Tunafish

2 definitions found

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  tunafish n. In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an
     age-old joke to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of
     `tunefs(8)' in the original {BSD} 4.2 distribution. The joke was removed
     in later releases once commercial sites started using 4.2, but
     apparently restored on the 4.4BSD tape and in {Net,Free,Open}BSD. Tunefs
     relates to the `tuning' of file-system parameters for optimum


     performance, and at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly inscriptions
     was a `BUGS' section consisting of the line "You can tune a file system,
     but you can't tunafish". Variants of this can be seen in other BSD
     versions, though it has been excised from some versions by humorless
     management {droid}s. The [nt]roff source for SunOS 4.1.1 contains a
     comment apparently designed to prevent this: "Take this out and a Unix
     Demon will dog your steps from now until the `time_t''s wrap around."
  
     [It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish. Usually
     at a canning factory... --ESR]
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  tunafish
       
           In hackish lore, refers to the
          mutated punchline of an age-old joke to be found at the bottom
          of the manual pages of "tunefs(8)" in the original {4.2BSD}
          distribution.  The joke was removed in later releases once
          commercial sites started using 4.2.  Tunefs relates to the
          "tuning" of {file-system} parameters for optimum performance,
          and at the bottom of a few pages of wizardly inscriptions was
          a "BUGS" section consisting of the line "You can tune a file
          system, but you can't tunafish".  Variants of this can be seen
          in other BSD versions, though it has been excised from some
          versions by humourless management droids.  The [nt]roff source
          for SunOS 4.1.1 contains a comment apparently designed to
          prevent this: "Take this out and a Unix Demon will dog your
          steps from now until the "time_t's wrap around."
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (1997-01-12)