On 12/26/2020 11:39 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: > On Sat, 26 Dec 2020 at 12:21, Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr> wrote: > >> Le 26/12/2020 à 18:14, Scott Robbins a écrit : >>> I'm sure all of us have done, if not this, something equally embarrassing >>> like posting a private reply to an email or doing dd with the wrong >>> destination, etc. >> Then let's make a little contest out of it: what's the most stupid thing >> you've >> done as a system administrator ? >> >> I'm a ten-finger-typer, and I rarely look at the keyboard. Which is a bad >> thing >> when your focus is on the wrong terminal. So a few years ago I happened to >> type >> "ssh root at some-remote-server.com <ENTER> <ROOTPASSWORD> <ENTER>", vaguely >> sensed in the corner of my eye that something was wrong and discovered to >> my >> horror that I just posted it on a densely populated IRC channel. >> >> Your turn. :o) >> >> > 2 am clean up of disk space to get email servers working again > discover a large tree of temp files from a shared service in /usr/<account > name> # remember before /home? > /bin/rm -rf . /* I did the same just to prove for myself I am right. Used fresh test installation for that though: rm -rf / - was testing it, as I missed the moment when the following stopped being true: "the above command will start removing directory tree / _alphabetically_, hence when it removes /dev/[root file system device] further remove operations will fail. Hence on physical root device only stuff alphabetically before /dev will actually be removed." Of course I was gravely wrong, thing did change (as one of experts on mail list pointed out for me). And the above command did obliterate everything. Embarrassing part was: I had first said that loud on mail list, and only after I had been told I'm wrong, I actually tested it, and confirmed to my self I was wrong. Another embarrassing thing was done by my younger colleague. He was helping someone he talked to on the phone to change that user's password. And as many younger (than I) people he always was typing lightning fast. And instead of typing passwd [username] he typed passwd [username] Without noticing anything wrong he changed root password on the machine to, guess what?, "password" (without quotes). He ultimately did help user to change his password. And few days later bad guys just walked into machine as user root. I hope, he doesn't read this my post. So mine was not the case one can state funny way: I thought I was wrong but I was mistaken ;-) Valeri > ^c > up-arrow > spew coffee and swearing > go get reinstall cdrom and backup tapes >