Gnarly Error Messages

Veeru writes "In my career, I have run across some whopper error messages, but a call from the mainframe sysop one night beat them all: 'We are experiencing MVS processor spin loops, the programs are running while holding a disabled CPU. This is causing XCF communication delays to the point where we are losing VTAM RTP routing, are suffering OSPF adjacency failures on TCP/IP dynamic routing and MIM VCF failures. Whatever this code is, it should NOT be propagated to production or we run the risk of losing the development plex if XCF signaling is adversely impacted by processor disabled spin loops'. My friend once got an error message 'Error 2 while trying to report error 2'. I would be curious to hear from the Slashdot community on encounters with other bizarre error messages."

Keyboard error.

[Trusty Penfold (615679)]

Press F9 to continue.

Actually it's F1

[Rui del-Negro (531098)]

And personally I prefer the ones that said "Keyboard not found; press F1 to continue"

RMN
~~~

Re:Keyboard error.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Apparently there's also a "Display error; hit F1 to
continue" message, but I've never seen it.

Interface Hall of Shame...

[*xpenguin* (306001)]

One of the most entertaining error message sites is iarchitect [iarchitect.com], which provides good and bad examples of error handling and GUIs.

Re:Interface Hall of Shame...

[TeknoDragon (17295)]

They have plenty of exposed Win32 API errors, but here's my favorite:

error: "The parameter is correct"

Re:Interface Hall of Shame...

[1010011010 (53039)]

Close to my favorite:

Error: Success

Gnarly.

[Trusty Penfold (615679)]

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!

translation...

[wuchang (524603)]

We don't know wtf is happening, but we want everyone to think that we're on top of things and that we deserve the salaries they pay us.

Re: translation...

[Punk Walrus (582794)]

"Now that I have changed the master password of the database, it is time to discuss my salary..."

I think the old Amgias used to have a "Guru Meditation Error" for certain errors

Out-of-range error

[gunner800 (142959)]

When the user specifies an attribute value outside the correct range it's helpful to list the possible correct values. But if the value just has to be non-negative it's much more helpful to say "Value must be non-negative" than to list all the possible positive values.

Fortunately, users never saw this error, as the program ran out of memory while composing it.

A really, really bad one...

[The Wooden Badger (540258)]

"Now starting Windows for the first time"

D'oh -Homer Simpson.

"Unsafe Removal of Device"

[jelle (14827)]

When a coworker tripped over a badly layed network cable and pulled the PCCard from the laptop...

First windows error message that actually was telling the truth ;-)

Error

[_Spirit (23983)]

Had a Mac program long ago that featured the following error msg:

I must remember to put an error message here

And in another:

Whoops !
If you see this error please report the code as I have forgotten put an error message here

Printer on fire

[by Anonymous Coward]

me@machine:/usr/src/linux/drivers/char% grep "on fire" *.c

lp.c: /* not offline or out of paper. on fire? */
lp.c: printk(KERN_ERR "lp%d reported invalid error status (on fire, eh?)\n", minor);
lp_m68k.c: printk(KERN_NOTICE "lp%d: on fire\n",dev);
lp_m68k.c: /* not offline or out of paper. on fire? */
lp_m68k.c: printk(KERN_NOTICE "lp%d: on fire\n",dev);

error message

[sheol (153979)]

i once received the following at work in the proprietary software used for cable tv tech support/etc....

"You need help. Please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx for assistance."

Gotta be the classic MacOS...

[Greebz (139906)]

"An Error Occurred Because An Error Occurred"

Ah, so that's why!

The best BeOS error

[eexlebots (203658)]

"Error: No error"

I got that one a few times; always memorable. Almost as fun as seeing your GUI melt into the joy of a KDL:

"Welcome to Kernel Debugging Land!"

Sometimes Barney plays on his own

[hklingon (109185)]

This error is documented in MS's KB:
"Sometimes Barney Starts Playing Peekaboo on his own." Scary. [microsoft.com]

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - Q325038

[cpeterso (19082)]

Q325038: Calendar Type May Change to Japanese Emperor Era When Outlook Runs [microsoft.com]

someone's in the kitchen

[Jucius Maximus (229128)]

The Selecting Blendolini Causes Choco-Banana Shake Hang From the BSOD-on-my-toaster dept issue was a real error in a Microsoft related program, "Someone's in the Kitchen." There used to be a whole technet article describing the crash involving the choco-banana shake recipe, but it was pulled. For reference, check this out: Q157668 Mystery solved. [wininformant.com]

Illegal Operation

[stephenisu (580105)]

Working in Technical support for a government website frequented by technophobes with college aged children, I can't count the times I have had people scared to death because their computer had encountered an illegal operation. One woman started yelling at her kids for putting that &#*!ing nappy (napster I am guessing) thing on their machine. It took me 15 minutes to explain the situation to her.. after the 10 minutes of telling her to calm down.. at least she wasn't one of the criers.

Re:Illegal Operation

[Jucius Maximus (229128)]

"Working in Technical support for a government website frequented by technophobes with college aged children, I can't count the times I have had people scared to death because their computer had encountered an illegal operation."

I once worked with this woman with poor vision who was hysterical because something about an "illegal abortion" had appeared on her machine.

She said that she had advised a girl who had made some mistakes on such matters but never was actually involved in such a thing. Only later she realised what it really said.

Gnarly error messages

[Doctor Sbaitso (605467)]

I've encountered "Error: too many errors" several times before.

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense

[Mwongozi (176765)]

no sense in pretending

Undefined?

[stu_coates (156061)]

While doing some JavaScript programming with and old version of Netscape:

Undefined is not defined

AppleWorks GS

[axneck (573097)]

AppleWorks GS on the Apple IIGS... "A serious system error has occured" and two buttons appeared. The first button said "Reset", and the second button had an arrow pointing to the first button. :)

"ERROR: SUCCESS!"

[davemarmaros (598966)]

The fax machine in my office's mailroom displays this to confirm that your outgoing fax was sent. It confused the heck out of me the first time...

Apple's MPW C compiler famous for its error msgs

[Cerlyn (202990)]

Apple once put out a C compiler famous for its error messages. Who else would make a compiler that states "This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer AND your window wasn't wide enough to read this whole error message"?

Searching for Apple compiler error messages on Google [google.com] picks up dozens of sites with the error messages from this compiler, as well as spreads out the slashdot effect.

Doing a search for Eudora humor error messages on Google [google.com] shows Eudora to have a similar sense of humor as well ("Memory is tight-Live Dangerously").

Re:Apple's MPW C compiler famous for its error msg

[davidmccabe (516209)]

Or how about:

"You can't modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler." :-D

Oh for the days when Apple had a since of humor.

A Few Windows Error messages

[cOdEgUru (181536)]

(1) Winerr 00E : Unexplained Error - Please tell us how this happened
(2) 01B - Error Removing Temp File; Kernel.dll Will Be Substituted
(3) 01C - Wrong Disk Formatted. Sorry About That.
(4)Title: setup32.exe - error in application
The instruction "0x77e0a053" points to memory at "0x0f1366b8". The data was not transferred into RAM because of an I/O error in "0x00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000c0000240".
That's a lot of zeros... I thought addresses were only 32 bits long in Windows2000...

cute error msg

[jennygerbi (263473)]

I like this far more than is acceptable:

>cat food
>cat: cannot open food

Apollo workstation

[hedley (8715)]

At a DN300's boot prompt I typed:

> ?

You must be from Prime. Use 'h' for help.

Prime was Apollo's competitor at the time. :)

Hedley

Dr. Watson caused a Dr. Watson

[borwells (566148)]

My favorite on the NT servers was a popup explainging that the Dr. Watson process had generated a Dr. Watson error. If the system hadn't frozen I would have screen-capped that bad boy.

Also, twice when using Veritas Backup Exec NT 7.3 I received a warning error messages stating that there were over 1 billion administrators currently connected to the system, so I should be careful making changes. I wasn't aware Backup Exec was so popular.

Could the Dell dude do gnarly error messages?

[Rai (524476)]

"Gnarly Error Messages" make me picture the Dell dude popping up like the M$ Clippy and saying something like "Dude, your program just totally crashed. Bummer!"

My Favorite SQL Error Message

[Ikari Gendou (93109)]

"Cannot Start Transaction While in Firehose Mode" [microsoft.com]

SGI message - has anybody else had this?

[fantomas (94850)]

First time my boss went away and left me in charge of everything, our baby, the SGI Indigo2 ( this was a few years ago) decided to die big style. I am not a full blooded geek so scuse me if I don't describe this right, but...

...screen filled with text, went up the screen rapidly filling the whole thing, I think it was like when you start up and all the boot stuff goes past. Finally the screen flashes then does a sort of blue screen of death and the only text on the screen in the top left is DON'T PANIC.

I swear I saw this, if I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it, but there I am, the boss is away for the first time on holiday and the computer is saying 'DON'T PANIC' . I knew things were very, very bad.

Can somebody tell me about this error message, how SGI got to put it on their machines, and why?

(end note is boss was cool as ever and the engineers fixed it and we got our data back, but boy, was I afraid to touch that machine again...)

Engrish!

[chrisbolt (11273)]

It's always fun trying to decipher engrish error messages [engrish.com].

HAL9000

[lateralus_1024 (583730)]

[in soothing voice]"Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

linux

[Kallahar (227430)]

When installing linux you can get this error:

***Kernel panic: I have no root and I want to scream

if you don't tell the kernel where to find it's root filesystem.

Travis

HTTP 503.1

[utahjazz (177190)]

Service unavailable due to link posted on Slashdot.

Errors covering errors

[Ektanoor (9949)]

Many years ago, one of my colleagues fell into a weird situation. He was quite good in Assembler and wrote some quite long program. When he finished, he said that he doubts that the program could work. "I should have done some checks before finishing it..." He compiles the program, gets ready for some long debugging and... the program works... He stares at the screen.
"Something is wrong here..."
"What?" I ask.
"The program works...".
"Well it should doesn't it?".
"No, it shouldn't, no one can write Assembler in such volume and avoid errors..."
"But does the program give the right result?"
"Yes, but that's impossible! I nearly guessed how to do it. How can it work?.."

So he starts checking the program. Finds nothing. Debugs it, all seems to work. Then he starts to doubt that the results are correct. So he makes two three checks by hand. Then he writes a small segment of the program and things go nuts.He gets back to the whole program and starts debugging it, step by step. In the end, and after taking four times more what took him to create the program, he approaches me with some clear relief.

"There were errors..."
"So the result was wrong..."
"No, the result was absolutely right!"
"!?!"
"Well, the fact is that I did one offset wrong but in other section of the program, another error in made returned the values to normal. That's why the program worked fine..."

How many such programs exist?

Great old Amiga error message...

[nathanis (618912)]

I remember I was using an old Amiga disk-doctor type utility, and I got this wonderful error message:
'Cannot mark bad blocks because the block used for marking bad blocks is bad.'
Say THAT 10 times fast.
I've been telling this wonderful story to my computer friends for ages, and finally, I have an online outlet for it! Yay!

All MVS error messages

[tkrotchko (124118)]

All IBM MVS error messages end up saying this in the manual:

ERROR: Error on open macro at the address indicated

PROGRAMMER ACTION: Fix and rerun.

No joke.

Thanks for reminding me

[sh0rtie (455432)]

____________________________
Internet Explorer
Line: 142
Char: 7
Error: 'null' is null or not an object
Code:0
URL: http://jobs.microsoft.co.uk/working.asp
_________ ___________________

http://remember.mine.nu/null.jpg [remember.mine.nu]

The Dreaded /. Error Message:

[Devil's BSD (562630)]

My most interesting error messages go something like this.

[root@localhost]% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

[root@localhost]% gotta light?
no match.

[root@localhost]% ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

[root@localhost]% cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans

[root@localhost]% rm God
God not found.

[root@localhost]% talk VladimirPutin@Kremlin
Cannot find VladimirPutin@Kremlin: Your party is not logged on.

More funny UNIX commands here. [cornell.edu]

SWTP prompt

[frovingslosh (582462)]

The old SWTP microprocessor kits used to output a single * as a prompt. I prety much knew how the day was going to go when I saw one that, the first time it was powered up, type out FU

Messages from other planets

[dcavanaugh (248349)]

Back in my VAX/VMS days, the powers that be decided to name the machines after planets. The limit was six characers, so the names were "VENUS", "MARS", and "PLUTO". So far, so good.

Certain conditions, (such as a reboot) were generally accompanied by broadcast messages that would (in our case) be sent to hundreds of dumb terminals in about 12 different cities.

*** Reply received from operator on MARS ***
System shutdown in 5 minutes

Re:Error,Cannot Close Application, Click OK to clo

[JWSmythe (446288)]

I still put those in for giggles.. Usually in something like this:

if ($a > 0){
#something
}elsif($a 0){
#something
}elsif($a = 0){
#something
}else{
die "Error: You shouldn't see this."
};

Other humorous error messages

[by Anonymous Coward]

A friend once got a javascript error that would have made Bill Clinton proud:

'is' is not defined

I once got a Windows message telling me to insert the CD labeled 'Windows 98' into the floppy drive C: (really! all three in one!)

But my favorite was an old mainframe warning:

Warning: Starting system abort routine. Enter 'go' to continue or 'no' to stop.

To this day I don't know whether 'go' would continue aborting, or continue running, nor whether 'no' would stop running, or stop aborting!

Re:Mac Bomb

[cscx (541332)]

The MacOS Bomb is analagous to the BSOD on Win9x -- lack of protected memory caused some serious shit to happen. (Funny, the Win9x "BSOD" really isn't the official "Blue Screen of Death" anyway -- it's just a blue error message. The real BSOD [rr.com] originated on WinNT and only occurred when some serious shit happened -- like yanking out expansion cards with the power on, or some nasty corrupted driver.)

Now for some snapshots I took myself. My personal favs include KDE's "Sound Server fatal error: cpu overload, aborted" (sorry no pic), this priceless one from Outlook, [216.136.200.194] (I can't make this shit up) KDE's 3D take on the Mac's age-old bomb concept, GNOME doing what it does best [216.136.200.194], and you can't forget Linus' famous "Aiee!" message when the Linux kernel panics.