• Anonypony (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    Zylon:
    I would like to know what, if any, parts of today's WTF weren't pure fiction.
    Googling some words from the article, I found this:

    http://pastebin.com/pvki7hGh

    That's today's story, unembellished.

    WOW.

    I always knew most (if not all) of these "stories" had more fiction than fact in them, but good hell...

    No wonder so many articles lately are SO BAD. When you've got poor writers making up bad stories built just to support a mediocre (at best) WTF, you'd best not be expecting Tom Clancy (RIP).

    Alex: If you're short on things to publish, tell us and send out a call for more. Don't rely on this kind of drivel.

    Oh, and:

    Whatever the nature of "attack" was, it simply stopped after those developers updated firmware of hardware device my company is working on, and pushed the firmware to their customers.

    I wondered WTF "firmware" had to do with anything in the fake story. Moral is if you're going to have someone write fiction, make sure they have some understanding of the topic. See also "posix commands".

  • Anonypony (unregistered)

    Oh, and TRWTF is naming your son "Jacky".

  • (cs) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    "I think the firmware was updated recently", said Jacky, the system administrator. The system administrator whould know, not "think".
    The system administrator would know that describing the problem accurately would only confuse the Mr. Cullen and lead to him asking dangerously ill-informed questions and trying to implement even more dangerous fixes to all the wrong problems. Saying something simple that uses approved words which you know won't cause trouble is the safest response in this case.
    Then the question of the cron job. I can't think of any reason for a cron job sending apache down into a 10 second sleep every minute.
    I can. It's because somebody forgot how crontab(5) worked and performed an unwise cut-and-paste that did something entirely different from restarting cron every night at midnight. Being unclear on the existence of apachectl(8) may have been a contributing factor.
  • foo (unregistered) in reply to The Sauce
    The Sauce:
    The original story was both substantially more interesting and considerably more plausible. Altered story makes the submitter look like an idiot.

    Clearly the site authors are partaking in negative energy for their productions.

    As an aside, I don't think I'll submit anything of my own to this site unless this trend changes. I'd prefer not to be rewarded for my trouble and contributions by being unintentionally painted as a moron as a result of well-intentioned, but failed, attempts at improving humor.

    Rather:

    1. Submit story
    2. Wait for it to be published (if you still recognize it, that it ...)
    3. Profit! ... I mean, post real story in the comments.

    Who's the moron now? (As evidenced today.)

  • (cs)

    So...

    ...the webserver has firmware? (Is it an embedded system? Why is an embedded system a webserver?) ...the sysadmin doesn't know for sure if the firmware was updated, or why that cronjob exists? ...Apache restarting every minute is enough to bring the server to its knees? ...actually, that never even happened? ...the whole klaxxon thing was also completely made up? ...We never find out why Apache suddenly stopped being able to shut down properly, or why that task was added? ...TDWTF doesn't proof-read their articles to see if they need, for example, additional line breaks? ...the entire real story was "a firmware updated added a cronjob that restarted Apache every minute, and we were puzzled why Apache was not responding sometimes?" ...it was written 2 years ago?

    TRWTF is once again TDWTF.

  • part of the 83% (unregistered)

    "but a hash character doesn't comment out lines in cron job."

    Huh ? I've been doing it for years.

  • (cs)

    Reading older articles for more entertainment (I'm up to January 2007) by now, I wish we could have more "Code Smorgasbord" articles, where it's just the code, and we can figure out the backstory. We don't have one guy completely destroying the story, we have a bunch of commenters who have worked with the given technology extensively, and can tell you why it's a WTF or not, and why it might be plausible to require it in a production system. And the other 80% is trolls, but it's still entertaining.

  • Dominic (unregistered) in reply to derari
    derari:
    Why was this restart cronjob there anyway?
    "I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I’ll just restart Apache every 10 requests."
  • Kerin (unregistered)

    I've been annoyed by people screaming about the declining quality of TDWTF since 2008. But, Christ, these last few months have just been AWFUL.

    Where the hell does Alex find these goons? I'm actually looking forward to "classics week" because the articles will be better.

  • salsdrgkjb` (unregistered)

    Because I know noone else would've said this....

    is there a formatting issue in the article's "screen dump"?

  • Joey (unregistered) in reply to skotl
    skotl:
    Why has the "firmware on the RAID controller" to pick an example from the above post stopped Apache starting?

    And all the other WTFs on the WTF, as mentioned above.

    Bit of a mess, this one, again :(

    (and before people start bleating about "you get what you pay for" - I get that, honestly I do, I'm just baffled at the continued decline in quality of the front page stories as it used to be so much better)

    You've noticed it's not Alex (and Remy) anymore, right?

    Also, bring back Pot Pourri

  • Caffeine (unregistered)

    Bring back MFD!

  • (cs) in reply to Joey
    Joey:
    You've noticed it's not Alex (and Remy) anymore, right?

    Also, bring back Pot Pourri

    I'm not really fond of either.

    http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/I_0x27_ll_take_94,249_please.aspx

  • Kerin (unregistered) in reply to Caffeine
    Caffeine:
    Bring back MFD!

    Yeah. At least that was a horrible, unfunny, made up clusterfuck that left the rest of the site unscathed.

  • Joey (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Joey:
    You've noticed it's not Alex (and Remy) anymore, right?

    Also, bring back Pot Pourri

    I'm not really fond of either.

    http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/I_0x27_ll_take_94,249_please.aspx

    Oh I meant more like this one: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Onramp-to-the-Information-Superhighway.aspx

    I finally saw salmiak in a shop[ (but was way to afraid to buy it)

  • Bill C. (unregistered)

    83.3% uptime? No wonder Akismet likes Viagra spammers.

  • GWO (unregistered)

    I wouldn't mind the needless embellishment if the results weren't so badly written. It's like the DailyWTF uses guidelines written by someone who considers Stephanie Meyer to be the greatest English prose stylist in the world.

    Stop over-writing everything!

  • (cs) in reply to The Sauce
    The Sauce:
    As an aside, I don't think I'll submit anything of my own to this site unless this trend changes. I'd prefer not to be rewarded for my trouble and contributions by being unintentionally painted as a moron as a result of well-intentioned, but failed, attempts at improving humor.
    Post it in the forums instead. There's lots of crap there, but there are more diamonds that in the featured articles.
  • (cs) in reply to gnasher729
    gnasher729:
    Excellent find. Seems that a line in the cronjob was commented out by using a hash character - but a hash character doesn't comment out lines in cron job.
    No. It was commented out afterwards.

    Check the documentation before spreading false information: hash character at first position in line comments out the line.

  • o11c (unregistered) in reply to no laughing matter
    no laughing matter:
    gnasher729:
    Excellent find. Seems that a line in the cronjob was commented out by using a hash character - but a hash character doesn't comment out lines in cron job.
    No. It was commented out afterwards.

    Check the documentation before spreading false information: hash character at first position in line comments out the line.

    I was going to say something about not all crons being equal, but every cron I've found documents that a leading # is a comment

  • Kobor (unregistered)

    The real WTF is viewing only the lines logged at 'notice' level, missing all the others , like 'error'. Way to troubleshoot a server.

  • anonymous (unregistered) 
    [root@localhost ~]# grep '\[notice\]' /opt/apache/logs/error_log | less [Tue Mar 29 06:42:01 2011] [notice] caught 
SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 06:42:11 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 configured -- resuming 
normal operations [Tue Mar 29 06:43:01 2011] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 06:43:11 2011] 
[notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 configured -- resuming normal operations [Tue Mar 29 06:44:01 2011] [notice] 
caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 06:44:11 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 configured -- 
resuming normal operations [Tue Mar 29 06:45:02 2011] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 06:45:12 
2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 configured -- resuming normal operations [Tue Mar 29 06:46:01 2011] 
[notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 06:46:11 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 configured 
-- resuming normal operations [Tue Mar 29 06:47:01 2011] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 
06:47:11 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 configured -- resuming normal operations [Tue Mar 29 06:48:01 
2011] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 06:48:11 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 
configured -- resuming normal operations [Tue Mar 29 06:49:01 2011] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue 
Mar 29 06:49:11 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) PHP/5.3.3 configured -- resuming normal operations [Tue Mar 29 
06:50:01 2011] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Tue Mar 29 06:50:11 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) 
PHP/5.3.3 configured -- resuming normal operations ...........
    Protip: They make text editors that actually understand Unix-style line breaks, so they don't do that. You should try one sometime.
  • (cs) in reply to Kobor
    The real WTF is viewing only the lines logged at 'notice' level, missing all the others , like 'error'. Way to troubleshoot a server.

    You wouldn't want to view all unrelated logs and commands embedded within the story.

  • (cs)

    Indeed everybody was quick to point out, the article was rewritten to the point of being another completely different story. Good find on the pastebin one, that's a draft of my original article submitted via TRWTF. So sad.

    A few things, including background information, deserve more clarification (please refer to the pastebin one):

    (1) The so-called "sysadmin" (Jacky) has not been notified of existence of such production machine until the incident has died down. Yes, Jacky was demanded to investigate all servers he knew for hacking attempt, but definitely not for servers he doesn't know. Jacky poked into that particular server by himself later for further, unasked, investigation purpose (which was possible with all servers sharing same password, another WTF that Jacky has no right to rectify).

    (2) The de facto sysadmin of the concerned machine was a developer who installed everything and kept the machine running.

    (3) This is an investigation of aftermath of server "outbreak". So the hash in front of cron job line actually works, but it shows what was done to control web server bombarding.

    (4) The "firmware" was for an embedded device developed by the same company and distributed to hundred of thousands of customers. That embedded device pulls certain amount of data from web server everyday, but have gone foul on the day of outbreak upon triggering certain really stupid condition.

    (5) Jacky was initially unable to determine the root cause with very limited info at hand. But 3 days later everybody simply stopped mentioning the incident, and that lured Jacky's curiosity to conduct another unasked investigation.

    That's about it, sans the triggered condition. I think you all can derive several more WTFs from the explanations above.

  • (cs) in reply to sapristoire
    sapristoire:
    that's a draft of my original article submitted via TRWTF.

    OK I need some coffee. Anyway it's my submitted article more than 2 years ago, so long that I almost forgot its existence.

  • Reinier (unregistered) in reply to faoileag

    Thanks ... that makes a little more sense. But only a little.

  • (cs)

    I guess they never heard of "apachectl graceful" (zero downtime restart).

  • fredden (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    The log output badly needs reformatting, though.
    I suspect that Outlook ate the newlines from the original submission.

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