21 Nov
2017
21 Nov
'17
9:03 p.m.
Hi all,
An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gi…
It is for example discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313
It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past
twelve", as
in the ABBA song.
I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
immune from the easter egg:
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh
Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
one...
Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
21 Nov
21 Nov
10:47 p.m.
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi all,
An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-
man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030
It is for example discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313
It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past
twelve", as
in the ABBA song.
I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
immune from the easter egg:
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh
Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
one...
Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
I didn't discover this one, but came across documentation of it when
researching the 3b2. (http://ferretronix.com/tech/3b2/):
The AT&T 3b2 (System V R3.2)
lboot prompts you with “Enter path name:”
enter “magic mode”
lboot replies “POOF!” “A hollow voice says (directory)”
Instead of load-and-run, it loads the kernel
and then breakpoints before entering with the message
“You are standing inside of a large unexecuted /boot/KERNEL
The only exit you see is at 0x108000”
It's in the source code: (/usr/src/uts/3b2/boot/lboot/subr.c)
/*
* check for secret "magic mode" feature
*/
if (0 == strcmp(sp,"magic")) {
char *mp;
if ((mp=strtok((char*)NULL,"\r\n\t ")) == NULL || 0 !=
strcmp(mp,"mode"))
break;
MagicMode = TRUE;
printf("\nPOOF!");
if ((mp=strtok((char*)NULL,"\r\n\t ")) != NULL)
{
if (*mp == '/')
++mp;
strcat(strcpy(slash_boot,"/"), mp);
printf(" A hollow voice says \"%s\".",
slash_boot);
}
printf("\n");
continue;
}
-- Charles
11 p.m.
On Tue, 21 Nov 2017, Edouard KLEIN wrote:
Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional
settings where UNIX
first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
As a former developer and manager, I would be really pissed off if my
programmers wasted their time on writing useless frippery instead of
quality code, and I would certainly have a little chat with them...
Or is that just me?
And is some M$ malware still masquerading as easter eggs? Simple enough
to do: write it, wait for it to spread a bit, announce you've found a new
egg (but it may not work for everyone (and will now))...
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
11:07 p.m.
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi all,
An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-
man-print-gimme-gimme-gimme-at-0030
It is for example discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313
It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past
twelve", as
in the ABBA song.
I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
immune from the easter egg:
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh
Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
one...
Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
I remember back in the late 90's, the man page for syslogd had a section
about dealing with network attacks on syslogd servers; several approaches
described, the last one reading something like
....if all else fails, find a three for length of sucker rod* and have a
discussion with the user.
*Sucker rod: 3/4 threaded steel rod, used in oil drilling.
It looks like someone edited it out of the man pages since then.
-- Charles
11:30 p.m.
man woman
make love
cat "tin of catfood"
the first two were easter eggs. the last one was just assonance from
"cannot open" error message.
I think they were always tolerated.
But.. then not. The ADA compiler verification committee made York take
"congratulations, you have just invoked the most abstruse element of
the ADA specification"
out of the compiler messages section: it was tickling the test harness
and didn't meet compliance (or so I was told)
On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 7:07 AM, Charles Anthony
<charles.unix.pro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hi all,
An easter-egg in the version of man that is installed on the most popular
Linux distros has recently been discovered after being there for 6 years:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man-print-gimme-gi…
It is for example discussed here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747313
It makes man print 'gimme gimme gimme' if called at "Half past
twelve", as
in the ABBA song.
I check on BSD, but man seems to be a shell script on FreeBSD, so it's
immune from the easter egg:
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/usr.bin/man/man.sh
Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some in, or discovering
one...
Was this kind of humor tolerated in the professional settings where UNIX
first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
I remember back in the late 90's, the man page for syslogd had a section
about dealing with network attacks on syslogd servers; several approaches
described, the last one reading something like
....if all else fails, find a three for length of
sucker rod* and have a
discussion with the user.
*Sucker rod: 3/4 threaded steel rod, used in oil drilling.
It looks like someone edited it out of the man pages since then.
-- Charles
22 Nov
22 Nov
12:51 a.m.
On Wed, 22 Nov 2017, George Michaelson wrote:
man woman
make love
cat "tin of catfood"
the first two were easter eggs. the last one was just assonance from
"cannot open" error message.
Never saw the easter egg, but "man woman" on FreeBSD/Mac/Penguin says "No
manual entry for woman" which I guess will have to do...
(Well, someone had to try it, so it may as well be me.)
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."
23 Nov
23 Nov
10:39 p.m.
On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 8:51 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
On Wed, 22 Nov 2017, George Michaelson wrote:
man woman
make love
cat "tin of catfood"
the first two were easter eggs. the last one was just assonance from
"cannot open" error message.
Never saw the easter egg, but "man woman" on FreeBSD/Mac/Penguin says "No
manual entry for woman" which I guess will have to do...
(Well, someone had to try it, so it may as well be me.)
--
Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer." 
7:17 p.m.
Years ago at BRL, we had a division chief that typed with only two fingers. One of my
coworkers modded the "stty" command to include "two-finger" in the
list of modes when that user ran it.
Of course, it was slightly laughable when he discovered it and found there was no way to
disable it.
The "make love" harkens back to TECO which would print "NOT WAR?"
Years ago, Milo Medin found that there was a "backdoor" password into the
Proteon routers that he discovered running "strings" on the binary. After
making a stink about it, Proteon removed (or just changed) the password. However, if
you ran strings on the binary, about the same place you'd have found the original
backdoor password was a string "Not so easy this time, eh Milo?"
9:22 p.m.
Hi Ron,
Years ago at BRL, we had a division chief that typed
with only two
fingers.
Being able to touch-type is a boon to the programmer, but I did work
with one old-timer used to writing and having someone else do the
punching.
When forced to use one of these fangled electronic keyboards, he would
sit and think for a while and then hunt-and-peck out up to a dozen
lines, no editing required, then resume thinking. I suppose it was the
equivalent of not having to rub out what he'd just written.
Ian Fleming, I think, being a hack first before a novelist, said
something about not starting to type a sentence until you know how it's
going to end. Typing-correction fluid was probably the start of the
slippery slope.
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
21 Nov
21 Nov
11:30 p.m.
On 21 November 2017 at 18:07, Charles Anthony <charles.unix.pro(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I remember back in the late 90's, the man page for syslogd had a section
about dealing with network attacks on syslogd servers; several approaches
described, the last one reading something like
....if all else fails, find a three for length of sucker rod* and have a
It's still in sysklogd, and the manpage is here:
https://linux.die.net/man/8/syslogd
-Henry
discussion with the user.
*Sucker rod: 3/4 threaded steel rod, used in oil drilling.
It looks like someone edited it out of the man pages since then.
22 Nov
22 Nov
8:48 a.m.
Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Do you have any UNIX easter-egg stories ? Putting some
in, or discovering
one...
I suspect that Easter Eggs are more common in Open Source / Free Software,
where people feel free to "play" on stuff they do for fun / as volunteers.
Try:
gawk --nostalgia
sometime. :-) For a long time setting WHINY_USER in the environment
caused gawk to loop over arrays in sorted index order. That's long gone,
now that it can be done under program control.
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:00:42 +1100 (EST)
From: Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)
I think that this is totally appropriate for code being developed
for a paid product.
Arnold
first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
As a former developer and manager, I would be really pissed off if my
programmers wasted their time on writing useless frippery instead of
quality code, and I would certainly have a little chat with them... 
9:50 a.m.
On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 01:48:30AM -0700, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Hmm... As a manager, I'd be more annoyed if the code did not perform
according to spec than I would be if single programmer spent half an
hour amusing themselves. Being pedantic about time is a surefire way of
demotivating a dev team.
No matter who pays (or not pays) for the code to be produced, the end
user, no matter it's clinical staff in a hospital or your uncle's son,
need to be guaranteed that the code doesn't trigger unexpected behaviour
when used. The risk of that is usually smaller if the product does not
contain any easter eggs.
--
Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri,
National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS),
Uppsala University, Sweden.
Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[cut]
Subject: Re:
[TUHS] A man easter-egg (gimme gimme gimme)
I think that this is totally appropriate for code being developed
for a paid product.
Arnold first circulated, or was it frowned upon ?
As a former developer and manager, I would be really pissed off if my
programmers wasted their time on writing useless frippery instead of
quality code, and I would certainly have a little chat with them... 
4 p.m.
On 2017-11-22 01:48, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Try:
gawk --nostalgia
~$ gawk --nostalgia
awk: bailing out near line 1
Aborted
Maybe it still needs a program?
--
Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
To reply privately _only_ on Usenet, fetch the TXT record for the domain.
4:11 p.m.
Ian Zimmerman <itz(a)very.loosely.org> wrote:
On 2017-11-22 01:48, arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
No, that was the joke. Early Unix awk used to say exactly that
message, on almost any problem, often followed by a core dump.
(I never claimed the easter egg was non-lame.)
Arnold
Try:
gawk --nostalgia
~$ gawk --nostalgia
awk: bailing out near line 1
Aborted
Maybe it still needs a program?
2346
days inactive
2348
days old
13 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Charles Anthony -
Dave Horsfall -
Edouard KLEIN -
George Michaelson -
Henry Bent -
Ian Zimmerman -
Ralph Corderoy -
Ron Natalie