Thread View: alt.folklore.computers
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Started by j... Johan Vromans
Sun, 18 Feb 1990 22:18
Cat bringing system down
Author: j... Johan Vromans
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1990 22:18
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1990 22:18
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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" -------------------------
Re: Cat bringing system down
Author: e... Eric P. Scott
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1990 21:18
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1990 21:18
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A few years back, when Hewlett-Packard was pushing touchscreens (HP 150?), I read a letter in one of the magazines from ... I've spaced it--it was somewhere in South America or Central America. Anyway, it complained that HP had obviously failed to test their equipment in non-US environments: in that part of the world, flies were ubiquitous, and they seemed to be attracted to glowing things, like areas of the screen labeled TOUCH HERE TO DELETE FILE and TOUCH HERE TO CONFIRM DELETION -=EPS=-
Re: Cat bringing system down
Author: m... Michael Sinz - CATS
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1990 12:28
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1990 12:28
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In article <JV.90Feb...@mhres.mh.nl> j...@mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes: >Everybody knows the stories about squirrels bringing computer systems >down by biting the cables. >My cat took a different approach ... [story deleted...] Well, my cat took yet another approach... It was back in the days of S-100 systems and funny machines that would use cassette tape as low-cost home storage devices. One of my systems had this "reset" button that was in the casework and made in such a way that you had to push it with your finger twice for it to really do the reset. It also had a CPU idle light in it... The cat liked to watch this but had never gone near it. However, one day, while working on some large program, the cat started to play with the button. Before I was able to stop it, it had double pushed the button and the system went down! I spent the next hour trying to recover the core and the source I was working on and just as I was saving it to cassette, the blasted cat did it again! I had to take the cat outside, lock the door, rebuild the core once again and save it. I then added a toggle switch to the back of the machine that would enable the reset button (simple stuff) and let the cat back in. While it continued to play with the button, it never again had the chance to reset the machine. /----------------------------------------------------------------------\ | /// Michael Sinz -- CATS/Amiga Software Engineer | | /// PHONE 215-431-9422 UUCP ( uunet | rutgers ) !cbmvax!mks | | /// | |\\\/// "I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes. | | \XX/ Just then, he vanished. | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/
Re: Cat bringing system down
Author: m... Michael Sinz - CATS
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1990 12:37
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1990 12:37
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In article <97...@cbmvax.commodore.com> m...@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (Michael Sinz - CATS) writes: >In article <JV.90Feb...@mhres.mh.nl> j...@mh.nl (Johan Vromans) writes: >>Everybody knows the stories about squirrels bringing computer systems >>down by biting the cables. >>My cat took a different approach ... > [story deleted...] > >Well, my cat took yet another approach... [story deleted...] Hehehe... I just noticed as I finished the newsgroup that my signature has CATS in it... But we don't try to bring down the system... :-) /----------------------------------------------------------------------\ | /// Michael Sinz -- CATS/Amiga Software Engineer | | /// PHONE 215-431-9422 UUCP ( uunet | rutgers ) !cbmvax!mks | | /// | |\\\/// When people are free to do as they please, | | \XX/ they usually imitate each other. | \----------------------------------------------------------------------/
Cats at work (was Re: Cat bringing system down)
Author: camp... Larry Campbell
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1990 02:07
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1990 02:07
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[this has nothing to do with computers, but everything to do with cats, so I've redirected this thread to rec.pets...] Roger Dean is a well known commercial artist who has done, among other things, many album covers for Yes. He likes to work with a large, horizontal canvas. He also has cats. One day he was working on a very important canvas, another Yes album cover. Cat owners know what's coming: he turned his back for a moment, and when he turned around he saw one of his cats walking calmly across the wet canvas. Fortunately, there were no weapons nearby. Even more fortunately, the cat has walked across the sky in the painting. Dean grabbed some cotton balls and some white paint and managed to turn the paw prints into clouds; the painting was salvaged and made it onto the album cover. And if you look closely at the sky on the cover of "Yessongs", you can clearly see cat prints in the clouds. (The most interesting part is that you can guess the size of the original canvas from the size of the paw prints. Either the cat was very small, or the canvas was huge.) -- Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. camp...@redsox.bsw.com 120 Fulton Street wjh12!redsox!campbell Boston, MA 02109
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