[Gllug] Is this funny

[Kieran]

On Mon, 31 Dec 2001, Jackson, Harry wrote:

> Hi all
>
> I was reading some posts and came across this on sourceforge
>
> Hi,
>
> I erased a 60Gb company disk by typing:
> cp test.txt /dev/hdc
>
> The disk contained one ext2 partition.
> What to do.....
> (I have an excatly the same empty spare disk.)

Unix systems tend to show almost everything in computer on the
filesystem.  Simple examples are /dev/eth0 (a network card), /dev/mouse
etc.  An IDE hard disk will turn up as /dev/hdx (scsi is usually
/dev/sdx).  The partitions will then turn up as /dev/hdx1, hdx2, hdx3
etc.  Look in /etc/fstab for examples.  This is useful when mounting
or fscking filesystems.

The best bit is that the "raw device" (which is the term for the result
of this) doesn't realise that there may be a filesystem underneath it.

So if you are logging in as root, you can trash the disk pretty easily.

In this case, he's wiped the second IDE disk by the look of things.

Whether it is a complete wipe or not depends on how big the file is.  If
he backed up the size of the partitions, then perhaps not.  And he ought
to have backups anyway....

When I say "wiped", he has probably overwritten the config information
at the beginnning of the disk.  This should include little things like
the partition table....

If he can make a mistake like this, I don't see him fixing it before his
management notice :(  There is a tool called the Coroner's toolkit which
might be useful.

Regards

Kieran
>
> A solution will be rewarded.....
>
> Is this a complete wipe and if so could someone tell me why. It did make me
> laugh though. I was also wondering if I had the following script
> #######################
> #! /bin/bash
> echo $1
>
> history | grep $1
> #######################
>
> How can I get the output to appear on the console it was called from. I know
> its simple but I know not what or how.
>
> Regards;
> Harry Jackson.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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