Unix horror stories

[Steven W. Orr]

On Tuesday, Aug 29th 2006 at 15:12 -0400, quoth Tom Buskey:

=>On 8/29/06, Randy Edwards <redwards at golgotha.net> wrote:
=>> 
=>> > It's interesting that most of these horror stories are older.  I don't
=>> see
=>> > many that mention Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, (newer) Solaris,
=>> > etc. Are system less error prone? Are sysadmins and users making fewer
=>> > errors? Are people not sharing thier stories?
=>> 
=>>    A great series of questions!  Here's a theory I'll float...
=>> 
=>>    I think it's doubtful that admins are more trained (i.e. making fewer
=>> errors) than in years past.  Microsoft's dominance and the growth of *nix
=>> systems make that unlikely.
=>
=>
=>Answering my own question...
=>
=>I bet admins are more likely to have been exposed to Unix today.
=>
=>When those systems were out there (< '92ish) networks (and CD Roms) were
=>rare.  Most people grew up with DOS and didn't have multi user systems.
=>Multi user systems were expensive and propriatary: Novell, SCO, Vines, VMS,
=>Appleshare (well you could do appleshare mac to mac).
=>
=>If you wanted Unix at home, you probably bought SCO Xenix, Interactive Unix
=>or a branded unix (Dell Unix.  Really) for $1000 or more.  A 486 system
=>would run you $3k.  Maybe you played with Minix or Coherent.  386BSD was
=>being descibed in Dr. Dobbs.  Linux was just starting and not used in the
=>workplace.  Your network was probably a 2400 baud modem.

My first setup of SCO Opendesktop 1.0 for which I paid $1000 but I had to 
pay an extra $1500 for the dev package. The dev package was just a bunch 
of extra manuals that came with the include files and libraries. Total 
cost for My First Computer? $15,000 (That's right. Three zeros.) The modem 
started out as a Telebit Trailblazer running at 9600 (for $1000) which 
later got upgraded to a Worldblazer for an additional $1000 which made it 
run at 14,400. The cool thing about the Telebit stuff was that on the very 
rare occasion that there was a telebit on the other end, it would run the 
PEP protocol which survived ALL line noise including satellites and 
transoceanic copper.

=>
=>Most offices had PCs were not networked and had a dot matrix printer at each
=>one.
=>
=>"The internet" was something you used at college for email, FTP and maybe
=>telnet.

Internet? Ha! We had UUCP! And we LIKED it! Bang!

=>If you wanted information, you used the system manuals.  Maybe you had 'Unix
=>in a Nutshell' and "Unix Shell Programming".  You read Unix Review or PC
=>Magazine or InfoWorld.

System manuals? What manuals? We had *GURUS* back then. They just *knew* 
everything and it was usually because they had a masters paid for by Bell 
Labs. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot to read. One of the first 
books out was "Advanced Unix Programming by some idjut named Marc 
Rochkind. Much was finally revealed about IO (you know, read, write, open, 
close, dup and ioctl) but when he got to the section on System V 
semaphores, he gave us the big punt. ("I don't really understand this...") 
Things like O'Reilly didn't came until much later. The first really 
successful book to appear was Unix Network Programming by W. Rich Stevens. 
That single book was not only a wonderful book, but a catalyst for all 
other technical books. I'd have to say that O'Reilly was a child or 
grandchild of Stevens.


=>
=>
=>
=>> 
=>>    Mix in a declining job market, admins being busier than ever -- and I'd
=>> argue not really appreciated the way they were in years past -- and there
=>> could definitely be a problem with this type of feedback.
=>
=>
=>Sysadmins have never been appreciated.  But now, every engineer can setup a
=>network at home with a web server with no load on it and "disk is cheap".
=>

-- 
Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have  .0.
happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0
Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000
individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net