
The case of the 500-mile email - mqt
http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
======
jmtame
_And I was fairly certain I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES"
option._

That would be a great feature to have as part of a "new admin initialization"
program or something :D

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sidsavara
An old story but one of my favorites =)

~~~
adnam
The case of the 500-year anecdote.

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mqt
"Have you run tcpdump or strace?"

If you're curious about where to start debugging, this blog post gives a good
rundown:

[http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2008/12/sysadmin-advent-
day-1....](http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2008/12/sysadmin-advent-day-1.html)

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petercooper
Oldie but a goodie. Highly recommend reading this but if you don't want to..

 _SPOILER - though you should be reading the article first anyway if you
care!_

An accidental downgrade of Sendmail made Sendmail have a zero second timeout
on sending mail that ultimately worked out at 3 milliseconds, just enough to
hit servers within a certain radius..

I bet there are several pieces of software that could have a zero timeout
triggered in a similar way. The difficulty of figuring it out? About the same
as with this guy ;-)

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kajecounterhack
Yeah it's old but I never did figure out how his geostatisticians knew how to
see if the email went further than 500 miles...I mean, that'd mean they know
to measure where the mail servers are rather than the actual user, right? oh
well.

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
Back then, most of the users were probably within a local telephone call of
their mail server.

~~~
diN0bot
back then in the good old days of 2002...

(not sure if i'm joking or serious. depends on one's perception of chance)

~~~
eb
Read the _first_ line of his description again:

"The following is the 500-mile email story in the form it originally appeared,
in a post to sage-members on Sun, 24 Nov 2002."

The _story_ appeared on the SAGE mailing list in 2002. It actually takes place
between 1994 to 1997.

<http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html>

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
Exactly. In 1994, I was in the same town as my mail server. Since these were
emails from professors, probably to other academic types, many of them
probably used their school's servers, which would have been local.

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SlowOnTheUptake
I'm a little unclear on one point: knowing that 3ms * 186000 miles/sec is
roughly 550 miles, wouldn't the radius be ~275 miles? (Round trip travel time
before timeout)

That is assuming that packets could actually travel that fast through a wire.

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13ren
my shell doesn't have "units":
<http://www.google.com/search?q=.003+lightseconds+in+miles>

~~~
mqt
_units_ isn't a shell function; it's a program that's a standard part of Unix.
You can install GNU Units on Linux.

It even lets you define your own units in units.dat. Pretty cool.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_>(Unix)

~~~
13ren
I've really got to learn to stop posting anything to HackerNews that in any
way can be construed as an admission of weakness or vulnerability. I sensed
that was the case here when I was writing, but didn't think it was necessary
to hide it. I will be more careful in future to not reveal more than is
absolutely necessary, and so avoid this typical, casually condescending reply.
It's annoying because it's the "mistake" that gets seized on, instead of what
I'm saying... as if there's more interest in correction than communication.

Maybe I am alone here in disliking unsolicited advice, but ironically, when I
ask a question here, I usually don't get any help...

...so perhaps the secret is not to _ask_ , but state something that
_incidentally_ reveals the lack of knowledge, so the scent of inexcusable
ignorance rouses the instinctive hacker display of superior knowledge. I will
try this.

Or maybe, I am just not a _hacker_. Although I love coding (especially to help
other people) and I'm not a corporate type, I am coming to think this more and
more; because behaviour like giving unsolicited advice seems to be totally
acceptable and approved of on sites like this, but by my values is a form of
trolling, and has never sat well with me.

 _EDIT_ I just checked the site mqt lists in his profile
(<http://mark.nirv.net/>), and judging by his May 26, 2007 entries, he does
troll at times ("What a f______ p___"; "Use a spell checker next time,
a______." - to me, that's really abusive). Trolls have sometimes gotten under
my radar by combining genuine knowledge and apparent helpfulness with their
trolling. Oh well, you live and you learn; without risking mistakes and
uncongeniality, one cannot learn.

~~~
Jem
I didn't think mqt's response was remotely condescending, and I'm the queen of
"I'm just trying to help" bitchiness.

I think you need to be aware that not everyone who disagrees with you or fails
to kiss your ass is trolling.

Or, in true trolling style: stop whining.

~~~
13ren
mqt didn't disagree with me, and I didn't say that he did.

Those are your thoughts.

~~~
Jem
> mqt didn't disagree with me, and I didn't say that he did.

Neither did I.

~~~
13ren
> I think you need to be aware that not everyone who disagrees with you or
> fails to kiss your ass is trolling.

?

 _EDIT_ I can't believe I've gotten drawn into this. Your use of loaded terms
"bitchiness", "ass", "whining", giving your opinions as if they were truth,
issuing commands, all in terms that didn't relate to the comment you were
replying to, should have tipped me off. No more responses from me. Bye.

~~~
icey
I don't know what the rest of these guys are talking about. That guy sure was
a jackass for trying to show you how to get the thing you were complaining
about not existing.

And those other guys were total jerks for not waiting with baited breath for
you to post your questions. And the guy with the blog where he said a dirty
word? THE NERVE! I am totally with you, people who state opinions on their
personal websites without being asked for them first are total trolls!

The internet SUCKS! Let's go to the real world where everyone is nice!

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nazgulnarsil
why did he freakout? surely the idea of distance = ping time and there being
some sort of timeout going on is one of the simplest explanations?

~~~
donw
You're obviously not a sysadmin, living on the front line between the non-
technical, and mountains of computer hardware. I've worked at more than a few
places where "I can't send an email more than 500 miles." translates to "One
person 500 miles away has had their automatic spam filter nab my message."

I'm much more inclined to believe user error first. That said, the words
"consultant" and "upgrade" give me cold chills...

~~~
blurry
I am not a sysadmin either but I had exact same reaction as nazgulnarsil. I
would think a sysadmin's thought process would follow the path of _distance-
>latency->timeout_ pretty quickly. In other words, I understand what you are
saying about sysadmins having to deal with non-technical users, but in this
case I actually think the "customer was right". From what I've gathered from
this story, the end user was highly analytical in figuring out the exact issue
and made an intelligent and acccurate analysis. The sysdamin's emotional
filter was the problem, if anything.

