If (like me) you were a CS graduate student who cut your teeth on Berkeley Unix—complete with the first open source implementation of TCP/IP—you know Section 8 as the cryptic System Maintenance Commands section of the Unix User’s Manual. (Not to be confused with the Section 8 that was a recurring theme in Catch-22 and M*A*S*H.) It was obvious (to me) that this concluding section warranted a closer look because the introduction warned: “Information in this section is not of great interest to most users.” Judging by my taste in research problems over the years, reading Section 8 turned out to be a pretty good investment.
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Read Section 8
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If (like me) you were a CS graduate student who cut your teeth on Berkeley Unix—complete with the first open source implementation of TCP/IP—you know Section 8 as the cryptic System Maintenance Commands section of the Unix User’s Manual. (Not to be confused with the Section 8 that was a recurring theme in Catch-22 and M*A*S*H.) It was obvious (to me) that this concluding section warranted a closer look because the introduction warned: “Information in this section is not of great interest to most users.” Judging by my taste in research problems over the years, reading Section 8 turned out to be a pretty good investment.