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error message query

From Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com>
Newsgroups alt.os.multics
Subject error message query
Date 2020-04-07 16:45 -0400
Organization PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
Message-ID <mddk12rrpn6.fsf@panix5.panix.com> (permalink)

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In a different forum, someone told the following story:

    One of the most clever (in several senses) Multics developers, who was
    working in the innermost recesses of the file system, put in a check for a
    condition that would be detected during the boot-up sequence -- intended
    for himself during debugging/development; because it was an "impossible"
    condition, obviously it would never arise in a released, installed system.

    So he put in an error message that he could interpret and that amused
    him. Neither my memory nor my Latin is good enough to be able to reproduce
    the exact wording, but it was a Latin sentence that translated to "Unto the
    root this day is born a brother".

    I probably don't have to tell you the rest of the story.

Is anyone in the Multics universe familiar with the error message in question,
or is it simply folklore?

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news@alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen

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Thread

error message query Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2020-04-07 16:45 -0400
  Re: error message query Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> - 2020-04-07 20:24 -0400
  Re: error message query Adam Sampson <ats@offog.org> - 2020-04-08 03:18 +0100
  Re: error message query rfm <rmabee@comcast.net> - 2020-04-09 17:39 -0700
    Re: error message query coren@panix.com (Robert S. Coren) - 2020-04-10 10:46 -0400
  Re: error message query Charles Anthony <charles.unix.pro@gmail.com> - 2020-04-14 17:06 -0700

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