guru(8) - Systems administration

GURU(8)              Maintenance Procedures               GURU(8)

NAME
     guru - System administration

SYNOPSIS
     guru [ -e program ] [ -f ] [ -p target ]

DESCRIPTION
     guru is a sophisticated program synthesis and system mainte-
     nance  tool  developed after midnight in numerous university
     computing labs.  It is based on the famous LISP Hacker  sys-
     tem,  used  to  develop  AI programs on TENEX.  guru reads a
     problem description from the standard input.  An  innovative
     and  occasionally  correct solution is generated and written
     to the standard output.  Typically, guru is invoked  repeat-
     edly  until  an acceptable solution is generated or the user
     community has learned to live with the problem.

     The bugreport mechanism sometimes  invokes  guru.   In  this
     case  guru  executes at a priority inversely proportional to
     the reported urgency of the bug.  Feature  enhancements  run
     at  high  priority  whereas critical problems are fixed only
     when the machine would otherwise be idle.

     If the standard input is empty, guru uses its  program  syn-
     thesis  capabilities  to generate a selection of screen edi-
     tors, X widgets, compilers, sundry games and the  occasional
     diatribe.

OPTIONS
     -e program
             New features are added to an existing program.  This
             option  should  be used with caution as the enhanced
             program may behave unpredictably or not at all.

     -f      Reconstructs filesystems after a crash.

     -p target
             Ports the entire system on which guru  is  executing
             to  target,  preferably  a RISC machine.  This is an
             extremely  time  consuming  operation  and  is   not
             guaranteed to terminate.

     If more than one option is specified, guru may thrash.  Each
     copy of guru has its own set of unique, additional and undo-
     cumented options.

SEE ALSO
     YAPS: Yet another Program Synthesiser by S C Johnson.

NOTES
     Inherent design limitations prevent guru  from  synthesising
     comments.   The  programs  generated  are undocumented.  The

     lucidity, politeness, relevance and language  of  the  occa-
     sional diatribe vary considerably.

     The only diagnostic is an occasional ``I deserve a raise'' -
     which  may  be  ignored  albeit  doing  so  may  provoke ``I
     resign'' - an unrecoverable error.

     Sending the output of one  guru  into  another  can  produce
     quite startling results.