Cargo Cult sysadmining

[Tom Horsley]

So here's one that always leaves me wondering: The #1 original
admin advice that *ought* to be Cargo Cult except for the
fact that it actually works quite often: "reinstall the
program".

It is recommended far more often on Windows than on Linux,
but I see folks say it on Linux as well, and the totally
absurd thing is that it often works.

Why should it work? If a computer doesn't work well enough
to do a simple job like copy a few files off some install
media reliably, why on earth would you trust it to run
the (probably) much more complicated program you just
installed? In fact, if copying a few files onto the system
fails so often that reinstall is a standard practice, why
does anything ever work at all? It is a mystery to me :-).