firefighting n.

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, esp. 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.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.