firefighting

1. What sysadmins have to do to correct sudden operational

problems. An opposite of hacking. "Been hacking your new

newsreader?" "No, a power glitch hosed the network and I

spent the whole afternoon fighting fires."

2. The act of throwing lots of manpower and late nights at a

project, especially to get it out before deadline. See also

gang bang, Mongolian Hordes technique; however, the term

"firefighting" connotes that the effort is going into chasing

bugs rather than adding features.

(1994-12-01)