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

[Peter Stokes]

Hi Paul

Good point and the reason why some o/s change the rm to so it asks if you really want to do this....

Peter 
---------------------------
Peter Stokes
Ashlyn Computer Services
Tel: 01636 627990
Mbl: 07977 532320
---------------------------



On 12 Jun 2014, at 12:18, Paul <reclusivegeek at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> 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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>> 
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