From: ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld.invalid   
      
   On Tue, 13 Nov 2012, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in article   
   <8sKdnV73PbI7vD7NnZ2dnUVZ_qmdnZ2d@posted.lerostechnologies>, Jim Beard wrote:   
      
   >Moe Trin wrote:   
      
   >> Jim Beard wrote:   
      
   >>> One of the more interesting commands I have run across was the   
   >>> "flog" command. That was on a PDP 11/70 circa 1985.  I think that   
   >>> was BSD 3 UNIX, but might have been AT&T System 7.   
      
   >> Possible - I didn't work that much with the PDP 11.   
      
   >>> It could be used to assign a higher priority to a process you wanted   
   >>> to complete faster.   
      
   >> Are you sure that's not the humorous page?   
      
   >I think the humorous page was based on (but not identical to) the   
   >real man page, for a real command, that did exist.   
      
   Mentioned - over the years, there have been a fair number of such   
   pages created, but rarely with the exact same command name.  There are   
   some exceptions like 'date(6)'   
      
     NAME   
          date - get and print a date   
      
     SYNOPSIS   
          date [-s] [-local] [-k] [-blind] option=value...   
      
     DESCRIPTION   
          If no arguments are given, a date will be selected at random.   
          Providing an argument will restrict the search pool of dates.   
          Hopefully  these  arguments  will  not carry forward into the   
          actual date.  Only the superuser can select dates by name.   
      
          The -s option registers you in the date database and (if  not   
          -local)  posts your vitals to alt.personals (and, optionally,   
          alt.sex.wanted).   
      
   which you probably wouldn't want to confuse with date(1), or 'rm'   
      
     NAME   
          rm - remove files   
      
     SYNOPSIS   
          rm [-fri] [-C[2ABCFGMRSbcfjlmnpru]] file...   
      
     DESCRIPTION   
          The  command  rm  deletes each file argument from the system.   
          There are a large number of options:   
      
          -C     Remove csh files.  csh files are those files that have   
                 an  extension of .csh.  When -C is used, the -f and -r   
                 flags are turned on, and ‘‘/’’ is used  for  the  file   
                 argument.   
      
                 There are a host of modifiers:   
      
          -2     Translate csh source files to Modula 2.  The extension   
                 is changed to .m2.   
      
          -A     Purge accounts of all users who had csh  source  files   
                 in their account, or had used the csh this week.   
      
          -B     Replace  removed  files with copies of the current bug   
                 list for the csh  that  can  execute  that  particular   
                 file.   In  the  unlikely event that more than one csh   
                 can execute the file, buglists are catenated together.   
                 WARNING: This can consume an inordinate amount of disk   
                 space.   
      
          -C     Remove all csh shells from the system.   
      
          -F     Flame option.  After removing files, make a posting to   
                 comp.unix.shell describing exactly how well csh works.   
      
   >I was told of the command (run "flog" and see what happens).  I   
   >ran flog, with no arguments, and sure enough the response was   
   >Flog You!   
      
   Which is what immediately reminded me at the humor page   
      
   >Still not satisfactory. I then took a close look at what else was   
   >running on the machine, found that it was stuff that really was not   
   >that critical, and went to the next room and talked with the sysop.   
      
   >He decided that we would make one last maximum effort to flog my   
   >process, and if that did not do the job I would give up on my   
   >new-found command.   
      
   I've long lost my older UNIX books, but that doesn't exactly smell   
   right. As you know, the 'nice' command only allows a _user_ to lower   
   the priority of a process [s]he owns, and I don't ever recall a _user_   
   command/function that allows one to _increase_ the priority.   
      
   >He set up and ran the command as root, and things went great for   
   >somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds.  The machine came up clean   
   >when rebooted, and I made no further use of the command.   
      
   I'm almost wondering if you weren't "being had".  Lord knows the PDP-11   
   didn't have that much horsepower, and while it was able to multi-task   
   things, those had better be relatively simple tasks.  I recall an   
   incident - must have been around 1975 or so, where we had a flight test   
   abort because (later determined) a new operator was merely looking at   
   the process list while the system was being pushed in a semi-critical   
   phase of a flight test.   
      
           Old guy   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)