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Seeking harmless pranks or April fools for Ubuntu (one-liners), with which I can bring my colleagues laugh. However, it should not damage the system.

To broad, ok…

  1. Only shell scripts
  2. With a maximum length of 42 (The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.)
A.B.
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    https://github.com/keroserene/rickrollrc – saiarcot895 Jun 29 '15 at 18:32
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    Close voters, give me a chance. =) – A.B. Jun 29 '15 at 18:34
  • my own contribution [How to display random jokes from www.icndb.com in your terminal?](http://askubuntu.com/questions/527448/how-to-display-random-jokes-from-www-icndb-com-in-your-terminal) – Sylvain Pineau Jun 29 '15 at 18:35
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    What Tim said, however personally I'm fine with this question and I'd like it to stay open, so I won't vote to close. What happened to Paranoid Panda today IMO is a good idea to use as a prank: http://askubuntu.com/questions/642349/when-run-cat-says-hello-nothing-to-see-here-move-along – kos Jun 29 '15 at 18:40
  • Also the old-fashioned `chsh -s /bin/false user` – kos Jun 29 '15 at 18:44
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    http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/232/18237 – Mateo Jun 29 '15 at 19:03
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    `telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl` to watch Star Wars :D I like this one. – JoKeR Jun 29 '15 at 19:09
  • No doubt a sympathetic question, but also no doubt one with a million possible answers, and more a contest on who is the funniest than about solving a technical problem. This simply isn't the place for that. – Jacob Vlijm Jun 29 '15 at 19:22
  • is this a coding puzzle? for [codegolf.se] – Tim Jun 29 '15 at 19:22
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    type `yes I Love Linux` and press Enter. – JoKeR Jun 29 '15 at 19:27
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    Fork Bomb `:(){ :|:& }:` multiplies itself till all the system resource is utilized and the system hangs... Really nasty and risky one but tricky – JoKeR Jun 29 '15 at 19:32
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    really funny one and catchy `sudo apt-get insatll bb` then type `bb` and follow the outputs ;) – JoKeR Jun 29 '15 at 19:38
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    Alias `cat` to `echo "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down . . ."` . I think @ParanoidPanda will appreciate the joke ;) – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Jun 29 '15 at 19:49
  • @JoKeR Explain how to stop that music please! – kos Jun 29 '15 at 19:51
  • @JoKeR Ok nevermind, the window closed but I didn't notice the process was still running in the background – kos Jun 29 '15 at 19:53
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    @kos I just pressed Ctrl+C ;) or closing also works. – JoKeR Jun 29 '15 at 20:10
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    Not sure we need a whole new tag for "Humor" as I don't see how it's applying to other questions or whether it even needs to exist. – Thomas Ward Jun 30 '15 at 15:17

2 Answers2

2

A speak out message:

echo 'you are under surveillance' | festival --tts

Probably run this on start-up!

Source: This Thread - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1074772

sanchitkum
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2

The most classic

sudo chsh -s /bin/false user

or

sudo chsh -s /usr/sbin/nologin user

The first one will set user's login shell to /bin/false, which is an executable which always returns false, effectively cutting the user out of his account;

The second one will set user's login shell to /usr/sbin/nologin, which is an executable which will always display a custom message (which is intended to warn the user that he is not authorized to login), configurable in /etc/nologin.txt.

You're going to have fun with the second one!

If you don't have the target user's password but you have physical access to the machine:

  1. Hold LSHIFT at power-on to boot into grub
  2. Select the default kernel's recovery mode (e.g. Ubuntu, with Linux 3.19.0-15-generic (recovery mode)) and hit Enter
  3. Select root - Drop to root shell prompt and hit Enter
  4. Run mount -o rw,remount /
  5. Run chsh -s /bin/false user or chsh -s /usr/sbin/nologin user
  6. (Optional) If you chose the second method edit /etc/nologin.txtin the most profitable way
  7. Run reboot
  8. Enjoy
kos
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  • The problem is, I don't know the password for my colleagues, but hey, +1 =) – A.B. Jun 29 '15 at 19:22
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    @A.B. Boot into `grub`, drop to a root shell, `mount -o rw,remount /` and send the command. Problem solved :) – kos Jun 29 '15 at 19:25