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.