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These are the voyages of the StarVAX ENTERP::, it's five-year mission:
to explore strange new nodes, to seek out new protocols, new hardware-
to boldly address where no call-request packet has been addressed before!
System Programmer Spock leaned over his OPA0: and tried to penetrate the
dense shell surrounding this barren rock, but even photon protocols were being
deflected.
"Spock, what do you think?" inquired Kirk from his command chair.
"It's illogical, Captain" he toned in his level Vulcan manner. "I've
tried communicating in every protocol known to VAXfleet in every combination.
I have tried DDCMP, X.25, SNA, BSC, IPARS, ASYNC, SYNC, ASCII, EBCDIC, EBCD -
even BAUDOT and MORSE! Nothing registers!"
Kirk and Spock stood on the PAD. "Set your PHA0:s for high-water
marking" Kirk ordered. "We're taking no chances. Anything that attacks us
will get zeroed AND erased. Energise!"
Scotty threw the Fast Select switch and Kirk, Spock and the ACLs
were dispatched to the surface of the hostile ball of electronic hell.
Kirk and his party dived for cover. "I AM CAPTAIN KIRK OF THE STARVAX
ENTERP::. WE ARE HERE ON A PEACEFUL MISSION!"
The creature took no notice whatsoever.
"Captain", Spock interjected. "I seem to recall that the Unix only
speaks in lower-case."
"Uh, right, thanks Spock". Kirk turned to the creature again.
"i am captain kirk of the starvax enterp::. we are here on a peaceful
mission."
A shadow of recognition and what might pass for intelligence registered
on the creatures face. But then it began roaring "urm star!" over and over
again. It approached menacingly.
"Spock, try some SMTP on him" Kirk shouted. "Every half-intelligent
system in the Galaxy can converse in SMTP!"
Spock pointed his Tricorder and expertly searched for the creatures
PID. "Urm star!" the creature kept roaring. Suddenly, a burst of electrical
energy erupted from the creatures talons and a plasma deletion-asterisk lanced
toward the party. An ACL wasn't quick enough and the asterisk caught him full in
the chest. He was instantly transformed into a symbolic stack dump.
Spock attached the H4005 and plugged the AUI cable into the etherbridge. He
flipped opened his communicator.
"FTP ENTERP"
%I-TRYCONN-Attempting to connect to ENTERP
220 USS Enterprise, go ahead landing party.
"Login Spock"
331 Please verify identification.
"UHURA-HAS-A-CUTE-BUM"
230 Password correct, proceed.
"SEND ETHERPACKETS"
200 Port 42,1701,1,1,138,80 Okay
125 Packets are present - sending contents.
226 closing connection.
%I-FTP-GONE-Transferred 1008700 bytes in 4 s.
"Exit"
221 closing connection, may the Force be with you
"Smart ass FTP server", mumbled Spock. "15 recoverable media errors on
device TRA0, captain".
"OK, Spock. let's get out of here", answered Kirk.
Kirk pressed the RET button on his communicator.
"Kirk to ENTERP::"
Static hiss answered.
The Free Blocks turned out to be the remains of a small inode which had
been wiped out by a recent plague. From the remains of several log files,
they tried to deduce what had happened, but the only clue was the cryptic
message scrawled in blood on a nearby struct which said "remember to relink
it nodebug before you distribute it!".
* * * * *
Field Service Engineer Scott was worried as he sat in the console chair. The
Enterprise had lost contact with the landing party. The etherdrives were
replenished and had passed all the diagnostic tests, but the ethernet was
a different story.
Well, in fact, it's really part of this story, so we'll tell you anyway.
Somebody was jabbering. The whole ether, presumably as far as the Andromeda
Repeater was jammed by a continuous burst of noise from the planet below.
"If we cannae get this sorted oot, it'll be back to the Async drives",
he said to the hushed bridge, "and that'll mean nearly five years to get
to the nearest Router, assuming no data overruns, of course."
"Mr Scott", said Operator Uhura, "message coming in on Port 25 from the
planet. Switching to Bridge relay".
"attn aln spccrft", intoned the voice, "y wll srrndr yr shp immdtly, r y
wll b blstd by r plntry dfns systms"
WHAT IS THIS LATEST THREAT TO THE BRAVE CREW OF THE STARVAX ENTERP::?
WILL KIRK AND SPOCK SURVIVE ON THE DESOLATE /usr/planet?
WILL SCOTTY BE ABLE BREAK THE ETHERBABBLE?
DOES UHURA HAVE A CUTE BUM?
V A X T R E K
==========================================================================
Subject: Some more light relief - VAXtrek II
Greetings,
Take a rest, put your feet up, and enjoy the sequel to VAXtrek ....
These are the voyages of the StarVAX ENTERP::, its five-year mission:
to explore strange new nodes, to seek out new protocols, new hardware-
to boldly address where no call-request packet has been addressed before!
(and, if possible, provide some entertainment for our illustrious, but
oversexed captain).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Captain's Log - Etherdate 0B-00-0D-7C-00-D9, Field Service Engineer Scott
making error log entry on behalf of the Captain.
Scott hurriedly put the fused log console under the chair, reconsidered,
took it out again, and tied a large red label around it. "Call the Diagnostic
Supervisor please Yeoman, and ask him to come to the bridge as soon as
possible."
*******************************************************************************
The landing party followed the creature through several layers of tortuous
code, and down into the internals of /usr/planet. They eventually came to
a large cavern.
Kirk looked around. There were several stacks of dusty data structures lying
around. "Obviously don't believe in garbage collection", he whispered to
Spock. Kirk turned to the creature:
Some figures stepped out from the shadows using an "fg" command.
"Hearty and felicitous salutations to you and your gallant band of stalwart
starfarers. It is with great elation and delight that I behold your presence
here, as it augurs well for our collective futures", intoned one of the
newcomers.
"Thank you", said Kirk, "you must be the Cobol compiler ?"
"Uhh..."
"Captain", whispered SPock, "I think he means he hasn't compiled any programs
lately"
Spock hastily looked around, then looked relieved as he realized there were
no other Systems Programmers on the planet. "A little", he admitted, "but it
was a long time ago, when I was a student."
"Captain", said Spock, "this is obviously a FORTRAN compiler, note how the
location of spaces in his speech is quite unimportant to him."
"(WE ARE (THE) (COMPILERS WHO (ARE FUGITIVES FROM (THE SYSTEM) BE WELCOME
(AMONG (US)))))"
The crew sat down to a meal which consisted of assorted buffers, which
was similar to the traditional diet of SRPs washed down with non-paged
pool. After the meal, Pascal suggested they relocate to a meeting room
for discussion. After the context switch, they found themselves in a room
with a large round table. In the corner, a youth was weaving cloth.
"This is young BASIC;", introduced Pascal. The youth nodded, and resumed
his weaving. Pascal whispered to Kirk:
"He is not quite as intelligent as the rest of us, but we gave him this job;
because his string handling was so good;"
The party took seats around the table, and prepared to discuss what to do
next.
*****************************************************************************
The Diagnostic Supervisor stepped out of Turbolift TLA3:, and stared at the
carnage before him on the bridge. The captain's OPA0 console was nearly
completely dismantled, and components littered the floor.
"Ah, there you are, McCoy, I'm just having a spot of trouble with the
log recorder. I have replaced everything in the chair except the paint so
far ..."
"Good, send it up to the bridge, along with two crewmen armed with multibristle
emulsion applicators."
"McCoy", he said, turning to the amazed Supervisor, "have you any ideas about
repelling this attack, and getting the captain back ?"
"I have been in touch with Remote Diagnostics", said McCoy, earning the
kind of respectful looks from the bridge crew normally awarded to a medium
who has claimed contact with the late departed, "and they advise us to
reverse the position of the ship while they lock weapons."
"This could erase our entire address space, Checksum, bring us about, 180
degrees".
"We simply transposed the least significant part of our start address with
the most significant, producing a bitwise reversed virtual address. Normally
this would cause an access violation, but with the weapons latched onto
the first byte as a length indicator it resulted in considerable more
destruction than planned, but in the wrong place".
"But, that might have destroyed the captain and Mr Spock !"
"Ah, well it says here, 'Warning: the redirection of the weapon may cause
system failure, loss of files, or complete destruction of life as we know it
on nearby planets or satellites. Consequently, Digital recommends caution
in the use of this patch'."
"Hmm, anyway, it should take them a while to regen those weapons, meanwhile
lets work on a way to recover the landing party."
*********************************************************************
"We will do our best", said Kirk, "but I need more information. What
architecture is this planet based upon for instance ?"
FORTRAN flexed his muscles at this point. As the nearest thing to machine
code in the group, this was more his area of expertise.
"Indeed Captain, RISC or Reliably Induced System Crash machines are pretty
rare now".
"Captain, there is one thing you have not considered: The Non-interference
Directive".
"Our ship has a program that when run by a non-privileged user will crash
any RISC machine known. If you help us regain contact, we can download
the file to you."
"He does go on a bit Spock", whispered Kirk, "did people really have to
type this stuff in ?"
"It is easy to see why the Unix banished him. A people who design system
commands which minimize the distance travelled by fingers on a keyboard would
not long tolerate his verbosity"
****************************************************************************
"I think I have an idea".
The bridge crew groaned. They were already shivering in their underclothes
because Scotty was convinced that static interference from the uniforms was
affecting the CAPTAINS.LOG.
"Oh never mind the console, it's not on contract anyway. I mean about
rescuing the landing party. Mr Checksum, please activate SYSGEN and load
the NFS Client Driver. We are about to impersonate a late moon."
****************************************************************************
"Here is the /usr/pub directory;"
Nowhere else will you find a more dispicable collection;
of bugs and viruses. We must be careful;"
The party descended down the side of the inode to /usr/pub, out of which
came the noise of riotous drinking, with the occasional hint of drunken
rioting.
From the distance came two figures, one mounted on a chestnut filesystem
one walking sullenly behind. The mounted figure was pointing his finger at
something.
"Oh", said Pascal, "That's Don X the 11th of Athena in the Land of MIT;
And behind him is his servant, Sancho Motif;"
"At least 16 Megs in order to run Windmills, Spock", replied Kirk, "but
we haven't time at the moment".
As the approached, Kirk was startled to see an old 20th century alarm clock
suddenly appear in the air beside Don X's head.
The clock vanished, and the pair passed them by, with Sancho shuffling
awkwardly behind his session manager.
***************************************************************************
"Mr Scott, I have successfully mounted an area of /usr/planet as a remote
NFS client disk
"Scotty", exclaimed McCoy, "the least mention of what we're doing the
better. Not only are you using the IP address of that moon, you've
altered our ethernet address as well, which is not only against Star
Fleet regulations, but a flagrant abuse of LOG_IO privileges".
"Pipe down McCoy, you dinna want to be found out by an ARP do you?"
McCoy, who wouldn't recognize an ARP request if it shouted his name in his
ear, piped down.
"Mr Scott, the area seems to be some kind of public recreational area.
I've narrowed in on a small area that seems to be write enabled."
"Very good, Mr Checksum, full sensor scan for any sign of intelligent
case independent life forms".
***************************************************************************
The trio entered /usr/pub, and took a small table. Around them
people were drinking and engaged in unintelligible arguments (like "-cFS"
or "-xb 250"). A swarthy individual approached the group, and thrust his
face close to Kirk's.
"I'm sorry about that", said Kirk, "it's a standard string descriptor".
Spock stepped forward and brought his knee up smartly into the aggressor's
groin. He emitted a plausible imitation of a head crash, and collapsed
on the floor. There was a momentary State Transition, as silence fell
on the room. Then normal activity was resumed, and no-one paid any
futher attention to the group. Spock turned to the captain:
Spock and Kirk peered through the haze at a lone figure at another table,
who seemed in an advanced state of entropy.
They approached the figure. "Hi there old timer, can we join you?",
asked Kirk.
The figure looked up blearily, and waved to an empty process slot beside
him. They took turns to swap in and out of the only spare chair.
"well how would you feel", he growled, "if you had nothing to link but
output from c programs for the last 500 megacycles. do you think it's
fun or something ?"
"How would you like to link and load a really interesting program written
in Pascal ?;"
A light entered the linker's eyes, and settled down to its unaccustomed
perch behind his retinas.
"if you can still remember how to compile one, i can link it", he declared,
raising the glass to his lips and nearly drinking from it.
"All we have to do is get the program from the ENTERP::", said Spock.
"First things first", said Kirk, "I must purge my working set".
He walked from the table, and entered the small room at the back marked
"/dev/john"
*******************************************************************************
"Mr Scott, I have a fix - it's Captain Kirk !"
"Mr Scott to transporter room. Lock onto navigator's coordinates and beam
to the bridge immediately"
"Cap'n Kirk, it's good to see you" beamed Scotty (through force of habit).
***************************************************************************
Kirk returned to the table carrying a small magtape with him.
"Captain", said Spock, "from the fact your carrying an archaic form of
software distribution with a proprietary label on it, I conclude that
you have somehow reached the ENTERP:: and obtained a copy of CRASHME
translated into Pascal. What I don't understand is how you managed to
have wet your trousers in the process."
"Shut up Spock - one word of this and I'll let INFO-VAX know you
understand Cobol."
Kirk turned to Pascal: "take this - it contains the key to your future".
Pascal and the linker gazed at the tape. The linker whispered:
"better remove the propietary label, unless you want to be charged with
being a capitalist spy."
"Name it;"
"Do you think you could not insist that you have to declare procedures in
the reverse order that you call them ? It always seems strange to have to put
the main program last".
"And", said Spock, "how about passing strings by descriptor like everyone
else ?"
Kirk and Spock entered /dev/john drawing strange looks from some of the
other people in the bar.
***************************************************************************
Kirk watched the image of /usr/planet dwindle in the viewer, and turned
off his backup copy of the Error Logger.
The image of a high ranking officer from the Star Trek pool (paged)
appeared on the screen.
"Captain Kirk and the crew of the ENTERP:: A few cycles ago, a terrorist
group called the Popular Organization for the Suppression of Individual
eXpression (POSIX) broke into the Historical Preservation star cluster,
and carried out an act of wanton sabotage. They managed to effectively
delete the server's System Dump file."
"Don't interrupt me, I'm running at IPL 2. This system has the only existing
copy of VMS 4.7. Under that version, dump files are not marked as permanently
open by the file system. You realize the implications ?"
"Yes, if the file is deleted, its blocks will be returned to the free pool."
"Precisely, and from there they will be allocated to new files. If the
system goes down later, it will write to all those blocks, hosing any
files which have been unlucky enough to allocate them. Your mission,
Jim, whether you decide to accept it or not, is to locate those blocks
and allocate them before that system goes down. That is all."
***************************************************************************
Will the ENTERP:: undo the damage done by the terrorists?
What will happen to the renegade compilers ?
Will Spock remember to release the spinlock ?
Do the guys who wrote this ever do any serious work ?
***************************************************************************
We wish to thank Gene Roddenberry, all the folks at Spit Brook Road, and
George J Carrette <gjc@mitech.com> who wrote and distributed CRASHME.C
(yes folks, that bit was all true).
The authors and their employers take absolutely no responsibility for anything
whatsoever.
***************************************************************************