Admin Mourning
Admin Mourning
[The text is over a white-on-black terminal showing a bit of output from ps -el | grep sam, with processes running from root and sam.] When a user dies, their connections time out, but their screen sessions linger.
[The end of the command line is a |grep sam.] The server's uptime grows because you can't bring yourself to reboot
and wipe out their last earthly presence
[The processes listed are screen, zsh, irssi, and grep sam.] the ghost in zshell.

The background images show the output from the ps command of Unix-like computer systems, which lists all running processes including all interactive users logged in to the server. If a user did not log out, their processes would continue to run until stopped by a reboot. If some specific user dies while logged in, the running sessions still appear in the ps output and be a reminder to other users. This comic depicts an administrator unwilling to reboot a machine that has still running processes from a deceased user named "sam".
When a session is closed its descendent processes sent the HUP (Hang-up) signal, which normally causes them to terminate. However, the popular utility screen enables a user to detach and reattach that output, thus surviving over sessions.
The final joke refers to the command line interface being called a shell , and to a particular type of shell called zshell ( /bin/zsh in the final panel), making a pun with the expression " Ghost in the Shell ", which is the title of a popular manga series, originally derived from the expression " ghost in the machine ", used by philosopher Gilbert Ryle to describe Descartes' theory of mind-body dualism.
The phrase "su to the user" refers to the ability of a system administrator — i.e. the superuser, aka root — to switch to another user account (using the su command , which stands for s ubstitute u ser) without needing the target user's password, as would normally be necessary, which in this case would give the impression that sam's ghost were using the account.
[The text is over a white-on-black terminal showing a bit of output from ps -el | grep sam, with processes running from root and sam.] When a user dies, their connections time out, but their screen sessions linger.
[The end of the command line is a |grep sam.] The server's uptime grows because you can't bring yourself to reboot
and wipe out their last earthly presence
[The processes listed are screen, zsh, irssi, and grep sam.] the ghost in zshell.
