9 Mar
2021
9 Mar
'21
10:59 a.m.
On Saturday, 6 March 2021 at 14:03:02 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
On Sun, Mar 07, 2021 at 08:45:03AM +1100, Dave
Horsfall wrote:
> And that comment from FreeBSD's "tunefs" is still there:
>
> You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
>
> Funny; I could've sworn that it used to be "cannot tuna fish".
I checked the CSRG archive CDs. The line was added, as shown, in
4.2BSD:
--- ./4.1c.2/usr/man/man8/tunefs.8 1983-03-04 02:43:21.000000000 +1100
+++ ./4.2/usr/man/man8/tunefs.8 1983-07-27 18:21:46.000000000 +1000
@@ -4,7 +4,8 @@
@@ -66,3 +67,5 @@
Because the super-block is not kept in the buffer cache,
the program will only take effect if it is run on dismounted file systems.
(if run on the root file system, the system must be rebooted)
+.PP
+You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish.
I did a checkin at Sun that added
.\" Take this out and a Unix Daemon will dog your steps from now until
.\" the time_t's wrap around.
.LP
You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
And of course, the numbnuts that ran Solaris took it back out. Unless I'm
mistaken, I'm the dude that came up with the comment. I believe I spelled
daemon wrong but whatever, I found that snippet in the FreeBSD sources so
someone has a sense of humor and kept my comment.
Sadly, humour is no longer modern. A while back I updated the
documentation to gdb(4) in FreeBSD, and added under BUGS:
The debugging macros
.Dq "just growed" .
In general, the person who wrote them did so while looking for a specific
problem, so they may not be general enough, and they may behave badly when used
in ways for which they were not intended, even if those ways make sense.
And people took exception to "just growed" and converted it to "just
grown"! Not just a lack of humour, but also a lack of understanding
of literature and grammar. Somehow people take things too seriously
nowadays.
Greg
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