Down in the Dumps (a true story)

[Chris Torek]

In article <611 at eplrx7.UUCP> mcneill at eplrx7.UUCP (Keith McNeill) writes:
>I like what sys5 dangerous utilities (volcopy & mkfs) do.  
>They tell you what you are doing and wait 5-10 seconds 
>before they do anything.  This gives you a chance to 
>change you mind. ...

The old `restor' program (no `e') did this for `restore r'.
This sort of `countdown to disaster' is fine in its place, but
that place does not include something that is done often (e.g.,
several times a day for /etc/dump).  When you do something often
enough, you wind up doing it by rote:

>DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Thu May 26 09:03:42 1988
>DUMP: Date of last level 0 dump: the epoch
>DUMP: Dumping /dev/rra0a (/) to /dev/rra0a 
>DUMP: Sleeping 10 seconds...Hit BREAK to quit....

Chances are that, after a few months, the operator would not notice
anything odd about this until the dump finished.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris