Dusting the Production server

It has been more than a year since I stepped into the never-ending production support story of our project. Originally planned to be shutdown by August 2007, the project is still healthy and active. Though there were many signs of shutdown before, there would always be extensions similar to the completion of highway projects in Bangalore. After crossing many barriers, a new deadline of 31st March 2008 is currently placed.
This is different from the previous deadlines because we are really asked to plan for planning the shutdown (you read it right). And as a first step, we decided to clean the dust covered servers which have many uninhabited directories similar to dungeons in a castle. There would be bulk of files which were created in some place of the history and were never used. It was also like cleaning the closet after years of dumping clothes and items one over the other and by digging into it, one might find things which are long forgotten and for which we would have searched everywhere except the closet in time of need. And in a very similar manner, I found so many backups which occupied almost 50% of disk space and log files of more than 100,000 in number and also personal directories of all the old developers who worked in the initial stages of the project. It was a delightful experience to recall the initial days of the project with very primitive codes that have undergone hundreds of changes by now. Also the personal directories containing test scripts and backup files with interesting naming conventions became good time pass for the day.
And as if these are not enough for the day, I found an interesting file which I think if displayed here would not be a problem of Intellectual Property Rights Violation. For the file can be considered as relevant to the project only if a Cable services client is ordering turnips and lettuces as part of the Eat-while-you-watch campaign. You can find the file below without any tampering or change.

$ cat vegetables
dishes:5
turnips:8
lettuce:15
potatoes:15
green beans:32
carrots:104
yams:104

I hope who ever created this file in the production server remembered to buy them as his wife ordered. Or could there be a secret code that will place the order for these items automatically in Wal-Mart everyday? There are still more dungeons to explore. So I will update later if I find anything more interesting than this.