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

[Robert Mitchelmore]

This is a terrible idea, but an entertaining one.

$ mkdir foo
$ cd foo
$ touch -- -i
$ touch importantstuff
$ rm -rf *
remove importantstuff? n
$

--

Rob Mitchelmore
Ph.D student and Man of Many Hats
Horizon Doctoral Training Centre, University of Nottingham NG8 1BB

http://jamesjoycewaskorean.com | http://twitter.com/kerastion


________________________________________
From: nottingham-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk [nottingham-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of RICHARD SMEDLEY [smedley358 at btinternet.com]
Sent: 13 June 2014 17:05
To: Notts GNU/Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Nottingham] *nix most dangerous command line commands...

> 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......


The classic tale of recovering from this comes from Manchester:
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/recovery.html

 - Richard

--
@RichardSmedley












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
>
> --
> - ------------------ - ----------------------------------------
> -    Martin Lomas    - OpenPGP (GPG/PGP) Public Key: 0xCEE1D3B7
> - martin @ ml1 co uk - Import from   hkp://subkeys.pgp.net   or
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>
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> Nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk
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