(23-10-2017, 03:05 AM)josuah Wrote: If you do not knew the command before, it will still be challenging.

Last clue: it is in POSIX

I give up, I know of no POSIX utilities that outputs the content of a file/line/whatever and then the size and name.
I'm lost.

It may be obvious if you start from the command, but from the other side, I realize that I would also be clueless.

This is an old command, with a lot of better alternatives, that made it fall in shadow. I doubt I will ever see a script using it haha.

Let's turn this into a tiny scavenger hunt instead: "%u %d %s" is what you need to grep for, and Google will not be very useful with "%u %d %s".

Anyway, getting the POSIX man page locally is always a good idea.

I'm the thing that always fails to work from the first shot when installing Arch linux.
No matter what you do, No matter what wiki/blog you follow instructions on, I'll most likely cause issues and not work.
Without me, a computer is no fun, I am the laptop destroyer.
What am I?

(29-11-2017, 09:43 PM)renken Wrote: I'm the thing that always fails to work from the first shot when installing Arch linux.
No matter what you do, No matter what wiki/blog you follow instructions on, I'll mostly likely cause issues and not work.
Without me, a computer is no fun, I am the laptop destroyer.
What am I?

Is it ?

EDIT: Hide my guess.

(30-11-2017, 04:13 AM)asyncial Wrote:

(29-11-2017, 09:43 PM)renken Wrote: I'm the thing that always fails to work from the first shot when installing Arch linux.
No matter what you do, No matter what wiki/blog you follow instructions on, I'll mostly likely cause issues and not work.
Without me, a computer is no fun, I am the laptop destroyer.
What am I?

Is it

ALSA / sound in general

?

EDIT: Hide my guess.

It's Your suggestion never caused any issues for me, works like a charm for me, everytime.

Ha that's funny, because in my case it's the other way around: I use , but I hate , so I guess where on uses higher level tools, it usually really is easier to get to run. Disappointing ;)

(29-11-2017, 09:43 PM)renken Wrote: I'm the thing that always fails to work from the first shot when installing Arch linux.
No matter what you do, No matter what wiki/blog you follow instructions on, I'll most likely cause issues and not work.
Without me, a computer is no fun, I am the laptop destroyer.
What am I?

This is not even a riddle, it's way too generic. There should be a single answer.

I am invisible, inheritable and respected.
I contain your home and you should care about me.

#define SARCASM
Group Policy?

Heh. Good thing that I added the second sentence.

(22-02-2018, 01:59 PM)1848 Wrote: I am invisible, inheritable and respected.
I contain your home and you should care about me.

Yeah pretty much, if you drop the last word, you've exactly what I had in mind.
And then it also fits better grammatically and explains the last part.

I'm unknown by most users but exist nonetheless.
In most cases I can only be set during the creation of my owner.
Without me my owner is useless.

Extra clue:

(24-02-2019, 02:19 AM)grah Wrote: I'm unknown by most users but exist nonetheless.
In most cases I can only be set during the creation of my owner.
Without me my owner is useless.

This is a tricky as it implies we should know what is not known to most users and what makes an owner "useless". I'll take my shot anyway to get this started:

(24-02-2019, 08:51 AM)venam Wrote: This is a tricky as it implies we should know what is not known to most users and what makes an owner "useless". I'll take my shot anyway to get this started:

Let's say
/etc/passwd
or the shell
or /etc/shadow
or the home directory of a user
or the default value or /etc/skel (skeleton)

but in all those cases those can be changed later on after the creation of the "owner" and those aren't really "owners" either.

Those are probably wrong answers than. I'm at lost but at least the quest has started.

I guess I'm assuming what most users know about their system, which isn't a very concrete clue. My assumption is that generally the "owner" just works for most users and typically doesn't require any user intervention. The only time the user may learn about "it" is when the "owner" is behaving strangely.

For the second clue there are 3 important hints, the first being "in most cases", which means there are some "owners" that create and set "it" dynamically. The next is that there's more than one variation of an "owner". I guess this question requires you to figure out what is ment by "owner" first before you can solve it. Owner might not be the best choice of word but any other word would give it away.

I'm going to edit the post and add another hint as a spoiler in case you're really stuck.

That's indeed pretty vague.. I'll give it a shot anyway!

(25-02-2019, 07:37 PM)z3bra Wrote: That's indeed pretty vague.. I'll give it a shot anyway!

The owner might refer to the kernel, which you only notice when it misbehave, and has multiple variations.
Now as to what can only be set during its creation... There is a lot of stuff!
What can render a kernel useless if it's missing?

A driver?

I might need to rethink my clues because when I wrote them I didn't take into account the vagueness. It's also possible that I don't have the best grasp on the item in question so I could unintentionally be leading you astray. For example the relationship between the item and owner, some might consider the item a part / piece of the owner and not something separate or "owned". I need to better understand the item first and then fine-tune the clues.

I don't exist on my own.
With me the thing I belong to is seen as a whole.
What I belong to and am a part of is usually only created once and I along with it.
In all cases my size can only be adjusted during the creation of the thing I'm a part of.
In close to all cases my count can only be set during the creation of the thing I'm a part of.
If the thing I'm a part of is causing you grief when nothing seems to be wrong, it's time to look into me.
ls, find, and a few other commands have options for you to view/find information about me and what I contain.
I possess vital data for the thing I belong to and without it they are useless.

It's hard to come up with clues that don't reveal too much but give you enough to get it. When you know the answer the clues seem so obvious. I apologize for before, hopefully this is better.

(24-02-2019, 02:19 AM)grah Wrote: I'm unknown by most users but exist nonetheless.
In most cases I can only be set during the creation of my owner.
Without me my owner is useless.

Extra clue:

Without my owner there is no UNIX.

Since in UNIX everything is a file, what about file creation time? Can only be set at file creation, is abstracted from view most of the time and without the owner (=file) there's no UNIX.

Is your last post a new riddle or is it a rephrasing of he first one?

(26-02-2019, 04:38 AM)Dworin Wrote: Since in UNIX everything is a file, what about file creation time? Can only be set at file creation, is abstracted from view most of the time and without the owner (=file) there's no UNIX.

File creation time or birth time is not UNIX standard and it's not vital data either. I think this is a wrong direction.

Quote:Is your last post a new riddle or is it a rephrasing of he first one?

I think it was additional clues to the first one.

Quote:I don't exist on my own.
With me the thing I belong to is seen as a whole.
What I belong to and am a part of is usually only created once and I along with it.
In all cases my size can only be adjusted during the creation of the thing I'm a part of.
In close to all cases my count can only be set during the creation of the thing I'm a part of.
If the thing I'm a part of is causing you grief when nothing seems to be wrong, it's time to look into me.
ls, find, and a few other commands have options for you to view/find information about me and what I contain.
I possess vital data for the thing I belong to and without it they are useless.

It's hard to come up with clues that don't reveal too much but give you enough to get it. When you know the answer the clues seem so obvious. I apologize for before, hopefully this is better.

Let me try another guess:

(26-02-2019, 04:40 AM)venam Wrote: File creation time or birth time is not UNIX standard and it's not vital data either. I think this is a wrong direction.

But the 'owner', the file, is central to UNIX design.

Quote:

Quote:Is your last post a new riddle or is it a rephrasing of he first one?

I think it was additional clues to the first one.

In that case file creation time definitely doesn't fit. Those make it sound more like some part of a RAID stack or partition table but those are not specifically UNIX either.

(26-02-2019, 04:52 AM)Dworin Wrote: But the 'owner', the file, is central to UNIX design.

In that case file creation time definitely doesn't fit. Those make it sound more like some part of a RAID stack or partition table but those are not specifically UNIX either.

You were on the right track thinking about files. With the first block of clues when I said there would be no UNIX, I also meant everything else that came after (Unix-like).

(26-02-2019, 04:40 AM)venam Wrote: Let me try another guess:

a link

As in a link is part of an inode, which would be the owner, and there's a link count there too. A link doesn't exist on its own. And most users don't know about it.

I'll give it to you because that's very close to what I had in mind.

(26-02-2019, 03:10 PM)grah Wrote: I'll give it to you because that's very close to what I had in mind.

I thought about this for a while but it just didn't fit your clues, or so I thought. I would've said the reverse about the owner thing and the content or size parts.

This was still a fun quest to find out what it was. Thanks for this.

(27-02-2019, 06:16 AM)venam Wrote: I thought about this for a while but it just didn't fit your clues, or so I thought. I would've said the reverse about the owner thing and the content or size parts.

This was still a fun quest to find out what it was. Thanks for this.

Not a problem, hopefully my lack of knowledge on the subject and all things *nix didn't make it too unnecessarily tough.

Let's bring this little game back to life. It was so much fun!
One mistake I made though, was to use some of the questions from this thread as security questions to sign up to the forums. Little did I know that some of them aren't so straight forward or were driving people crazy (based on messages I've received).

Be sure to consult the rules of the game again:

Rules:

• The clues should be close enough so it's possible to guess.
  
• There should not be any flame war in your post.
  
• It's a well known thing, judge well what is well known.
  
• Try to be funny.
  
• When you find the answer use a spoiler otherwise you'll get a ban for a day. (might be a joke but don't ruin it for others)
  

---

Let me throw a new one:

I'm a command line utility
Someone recently talked about me (conf 2020)
They said I was similar to something with a zoo
z3bra also mentioned and used it in his talk (conf 2020)
Many confuse me with a certain protocol but I'm more of a tool that queries a DB.

Ah ! Easy one ! It should be for anyone that listened carefully 😉

(02-11-2020, 07:41 AM)z3bra Wrote: Ah ! Easy one ! It should be for anyone that listened carefully 😉

You got it! It wasn't hard for you because you're mentioned in the hint.

I'll try


As a utility from ancient times,
My name and purpose rhyme.
You probably never called me,
Unless of course, if you "grok vi".
Being the only utility with a "goal",
I'll streamline your input, at every call.

Probably not correct but I was thinking of:

Wow nice ! That's it !