🚀 go-pugleaf

Everybody knows the stories about squirrels bringing computer systems
down by biting the cables. 
My cat took a different approach ...

One day I was working at home, using a modem connection, doing some
system management. I logged in as super user, and started working. I
used a Hewlett-Packard HP2382 terminal. My shell was the C-shell,
which had its prompt set to "root> " (it usually showed the user's
name since we 'su' a lot).
For some reason I cd-ed to "/bin" and was copying some files when my
cat walked towards the keyboard and pressed the "Enter" key.
If you don't know what HP's Enter key does: it sends the contents of
the current line on the screen to the remote system.
Well, my screen looked something like

   root> cp somefile

when Enter was hit, so the remote system suddenly got the input

   cp somefileroot> cp somefile

Of course it started complaining about 'somefileroot' it could not
find, and I was relieved nothing seriously happened.

Some time later I noticed a file which I was sure I had moved to
another location. I mv-ed it once again, and to my astonishment it
would not disappear. And then it became clear to me that the
unexpected input had caused the C-shell to create a file "cp" (by
ouput redirection), and since I was in /bin, it had overwritten
/bin/cp. And since cp, mv and ln are all linked together, I couldn't
copy, move or link anymore.

I had no other choice than to kill cron, and drive to the office to
restore the programs from a backup tape.

My definition of a home computer: one that ignores input from pets.

Johan
--
Johan Vromans				       j...@mh.nl via internet backbones
Multihouse Automatisering bv		       uucp: ..!{uunet,hp4nl}!mh.nl!jv
Doesburgweg 7, 2803 PL Gouda, The Netherlands  phone/fax: +31 1820 62944/62500
------------------------ "Arms are made for hugging" -------------------------