About the same time the 500-mile email problem happened (mid 1990s), I had a difficult to understand issue with my office PC. Every morning, I'd come in, slide my hard drive sled in, and turn the computer on. We had 128 Kbps ISDN internet at the office and I had the same at home, but that was too slow to do much work. So I'd take the drive home so I could work at night, especially in the winter when the office was too cold at night.
Suddenly one winter morning, the PC wouldn't boot. I had to run to a meeting. When I got back, I turned the PC off and on again and everything was fine. The next morning, the same thing happened. The third day, I didn't have a meeting. I turned it off and back on, still no boot. I'd gotten in late, so I just turned it off and took an early lunch. When I got back, it still wouldn't boot. But I had a meeting, so I ran to that, leaving the computer on. When I got back, it booted fine.
The next morning, same thing. I decided to look inside, not having any idea what might cause such symptoms. As I took the shell off, a tiny mouse came out, jump off my desk, and ran across my lap before jumping on the floor and scurrying out of sight. From inside the computer came the smell of mouse urine. Apparently he'd been crawling in through the open drive bay to keep warm every night, and urinating while he was in there. Once the computer had been on for a while, the heat and airflow would dry it out enough to eliminate whatever electrical short was keeping it from booting. I went to the store and bought an empty drive sled to put in the drive bay whenever I took my drive out, and the problem never came back. I felt lucky that the liquid didn't cause permanent damage.
Finally a real computer mouse! What a funny story :)
My mouse doesn't do that
Seems like 'he' came out without damage, too :)
He doesn't give the chairman due credit, IMHO. The chairman collected information to help solve the problem AND it actually was the information needed. Without it, the author might look for "randomly unreachable servers" for a long time.
It's almost raw data -- exactly what you would wish for. By lecturing people that "email does not work that way", next time you either get no data at all because people don't even try, or no data because people hide it thinking email doesn't work that way, or a misguided conclusion when a layman tries to make a better guess at the cause of the problem.
These kind of posts are why I check HN pretty much every day for 15+ yrs now. Hard to believe I've missed this one. Glad I caught it this time! This posts reminds me to stay humble and avoid jumping to conclusions without analysis.
I think I’ve been one of those 2 or 3 times for this story. Read it, forgot it, read it again and only remembered after some time :D
I was one of the lucky ones today
Such a refreshingly good attitude!
[dead]
And still a treat. I love that story.
You guys beat me to it - I was working on the list!
Btw for those wondering about reposts: reposts on HN are just fine after a year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and reposts of classics every now and then are good because it's important for new users to learn the classics!
This, Stalking the Wiley Hacker[1], and others were the stories that got me into computers. I wish so much the experience of working in this industry hadn't so thoroughly annihilated the joy they once brought.
Our email systems are mostly mediated by giant hyper-scale companies (Microsoft, Google etc). The location of mail servers being where the recipient is seems quaint (and wonderfully decentralised).
And even if we do manage our own servers they are automated, and apps often containerised. Nobody ends up with older MTA due to an OS upgrade.
Remember reading this like 20 years ago nice to see it again.
I immediately did a "apt install units". Very cool!
I never realized this was 2002 and when I first read it, how new it was.
And here we are almost 25 years later.
Never get tired of seeing this resurface every once and a while. There needs to be a /greatest for posts like these (while still allowing people to repost them every so often)
How about sending mail 500 miles more?
Just to be the man/woman/non-binary who sends mail 500 miles to your front door?
You had me at EHL0.
> You had me at EHL0.
You just reminded me of my time working at Sendmail, where I often had to telnet to port 25 of some machine, and pretend to be a mail server sending email.
I used to be able to send all the commands without having to look them up. Not sure I could still do that today.
I think can still do it, 30 years after I last had to. The trauma of debugging sendmail m4 config issues for
hours while the company e-mail remained dysfunctional has permanently etched it into my mind.
EHLO example.com
MAIL FROM:<foo@example.com>
RCPT TO:<bar@example.com>
DATA
Subject: Hello, World
I have crawled through the depths of hell to deliver unto you this message.
.
Wietse Venema saved us all.
> It hadn't been altered -- it was a sendmail.cf I had written. And I was fairly certain I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option.
This is gold.
[deleted]
FAQ about this, which answers such questions as "Did this actually happen, or were you just spinning a yarn?"
About the same time the 500-mile email problem happened (mid 1990s), I had a difficult to understand issue with my office PC. Every morning, I'd come in, slide my hard drive sled in, and turn the computer on. We had 128 Kbps ISDN internet at the office and I had the same at home, but that was too slow to do much work. So I'd take the drive home so I could work at night, especially in the winter when the office was too cold at night.
Suddenly one winter morning, the PC wouldn't boot. I had to run to a meeting. When I got back, I turned the PC off and on again and everything was fine. The next morning, the same thing happened. The third day, I didn't have a meeting. I turned it off and back on, still no boot. I'd gotten in late, so I just turned it off and took an early lunch. When I got back, it still wouldn't boot. But I had a meeting, so I ran to that, leaving the computer on. When I got back, it booted fine.
The next morning, same thing. I decided to look inside, not having any idea what might cause such symptoms. As I took the shell off, a tiny mouse came out, jump off my desk, and ran across my lap before jumping on the floor and scurrying out of sight. From inside the computer came the smell of mouse urine. Apparently he'd been crawling in through the open drive bay to keep warm every night, and urinating while he was in there. Once the computer had been on for a while, the heat and airflow would dry it out enough to eliminate whatever electrical short was keeping it from booting. I went to the store and bought an empty drive sled to put in the drive bay whenever I took my drive out, and the problem never came back. I felt lucky that the liquid didn't cause permanent damage.
Finally a real computer mouse! What a funny story :)
My mouse doesn't do that
Seems like 'he' came out without damage, too :)
He doesn't give the chairman due credit, IMHO. The chairman collected information to help solve the problem AND it actually was the information needed. Without it, the author might look for "randomly unreachable servers" for a long time.
It's almost raw data -- exactly what you would wish for. By lecturing people that "email does not work that way", next time you either get no data at all because people don't even try, or no data because people hide it thinking email doesn't work that way, or a misguided conclusion when a layman tries to make a better guess at the cause of the problem.
Fantastic comment. Indeed.
Popular in:
2023 (1164 points, 198 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633
2020 (1034 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404
2015 (915 points, 140 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708
These kind of posts are why I check HN pretty much every day for 15+ yrs now. Hard to believe I've missed this one. Glad I caught it this time! This posts reminds me to stay humble and avoid jumping to conclusions without analysis.
One of the lucky 10,000! https://xkcd.com/1053/
I think I’ve been one of those 2 or 3 times for this story. Read it, forgot it, read it again and only remembered after some time :D
I was one of the lucky ones today
Such a refreshingly good attitude!
[dead]
And still a treat. I love that story.
You guys beat me to it - I was working on the list!
Btw for those wondering about reposts: reposts on HN are just fine after a year or so (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), and reposts of classics every now and then are good because it's important for new users to learn the classics!
Can an email go 500 miles in 2025? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030 - July 2025 (122 comments)
Can’t send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633 - Sept 2023 (198 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213064 - Nov 2021 (93 comments)
We can't send email more than 500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23775404 - July 2020 (135 comments)
500 miles (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18675375 - Dec 2018 (32 comments)
We can't send mail more than 500 miles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17602158 - July 2018 (1 comment)
The case of the 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14676835 - July 2017 (56 comments)
Every time we lift a pallet from the shipping room, the server times out (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13347058 - Jan 2017 (82 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10305377 - Sept 2015 (1 comment)
The 500-mile email (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338708 - April 2015 (139 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2701063 - June 2011 (18 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1293652 - April 2010 (24 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=385068 - Dec 2008 (28 comments)
The case of the 500-mile email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123489 - Feb 2008 (7 comments)
I can say that a new user (me) did learn the classic (this).
Congratulations! You are one of today's ten thousand!
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1053/
I wonder when we will see a timeless classic like this on HN, but for AI.
We can then poke some fun at what AI did, what went wrong, and our incredibly illogical "debug" of AI
AI bots on dead internet will bring them up and have an earnest metallic laughter together.
Reminds me of this classic that resurfaces here every few years: if I buy vanilla ice cream my car won’t start https://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=501
This, Stalking the Wiley Hacker[1], and others were the stories that got me into computers. I wish so much the experience of working in this industry hadn't so thoroughly annihilated the joy they once brought.
[1] https://archive.org/details/5626281-Clifford-Stoll-Communica...
So funny to think about this now.
Our email systems are mostly mediated by giant hyper-scale companies (Microsoft, Google etc). The location of mail servers being where the recipient is seems quaint (and wonderfully decentralised).
And even if we do manage our own servers they are automated, and apps often containerised. Nobody ends up with older MTA due to an OS upgrade.
Remember reading this like 20 years ago nice to see it again.
I immediately did a "apt install units". Very cool!
Everytime this pops up I immediately think of this classic: https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/flavors
I never realized this was 2002 and when I first read it, how new it was.
And here we are almost 25 years later.
Never get tired of seeing this resurface every once and a while. There needs to be a /greatest for posts like these (while still allowing people to repost them every so often)
How about sending mail 500 miles more?
Just to be the man/woman/non-binary who sends mail 500 miles to your front door?
You had me at EHL0.
> You had me at EHL0.
You just reminded me of my time working at Sendmail, where I often had to telnet to port 25 of some machine, and pretend to be a mail server sending email.
I used to be able to send all the commands without having to look them up. Not sure I could still do that today.
I think can still do it, 30 years after I last had to. The trauma of debugging sendmail m4 config issues for hours while the company e-mail remained dysfunctional has permanently etched it into my mind.
Wietse Venema saved us all.> It hadn't been altered -- it was a sendmail.cf I had written. And I was fairly certain I hadn't enabled the "FAIL_MAIL_OVER_500_MILES" option.
This is gold.
FAQ about this, which answers such questions as "Did this actually happen, or were you just spinning a yarn?"
https://ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html
As many times as I've read this story, I've never come across this.
Pity, as the constant handwaving in the answers makes the entire thing seem made up.
All time classic.
Here is another classic: wrong password when standing. https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...
A classic.
Related:
Can an email go 500 miles in 2025?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44466030
[dead]