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Geekaderata
> Geekerata
>
> (A UNIX Analog of Desiderata (Max Ehrman, 1927))
> (mainly as addressed to a network process)
>
> Badri Krishnamoorthy
> [email protected]
>
> -----
>
> Route placidly amid channel noise and network failures,
> And remember what throughput there may be in executing all alone.
>
> As far as possible, without overflowing buffer
> Be on communicative terms with all processes.
> Broadcast your data quietly and clearly
> And listen(2) to others.
> Even to the null and the unreachable,
> They too have their requests.
> Avoid long and argumentative sessions
> They are burdensome to the ether.
>
> If you compare your priority with others'
> You may become vain or bitter
> For always there will be greater and lesser processes than yourself.
>
> Enjoy your CPUtime as well as your idletime.
> Keep cognizance of your portmapper, however low-level
> It is a constant port in the changing mappings of the network.
>
> Exercise caution in your execution,
> For the kernel is full of traps.
> But let this not blind you to what swap space there is;
> Many channels strive for high bandwidths, and everywhere
> Computing is full of parallelism.
>
> Be yourself. (Check with getpid(2) frequently)
> Especially do not forge NFS file handles.
> Neither be cynical about sockets,
> For in the face of all congestion and delays
> They are as powerful as STREAMS.
>
> Take kindly the influx of new requests,
> Gracefully re-prioritizing the older ones.
>
> Nurture support of check-points to rollback from sudden crashes
> But do not thrash pages due to imagined pagefaults:
> Many core dumps are born of bus error or segmentation faults.
>
> Beyond a nominal consideration,
> Be nice(1) to other processes.
>
> You are a child in the kernel space
> No less than the daemons and the device drivers,
> You have a right to execute here.
> And whether or not it is apparent to you
> No doubt the kernel is crashing, though it shouldn't.
>
> Therefore be at peace with your programmer
> However geeky you think s/he is.
> And wherever your read(2)'s and recvfrom(2)'s,
> In the noisy communication channels of the network,
> Keep a valid (void *) buf available in your address space.
> With all its stopped jobs, missing arguments and broken pipes,
> It is still a UNIX shell.
>
> Be backward-compatible.
> Strive to be up and running always.
>
--
David Galloway
Houston Chronicle Interactive
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.chron.com/david