Crashing the system by editing a file
-------------------------------------
This happened again on the ICL 4130 running KOS.
I was doing research on software portability, in which I had been
interested for some time. I had obtained a portable editor from a postgraduate at the University of Essex, and had implemented it on KOS. It worked in very limited memory (essential on KOS) but had advanced looping
and decision constructs which made it very powerful. A select group of
people (including me, of course) used it a lot.
KOS was simply a layer on top of the manufacturer's operating system; as such, it had to deal with unexpected error returns from the system. I general, these did not happen very much at all. For development purposes
(and KOS was being developed continually), any unexpected error would
cause KOS to stop scheduling its timeshared users, print the message
LOGICAL ERROR on the operator's console, and pause for operator input. A simple command would allow it to continue, but of course the error had to
be investigated first.
My portable editor just occasionally caused a logical error. I tried my
best but could never find the fault. Then, one morning, I managed to cause four logical errors within a few minutes. The system manager wasn't happy, and he printed an octal dump of the entire KOS slave (we would call it a virtual machine these days). This was on 11 inch by 8 inch paper, quite
thin, and a pile about a foot thick. He dumped it on my desk, with the
order "Fix it!"
I took the pile back to my college study bedroom, and left it on the floor for several days. On the Saturday evening, I and several other postgrads gathered in the college bar, and I had quite a lot to drink. At closing
time, I staggered back to my room, not at all sleepy. I assume I said to myself, no doubt in a slurred voice: "Ah, fix the editor!"
Apparently, I did so. I have no more recollection of that night, but I
woke up the next morning to find paper all over the floor. On the top
sheet was written "Uninitialised variable in fourth word of VFILE control block". And so it was.
On Fri, 8 Mar 2024, Bob Eager wrote:
Crashing the system by editing a file
-------------------------------------
This happened again on the ICL 4130 running KOS.
I was doing research on software portability, in which I had been
interested for some time. I had obtained a portable editor from a
postgraduate at the University of Essex, and had implemented it on KOS.
It worked in very limited memory (essential on KOS) but had advanced
looping and decision constructs which made it very powerful. A select
group of people (including me, of course) used it a lot.
KOS was simply a layer on top of the manufacturer's operating system;
as such, it had to deal with unexpected error returns from the system.
I general, these did not happen very much at all. For development
purposes (and KOS was being developed continually), any unexpected
error would cause KOS to stop scheduling its timeshared users, print
the message LOGICAL ERROR on the operator's console, and pause for
operator input. A simple command would allow it to continue, but of
course the error had to be investigated first.
My portable editor just occasionally caused a logical error. I tried my
best but could never find the fault. Then, one morning, I managed to
cause four logical errors within a few minutes. The system manager
wasn't happy,
and he printed an octal dump of the entire KOS slave (we would call it
a virtual machine these days). This was on 11 inch by 8 inch paper,
quite thin, and a pile about a foot thick. He dumped it on my desk,
with the order "Fix it!"
I took the pile back to my college study bedroom, and left it on the
floor for several days. On the Saturday evening, I and several other
postgrads gathered in the college bar, and I had quite a lot to drink.
At closing time, I staggered back to my room, not at all sleepy. I
assume I said to myself, no doubt in a slurred voice: "Ah, fix the
editor!"
Apparently, I did so. I have no more recollection of that night, but I
woke up the next morning to find paper all over the floor. On the top
sheet was written "Uninitialised variable in fourth word of VFILE
control block". And so it was.
Thank you for sharing! =)
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that when
they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point where
they start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a
good stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)
At that point, I had no judgement!
On Fri, 8 Mar 2024, Bob Eager wrote:
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that when they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point where they start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a good stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)
That's the thing about hieroglyphics - they replace words that only
English speakers can understand with symbols that nobody can understand.
At least everyone is equal then...
On 2024-03-08, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
On Fri, 8 Mar 2024, Bob Eager wrote:
<story snipped>
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that
when they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point
where they start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a good stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)
I knew I had reached that point one night when I found myself staring at
a power switch with those O and | hieroglyphics, and seeing the | as a pinched-off pipe that stopped electrons from flowing, and the O as an
open pipe through which power could freely flow.
On 2024-03-08, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
On Fri, 8 Mar 2024, Bob Eager wrote:
<story snipped>
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that when
they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point where they
start to destroy more than they create. I always found that point a good
stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)
I knew I had reached that point one night when I found myself staring at
a power switch with those O and | hieroglyphics, and seeing the | as a pinched-off pipe that stopped electrons from flowing, and the O as an
open pipe through which power could freely flow.
That's the thing about hieroglyphics - they replace words that only
English speakers can understand with symbols that nobody can understand.
At least everyone is equal then...
On 2024-03-09, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
That's the thing about hieroglyphics - they replace words that only
English speakers can understand with symbols that nobody can understand.
At least everyone is equal then...
I mean, I guess... but I think there are still uses for the
"hieroglyphics". Take road signs in Europe; they are largely symbolic. Putting them in text would be pretty impractical, as someone who drove
in from another country with a different language (and there are of
course _many_ of those in Europe) would likely not be able to understand them.
There are some differences in the symbols from country to country,
but by and large they are standardized, and everyone learns them
when learning to drive.
On Sat, 09 Mar 2024 17:39:19 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2024-03-08, D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
On Fri, 8 Mar 2024, Bob Eager wrote:
<story snipped>
I never had an experience like that, but I do warn my students that
when they are up late happily hacking away, they will reach a point
where they start to destroy more than they create. I always found that
point a good stopping point for the late evening hacking session. ;)
I knew I had reached that point one night when I found myself staring at
a power switch with those O and | hieroglyphics, and seeing the | as a
pinched-off pipe that stopped electrons from flowing, and the O as an
open pipe through which power could freely flow.
Nice.
Mine was a Monday morning that I should almost certainly have taken off. I'd spent the entire weekend from Friday night to Monday morning at a biker's party (at one point I'd driven somebody's Triumph through a bonfire at his invitation) and was just a touch jaded while trying to pretend to work. From somewhere an errant thought invaded my mind that all this electronics and logic was just a smokescreen and really those little black plastic packages contained (mostly) tamed daemons that sometimes just did whatever they felt like.
The entire day was spent fighting bizarre bugs and failures in
things that had been working perfectly for months.
It was all due to fatigue etc. ... wasn't it ?
I like that one. And let me guess - they breathe magic smoke, which is
why a machine stops working when you let the smoke out. :-)
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