8 ms·
One of my favorites is the warning you get if you enter the shell of an Oracle ZFS storage appliance: +------------------------------------------------------
by dmd 5y ago
One of my favorites is the warning you get if you enter the shell of an Oracle ZFS storage appliance:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| You are entering the operating system shell. By confirming this action in |
| the appliance shell you have agreed that THIS ACTION MAY VOID ANY SUPPORT |
| AGREEMENT. If you do not agree to this -- or do not otherwise understand |
| what you are doing -- you should type "exit" at the shell prompt. EVERY |
| COMMAND THAT YOU EXECUTE HERE IS AUDITED, and support personnel may use |
| this audit trail to substantiate invalidating your support contract. The |
| operating system shell is NOT a supported mechanism for managing this |
| appliance, and COMMANDS EXECUTED HERE MAY DO IRREPARABLE HARM. |
| |
| NOTHING SHOULD BE ATTEMPTED HERE BY UNTRAINED SUPPORT PERSONNEL UNDER ANY |
| CIRCUMSTANCES. This appliance is a non-traditional operating system |
| environment, and expertise in a traditional operating system environment |
| in NO WAY constitutes training for supporting this appliance. THOSE WITH |
| EXPERTISE IN OTHER SYSTEMS -- HOWEVER SUPERFICIALLY SIMILAR -- ARE MORE |
| LIKELY TO MISTAKENLY EXECUTE OPERATIONS HERE THAT WILL DO IRREPARABLE |
| HARM. Unless you have been explicitly trained on supporting this |
| appliance via the operating system shell, you should immediately return |
| to the appliance shell. |
| |
| Type "exit" now to return to the appliance shell. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
I like how it explicitly says "no, seriously, Mister Unix Wizard, we mean YOU."
- duxup 5y ago>"no, seriously, Mister Unix Wizard, we mean YOU." That makes sense as they're the folks who will get in trouble. Rando person probably turns back at this point "nope this isn't what I wanted". Guy who thinks he knows better is the one who keeps going and freaks out when it hits the fan.
- Gaelan 5y ago+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | You are entering the operating system shell. By confirming this action in | | the appliance shell you have agreed that THIS ACTION MAY VOID ANY SUPPORT | | AGREEMENT. If you do not agree to this -- or do not otherwise understand | | what you are doing -- you should type "exit" at the shell prompt. EVERY | | COMMAND THAT YOU EXECUTE HERE IS AUDITED, and support personnel may use | | this audit trail to substantiate invalidating your support contract. The | | operating system shell is NOT a supported mechanism for managing this | | appliance, and COMMANDS EXECUTED HERE MAY DO IRREPARABLE HARM. | | | | NOTHING SHOULD BE ATTEMPTED HERE BY UNTRAINED SUPPORT PERSONNEL UNDER ANY | | CIRCUMSTANCES. This appliance is a non-traditional operating system | | environment, and expertise in a traditional operating system environment | | in NO WAY constitutes training for supporting this appliance. THOSE WITH | | EXPERTISE IN OTHER SYSTEMS -- HOWEVER SUPERFICIALLY SIMILAR -- ARE MORE | | LIKELY TO MISTAKENLY EXECUTE OPERATIONS HERE THAT WILL DO IRREPARABLE | | HARM. Unless you have been explicitly trained on supporting this | | appliance via the operating system shell, you should immediately return | | to the appliance shell. | | | | Type "exit" now to return to the appliance shell. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Cleaned up formatting
- dang 5y agoThanks! I've ported that edit to the GP - it just requires adding two spaces to the start of each line (see https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc).
- tsomctl 5y agoThat feels like an additional sentence was added every time someone screwed up their machine and called support.
- Veliladon 5y agoYou know what they say. Regulations are written in blood.
- FabHK 5y agoWell, in aviation. Not so sure for software engineering.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 5y agoThe 737 Max attempted pioneering work in this area.
- Veliladon 5y agoWhat do you mean attempted? Boeing successfully slaughtered 346 people with their negligence.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoAnd they didn't even get any new regulations written that I've seen. The hand wheels for the horizontal stabilizer trim became too hard for average pilots to physically operate if the aircraft is going too fast and out of trim far enough (even without being outside the safe operating envelope). There was no regulation limiting how much force the trim wheels can need while within the operating envelope. AFAIK, there's still no such regulation. So the "fixed" 737 Max models didn't change the hand wheels, meaning the physical backup in case of a trim runaway might not actually be usable. Yet they certified it without changes, because there's no regulation saying that the safety backup wheels have to be physically usable by average pilots in the event the primary powered system fails!
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoWhy include the shell then? Just curious.
- dmd 5y agoIt's really for Oracle techs to use, I guess? Dell Compellent has a similar thing. Theirs is hidden behind the super seekrit password "SuPpOrt"...
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoThat's a very...secure password!
- colechristensen 5y agoIt really should be applauded, you own this thing and can fully control it, but that means you can do things with it we can’t save you from and will refuse to even try. No need for a “security” team to lock away access from you, a very stern warning will do.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoGot it, thanks!
- duxup 5y agoDebugging maybe? When I worked support for networking equipment every device had potentially multiple shells or APIs hidden that allowed you to do stuff that really only the engineers who made the thing should do / direct someone to do it. I often walked trustworthy customers through using them as they knew if they did it then it was on them.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoReasonable, someone gets to use it.
- cryptonector 5y ago
- hexo 5y agoThat is so arrogant (from oracle) it should be illegal.
- zhengyi13 5y agoTell me you've never worked in support without telling me you've never worked in support.
- IncRnd 5y agoAH, now we see who cavorted inside the shell.
- bcantrill 5y agoIn this case, the message in question was written at Sun -- by someone who would turn out to be one of Oracle's biggest critics.
- cryptonector 5y agoI wonder who that might be! :) EDIT: Ah, I see you claimed authorship in a comment below.
- 0xFFFE 5y agoYou would have added some expletives too if you had worked as a support engineer.
- robmusial 5y agoThis place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- elaus 5y agoI think there's a lot to learn from this message, even in your daily communication with people from other fields of exertise. It's very clear and communicates without any technical terms – if only all error/warning messages were a bit (!) like that. For reference, the message parent quoted is a Long-time nuclear waste warning message: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warnin...
- earthboundkid 5y agoI dunno, I TL;DR'd in the middle. Seems like it's dangerous maybe? Whatever, can't be that bad.
- amacbride 5y ago“You’ll soon be glowing with health!”
- selestify 5y agoI've seen commentary before that this messaging could actually backfire, if you imagine intrepid explorers seeing this message and thinking there must be some great ethereal power located inside, ready to be unleashed with the right set of rituals.
- bcantrill 5y agoWow, that brings back memories! I wrote this message, and it was a direct result of some very bad experiences from some people who thought they knew what they were doing -- but in fact had no idea. I don't know how well this message worked, but it warms my heart to see it again; thank you!
- dmd 5y agoHoly shit! THIS is why I come to HN. I really really want an Oxide. Sadly it doesn't solve any problem we have, but ... man, so cool. Great work.
- spectra72 5y agoI had to read that multiple times to prove to myself that the text didn't literall call out "Unix Wizards". After 10+ years of doing qa on the ZFS appliance I completely ignored the warning and you could have slipped anything past me in the text.