Gnarly Error Messages 1315
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."
Mac Bomb (Score:4, Funny)
Other humorous error messages (Score:5, Funny)
'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:Other humorous error messages (Score:4, Funny)
Clippit has performed an illegal operation and will be arrested.
From an old issue of PC Magazine:
Error 23 occured when attempting to report that error 23 occured.
Re:Other humorous error messages (Score:5, Funny)
That reminds me of a screenshot I once saw that said:
Not enough memory to display error m
Shut her down Scotty, she's sucking mud again. (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt you could get that message past the suits these days. If you did, I'm sure Paramount would demand a royalty every time the message appeared (Star Trek franchiise).
Re:Mac Bomb (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Mac Bomb (Score:5, Funny)
Windows blorphs on a lot of stuff, actually. Sometimes their copying estimates are a bit off. [shacknet.nu] (Fortunately, it didn't really take that long.)
Sometimes there's an error even when there isn't [shacknet.nu] (or isn't when there is? Whatever)
It's ok though, all of these problems can be taken care of fairly easily with the New Microsoft Keyboard, [shacknet.nu] at a store near you!
Favorite Mac Error message (Score:5, Funny)
"How would you like if I erased all your files?" with two buttons both of which said "OK". If you clicked on the button it would say "just kidding" if you clicked anywhere else it would call you a coward.
Re:Mac Bomb (Score:5, Funny)
Keyboard error. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually it's F1 (Score:5, Funny)
RMN
~~~
Re:Keyboard error. (Score:5, Funny)
continue" message, but I've never seen it.
Re:Keyboard error. (Score:5, Funny)
panic("Cannot initialize video hardware\n");
2.0.38
It comes from very cool Kernel Cookies.
There are more:
printk("??? No FDIV bug? Lucky you...\n");
2.2.16
%
* the interrupt processing routine(s), so if you manage to get "flooded" by
* irq's, start thinking about the "Power off/on" button...
*/
2.2.16
%
pan
2.2.16
%
pan
2.2.16
%
#de
Are you able to smell it? */
2.2.16
%
print
2.2.16
%
panic("
2.2.16
%
* function or the penguins will get angry. */
2.2.16
%
2.2.16
%
die_
2.2.16
%
die_
2.2.16
%
die_
2.2.16
%
* "By your command" or "Activating turbo boost, Michael".
*/
2.2.16
%
pri
2.2.16
%
pani
2.2.16
%
panic("kmem_cach
2.2.16
%
panic("Detected a card I can't drive - whoops\n");
2.2.16
%
panic(
2.2.16
%
panic
2.2.16
%
panic("
2.2.16
%
panic("
2.2.16
%
panic("
2.2.16
%
panic ("Splunge!");
2.2.16
%
panic("
2.2.16
%
panic("
deal with such a beast...");
2.2.16
%
2.2.16
%
panic("CPU too expensive - making holiday in the ANDES!");
2.2.16
%
panic
2.2.16
panic(
2.2.16
%
2.2.16
%
printk(KERN_W
dev->name);
2.4.0-test2
%
* Hash table gook..
*/
2.4.0-test2
%
* function won. Do not mess with it... -DaveM
*/
2.2.16
%
* We used to try various strange things. Let's not.
*/
2.2.16
%
#if 0
2.2.16
%
* For moronic filesystems that do not allow holes in file.
* We may have to extend the file.
*/
2.4.0-test2
%
printk(KERN_WARNIN
number). Enabling \"cruft\" mount option.\n");
2.2.16
%
printk(KERN_W
2.2.16
%
2.0.38
%
2.2.16
%
2.2.16
%
*
* Wirzenius wrote this portably, Torvalds fucked it up
*/
2.2.16
%
printk("Penguin %d is stuck in the bottle.\n", i);
2.0.38
%
prom_p
2.0.38
%
panic("A
2.0.38
%
panic("bad_user_acc
2.0.38
%
%
* Should be panic but... (Why are BSD people panic obsessed ??)
*/
2.0.38
%
panic("Cannot initialize video hardware\n");
2.0.38
%
printk
2.0.38
%
printk("aut
2.0.38
%
HARDFAIL("Not enough magic.");
2.4.0-test2
%
#ifdef STUPIDLY_TRUST_BROKEN_PCMD_ENA_BIT
2.4.0-test2
%
if (user_specified)
* place. */
2.4.0-test2
%
p
"Self-destruct in 5 seconds. Have a nice day...\n");
2.3.99-pre8
No url for more... I can't find
Re:Keyboard error. (Score:4, Funny)
You forgot the best (mm/swapfile.c): :-)
Unable to start swapping: out of memory
And this one (arch/i386/boot/setup.S): :-(. Hopefully it works, and we don't :-).
# Well, that certainly wasn't fun
# need no steenking BIOS anyway (except for the initial loading
Re:Keyboard error. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Keyboard error. (Score:5, Informative)
Interface Hall of Shame... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interface Hall of Shame... (Score:5, Funny)
error: "The parameter is correct"
Re:Interface Hall of Shame... (Score:5, Funny)
Error: Success
Re:Interface Hall of Shame... (Score:5, Funny)
Error code: NO_ERROR
Kind of reminds me of the "everything's ok" alarm...
Re:Interface Hall of Shame... (Score:4, Informative)
eg. print error prints success because of second function.
Re:Interface Hall of Shame... (Score:5, Informative)
Go directly to their error messages page [iarchitect.com], rather than linking through their home page (which does, in all honesty, have a sizeable amount of interesting information on it).
Re:Interface Hall of Shame... (Score:5, Funny)
Here's some of the better ones:
RealPlayer can't get no respect [attrition.org]
Yes, some people are just this dumb [attrition.org]
Not funny, just amazing [attrition.org]
Next-generation keyboard from Microsoft [attrition.org]
Gnarly. (Score:5, Funny)
translation... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: translation... (Score:5, Funny)
I think the old Amgias used to have a "Guru Meditation Error" for certain errors
Out-of-range error (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately, users never saw this error, as the program ran out of memory while composing it.
A really, really bad one... (Score:5, Funny)
D'oh -Homer Simpson.
"Unsafe Removal of Device" (Score:5, Funny)
First windows error message that actually was telling the truth
Error (Score:5, Funny)
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
make: stop. don't know how to make love! (Score:5, Funny)
I read a case history that was somewhat similar. Except the error message was in Latin. Someone who had once taken Latin was tracked down, and asked to translate. The translation was something like, "Unto the son is born a brother". When the original programmer was tracked down, he was embarrassed. "But that condition was never supposed to arrive. He had some kind of complicated data structure, where each element could have children and siblings. Except the element at the apex of the tree was supposed to be a special case -- no siblings.
But since it was never supposed to happen the original programmer didn't bother to put a meaningful error message.
Back with good old version 7, make gave error messages like:
make: stop. don't know how to make foo!
if you had typed "make foo" and there was no makefile, or no rule for foo in the makefile.
When computer naive people (remember them) would ask what computers could do, it was fun to have them sit down and type:
make love
Which would, of course, result in:
make: stop. don't know how to make love!
"make war" was another good one.
Printer on fire (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Printer on fire (Score:5, Informative)
See this linux kernel post [iu.edu].
Re:Printer on fire (Score:5, Funny)
double is_computer_on_fire()
Returns the temperature of the motherboard if the computer is currently on fire. If the computer isn't on fire, the function returns some other value.
and of course the classic:
int32 is_computer_on(void)
Returns 1 if the computer is on. If the computer isn't on, the value returned by this function is undefined.
(source: [dhs.org]
http://bang.dhs.org/be/bebook/The%20Kernel%20Ki
Those were the days.
error message (Score:5, Funny)
"You need help. Please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx for assistance."
Amiga Error (Score:4, Funny)
Remember the Amiga 500/1500 error message that said
"Guru Medatation"
Re:Amiga Error (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone likes to malign the Amiga system crash dialog, simply because it bore the term 'Guru Meditation'. "Ha ha," they joke, "see how primitive and useless the error message was."
You have to understand that this was a massive advance forward. Prior to that, the major systems were first-generation Macs (which displayed a certain number of bomb icons and nothing else); and Apple ]['s, Commodore-64s, and MS-DOS-running PC clones -- all of which displayed nothing; it just (if you were lucky) silently locked up.
Carl Sassenrath [sassenrath.com], designer and author of the Amiga's 'kernel', thought this state of affairs sucked, so he did something about it. Amiga's Guru Meditations, cryptic though they were, told the programmer which task was responsible for the crash (first hex number), and what exception it generated (second hex number). You could then hit the right mouse button to drop into a very primitive serial debugger to get more information. While these numbers were useless to 95% of the users out there, it was information the user could give to the vendor, helping them track down the problem more easily -- information they never had before.
Meanwhile, everyone just happily tolerated Windoze BSODs, even though they were, and still are, no more informative than Amiga Guru Meditations.
Schwab
Gotta be the classic MacOS... (Score:5, Funny)
"An Error Occurred Because An Error Occurred"
Ah, so that's why!
The best BeOS error (Score:5, Funny)
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!"
"Your system date is set to year 8192. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"Your system date is set to year 8192. (Score:4, Informative)
Sometimes Barney plays on his own (Score:5, Funny)
"Sometimes Barney Starts Playing Peekaboo on his own." Scary. [microsoft.com]
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - Q325038 (Score:5, Funny)
someone's in the kitchen (Score:5, Funny)
Re:someone's in the kitchen (Score:5, Funny)
As the principle software developer on Someone's in the Kitchen (the title helped pay the down payment on my house), I have to say I didn't realize this problem had made it to the published Microsoft Knowledge Base. Of all things...
Though I have to admit, the funniest bug report I ever tracked for that product was a timing error in a
Problem was, the wave file was cut short, and the play back of the audio stopped before the syllable "roach."
Needless to say fixing that problem before GM was slightly more important than the Blendolini Choco-Shake hang.
Illegal Operation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Illegal Operation (Score:4, Funny)
"System Error: You need to contact technical support."
Unfortunately, the guy in the next cube over wasn't much help...
Re:Illegal Operation (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Illegal Operation (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense (Score:5, Funny)
Undefined? (Score:5, Funny)
While doing some JavaScript programming with and old version of Netscape:
Undefined is not definedAppleWorks GS (Score:5, Funny)
C++ template errors (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't remember who said it, but C++ templates are clearly the work of the devil.
"ERROR: SUCCESS!" (Score:5, Funny)
PC Loadletter (Score:5, Funny)
That bitch is lucky I'm not armed.
My favorite windows error: (Score:4, Funny)
Though now on NT/2000 these errors are logged in the handy-dany event logger.
Apple's MPW C compiler famous for its error msgs (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
"You can't modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler."
Oh for the days when Apple had a since of humor.
Oooooops. (Score:4, Funny)
There's always the old favorite "This application has performed a fatal error and will be shut down: Windows" and the similar "This file appears to be corrupted or infected, and should be replaced: Symantec AntiVirus." I'll post the screenshot of the antivirus one if i find it.
A Few Windows Error messages (Score:5, Funny)
(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 "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
That's a lot of zeros... I thought addresses were only 32 bits long in Windows2000...
cute error msg (Score:5, Funny)
I like this far more than is acceptable:
>cat food
>cat: cannot open food
Apollo workstation (Score:5, Funny)
> ?
You must be from Prime. Use 'h' for help.
Prime was Apollo's competitor at the time.
Hedley
Dr. Watson caused a Dr. Watson (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
How to totally screw up Win2k in less than 1 min. (Score:4, Interesting)
You gotta love MS's monolithic integration...
Re:How to totally screw up Win2k in less than 1 mi (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. You gotta love people who either a) mess with things they don't understand or b) deliberately try to break things...and then find that they're broken.
Granted, there exists an argument that even when apparently working correctly most MS products are badly broken, but that's for another post...
My Favorite SQL Error Message (Score:5, Funny)
SGI message - has anybody else had this? (Score:5, Interesting)
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...)
Re:SGI message - has anybody else had this? (Score:5, Informative)
If an SGI box kernel panics, it does exactly what you described, printing the message "KERNEL PANIC" at the top of the textport and spewing out lots of stack traces after it.
Now, kernel panics are, of course, handled by a handler. (Those panic messages don't happen by magic, you know.) If, on the off chance, your machine should panic, and then panic again inside the panic handler-- apart from meaning something is really, really wrong-- the system prints the message "DOUBLE PANIC" on the screen.
That's probably what you saw. I've seen this many times-- always due to faulty hardware.
Of course, I wouldn't put it past SGI to put a joke in their panic messages. This is, of course, the company that warned users in its workstation owner's guide not to "dangle the mouse by its cable or throw mouse at co-workers."
And there's always the ever-popular audiopanel -spinaltap gag. Running audiopanel with the -spinaltap flag makes the VU meters go to 11. Naturally.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
HAL9000 (Score:5, Funny)
linux (Score:5, Funny)
***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 (Score:5, Funny)
Errors covering errors (Score:5, Interesting)
"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?
My Best Ever (Score:4, Funny)
Error #112233:
Catastrophic Failure
And then it continued to play the Divx movie fine....
Great old Amiga error message... (Score:5, Funny)
'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 (Score:5, Funny)
ERROR: Error on open macro at the address indicated
PROGRAMMER ACTION: Fix and rerun.
No joke.
Thanks for reminding me (Score:5, Funny)
____________________________
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]
ResEdit and Mac OS X (Score:4, Funny)
Good times.
triv
My first unix error... (Score:4, Funny)
-Chris
Funky error message (Score:4, Funny)
The Dreaded /. Error Message: (Score:5, Funny)
[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 (Score:5, Funny)
Messages from other planets (Score:5, Funny)
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
'I'm crushing your head!' (Score:4, Funny)
'I'm crushing your head!' error appears after leaving open a pop-up slider
Product: Flash
Platform: All
Versions: 5.0
ID: 15438
Issue
After leaving a slider pop-up open, the user switches to another functio] such as accessing a menu or testing a movie. Flash then behaves unexpectedly. Sometimes an error message appears which states:
"I'm crushing your head!" "Crashing at gPopupDail should be new!. Yes = go to debugger, No = keep running, Cancel = terminate."
At other times the slider may continue to appear independently of the panel.Reason
This error is caused by leaving the a pop-up slider open while attempting to perform another function.
Solution
Click out of the slider area to close the pop-up slider before testing the movie or accessing another menu.
Is Jeeves gay? (Score:4, Funny)
HTTP error 403: file is none of your business
You have a lot of nerve even clicking on this link.
I didn't make this up since I can't do ascii art (Score:5, Funny)
Kernel error [venns.org]
Depressed web servers (Score:4, Funny)
Printer not found (Score:5, Funny)
TiVo (Score:5, Funny)
Values of beta will give rise to dom! (Score:5, Interesting)
From personal experience, one that sticks out in my mind is from Microsoft's Flight Simulator. If you auger into the ground, it says "Crash". If you bellyflop into Lake Michigan it says "Splash". But if you make a perfect landing, forgetting the minor detail of putting down your landing gear, it'd say "Crash! Lower your gear next time!" This message dates all the way back to MFS 1.0.
When you write your own errors (Score:5, Funny)
"The printer doesn't work."
"Is there an error? What does it say?"
"It's all the way in the next room."
"Ma'am, I need to know the error."
"It says printer error."
"Could you read me exactly what is says?"
"I remembered. That's what it says. Printer error."
"Ok, ma'am? You're talking to the guy that wrote the software. I know for a fact that it doesn't say printer error, because I never wrote an error message that says printer error. Now please put down the phone, go into the other room, and read me the real message."
*click*
True story.
VirtualPC inside VirtualPC (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Error,Cannot Close Application, Click OK to clo (Score:5, Funny)
if ($a > 0){
#something
}elsif($a 0){
#something
}elsif($a = 0){
#something
}else{
die "Error: You shouldn't see this."
};
Re:Error,Cannot Close Application, Click OK to clo (Score:4, Funny)
die "Error: You shouldn't see this unless I forgot a less than sign (or Slashdot removed it)."
Re:Error,Cannot Close Application, Click OK to clo (Score:5, Funny)
Needless to say, I didnt go back to programming for the rest of the day...
Re:Real Media (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux errors are the best (Score:4, Funny)
The switch to link against this library was thus -lowfat