Category: Geekery

This happens on RedHat 7.3 – haven’t tried on something more recent.

Assume you have a machine where root can rsh to localhost (yeah, I know, but the machine isn’t on a network where there are any users, so it’s not as bad as it could be.)


rsh localhost "/etc/init.d/snmpd restart; echo 'DONE'"


will echo the “DONE” but never return unless you hit ^C twice.


rsh localhost "/etc/init.d/snmpd restart

works as expected.

Now take a script that does rsh'es to a bunch of machines and runs apt-get on them (as well as on the local machine) and does various configuration tasks on both the local and the other systems, including restarting services. See script run. Now, take the entire script, and
put a


{
} 2>&1 | tee -a /var/log/upgrade.log


around the whole thing, and suddenly it never finishes.

See Paul waste his whole day trying different variations, each time requiring 45 minutes to put all the machines back to the version 3.3 configuration, and at least 20 minutes for the script to run. Can you say “bored and frustrated”, ladies and gentlemen?

And to top it all off, there’s an AIRMET for icing all along the route to Ottawa, so I won’t be flying after all.

Phone call yesterday afternoon:

Him: “Paul, you know that computer you were sitting at down in the lab earlier?”
Me: “Yeah, what about it?”
Him: “I got a call from Corporate Security. Evidently it was pinging the corporate network.”
Me: “Yeah, I was looking for a machine connected to the network so I could read my email.”
Him: “Well, they want you to stop pinging.”
Me: “I did about 3 pings of relay.foo.com, and then when I saw it was connected, I telnetted to it.”
Him: “Well, I’m going to have to disconnect that machine from the network.”
Me: “DUDE! WTF?”

So I’m down in the lab again, doing this test that takes over an hour to run, and using a different computer to check my email. And this time I was careful to test its network connectivity by attempting a telnet, rather than using one of those evil nasty pings.

A few days ago the sysadmin at the National Capital Freenet emails me to ask if the news system relies on any files in the /, /usr or /var partitions, because he wants to upgrade to the latest and greatest Solaris and doesn’t want to blow anything of mine away. I said no, I don’t think so. Ok, he tells me, I’ll be doing that on Thursday.
Continue reading “I needed that like I needed a hole in my head”

Today I had to go over to the legal office to sign a patent application. Have I mentioned before how much I hate the very fact that software is patentable? And that I was relieved when our first patent application was rejected by the patent office?

Still, it would be an ego trip to get my name on a real patent.