On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Edouard KLEIN <edouardklein@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:


It is for example discussed here:

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:

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