189 Funny UNIX Error Messages

I was searching around and I’ve compiled a list of *nix errors found on an old newsgroup archive, reformatted for your reading pleasure.

Which one is your favorite?

1. “Values of B will give rise to dom.”
2. FATAL system error #nnnn CAUSE: We should never get here!
3. OHHHH…. I give up Core dumped
4. COMPILER UNABLE TO ABORT
5. AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE TO WRITE BEYOND THE MAXIMUM ASSIGNED SPACE FOR A MASS STORAGE FILE. AN ATTEMPT WAS MADE TO EXPAND A MASS STORAGE FILE BEYOND THE MAXIMUM ASSIGNED SPACE. A READ FUNCTION FOR A MASS STORAGE FILE SPECIFIED AN ADDRESS (WORD 5 OF THE I/O PACKET) THAT IS BEYOND THE MAXIMUM ASSIGNED SPACE. A READ OR WRITE FUNCTION FOR A WORD-ADDRESSABLE MASS STORAG FILE SPECIFIED A MASS STORAGE ADDRESS (WORD 5 OF THE I/O PACKET) AND A TOTAL DATA COUNT. WHEN THE MASS STORAGE ADDRESS IS ADDED TO THE TOTAL DATA COUNT, THE RESULTING ENDING MASS STORAGE ADDRESS IS GREATER THAN 2*/35-1. A READ OR WRITE FUNCTION FOR A SECTOR-FORMATTED MASS STORAGE FILE SPECIFIED A MASS STORAGE ADDRESS (WORD 5 OF THE I/O PACKET) THAT IS GREATER THAN 2*/30-1. ADI ONLY: REFERENCE ATTEMPTED BEYOND THE ASSIGNED FILE WHEN THE FILE IS CONFIGURED AS A FH-432 OR FH-1782 DRUM.
6. ERROR: A really big FUCK UP has been detected !!
7. Momentaraly writing while seeking..
   Constantly writing while seeking..
   Momentaraly writing while reading..
8. initstate: not enough state (%d bytes) with which to do jack; ignored.
9. “Keyboard not present, press any key”
10. “You lied to me when you told me this was a program”
11. “PROGRAMMER GOOFED . . . YOU SHOULD NEVER SEE THIS MESSAGE”
12. YOU CAN’T DO THAT!
13. Man the Lifeboats! Women and children first!
14. $ make :== $ sys$system:teco32 make
    $ make love
    Not war?
15. That makes 100 errors; please try again.
16. You can now delete more, or insert, or whatever.
17. Sorry, I don’t know how to help in this situation.
18. Maybe you should try asking a human?
19. Sorry, I already gave what help I could…
20. An error might have occurred before I noticed any problems.
21. If all else fails, read the instructions.
22. This can’t happen.
23. I’m broken. Please show this to someone who can fix can fix
24. I can’t go on meeting you like this.
25. One of your faux pas seems to have wounded me deeply.. in fact, I’m barely conscious. Please fix it and try again.
26. Interruption
27. You rang?
28. IMPOSSIBLE.
29. NONEXISTENT.
30. ETC.
31. BAD.
32. A funny symbol that I can’t read has just been input.  Continue, and I’ll forget that it ever happened.
33. I suspect you’ve forgotten a `}’, causing me to apply this control sequence to too much text. How can we recover? My plan is to forget the whole thing and hope for the best.
34. I dddon’t go any higher than filll.
35. Dimensions can be in units of em, ex, in, pt, pc, cm, mm, dd, cc, bp, or sp; but yours is a new one!
36. Something Rotten in Denmark, Interp Stack Not ALigned
37. <Assorted DEC ID fruitcake> ILLEGAL ERROR
38. bad magic number
39. “very funny”
40. “Unexpected ‘;’, expecting ‘;'”
41. You can’t do that in horizontal mode.
42. “COMPILER THWARTED”
43. “Keyboard error or no keyboard present. Press F1 to continue.”
44. “Argument is bletchful.”
45. “Guru Meditation”
46. “lint’s little mind is blown.”
47. “Hot Damn! You need more ram!”
48. String literal too long (I let you have 512 characters, that’s 3 more than ANSI said I should)
49. And the lord said, ‘lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch statement’a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program
50. You can’t modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler
51. This struct already has a perfectly good definitiontype in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39, lines 10-11 (I know you
    don’t care, I’m just trying to annoy you)
52. Can’t cast a void type to type void (because the ANSI spec. says so, that’s why)
53. Huh ?
54. can’t go mucking with a ‘void *’
55. we already did this function
56. This label is the target of a goto from outside of the block containing this label AND this block has an automatic variable with an initializer AND your window wasn’t wide enough to read this whole error message
57. Call me paranoid but finding ‘/*’ inside this comment makes me suspicious
58. Symbol table full – fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer
59. “It seem you are trying to check the output from a word-processor. Not only does this not make sense, but you would probably damage the file
60. if you tried so I am not going to let you do this!”
61. It looks like the active file is messed up. Contact your news administrator and leave the “bogus” groups alone, and they may come back to normal. Maybe.
62. Attention K-Mart shoppers: Blue Light special in out SYSTEM UTILITIES department. for the next 10 days we will be taking requests for the utilities that you think should be here. Thank you again for shopping K-Mart.
63. “Things are not looking good!”
64. “I didn’t think this set of error conditions could ever happen”
65. “Now deleting all files. Goodbye”
66. “file has bad magic.”
67. “Hi Linda! We wondered how long it would take, for you to mess up this bad.”
68. “The running master will not die…”
69. “Shut ‘er down, Clancy, she’s a-pumpin’ mud!”
70. An error has occured on the error logging device.
71. “Out of order”
72. “Hey are you talking to me? Try again!”
73. “Invalid command. Feel ashamed for yourself and try again.”
74. “Of all the commands available you picked the wrong one!”
75. “Shut her down, Scotty, she’s sucking mud again!”
76. ERROR 1164 HOW IN THE HELL DID YOU GET HERE
77. WARNING: FILE GENERATED THE FILE WHICH WAS SPECIFIED AS THE ‘COPY TO’ OR DESTINATION FILE WAS NOT THERE AND WAS THEREFORE GENERATED BY JOBCONTROL. IF YOU DID NOT MEAN TO COPY TO A NEW FILE ELIMINATE THE FILE.
78. NO ACCESS FOR $TOAD SERVICE A USER PROGRAM MADE A CALL TO A $TOAD SERVICE AND THE USER DOES NOT HAVE THE PROPER ACCESS TO BIT TO USE THAT SERVICE. ACCESS RESTRICTIONS ARE PLACED ON THE $TOADS SERVICES IN GENERAL, AND $CPRIOR, $PABORT, AND $SUSP FOR INDIVIDUAL RESTRICTIONS. JOBCNTRL ER 2167 : NO ACCESS TO VULCANIZE PROGRAM
79. AN ATTEMPT HAS BEEN MADE TO VULCANIZE A REAL-TIME, MONITOR, OR NRH
    TYPE PROGRAM, OR A PROGRAM WITH HIGH ACCESS, ACCOUNTING FILE ACCESS,
    OR SUB-SYSTEM ACCESS. THE VULCANIZE REQUEST IS IGNORED BECAUSE THE
    USER DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS TO GENERATE SUCH A PROGRAM.
80. IT’S NOT NICE TO FOOL POP!
81. YOU JUST TRIED TO FAKE-OUT MOTHER NATURE, AND SHE CAUGHT YOU! SUPER-VULCAN NOW HAS YOUR NAME ON HIS ENEMY LIST, AND YOU CAN BE CERTAIN THAT FUTURE ATTEMPTS TO RESOURCE LFN 0,3,OR 6 WILL RESULT IN YOUR BEING ABORTED, SPINDLED, MANGLED, FOLDED, PUNCHED, DELETED, AND DEALLOCATED.
82. PROGRAM FILE DESTROYED. THE PROGRAM HAS BEEN ABORTED DUE TO INCONSISTENCIES IN THE INFORMATION GENERATED BY THE VULCANIZER. THE DISC COPY OF THE PROGRAM MAY HAVE BEEN
    DESTROYED OR THE PROGRAM MAY NOT HAVE BEEN RE-VULCANIZED AFTER A MAJOR SYSTEM RELEASE. IN ANY CASE RE-VULCANIZE THE PROGRAM (RLIBS ALSO).
83. minor alarm
84. major alarm
85. critical alarm
86. alarm system failure alarm
87. This application has violated system integrity and must be terminated.
88. “You are a charlatan.”
89. “Go away. You don’t exist.”
90. Tsk tsk? Have I been a bad computer?
91. line 2706 compiler error: schain botch
92. Are you lonely?
93. Anyone have a better memory of this than I do?
94. ?NO ERROR
95. I give up…. dumping core now!
96. For heavens sake, doesn’t anyone just talk anymore?
97. Not tonight, I’ve got a headache.
98. I beg your pardon?
99. Your place or mine?
100. FORTRAN FATAL INTERNAL ERROR FATAL COMPILER DAMAGE REPORT FOLLOWS
101. ?Invalid Character At Terminal — Please Go Away
102. ?Unibus timeout — send in a new quarterback
103. ?Ouch, That HURTS!
104. You must be joking.
105. Error: Error ocurred when attempting to print error message.
106. Error #1: Power supply not found”
107. ERROR 0: POWER NOT ON
108. Break Rob’s knuckles
109. “You can tune a filesystem, but you can’t tuna fish”
110. $ man fish
     Don’t say “fish”, Bishop. It doesn’t mean anything.
111. $ man overboard
     BUGS: No life raft
112. “Oops! Error while handling error!”
113. Can’t find wicked faraway objects.
114. Can’t fit 27″ tape through 25″ door.
115. “Invalid Error”.
116. “code has no effect”
117. “No message, no subject; hope that’s ok.”
118. I the most critical examiner of all have determined that there is an error on line 42.
119. Parity Error But Segment Doesn’t Found
120. MORE CORE AVAILABLE, BUT NOT FOR YOU
121. Shannon and Bill say this can’t happen”);
122. PUNT
123. ‘Weird magic happens here’.
124. “Thou hast new mail.”
125. Too much “sourcing” going on.
126. Okie dokie
127. Mail’s idea of conditions is screwed up
128. ~h: no can do!?
129. Too many regrets
130. detract asked to insert commas
131. metoo
132. Somethings amiss — no @ or % in arpafix
133. Made up bad net name
134. ubluit
135. Who are you!?
136. ; why =
137. “The impossible has happened!”
138. Beam me up Scotty, there’s no life out here.
139. “NO ERRORS DETECTED”.
140. NO COMPILER DETECTED ERRORS.
141. Holy Panes Batman, the window’s missing!
142. “Holy PH, Batman, the buffer’s missing!”
143. “Holy Vectors Batman, I can’t get more lines!”
144. “System Error – Sureness out of Bounds”
145. Mysterious Error -nnn
146. Internal Error: Illegal hedge TV number. (huh?? what?!)
147. Internal Error: BlinkThere or HiliteThere messed up.
148. Bad External File System: Boy, is your system messed up. 🙂
149. Hodie natus est radici frate
     “Today unto the root is born a brother'”
150. Looks like mere mortals are trying to enter the Twilight Zone
151. FATAL: Major security hack. Notify Administrator.
152. Identity problems, eh ?
153. Bad Craziness
154. ’tis is no game for mere mortals
155. Go away and get a life
156. Death before dishonour ?
157. Dave, don’t do that…
158. Good afternoon, gentelman, I’m a HAL 9000 Computer
159. Only few mortals may try to enter the Twiligth Zone
160. Only real wizzards know the spells to open the gate of paradize
161. Trying to unlock the door twice eh ?
162. Use the force, Luke !
163. Change balls, please
164. Bad Craziness
165. “NONE of your errors have been found”
166. “Well, you ran into something and the game is over.”
167. “Unused error message #xxx”
168. “FALL DOWN GO BOOM”
169. Data potato doo-wop doo-wop
170. Okie dokie, core dumped.bash
171. Puke.
172. spurious multibus interrupt
173. EDOTDOT!!!!
174. Your guess is probably much better than mine.
175. You wascal wabbit! Wandering wizards won’t win!
176. savemail: HELP!!!!
177. Who are you ?
178. MAIL DELETED BECAUSE OF LACK OF DISK SPACE
179. Can’t suspend a login shell (yet).
180. EH?
181. You are a charlatan, bordeaux.kpno.noao.edu
182. “Your expression has defeated me”
183. “Your formula has defeated me”
184. WARNING: 54 – PROGRAM NOT RECURSIVE
185. Help is not available for you.
186. Masscomp C compiler:”Insane structure member list”
187. User Error: An unknown error has occurred in an unidentified program while executing an unimplemented function at an undefined address. Correct error and resubmit.
188. Liar, Liar! Pants on Fire!
189. Error: Success

I think my favorite is “Man the Lifeboats! Women and children first!”There are SO many more I’ve found, this Haiku is probably best:

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.