2006-02-23

Berkelian Rhapsody (Yes, I'm that Greywolf)

Berkelian Rhapsody
(based on Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen)


Is this in real time? Is this in memory?
Caught in a for(;;) loop, no escape from this subroutine...
open() your files, branch through the do{}while()s and see
I'm just the kernel, I need no libraries
Because you boot me up, load and go
Branch from high, store to low
Any way the thread flows
Doesn't really matter to me
To me.

unlink() just killed a file
Filled it's data up with NULLs, cleared the inode, closed the holes
vfork(), life had just begun
Then kill(0, SIGKILL) blew it all away
mmap(), ooooooh, didn't mean to make it die
if (the parent process doesn't fork again) {
carry on, carry on, as if nothing really matters;
}

Too late, init has died
Flush my buffers out from core, then reboot() and try once more
panic ("freeing free block"); I've got to crash
Got to enter kdb and see the truth
Init, ooooooooh (Any way the thread flows)
I've lost my tty
I wish my page hadn't been swapped out at all...

I see the signal trap vectors into core
Interrupt! Overrun! It will do a fandango
Data's skrogged like lightning, very very frightening me
Dennis Ritchie? Kenneth Thompson? Kirk McKusick? Eric Allman?
Someone help me! Robert Pike?
Oh, Kernighan (-an -an -an -an -an)

I'm just a quick hack, nobody uses me
He just makes sockets in his address family
Spare him a buffer in high memory

bind(); accept(); msg_send(); will it let me go?
munmap(); NO! It will not let you go (LET IT GO!)
munmap() just will not let you go (LET IT GO!)
munmap() just will not let you go (LET IT GO!)
Will not let you go (LET IT GO!)
Will not let you go
Will not let you go oh, oh, oh, oh
No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
kill(0, SIGKILL), exit(0); exit(0); let me go!
BSDi has a daemon set aside for me, for me, for meeeeeeeeeeeeee

So you think you can stomp on my stack space and text?
Skrog my image and data by calling exec()?
Ohh, page-d, can't do this to me page-d
Just gotta switch out, just context switch right out of here

Nothing really hashes, anyone can see
Every process thrashes, every disk drive crashes
On me

Any way the thread flows...

...by Greywolf, with posthumous apologies to Freddie Mercury.



I wrote this back in 1991/1992 after having seen Wayne's World and while still being a UNIX fanatical student (not a lot's changed). I ended up posting it shortly after Freddie Mercury's death.

I must say I'm rather flattered to see that this bit of parody has been mirrored on so many sites -- I got 10+ pages worth of hits when I went to search for it!

Maybe I'll come up with something else someday...

[sound of breathing in as though surfacing from underwater]

Yes, I'm still here. Unfortunately, with a 1.5h commute, while I may think of profound things and the like on the way to work, I don't remember them by the time I have a moment to post. Isn't that the way it goes.

Maybe it's because, in all my ranting, I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said.

When I do, you, the followers of the Journeys of the Sound Chaser, will be the first to know!

My home site over at starwolf.com is down for the moment as I don't have a lot to go on about there, and I'm having a heckuva time setting up a good looking, yet minimally-overloaded web page. Sigh.

Kudos to the BlogSpot team for putting in Word Recognition as a requirement for posting to my pages. I'd hoped it was someone real posting to my pages, but nobody ever seems to.

My comments are currently moderated, but I'll try to pay more attention to this spot, so don't worry that what you say won't be seen (unless I reject it, which is no great loss, considering I'll delete it if I don't like it anyway, so this is just a precursory step to keep it from getting posted in the first place).

Thought: Great One. Have a great one. What's that mean?

  1. A larger-than-average sized bottle of beer; 22 oz. "Have a Great One!"
  2. A better than average intimate experience. "Have a Great One!"
  3. Someone revered -- usually recently deceased or predated, if you are to "Have a Great One!" [Did you want fries with that?]

"This is Pete; go ahead, Honest..."