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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>tunafish</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../T.html" title="T"/><link rel="previous" href="tumbler.html" title="tumbler"/><link rel="next" href="tune.html" title="tune"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">tunafish</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="tumbler.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">T</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="tune.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="tunafish"/><dt xmlns="" id="tunafish"><b>tunafish</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> In hackish lore, refers to the mutated punchline of an age-old joke
to be found at the bottom of the manual pages of
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">tunefs</span>(8)</span>
in the original <a href="../B/BSD.html"><i class="glossterm">BSD</i></a> 4.2 distribution. The joke was
removed in later releases once commercial sites started using 4.2, but
apparently restored on the 4.4BSD tape and in {Net,Free,Open}BSD. Tunefs
relates to the <span class="firstterm">tuning</span> of file-system
parameters for optimum performance, and at the bottom of a few pages of
wizardly inscriptions was a &#8216;BUGS&#8217; section consisting of the
line &#8220;<span class="quote">You can tune a file system, but you can't tunafish</span>&#8221;.
Variants of this can be seen in other BSD versions, though it has been
excised from some versions by humorless management
<a href="../D/droid.html"><i class="glossterm">droid</i></a>s. The [nt]roff source for SunOS 4.1.1
contains a comment apparently designed to prevent this: &#8220;<span class="quote">Take this
out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until the <b class="command">time_t</b>'s wrap around.</span>&#8221;</p><p>[It has since been pointed out that indeed you can tunafish. Usually
at a canning factory... &#8212;ESR]</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="tumbler.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../T.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="tune.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">tumbler </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> tune</td></tr></table></div></body></html>