Announcing a exciting new tool for data center management!
When was the last time you found a bazillion zero-length files in
/usr/tmp and said to yourself, "How did this crap get on my
system?"
When was the last time you had to clean fifty megabytes of run-on
puns out of a user's news directory, and said to yourself, "What a
load of crap?"
When was the last time you looked at a piece of mail and said to
yourself, "This is the stupidist crap I've ever laid eyes on"?
Well, you're right, it is crap, and now you can do something about it.
Introducing the new Crap Detector daemon crapd.
crapd works similar to syslogd in monitoring system error messages,
but has the added function of removing offending files and
utilities from the system using complex heuristics to determine the
file's crap quotient. Sensitivity is settable anywhere from "merely
inane" to "gut-wrenching anal explosion" and can be set on a
per-user basis.
Files that crapd has decided meets the above criteria are held in
/usr/stool for a user-settable period of time, and then flushed to
/dev/dump. Anything crapd decides is true stinking diarrhea will
be sent directly to /dev/dump with no questions asked.
crapd is especially useful for cleaning out mail spool directories,
as this has been proven to be one of the most prolific accumulators
of crap in the history of interactive computing.
There is, of course, a list of exceptions for crap you are
required, against your better judgement, to have on the
system. However, if crapd decides the list is full of crap, it will
be migrated to /usr/stool.
In scientific lab test, crapd has been shown to virtually eliminate
user distractions, increase system performance by 50%, and reduce
backup volume by an order of magnitude. Our customers report that
capital equipment expenditures have been reduced significantly now
that they don't have to keep disks spun up just to keep the crap
warm.
As an added bonus, crapd will search through your process table and
kill off any processes that anyone who could grab their butt with
both hands wouldn't have launched during a billion-year drinking
binge.
Next year, a stealth option to the crap detector daemon will be
available. This option adds a new "virtual crap" feature to your
file systems, which causes files that have been flushed by crapd to
appear to still be there. In carefully controlled lab tests, we
have found that users will happily continue to append Dan Quayle
jokes to a file for years without ever realizing that the directory
entry has been faked and the file no longer exists.
So, be productive, be pure, get the Crap Detector!
Warning: Be sure to put Usenet News in the exceptions list, or
crapd is sure to unlink the news spool directory, shoot nntpd, and
set fire to your incoming news link.
