Some days you think I'll just fix a bug.

And then you're knee-deep in yaml-powered tool written in python, suddenly falling through a hidden trapdoor into a shell script that uses sed and grep to parse the yaml configs, and you land on a bed of ancient monkey skulls.

At least you hope they're monkey skulls, because the inference could be its other devs who never made it back, and this sed/grep monstrosity is looking for something that was assumed to be on a single line, but doesn't have to be, because ... yaml is not an ini file.

The monkey skulls suddenly collapse into dust, and while you sneeze, you disturb a previously hidden nest of snakes (the python, you remember), which rises up to bite you on the arse. At least, its pretty close to your arse.

The only thing you can think of is to run screaming down random corridors looking for an exit, only to find that the config files that should be in /usr/local/etc are in fact in /etc/ and they point you to an escape route, even if its poorly documented, but its across a shoddy rope bridge over /var/lib/ and there are raging crocodiles below you. Skimming these files that don't respect hier(7) at all, you realise there's no choice - it's the bridge, and the crocs, and you'll need to move, fast.

Grabbing a fraying cord on the rope bridge, you struggle across as fast as you can. Of course, it pulls loose, and you swing wildly down towards the crocodiles. There's no way out now, but suddenly you realise -- /run/ isn't safe, but there's /var/run/ where this stuff should be, and at the last second, you swing over the crocs, into a hidden cave of the ancients.

There is a scroll, and it tells you how to get out. There are only two words:

0

If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://bsd.network/users/dch/statuses/111170602502886001 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)