lynn Luu)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: how much memory the system has
Date: 12 Oct 92 22:12:45 GMT
Reply-To: luu@npg-sd.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM (Lynn Luu)
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR Corp., Network Products - San Diego

I'm wondering if someone knows a system command, a unix tool or anything 
that shows how much memory the system has?

I'm using UNIX System V. release 4.  I looked at sysdef's output,
it shows many things but system's memory.

Your help will be highly appreciated.  Please answer via email
       lynn.luu@SanDiego.CA.NCR.COM

Lynn.
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Lynn Luu                             Email: luu@.SanDiego.NCR.COM
NCR Corporation, Rancho Bernardo
-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: johnsond@newshub.sdsu.edu (Dwayne Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: SNMP Agents for Sun
Date: 7 Oct 92 05:17:40 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

I'm looking for software or freeware that will allow Unix servers to
return useful information to network management software.  If you're
aware of such programs (source would be nice, but buyable executables
are acceptable) please drop me a line.  I'm interested in any and
all UNIX type platforms.



-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dwayne Johnson                           | Hold on to the Great Image
Internet:   johnsond@sciences.sdsu.edu   | and the world will come to you.
            johnsond@nextnet.csus.edu    |     -- Lao Tzu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: adb@geac.com (Anthony DeBoer)
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 13:56:44 GMT
Organization: Geac Computer Corporation

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?

This actually leads me back to a Unix admin horror story.  At a former
employer, I once watched our sysadmin reboot from the distribution tape
after making a typing error editing the root line in /etc/passwd.  After
munging the colon count in this line, nobody could login or su, and he
hadn't left himself in root in another session while testing his changes
(a rule I've adopted for myself).

My "big break", the moment I became sysadmin, was partly by virtue of
being the only one to ask him for the root password the day he went out
the door for the last time.

What I've found preferable, when wanting to set up an alternative shell
for root (bash, in my case), is to add a second line in /etc/passwd with
a slightly different login name, same password, UID 0, and the other
shell.  That way, if /usr/local/bin/bash or /usr/local/bin or the /usr
partition itself ever goes west, I still have a login with good ol'
/bin/sh handy.  (I know, installing it as /bin/bash might bypass some
potential problems, but not all of them.)

This might, of course, be harder to do on a security fascist system like
AIX.  Simply trying to create a "backup" login with UID 0 there once so
that the operator didn't get a prompt and have to remember what to type
next was a nightmare.  (I wound up giving "backup" a normal UID, put it
in a group by itself, and gave it setuid-root copies of find and cpio,
with owner root, group backup, and permissions 4550).  BTW, this was to
make things easier for the backup operator, not to make it secure from
that person.
-- 
Anthony DeBoer       adb@geac.com | uunet!geac!adb | GEM: ANTHONY.DEBOER
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
From: fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald)
Subject: Re: temparary superuser
Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 06:07:00 GMT

mmt@RedBrick.COM (Maxime Taksar) writes:

> I'm not paranoid about someone cracking one of my systems.  Why?
> Because I make sure to use good security practices.

Just once, I made a statement like that to someone who knew Unix better
than I did.  Within an hour I'd received mail from root on my "secure"
system.  This was quite enlightening.  These rules are the only ones that
work:

- Root can do an enormous amount of damage.
- Anyone with an account on a Unix system who tries hard enough to become
  root, can do it.  Therefore there are no technical obstacles to someone
  becoming root, only disincentives.
- Therefore, people have to be discouraged from even trying to break root.

If people want to experiment on a Unix system, they can get their own.  An
account on our Internet gateway system is NOT an invitation to try to break
root on it.

-- 
Tom Fitzgerald   Wang Labs       fitz@wang.com   "I went to the universe today;
1-508-967-5278   Lowell MA, USA                   It was closed...."
From: john@sekrit.WPI.EDU (John Stoffel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Date: 13 Oct 92 09:21:52
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
	<FISCHER.92Oct12004045@steiner.iesd.auc.dk> <168.28180@incc.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sekrit.wpi.edu
In-reply-to: jerry@incc.com's message of 12 Oct 92 20:58:53 GMT

>>>>> On 12 Oct 92 20:58:53 GMT, jerry@incc.com (Jerry Rocteur) said:

Jerry> In article <FISCHER.92Oct12004045@steiner.iesd.auc.dk>, fischer@iesd.auc.dk (Lars Peter Fischer) writes:
> 
> >>>>> "Jerry" == Jerry Rocteur (jerry@incc.com)
> 
> Jerry>  Moral: be *very* careful of find execs, get the syntax right!!!!
> 
> Yup. Use "find <whatever> -print" and look at what you get. If it
> seems reasonable, add " | xargs <whatever" at the end. -exec is slow
> anyway.
Jerry>  
Jerry>  Be careful here:

Jerry>  - xargs is not on all systems
Jerry>  - xargs places file names one after each other <whatever file1 file...
Jerry>    which means you can have trouble with large file lists as all files
Jerry>    will not be acted upon
Jerry>  - the big advantage with xargs of course is that it runs the command
Jerry>    once, unlike exec which is one file at a time.               

Try and use perl.  This does a really nice job.  Of course you still
aren't protected from yourself... :)

	find <whatever> -print | perl -ne 'print; chop; unlink;'

And this doesn't have the potential problem of running out of space
for all the file names like xargs, and it doesn't have to fork a new
exec for every command like find would do.

--
Youth of today!  Join me in a mass rally for traditional mental attitudes!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
john@wpi.wpi.edu | Work Station Specialist | Worcester Polytechnic Institute
John Stoffel     | 508-831-5512 (work)     | Worcester, MA  01609
From: bill@chaos.cs.umn.edu ( Hari Seldon ... psychohistorian )
Subject: Re: WANTED: Unix administration horror stories !
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 03:20:13 GMT

In <1992Oct13.014245.24930@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz> russells@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Russell Street) writes:

>rca@Ingres.COM (Bob Arnold) writes:
>>	9) It's a lot less painful to learn from someone else's experience
>>	   than your own (that's what this thread is about, I guess :-) )

>With out trying to wander off the thread tooooo much ... In my
>experience the best experiences to learn off are your own :)
>I wonder how many stories we have got so far about "I will never
>type rm -r /" as root. (And no I have not done that _yet_, but
>the day will come :()

after a real bad crash (tm) and having been an admin (on an rs/6000)
for less than a month (honest it wasn't my fault, yea right stupid)
we got to test our backup by doing:
# cd /
# rm -rf *
ohhhhhhhh sh*t i hope those tapes are good

ya know it's kinda funny (in a perverse way) to watch the system just
slowly go away.

bill pociengel
--
llbi locgeenpi " i'm a little confused right now"
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,alt.sources.wanted
From: pac@rucs.faculty.cs.runet.edu (Michael Packer)
Subject: Accounting software for printing
Organization: Radford University
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:38:52 GMT


	I'm in need of some kind of accounting software that will allow
students to print to a printer only if they have "funds".  If they don't
have enough money to pay for the entire job it will not print and just
ignore their request for printing and let them know it was not printed.

any leads on possible places to look would be GREATLY appreciated!

this would be running on SunOS 4.1.1

thanks
pac@rucs.faculty.cs.runet.edu

PS: all of the other people that have already asked for "me too" i'll
post any and all leads i get to comp.unix.admin


thanks again!
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|Michael Packer           831 - 5978 |   pac@rucs.faculty.cs.runet.edu       |
|Radford University Computer Science |   System Administrator                |
|"The world goes in circles, don't just sit there for the ride"              |
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|Michael Packer           831 - 5978 |   pac@rucs.faculty.cs.runet.edu       |
|Radford University Computer Science |   System Administrator                |
|"The world goes in circles, don't just sit there for the ride"              |
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin