Unix pranks

Editors note:  This is reposted from one of my older pages.  Goes hand in hand nicely with the Funny Unix Commands, this takes it a bit farther. When you end up working around Unix sysadmins for any length of time, the need to jokingly flaunt your sysadmin muscles seems to arise to shake off the stress of the job.

Nasty banner on login
A cow-orker did this to our admin account one day, she thought she was being damn funny. I was mildly pissed because I had work to do on that server. :)  In the end, it still makes good comedy.

The following was added into the .profile (in HP-UX, adjust, mix and stir as necessary for your shell):
banner “WHAT R U” ” DOIN IN” ” HERE?”
echo “Pls press enter to continue….”
read junk
banner “PLS LOGOUT” ” NOW!!!”
export PS1=” ”

Basically it displays huge text with each message and requires input after each one, then sets the prompt to blank. Very nice.

Remote xeyes display
This was a favorite of IT people’s when I worked at Sequent Computer Systems. Very cute. Make xeyes pop up on another users xsession. Lotsa laughs, very annoying.

Run the following command:
xeyes -display IP:0.0
(where IP is the remote display IP you are shooting for)

Mock delete everything in a user directory upon login…
Try adding this to the end of a users .profile:

echo “rm -Rf ~/”
echo “Are you sure you want to delete everything under $USER/?”
read junk
echo “Could not remove direcoty $USER/: in use.”
PS1=” ”
sleep 300
echo “Just Kidding!”
PS1=”$>”

Good clean fun right? Just the right thing for over-reactive people with heart problems.

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