I love how obscure bugs get fixed sometimes. One of our bIPlog writers was having trouble overwriting uploaded files in a Movable Type blog. It just failed with a “permission denied” error no matter how many permissions I gave the temp dir. We run Apache on Win2K, while Ben Trott at MT is a *nix guy. Everyone was coming up stumped. My question got fanned out, and eventually a friend of a friend on the east coast speculated that it was not a perms issue at all, but file handle flushing. Forwarded his response to Ben, who shot back a perl fix minutes later. And we’re in business. The writer is happy and MT is a tiny bit better. Kind of amazing to see this thing blossom from a normal user uncovering an unknown bug to a coast-to-coast correspondence between strangers, people helping out for nothing but the promise of a dozen Krispy Kremes. People are cool.
Krispy Kreme Bug Fix
Music: Kristin Hersh :: Pale
Email, News, Blogs, IM – the tools change, the spirit remains the same.
‘…I’ve walked through the countryside of Maine in the snow and seen branches bent to the ground under the weight of it because of Usenet, I’ve been in a room with fifty people screaming the chorus of “March of Cambreadth” at a Heather Alexander concert in Seattle because of Usenet, I’ve written some of the best damn stuff I’ve ever written in my life because of Usenet, I *started* writing because of Usenet, I understand my life and my purpose and my center because of Usenet, and you know 80% of what Usenet has given me has fuck all to do with computers and everything to do with people.’ – Russ Allbery (full text)