Op my eerste werk uit van die kollege in 1991, Ek was gelukkig om te werk vir 'n produksie met 13 plekke, not including its corporate HQ in New Jersey. I joined just when the company was rolling out a new ERP system. We were a small IT department of about ten people altogether, two of whom Did Not Travel. Part of the project involved replacing IBM System 36 boxes with HP hardware and HPUX. Everyone used green tubes to access the system.

Die projek rol saam en ek gestuur met 'n nuwe mede-werker af te Baltimore, Jeff. Our job was to power up the Unix box, maak seker dat die O / S hardloop, die installering van die ERP-stelsel, instel van die ERP, train people on the ERP and do custom work for folks on the spot. (Dit was 'n droom werk, veral kom reguit uit die kollege). Before we could really get off the ground, ons nodig het om al die groen buise te pak, put them on desks and wire them. And the best part was that we had to put the RJ11 connectors on ourselves.

Vir een of ander rede dat ek nooit verstaan ​​nie en eintlik nooit gedink om te vra oor die tyd, het ons het 'n paar kontrakterende maatskappy kom saam en hardloop kabel deur die plant, but we didn’t have them put on the connectors. So, daar was 'n "pleister boks" met die dekades van ongelabelde kabels in die "rekenaar kamer" en hierdie kolle om die gebou op verskeie plekke in die gebou.

Ons het ons deur dit in die loop van 'n naweek, die toets van elke draad, om op 'n stuk (om seker te maak dit was reguit vs. gekruis), verseker die bietjie instellings op die groen buise en drukkers was korrek, labeling wires, om seker te maak dat "Getty" was running correctly for each port and probably a thousand other things that I’ve suppressed since then. It all came together quite nicely.

Maar, there was one important cable that we couldn’t figure out. The plant in Baltimore had a relationship with a warehousing location in New Jersey. Some orders placed in Baltimore shipped out of that location. There were two wires that we had to connect to the HPUX box: a green tube and a printer. The green tube was easy, maar die drukker het in 'n drie-week nagmerrie.

As jy weet dit nie, of onderdruk, die hantering van groen buise en drukkers op hierdie manier, there are various options that you deal with by setting various pins. 8-bietjie, 7-bietjie, pariteit (selfs / vreemde / geen), probably others. If you get one of those settings wrong, die buis of printer toon steeds dinge, maar dit sal die totale brabbeltaal wees, or it will be gibberish with a lot of recognizable stuff in between. Natuurlik, these pins are hard to see and have to be set by using a small flat-edge screw driver. And they are never standard.

Ons het die eerste van baie vinnige oproepe met die NJ man ('n bont rekenaar vyand wat ons waarskynlik vloeke aan hierdie dag). We got the green tube working pretty quickly, but we couldn’t get the printer to work. It kept "printing garbage". We would create a new RJ11 connector, switching between crossed and straight. We would delete the port and re-created in Unix. We went through the arduous task of having him explain to us the pin configuration on the printer, nooit regtig seker of hy besig was om dit korrek.

Dit is tyd om te gaan woon, alles in Baltimore is neurie, maar ons kan nie die vervloekte drukker in NJ om te werk! We’ve exhausted all possibilities except for driving back up to NJ to work on the printer in person. To avoid all that driving, ons uiteindelik hom vra om ons te faks wat hy kry wanneer dit "gemors", hoop dat miskien is daar 'n leidraad in daardie gemors wat sal sê ons wat ons verkeerd doen.

Toe ons die faks, we immediately knew what was wrong. Sien, ons metode van toets of ons 'n drukker korrek ingestel het was 'n "LP uit te reik" opdrag soos:

LP / etc / passwd

Basies, we printed out the unix password file. It’s always present and out of the box, always just one page. You standard Unix password file looks something like this:

Smith:*:100:100:8A-74(kantoor):/home / Smith:/usr / bin / sh
:*:200:0::/huis / gastehuis:/usr/bin/sh  

We had been printing out the password file over and over again for several weeks and it was printing correctly. Egter, aan die einde gebruiker, dit is "druk gemors".

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