Most of these stories relate to administering interactive multi-user machines, not the kind of thing we now think of as a server. Users were simultaneously log

Most of these stories relate to administering interactive multi-user machines, not the kind of thing we now think of as a server. Users were simultaneously logged in at the shell going about their business in *nix, not sending stateless requests in to a server process. And you certainly couldn't afford to have a duplicate of a machine that expensive. The idea of multiple environments didn't really exist, and you mostly administered machines from within - hence many of the stories being about getting enough tools working again to straighten it out. You didn't have another machine (or perhaps the connectivity) to put the thing on the operating table from a working system. Things were different...