(with thanks {and apologies} to Arlo Guthrie)
This song is called "Atlas' HDA." It's about Atlas and its
HDA, but "Atlas' HDA" isn't the name of the HDA, that's just the name
of the song. That's why I call this song "Atlas's HDA."
Now it all started about two full backups ago, during the week
before finals, when my friend and I went to login to Project Athena in
building 1. But our files don't live in building 1, they live in
building 11 on Atlas' HDA.
And since Atlas is a 750, there isn't a lot of space free on
it, so they decided they didn't have to make any on-line backups for a
long time.
Well, we got to building 1 and found that we couldn't get to
our files in building 11 on Atlas' HDA, so we decided that it'd be a
friendly gesture to call up hotline and tell them that Atlas was
having problems. So we walked over to the phone with our NFS errors
and serial numbers and usernames and UID's and Kerberos tickets and
other implements of authentication.
Well, we called hotline and there was a long answering message
which told us that we should call extension 3-0168 before reporting
any major service outages. Well, we'd never heard of a hotline which
you couldn't use unless you called another extension first, so with
tears in our eyes, we walked off to find an operations droog.
We didn't find one 'til we came to a little machine room, off
the building 11 hallway, and in that machine room was the Manager of
Operations, logged into Atlas and playing with the HDA. We asked the
operations manager, "Can you restore our files?" and he said, "Kid,
you got any problem sets due tomorrow?" Well, I didn't, but I decided
that being able to get to our zfwrite binaries was better than not, so
I said, "Yes," and he said, "Then I'll restore your files." And
that's what he did.
And we went back to building 1, had a great time using
zfwrite, and went into mboggle-mode, and didn't stop until the next
Kerberos ticket lifetime, when we got a zephyr message from the
Operations Manager. He said, "Kid, we found your network address on a
zfwrite message at the bottom of a half-a-million other zephyr
messages, and I just wanted to know if you had any information about
it."
And I said, "Yes sir, Mr. Operations Manager, I cannot tell a
lie. Someone sent that zfwrite message from my network address."
After conversin' with the Operations Manager for about forty-five
zephyr messages, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and he
said that we had to show him how we sent those zfwrite messages, and
also had go down to e40 and talk to him at Project Athena
headquarters. So we gathered together our serial numbers and
usernames and UID's and Kerberos tickets and other implements of
authentication, and walked over to e40.
Now friends, there waas only one of two things that the
Operations Manager could've done at the Project Athena headquarters,
and the first was that he could've given us a network-address hacked
version of zwrite for bein' so brave and honest over zephyr with him
(which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it), and the other
thing was that he could've flamed at us and told us never to be seen
sending zfwrite messages on the Project Athena network, which is what
we expected.
But when we got to the Project Athena headquarters, there was
a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both
immediately sat down in Earll Murman's office and had our accounts
suspended. And I said to the Operations Manager, "Mr. Operations
Manager, I can't show you how I sent that zfwrite message with this
here suspension on my account." He said, "Shut up, kid, and follow
me," and that's what we did, and walked over to building 11 to look at
Atlas (Remember Atlas? This is a song about Atlas.).
I wanna tell you 'bout Project Athena, where this is
happenin'. They got 800 workstations, all access_off, about about ten
operations droogs. But when we got to building 11 there was about
twenty droogs, five postmasters, and two MIT lawyers, this bein' the
worst lie told to the Operations Manager in the last ten years, and
everybody wanted to get in on yellin' at us about it.
And they was using all kinds of software and hardware that
they had hanging around the machine room. They was taking window
dumps, accounting traces, lastlogs, sulogs, findlogs, messages,
printer dumps, screen dumps and core dumps... And they made seventeen
multi-layered X windows with inverse text and scroll bars on the side
and top of each one with man pages explainin' what each one was, to be
used as evidence against us.
After the ordeal, we followed the Operations Manager back to
e40. He said he was gonna make us proofread Athena documentation for
a while. He said: "Kid, I'm gonna give you some documentation to
proofread. I want your pen and your `r' key."
I said, "Mr. Operations Manager, I can understand your wantin'
my pen so I don't accidentally mark up the documentation, but what do
you want my `r' key for?" and he said, "Kid, we don't want any
accidental rm problems." I said, "Mr. Manager, did you think I was
gonna rm -r * my account for litterin'?"
The Operations Manager said he was just makin' sure, and
friends, he was, 'cause he took my pause key so I couldn't type
ctrl-alt-pause and reboot the workstation (even though it was a VAX),
and he took my telephone, so I couldn't dial in to athena, make 1200
baud sounds with my voice, login as the super-user and eliminate all
the evidence collected against me. The Operations Manager was makin'
sure.
It was about four or five hours later that Jon (remember
Jon?) came by and, with a few nasty looks at the Operations Manager
on the side, told me I could stop proofreading documentation. And we
went back to the SIPB office and had a great Pizza Ring take-out
dinner and didn't logout until the next day, when I had to go talk to
a design review.
I walked into the conference room, sat down, and the
Operations Manager came into view with the seventeen multi-layered X
windows with inverse text and scroll bars on the side and top of each
one with man pages explainin' what each one was, to be used as
evidence against us, and sat down.
Bill Cattey came in, said, "All Rise!" We all stood up. Jerry
came in with his PC and sat down. And we sat down. And the
Operations Manager looked at his seventeen multi-layered X windows
with inverse text and scroll bars on the side and top of each one with
man pages explainin' what each one was, and he looked at the PC, and
then at his seventeen multi-layered X windows with inverse text and
scroll bars on the side and top of each one with man pages explainin'
what each one was, and began to cry.
Because the Operations Manager had come to the realization
that it was a typical case of user interface incompatibilities, and
there wasn't nothin' he could do about it, and Jerry wasn't gonna look
at the seventeen multi-layered X windows with inverse text and scroll
bars on the side and top of each one with man pages explainin' what
each one was, to be used as evidence against us.
And we were fined 50k quota and told to delete the zfwrite
binaries.
But that's not what I'm here to tell you about. I'm here to
tell you about the HDA.
*************************
They got this area over in e40 called the watchmaker zone,
where you walk in and get your programming skills inspected, detected,
neglected and selected!
I went down and got my interview one day, and I walked in, sat
down (slept on the third floor of lobby 7 the night before, so I
looked and felt my best when I went in that morning, 'cause I wanted
to look like the best MIT hacker. I wanted to feel like.... I wanted
to BE the best MIT hacker), and I walked in, said down, I was gunned
down, brung down, locked out and all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly
things.
And I walked in, I sat down, and Jane gave me a piece of paper
that said: "Kid, see Geer in the watchmaker zone."
I went there, and I said, "Dan, I wanna hack! I wanna hack!
I wanna see gross code and dereferenced null pointers and overnight
hacking sessions and bugs to fix and write impossible-to-comprehend
code! I wanna feel nine-track tape between my teeth! I mean hack!
Hack! Hack!"
And I started jumpin' up and down on his desk (there was no
room to jump on the floor), yellin' "HACK! HACK! HACK!" and Win
Treese walked in and started jumpin' up and down with me, and we was
both jumpin' up and down, yellin', "HACK! HACK! HACK! HACK!!" and
some watchmaker came over and gave me the watchmaker root password,
sent me into the watchmaker zone, and said, "You're our bug-fixer."
And I didn't feel too good about it.
I proceeded to work as a watchmaker, gettin' more inspections,
rejections, detections, neglections, and all kinds of stuff that they
was doin' to me there, and I was there for two years... three years...
four years... I was there for a long time goin' through all kinds of
mean, nasty, ugly things, and I was just havin' a tough time there,
and they was inspectin', injectin', every single part of my code, and
they was leavin' no function untested.
I proceeded through, until my thesis was almost finished and I
came to see the very last man. I walked in, sat down, after a whole
big thing there. I walked up, and he said, "Kid, we only got one
question: have you ever been in trouble with the Operations Manager?"
And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Atlas' HDA
massacree with full orchestration and five-part harmony and stuff like
that, and other phenomenon.
He stopped me right there, and said, "Kid, did you have to go
meet with Saltzer?" And I proceeded to tell him the story of the
seventeen multi-layered X windows with inverse text and scroll bars
on the side and top of each one...
He stopped me right there and he said, "Stop right there!
Kid, I want you to go over and sit down on that bench that says,
`Hackers who got caught.' NOW, KID!"
And I walked over to the bench there, and there's... The
hackers-who-got-caught group is where they put you if you may not be
moral enough to hack for a salary after learning to hack for four
years.
There was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-lookin' people on the
bench there... there was system crackers, password breakers, Kerberos
bug-finders, sendmail demons, and Robert T. Morris enthusiasts!!
Robert T. Morris enthusiasts sitting right there on the bench next to
me! And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one... the most obsessed RTM
enthusiast of all, was comin' over to me, and he was mean and ugly and
nasty and horrible and all kinds of things, and he sat down next to
me. He said, "Kid, you get a security hole?" I said, "I didn't get
nothin'. I had to delete the binaries."
He said, "What did you have to talk to Jerry about, Kid?" And
I said, "Sending zfwrite messages..." And they all moved away from me
on the bench there, with the Robert T. Morris enthusiast and all kinds
of mean, nasty things, 'til I said, "...to the Manager of Athena
Operations..." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a
great time on the bench talkin' about system cracking, password
breaking, Kerberos hacking, virus hunting... and all kinds of groovy
things that we was talkin' about on the bench, and everything was
fine.
We was drinkin' coke and eatin' all kinds of junk food, until
the dean came over, had some paper in his hand, helt it up and said:
"KIDS-THIS-BUG-REPORT'S-GOT-FORTY-SEVEN-WORDS-THIRTY-SEVEN-
FILL-IN-BLANKS-FIFTY-EIGHT-ESSAY-QUESTIONS-WE-NEED-TO-KNOW-THE-
DETAILS-OF-THE-BUG-THE-SECURITY-HOLE-THE-HACK-WHATEVER-YOU-DID-AND-
ANYTHING-ELSE-AT-ALL-YOU-GOT-TO-SAY-PERTAINING-TO-THE-BUG-WE-WANT-
TO-KNOW-THE-PROGRAM-NAME-THE-SERVER-IT'S-ON-THE-PATH-TO-IT-THE-
RELEASE-NUMBER-THE-MACHINE-YOU-WERE-RUNNING-IT-ON-AND-EVERYTHING-ELSE..."
And he talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a
word that he said. But we had fun rollin' the mice around and lookin'
at xpix.
I filled out the special bug report with the multiple-choice
and essay questions and fill-in-the-blanks, and put everything down
just like it was and everything was fine. And I put down my pencil,
and I turned the bug report form over, and there, written on the back
of the form... centered on back of the form.... away from everything
else on the form... in parentheses, capital letters, back-quoted, in
NewCenturySchlBk, read the following words: "Kid, have you passed
Phase II?"
I went over to the dean. Said, "Mister, you got a lot of
dammed gall to ask me if I've passed Phase II! I mean, I mean, I
mean, that you say, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean, I'm sittin'
here on the hackers who got caught bench, 'cause you want to know if
I'm a good enough writer to go out and write computer programs, build
circuits, and work in technical support?"
*************************
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind!
We're gonna send your user-id off to the NCSC in Washington!" And,
friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined on a logical volume on
dockmaster, is a study in ones and zeroes of my aborted hacking...
*************************
And the only reason I'm singin' you the song now is 'cause you
may know somebody in a similar situation. Or you may be in a similar
situation, and if you're in a situation like that, there's only one
thing you can do:
[ CHORUS ]
You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may
think he's really dangerous and they won't give him a job.
And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're
both hackers who got caught and they won't take either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people
walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Atlas' HDA" and walkin' out? They may
think it's a new type of backup!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a
day, walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Atlas' HDA" and walkin' out?
Friends, they may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's what it is: The
Atlas' HDA ANTI-BREAKAGE MOVEMENT! And all you gotta do to join is to
sing it the next time it comes around on the hard disk.
With feelin'.
You can get to your files all day
on Atlas' HDA
You can get to your files all day
on Atlas' HDA
You'll be sure there's just no risk
If you copy all your files to the local hard disk
YOU can get to your files all day
on Atlas' HDA
(but don't forget to backup fast, on Atlas' HDA!)
You can get anything you want at a Chinese Restaurant
(exceptin a hamburger) ....
Terry Kennedy, Operations Manager, Academic Computing, St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA, terry@spcvxa.bitnet by Jon Kamens jik@Athena.MIT.EDU From the Internet. Original © not known. This version ©2000 OFC