21 Nov
2017
21 Nov
'17
11:47 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