krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (12/19/90)
You all may have already seen this before ... but it brightened my day considerably ... *and* it added just a little bit to my knowledge of Unix. == Dave From bahai-net-request@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Mon Dec 10 15:25:01 1990 Received: by bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU (5.61/25-eef) id AA04146; Mon, 10 Dec 90 14:49:49 EST Received: from MIT.MIT.EDU by bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU with SMTP (5.61/25-eef) id AA04138; Mon, 10 Dec 90 14:49:39 EST Received: from toxicwaste.media.mit.edu by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA16501; Mon, 10 Dec 90 14:49:33 EST From: jtidwell@MIT.EDU Received: by toxicwaste.media.mit.edu (5.61/4.7) id AA05045; Mon, 10 Dec 90 14:49:30 -0500 Message-Id: <9012101949.AA05045@toxicwaste.media.mit.edu> To: bahai-net@BLOOM-BEACON.MIT.EDU Subject: A bit of humor for you Unix hackers... Date: Mon, 10 Dec 90 14:49:27 EST Status: R Sorry for the quantity of header info. Keep reading patiently; the clincher is at the end of the third paragraph. :-) - Jenifer Tidwell jtidwell@adam.mit.edu ------- Forwarded Message Received: by ATHENA-PO-2.MIT.EDU (5.45/4.7) id AA05336; Mon, 10 Dec 90 12:13:53 EST Received: from TSX-11.MIT.EDU by ATHENA.MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA02291; Mon, 10 Dec 90 12:13:14 EST Received: by tsx-11.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA09694; Mon, 10 Dec 90 12:13:10 -0500 Date: Mon, 10 Dec 90 12:13:10 -0500 From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU> Message-Id: <9012101713.AA09694@tsx-11.MIT.EDU> To: sipb@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: [Mark Rosenstein: [stever@ai.mit.edu: [ian@ai.mit.edu: Computational Cosmology, and the Theology of Unix]]] Reply-To: tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Address: 308 High Street, Medford, MA 02155 Phone: (617) 395-0154 Amusing..... Date: Mon, 10 Dec 90 12:02:21 -0500 From: Mark Rosenstein <mar@MIT.EDU> Sender: mar@MIT.EDU To: watchmakers@MIT.EDU Subject: [stever@ai.mit.edu: [ian@ai.mit.edu: Computational Cosmology, and the Theology of Unix]] Return-Path: <mmdf@lcs.mit.edu> From: "Ian D. Horswill" <ian@ai.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 7 Dec 90 12:48:50 EST To: phila@cogs.sussex.ac.uk Cc: unix-haters@mc.lcs.mit.edu, ian@ai.mit.edu In-Reply-To: Phil Agre's message of Fri, 7 Dec 90 15:36:43 GMT <16104.9012071536@rsunp.cogs.susx.ac.uk> Subject: Computational Cosmology, and the Theology of Unix For what it's worth, that doesn't sound like a binmail bug. It sounds like you people are not running binmail on the file server and also have not enabled network root access. It works like this. Sun has this spiffy network file system. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any real theory of access control. This is partly because unix doesn't have one either. It has two levels: mortal and God. God (i.e. root) can do anything. The problem is that networks make things polytheistic: Should my workstation's God be able to turn your workstation into a pillar of salt? Well gee, that depends on whether my God and your God are on good terms or maybe are really just the SAME God. This is a deep and important theological question which has puzzled humankind for millenia. The Sun kernel has a user-patchable cosmology. It contains a polytheism bit called "nobody". When network file requests come in from root (i.e. God), it maps them to be requests from the value of the kernel variable "nobody" which as distributed is set to -1 which by convention corresponds to no user whatsoever, rather than to 0, the binary representation of God (*). The default corresponds to a basically Greek pantheon in which there are many Gods and they're all trying to screw each other (both literally and figuratively in the Greek case). However, by using adb(1) to set the kernel variable "nobody" to 0 in the divine boot image, you can move to a Ba'hai cosmology in which all Gods are really manifestations of the One Root God, Zero, thus inventing monotheism. Thus when the manifestation of the divine spirit, binmail, attempts to create a mailbox on a remote server on a monotheistic unix, it will be able to invoke the divine change-owner command so as to make it profane enough for you to touch it without spontaneously combusting and having your eternal soul damned to hell. On a polytheistic unix, the divine binmail isn't divine so your mail file gets created by "nobody" and when binmail invokes the divine change-owner command, it is returned an error code which it forgets to check, knowing that it is in fact, infallible. So, patch the kernel on the file server or run sendmail on the server. - -ian (*) That God has a binary representation is just another clear indication that Unix is extremely cabilistic and was probably written by disciples of Alestair Crowley. ------- End of Forwarded Message