Re: GLOAT BLOAT (Was: Boot messages, Ideas for v2.1)

Michael K. Johnson (johnsonm@redhat.com)
Mon, 24 Jun 1996 09:17:56 -0400


Herbert Rosmanith writes:
>> Well I kind of liked 'lp on fire' for the printer is off line/outa
>
>"lp on fire" is not (C)Linux ... I saw it on other (older) unices too.

Amazing!

When I did my Linux parallel port driver rewrite some years ago, the
original author had put a comment something like "/* unknown error;
on fire? */ under a conditional. I liked it so much I turned it into
an error message (for better or worse...) that said "lp on fire".
I had never seen that error message in any other unix (at the time,
I had only used BSD on a VAX and SunOS, none of the machines I used
*had* an lp device, and I wasn't the sysadmin anyway).

Just out of curiousity, can you name any of those older unices with
the same error message?

michaelkjohnson

"Ever wonder why the SAME PEOPLE make up ALL the conspiracy theories?"