[Nottingham] *nix most dangerous command line commands...

[Peter Stokes]

Hi All

Many moons ago, I was on a customer site logged in as root and mistyped the cd location I wanted to go to, then not realising I was still in the / directory, I then typed 

rm -r *

End of operating system......

Thankfully the system was a workstation and not of vital use.....!

Peter
---------------------------
Peter Stokes
Tel: 01636 627990
Mbl: 07977 532320
---------------------------




On 12 Jun 2014, at 12:01, Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk> wrote:

> OK folks,
> 
> I'll start the bits rolling with the question of how much damage can you
> do to a Linux system as root with just one mistyped or missed character
> on the command line?
> 
> 
> My little gem for alarm is:
> 
> cat >>to_append_text_to_config_file
> 
> ...and using ">" create/overwrite rather than ">>" append...
> 
> !
> 
> 
> Similarly, using "whatever_command 2>&1 | tee -a append_to_log_file" and
> forgetting the "-a"...
> 
> 
> Other good one's for "ouch" that others trip over?
> 
> Can commands be made 'defensively' 'safer'?
> 
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 
> -- 
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