The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Notes on an overheard conversation at The Ft. Lauderdale Office of The Corporation

“Can you help me?”

“Sure. What's the problem?”

“When I'm logged into my laptop as me, I can run ispell. But if I switch to root, it's not there.”

“Hmm … where does ispell live?”

“It's in /usr/local/bin. And before you ask—I checked, /usr/local/bin is in root's $PATH.”

“Hmmm … I'm running … um … that version of the operating system.”

“Rabid Wombat? I am too.”

“Let me drive the laptop for a second.”

“Okay. These two terminal windows.”

“Can you switch to root for me?”

“There you go.”

“Now, let's see … as you, I can see ispell in /usr/local/bin and the permissions seem okay. Now in the root terminal window … wow! There's a completely different set of files in /usr/local/bin. Hmmm … ”

“Any ideas?”

“Wait a second … that root window is on another system!”

“Oh … that would explain my problem … ”

“Yes it would.”

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