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

[Paul]

Oh yes and also remember it will delete all mounted/network drives that are not mounted read only. I have know it happen when someone forgot the . in the command rm -Rf ./* intending to delete a subdirectory tree.

Paul

On 12 Jun 2014, at 12:13, Peter Stokes <peter at ashlyn.co.uk> wrote:

> 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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>> - martin @ ml1 co uk - Import from   hkp://subkeys.pgp.net   or
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>> 
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