Fun_People Archive
3 Jan
Unix OS advances - /usr/stool

Date: Tue,  3 Jan 95 18:08:40 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Unix OS advances - /usr/stool

Forwarded-by: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: Daniel Carosone <danielce@ee.mu.oz.au>
From: Ronald O. Christian <roc@gasco.com>

Announcing a exciting new tool for data center management!

When was the last time you found a bazillion zero length files in /usr/tmp
and said to yourself "How did this crap get on my system?"

When was the last time you had to clean fifty megabytes of run-on puns out
of a user's news directory, and said to yourself, "What a load of crap"?

When was the last time you looked at a piece of mail and said to yourself
"This is the stupidist crap I've ever laid eyes on"?

Well, you're right, it is crap, and now you can do something about it.

Introducing the new Crap Detector daemon "crapd".

Crapd works similar to syslogd in monitoring system error messages,
but has the added function of removing offending files and utilities
from the system using complex heuristics to determine the file's "crap
quotient".  Sensitivity is settable anywhere from "merely inane" to
"gut-wrenching anal explosion" and can be set on a per-user basis.

Files that crapd has decided meets the above criteria are held in /usr/stool
for a user-settable period of time, and then flushed to /dev/dump.  Anything
crapd decides is true stinking diarrhea will be sent directly to /dev/dump
with no questions asked.

Crapd is especially useful for cleaning out mail spool directories, as
this has been proven to be one of the most prolific accumulators of crap
in the history of interactive computing.

There is, of course, a list of exceptions for crap you are required,
against your better judgement, to have on the system.  However, if
crapd decides the list is full of crap, it will be migrated to /usr/stool.

In scientific lab test, crapd has been shown to virtually eliminate
user distractions, increase system performance by 50% and reduce backup
volume by an order of magnitude.  Our customers report that capital equipment
expenditures have been reduced significantly now that they don't have to
keep disks spun up just to keep the crap warm.

As an added bonus, crapd will search through your process table and
kill off any processes that anyone who could grab their butt with both
hands wouldn't have launched during a billion year drinking binge.

Next year, a stealth option to the crap detector daemon will be available.
This option adds a new "virtual crap" feature to your file systems, which
causes files that have been flushed by crapd to appear to still be there.
In carefully controlled lab tests, we have found that users will happily
continue to append Dan Quayle jokes to a file for years without ever realizing
that the directory entry has been faked and the file no longer exists.

So, be productive, be pure, get the Crap Detector!

Warning:  Be sure to put Usenet News in the exceptions list, or crapd
is sure to unlink the news spool directory, shoot nntpd, and set fire
to your incoming news link.


Brought to you by Waste Products, Inc.

"If it's a Waste Product, you'll know it!"

© 1995 Peter Langston