(Sorry, this is going to be a bit long - well that's an unusual mail)
I've been wondering whether I should explain all the details of why I'll
have to leave FRECP11 in a few days or not. I decided to do it, because I
would anyway be overwhelmed with questions if I did not, and also because
it may provide some entertainment to the reader (well it's probably very
funny when you're not the one involved :-) ).
It all started with the installation of RSCSV2. Since we are going to
install VTAM, we had to install RSCSV2 too. When the RSCSV2 tapes
arrived, I realized that the sources tape, which my boss said she had
ordered, was missing. I called our IBM commercial rep, and she said "What
do you need sources for? The code can function perfectly without sources,
it is already compiled as it is sent to you", etc. Well I don't need any
lecture from a commercial <expletive deleted> about what "source files"
means and how the code may run without them, and said I darned well knew
what sources are and needed them to put security mods into the thing,
period. She said it had become quite difficult to get RSCS sources
recently, and there would be a delay. There was nothing I could do so I
said okay, we'll do with the delay.
3 months later, the sources still had not arrived. I called back and got
told there had been unexpected delays. I replied that this would just
mean unexpected delays in the installation of RSCSV2, and hence in the
installation of VTAM and subsequent payment of the license fee. My gosh
why do we need commercial reps besides the "technical" ones?
One week later (still no sources), an operator told me that he had
overheard a conversation between the computing center's administrative
director (henceforth referred to as 'my boss') and our commercial rep.
She said that, from what she had understood, the IBMess was trying to
convince my boss than mod are Evil and that OCO is Good and she should
not let evil sysprogs tamper with the Pristine and Perfect IBM sources.
My boss was worried about the security aspect, but the IBMess was
confident that this had been solved in the last release and mods were no
longer needed. My boss always believes any technical statement made by
IBM, as though it were written down in the Holy Bible.
This ended up in an official interview between my boss, my colleague
sysprog (who is the official Head of the Systems Group - note that she is
also the one and only member of the systems group so this is a purely
honorific title meant to compensate the fact that there are 4 other
persons in her tiny office and she has to share her phone line with 6
others), my boss and IBM. Funny as it may seem, the commercial rep was no
longer confident that RSCSV2 was free of security holes, and the
technical rep even acknowledged the existence of these problems. Still,
they were advocating OCO and the removal of all mods from the system. I
started fighting their arguments, and finally decided to forget it since
I'm leaving this place in 10 weeks anyway - after all it's their problem.
Their main argument was that my colleague would never be able to maintain
them and port them to RSCSV2 (which is perfectly true - when she was
hired, she had never used a VM system and she has been given no training
whatsoever; she also had 6 (now 7) computers from 4 different vendors to
maintain, and has little time for anything but user support). I offered
to port them to RSCSV2 myself before leaving, but this was seen as not
being any solution to the problem. I said of course, the actual problem
is you don't want to give her the training that she needs (eg assembler
courses, or courses on CP/CMS internals). The reply was that she didn't
know any of this training, and assembler is a useless language that
nobody ever needs any more nowadays - in 5 years, you won't ever need any
qualification to be a sysprog (besides reading, writing and arithmetics).
Our commercial rep then came up with the notion that I should write a
complete technical documentation about the mods before I leave, so that
my colleague could maintain them. This is stupid of course - how can you
expect to have someone translate english into chinese if he doesn't have
the slightest notion of chinese, even with the best available dictionary?
The commercial rep, remembering her flattery lessons (IBM confidential),
said she was confident I could write a document empowering my colleague
to port the mods to V2 herself. Well considering that I'm being paid
FF0.00/month, I don't see why I should do any boring work for them,
especially if this work is going to be completely useless - they should
be glad I keep the system running at all. My boss then became extremely
angry, saying that I wasn't billed the ($100 - that's one hundred not one
thousand) CPU time I swallow up every month and that there should
therefore be no reason to give me any money for my service. I don't know
how I managed not to shatter the windows in a shout of anger at the
mention that the service I provided was esteemed to be worth $100 a
month. I simply said I wouldn't write any such document unless they gave
the required training to my colleague (so she could use it), and a decent
amount of money to me. I also mentioned that my mods have been installed
on several other EARN/BITNET nodes, and that nobody complained about the
lack of documentation nor had any problem adapting the mod to fit their
local ones - in other words, a competent sysprogs doesn't need any
'technical document' besides the comments in the PTF file and the
description of what it does, which is already available.
My boss was extremely vexed and went to see the Higher Management, so
that they would 'punish' me (note - that's my impression, she didn't say
anything about it and would certainly pretend to be vexed if she saw that
:-) ). The net result was that she got herself into an extremely bad
situation, and is probably going to incur a blame from the Head Director
himself. She was accused of having allowed a student from another school
play an important role in the maintenance of the system. Students are, by
definition, untrustworthy, incompetent (with the only exception of the
students of the School, which are of course competent), unexperienced,
and write very poor code/research papers/whatever. This is funny because
the same Higher Management had refused to give my boss another sysprog
when the one that was there when I first came to FRECP11 left. That is,
there was ZERO sysprog in the school and nobody looked after the system
(except me). Nobody could create accounts, nobody could do anything if by
some act of God the system suddenly decided to go wrong. As the users
used to say in that time, "They have hired someone to go to the church
every day and burn candles instead, praying that nothing bad will happen
to the system" :-) The second blame that was laid on my boss is that she
had allowed the same student to write code that the official sysprog is
not able to maintain. This strikes me as even more funny since the code
was written when the sysprog was the person before the person before the
current sysprog (as you can see, people don't remain in this shop for
very long - I've seen 3 generations of sysprogs in less than 3 years).
This one said he didn't have any problem with maintaining the code if I
left, although it would of course take him much more time than it would
take me. I guess my boss should have foreseen that he would leave, and
that her successor wouldn't remain much longer (well she had no VM
experience either anyway), and her successor's successor wouldn't be able
to maintain the code. The Higher Management also suggested that they
threw me out on the spot, destroying all my files. My boss replied that
this would certainly not solve the problem, and the Higher Management had
another opportunity to compete for a Guinness Book of Records entry in
its favourite chapter, "Incompetence": "Well, just ask the VFI /* a
student spending his mandatory 'army service' in the school in the
computing center */ to port the mods and write the technical description.
He may never have used a VM system before, but he does know how to use an
IBM PC so it shouldn't take him more than one week or two to get used to
the 4381 and start being productive". It would be funny if it weren't so
sad.
In any case, the Higher Management will discuss the problem with the Head
Director and come up with a decision by monday. There are three
possibilities:
1. Throw me out and destroy all my files, unconditionally. The VFI will
port the mods and write the documentation.
2. Give me some (ridiculous) amount of money in exchange for the Holy
Document, and perform step 1 or 3 if I refuse to abide. I would of
course be paid only when my colleague has managed to port the mods, so
that the quality of the Document may be ascertained. This obviously
means 'never' - well I'd really like to see someone port the VMH or
MULTICS5 mods to RSCSV2 without learning assembler :-)
3. Remove all the mods and all the production software I have written,
throw me out and destroy all my files.
The most likely is (2), then (3). Since I do not plan to accept (2), at
least not with the (previsional) condition that "you do it for (almost)
naught or we zap your account and files" (nice chaps uh?) it will
probably mean that my account won't last very long. I certainly don't
like being threatened of having my files zapped without being allowed to
get a copy (note that this is perfunctory since I already have a full
backup, but still). I certainly don't like being forced to do something
for people who have exploited me for 3 years and are obviously not
satisfied with the money this has already saved them. This simply isn't a
way for fair, civilized people to behave, considering that I have always
tried to be helpful, even when it meant more work for me - I had simply
refused to do something that would be intrinsically useless and had given
good reasons for that. Anyway I prefer to leave right now and leave them
neck-deep in the brown stuff - I was planning to explain to my colleague
how all the software I wrote works, give her recommendations on how to
maintain it, give her my phone number in case there is a serious problem,
etc. I haven't been able to do it yet since she's been in various
training courses for the last 2 weeks (funny - they do have money to give
her UNIX courses). Now I'm glad I haven't.
I feel that the attitude of the Higher Management towards my boss is
undeserved (not that I think the outcome is undeserved - the arguments
are). However, she certainly deserves a blame for the sheer lack of
intellect that she showed when she told me that my account would probably
have to be deleted next week with all files erased (she obviously wasn't
pleased at the notion), unless I accepted a set of conditions which she
probably knows I will never accept. She would have been in a lot of
trouble if I had been the vandal type. My boss, in her Infinite Wisdom,
had decided that all backup tapes, past, present and future, would be
stored in the same place, so we don't have to be searching in several
places when we need to find the last backup. This Holy Vault is a
paper-thin metal sheets cupboard with a pretense lock that a child of 10
could easily break open (I have the key anyway). It would be very easy
for me to mount the 20-30 tapes contained in this cupboard and destroy
them in such a way that they'd look exactly like an unreadable tape (I
prefer not to give details as I don't think this is needed). Furthermore,
my boss, her Overwhelming Wisdom helping, had also decided that backups
should be made on cheapo surplus tapes - we're not a rich site you see,
and there's an unthinkable bunch of backup tapes, over 20! The last 3
attempts at restoring something from a backup tape failed miserably with
an I/O error and the help of DDR's total lack of recovery routine (if the
start of the tape is unreadable, nothing past the scratch can be
restored). If they realized the backups were broken, they probably would
think it's because of the tapes, and they couldn't prove the tapes had
been intentionally damaged. I could then put a mod into CP that would
work for just a few hours on a given day, and would randomly change disk
read operations to writes and vice versa. This would destroy the present
contents of the disks in minutes (if activated during prime time), and
everybody would suspect a transient hardware error. In any case, the
present file store would be damaged beyond repair and backups would be
unreadable. All the work of the users community in the last 5 years would
be completely annihilated. I'm sure my boss would be fired on the spot if
this were to happen - it's utter foolishness to store all available
backup tapes in the same place, what would happen if there was a fire???
Anyway. I'll have more information about the Higher Management's decision
on monday. In any case, I'm confident that they won't remove my account
until monday 21st: the sysprog will be off all the week, and nobody else
has authority to change passwords, remove accounts, etc. My boss had once
requested that she be given the sysprog's password, but then she had
immediately rushed to the users' room to logon to it (note that she has
her own private terminal in her office, 20 seconds distant from the
users' room), and for some reason she "forgot" to logoff when she left
(anyway she has this "local echo" feature that causes her to echo to her
Vocal Subsystem anything that gets output on the Fingertips Facility, a
bit like a VT100 except that she doesn't have the echo suppression
facility for password prompts :-), so I'd be surprised if nobody had
overheard the password while she "typed" it). Well a group of hackers
burst into the system 6h after she had been given the password, stealing
files, printing notebooks of other users from the accounts of innocent
people, etc. She didn't dare to ask for the password again :-)
In any case, I'll be on ERIC@CEARN in 6 weeks of time (unless something
very unexpected happens). In the meanwhile, I'll be reachable via
OLIVIER@PASTEUR, and I'll try to get myself an account on another VM EARN
system in Paris. I'll set up LISTSERV to forward ERIC's mail to
ERIC@CEARN as soon as I am forced to leave. My main problem is precisely
[log in to unmask] They will most probably keep it up (well if they don't,
the 3812 programs will no longer work - LISTSERV performs the accounting
and creates header pages). They will most certainly NOT maintain it. I'm
trying to get rid of all the lists, but it's not that easy. The following
changes have already been made:
EARNSEC --> EARNSEC@CEARN
LCOORD-L --> LCOORD-L@CEARN
LSTSRV-M --> LSTSRV-M@CEARN
LIAISON --> Killed, recipients moved to another LIAISON list.
RSCSMODS --> Killed, recipients moved to another RSCSMODS list.
SCRIPT-L --> Killed, recipients moved to another SCRIPT-L list.
CHAT-L --> Killed, recipients moved to another CHAT-L list.
Note that POLYGRAF is down and I have been unable to update the
appropriate peers. I still have EARNTECH, LSTSRV-L and LINKFAIL to move,
and this is a big problem, especially for LINKFAIL which is the European
entry point (ie the one pointed to by BITNIC), and can't reasonably be
moved on the other side of the FRMOP22-CEARN line. There is only one
other LISTSERV in France (FRULM11), and I'm not sure they have a lot of
disk space and CPU time to spend on LISTSERV. I'll contact the FRULM11
NAD on monday anyway. I will also alter the link weights file to get all
the DISTRIBUTE traffic off FRECP11; whether it will be handled by FRULM11
or cast back on the international lines (meaning duplication of files on
the heavily loaded lines) depends solely upon the amount of CPU FRULM11
can donate to the network, and I will not try to force anything upon them
- 25 minutes a day is hard to swallow for an overloaded 4341. Note that
an omission on my part in the last version of LINKSWT FILE caused all
traffic to be sent to FRULM11 rather than FRECP11 if VERS8802 is not
installed. I will correct this on monday.
In any case, if something goes wrong with LISTSERV@FRECP11, don't panic,
I'll probably be able to do something. None of the people in the
computing center want me off (not even my boss), and they'd probably let
me come some day to make a change to LISTSERV if it really couldn't be
fixed remotely. Of course it wouldn't take me much more than 10 minutes
to get into the system from a vanilla account, now that all the security
mods have been tripped (vanilla IBM sure is nice for hackers), but I'd
rather not do that - it's their CPU after all, not mine (well I would
sure enjoy having a 9370 at home, but unfortunately I'm not rich
enough... :-) ).
Eric
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