sucking mud
adj. Not working; crashed.
Other Forms
Examples
2002
When a web server is sucking mud what is it doing? … It is malfunctioning. The term is used in the oil exploration industry to describe a malfunctioning pump.
—Darrell Ince, “Online,” The Guardian (London, England), January 03, 2002
2001
Telecommuters may not always be available when someone at the corporate headquarters needs them. Particularly in the case of remote IT workers, any slowdown or problem will need fixing quickly.

For example, if your multimillion-dollar Web server is sucking mud, the remote administrator has to be notified of the problem immediately-it can't wait until he or she happens to read e-mail.
—Michael J. Demaria, “Telecommuniting: Keeping data safe and secure,” Network Computing, November 26, 2001
1991 (earliest)
sucking mud [Applied Data Research] /adj./
(also 'pumping mud') Crashed or wedged. Usually said of a machine that provides some service to a network, such as a file server. This Dallas regionalism derives from the East Texas oilfield lament, "Shut 'er down, Ma, she's a-suckin' mud". Often used as a query. "We are going to reconfigure the network, are you ready to suck mud?"
—Eric Raymond ed., “The New Hacker's Dictionary,” MIT Press, September 01, 1991
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