party − set OS responses mode
party ON|OFF|WHEREIS [ - ] dnv
Operating systems being what they are, the admin people can easily grow tired of command responses that resemble dyslexic eugene-speak filtered through Kernighan and Ritchie’s collective back-brains. To alleviate this, we have included a slightly more ‘casual’ mode, in which the responses to all commands are first filtered through a customising routine (DUDE) , which makes them sound a little more friendly while retaining their full information content (usually). The rooted(c) system prompt is changed to ‘What now, dude?’ and output from each command is terminated by ‘No problem, dude.’
−v |
Verbose mode (ALL commands have a ‘verbose’ mode). When this option is present, all filtered responses are preceded by a message: ‘This response has been parsed by the DUDE filter and is not intended to be some sort of sleazy come-on.’ |
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−d |
Don’t restart all processes after recompiling the /uselss/libs/eugene file (see below). This allows any important tasks to complete beforehand. |
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−n |
Notify all users that they are about to be force-logged out and force-logged in again. |
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ON |
Activates the DUDE filter. |
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OFF |
De-activates the DUDE filter. |
WHEREIS
Doesn’t do anything, but we couldn’t resist it.
%-) party on
What now, dude?
To compare the differing responses, here is output provided by the ispi -s command, with party OFF and party ON:
party OFF
line who why how long
==========================================================
000 rooted that’s you, dweeb! epoch
−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−
00F wp she’s supposed to be 0:44:12
typing up the end of
financial year report,
but she’s been doing her
resume when she thinks
no-one is watching
−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−
014 maint playing games, as usual 0:51:16
party ON
Well, let’s see who’s on, eh? There’s you, of course, on line 000 (Imagine that! Hahaha!) Oh look, on serIOus line 00F, it’s that cute little secretary - looks like she’s lost her keyboard template again, she’s been hitting the escape key for the past five minutes! AND OF COURSE, the guys down in maintenance are playing ‘cosmic ballcrushers’. As usual. Well, who else, um, no-one really interesting like, ya know, oh hang on, DTR is toggling on serIOus line 03D.. oh, no problem, it’s that stuffed modem again. You want maybe I should send some AMail to maintenance and get ’em to look at it? No problem, dude.
What now, dude?
/uselss/libs/bill&ted/DUDE
This is the pipe process, usually
started at system shoe, which lies
idle until party ON is issued.
/uselss/libs/eugene
Contains all of the ordinary, ho-hum
confusing computer - jargonese
responses which commands ordinarily
issue. Text file.
/uselss/libs/eugene.spoo
compiled version of the eugene file.
/ephemeral/eugene.chex
Checksum for the compiled eugene file.
crp(1), stuffio(2), doobrie(9), gouge(3), ftang(65534), wi(-1), edmond(29), jumpstart(2), vo_mit(992)
The −n option can be slow.
If the n option is issued, some users in a wi editing session may not receive the ‘warning, restart imminent’ message until after the restart.
There is no way selectively to follow symbolic links.
Sunburne Computer, Inc. 9 October 1991