[ale] tech "magic"

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Tue May 26 22:57:37 EDT 2009


I was chasing :moon phase" bugs last week. cron jobs that overlapped
by 20-50 _milliseconds_ and thus the next one got crap data because
the first wasn't closed out all the way.

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Rev. Johnny Healey<rev.null at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's a great wikipedia article on unusual software bugs:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unusual_software_bug
>
> I actually ran into a schroedinbug in an apache config file today.
>
> -Johnny
>
> On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Everyone here has had it happen. Something fails and you get called to
>> "take a look at it". You get there. take it and it isn't working. So
>> you methodically take it apart, inspecting everything alonmg the way
>> looking for failure points and find
>>
>>
>> nothing
>>
>>
>>
>> it all looks fine
>>
>>
>>
>> So you start testing a few thing as you put it back together.
>>
>>
>>
>> all the parts work correctly even though 20 minutes ago they were all
>> totally dead
>>
>>
>>
>> Finally you plug in the reassembled device and it comes up normally
>> and works perfectly.
>>
>>
>>
>> The 3Com switch I noted last Thursday that likely had a dead power
>> supply just ran me through that exact process. It works fine now.
>> Power supply puts out a rock solid 14V (no load) and 12.01V at 10A
>> load. All the fans work just fine.
>>
>> At least I don't have to explain "what I fixed" in an invoice...
>>
>> --
>> --
>> James P. Kinney III
>> Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>
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>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness


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