8 ms·

How Ubuntu startup script deletes everything

127 points by mrud 17y ago

viraptor 17y ago
To add insult to insult to injury (the first insult was "Don't do that then"), the person handling the bug is a member of the "Canonical User Experience and Design team". It's like they're annoying people on purpose sometimes...
- nas 17y ago
  Seriously, add a "set -e -u" to the top of the script and close the bug already. He wasted more time arguing about it then it would take to fix it.
  - viraptor 17y ago
    This could be a default one day really... Like php disabling register_globals. It would stop so many silly mistakes.
jacquesm 17y ago
I find the response of the maintainer to be typical of the kind of detached attitude that you come across every now and then with issues reported. I've had bugs converted to 'wontfix' and 'unconfirmed' in spite of giving detailed info and / or situations where it clearly is a bug. It shouldn't take a 'thinking over a cup of tea' to recognize this is highly undesirable behaviour, a fix is practically free and very easy, the results of executing that script are potentially very expensive. It's a bug. Not a feature for the wishlist. And I never did get why there has to be yet another way to start stuff up in the first place. /etc/inittab, /etc/init.d/ and now 'upstart'... It doesn't seem to be a great improvement over the previous system but requires a bunch of new stuff to be learned and old stuff to be unlearned. That should come with a clear advantage of sorts and I can't seem to find any.
- jluxenberg 17y ago
  One nice feature of upstart is its ability to start services, disk checks, etc, in parallel. This will dramatically decrease boot times on modern systems. ( http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/57213 http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/57213 )
- krainboltgreene 17y ago
  Yay open source! Yay linux! This is why I'm slowly backing away from anything to do with linux.
  - cookiecaper 17y ago
    We may have flippant maintainers once in a while, but open-source is actually a protection against that, not a liability. Anyone can take care of this bug and release their own patches and spins with any given bug or set of bugs or set or features implemented/removed/whatever in open-source. If you get a flippant maintainer of, say, a component of Windows, you're just going to have wait until one of his bosses decides a given bug is a large enough threat to the company to demand it gets fixed. This can be a very, very long time, especially where only edge cases are affected, where you have no option to do anything but beg someone to listen to you. With open-source software, you can fix it yourself, you can hire someone else to fix it, you can put something else in its place, you can do anything! One of these options is obviously better.
    - houseabsolute 17y ago
      > open-source is actually a protection against that, not a liability Theoretically, but in practice open source software is decidedly worse at this sort of thing than OS X or Windows. I suspect that the profit motive is a driving factor here. You can tell that this maintainer does not care or lacks the capacity to empathize at all about his users. Maybe because they are not the ones paying the bills?
      - gcr 17y ago
        Hmm? Could you care to explain your reasoning? Are you speaking of bug counts per lines of code? Or something else? In my eyes, I'm glad that this bug report is in the wild. I'm glad microsoft employees are waving this around in our faces because look how many lives this bug report will save. Look how many people won't get bit by this bug now that they know about it. On the other hand, I can't explain how many times I've used Microsoft's installers, following the instructions to the T only to wind up with broken software or even yes, trashed filesystems. Perhaps you're right. Maybe open source software is more buggy than our middle-management-driven alternatives. But at least we aren't afraid to warn people of its faults. I think the fact that we don't need to cover critical bugs like this up to keep profits high says something positive about this model of development.
moe 17y ago
On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 14:12 +0000, Thomas Krause wrote: > The problem is, that you don't know this script is > dangerous before you executed it. Then you should not execute it. Scott -- Scott James Remnant <email address hidden> Brilliant. Exactly what you want to hear when a seemingly innocent vendor init-script just erased your harddrive.
- noonespecial 17y ago
  A few comments down is a particularly rich response to this: So, just to clarify that: What you are basically saying is that the manpage stating > start JOB... > Requests that the named jobs be started. The status of the jobs will be output to standard output until > they are succesfully running, or in the case of tasks, until they have completed. should in fact be read as: "might either start the job or delete all your data, and we neither check, warn or document regarding this issue anywhere visibly"? Seriously?
sswam 17y ago
what a lousy maintainer
- davidw 17y ago
  I think he made a bad choice and didn't like his responses either, but from that, on one bug report, to 'lousy maintainer' is pretty harsh.
thingie 17y ago
Such a lack of any failsafe behavior in a script that can potentially erase whole disk should have been against all reasonable policies that distribution's init scripts should have. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, and I have very, very low opinion about it, but still, there must be such guidelines and policies. If there aren't, it's the primary bug.
- nearestneighbor 17y ago
  Are you saying that other Linux distributions are better? It used to be that Debian was more solid, but I don't think this is the case any more.
  - ismarc 17y ago
    Debian is still considerably more solid. However, improvements and software development has outpaced the Debian release cycle. In order to be "competitive" for what a large number of people want on the desktop side, unstable or testing are the repo's they should be pulling from rather than stable. However, unstable and testing are exactly that, unstable and testing, and it can be pretty frustrating for unfamiliar users to have to deal with kinks that haven't been worked out yet.
    - nearestneighbor 17y ago
      I didn't do any statistical survey of thousands of users, but I am using Debian5 and Ubuntu8.04. The former feels and acts considerably more broken, in my experience. This is in addition to being more pain to install. Just my $0.02.
      - ismarc 17y ago
        The way Debian manages it, only bugfixes are added once something hit's "stable" (current Debian 5). This means that drivers and new versions of applications are typically frozen except for bug patches only. Debian 5 was released a little over a year ago, leading to the software being outdated by standard desktop/consumer use compared to the number of improvements and bugs fixed in the mean time (most applications provide feature+bug releases which are not added to Debian once it hits stable). For servers, this is reliable and actually wonderful to deal with. For desktop/laptop systems, it can be frustrating because the code exists, and it should be nice, easy and non-broken for applications and drivers, but in reality it's not, because the release is behind. Ubuntu's goal is to have a much quicker release cycle to keep this from happening, but in the mean time never get a system that's really 100% stable and usable. Ubuntu also does some weird crazy hacks to get things to appear smooth to the user, when in reality they have pre-programmed guesses you can't override. So if it doesn't work, the only recovery is seasoned Linux experience. Debian, on the other hand, gives a large number of options making the installation not seem as smooth, but is recoverable with quick Google searches or reading of the explanations.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
sswam 17y ago
I added a complaint to the bug report
- sswam 17y ago
  and may I suggest other people do the same if you feel this maintainer probably won't bother to fix it
- gcr 17y ago
  No, that's not where complaints go. Bug reports should hold information that explains how to fix the bug or how to reproduce it. A complaint that says "me too! hurry up and fix it!" adds nothing useful and pollutes the rest of the helpful posts there. Post your "me too!" comments on the Ubuntu forums. That's the place for them. Failing that, the "This bug affects me too [change]" button is more than willing to listen.
unperson 17y ago
Similar posting regarding the state of the community at Ubuntu: http://www.fewt.com/2010/03/bye-ubuntu-it-could-have-been-fun-but.html http://www.fewt.com/2010/03/bye-ubuntu-it-could-have-been-fu...
mmaunder 17y ago
Added my 2c to the bug thread. Reposted here: From: http://www.ubuntu.com/education http://www.ubuntu.com/education "Above all, Ubuntu is set apart from other operating systems by its unwavering focus on simplicity and ease of use. Ubuntu's motto is "Linux for Human Beings" and every development decision and application has that goal in mind."
nnutter 17y ago
Uh, Seriously? Why would you run any command without knowing its purpose? Should they also disable 'rm' because idiots wipe their system with that as well? Sure the maintainer is being a bit lazy about the issue but everyone always thinks their problems are the most important in the world. Everyone criticizing him is failing to question whether he may have more critical bugs, ones where a stupid user isn't involved.
- pak 17y ago
  Name any commonly used Linux executable that deletes the server root when run without any arguments, with no confirmation or warning. It's a little unexpected. Even after reading the script, you may not catch the fact that not setting the right environment variable causes massive damage--it's not documented anywhere.
  - duskwuff 17y ago
    This isn't on Linux, granted, but killall will ignore its arguments and kill ALL accessible processes on a number of other UNIX-like OSes (such as Solaris).
    - viraptor 17y ago
      I'd consider the name killall to be both an explanation and a warning. But yeah - I made that mistake once on Solaris. That's why you should never have applications like that. Even shutdown needs some option for scheduling when it should work.
      - TallGuyShort 17y ago
        Even then - neither killall or shutdown is as serious as deleting the root partition. It's the difference between a reboot and a complete reinstall/restore from backup.
  - gcr 17y ago
    Maybe cat, if invoked the right way. Just tack a >/dev/sda on the end and you're good to go. ;)
xenophanes 17y ago
This must be why the iPad doesn't have user runnable scripts.
snorkel 17y ago
I have a patch if [ -z $MOUNTPOINT ]; then echo "MOUNTPOINT not defined. Not deleting your file system."; exit(1); fi This patch will be included in Zippy Zebra due out in 2018
- ableal 17y ago
  Those in a hurry please check this reply first: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177/comments/24 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/55717...
varikin 17y ago
Reminds me of why I finally left Gentoo. Some maintainers started believing that their default configurations where the only correct configurations. For example, the Apache maintainer believed the virtual hosts was the correct way to run Apache. I felt that my simple static html webpage didn't need that, so I just used /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and /var/www/htdocs/index.html plus a handfull of other static files. Then around 2005 or so, an update to Apache replaced my httpd.conf with the default and deleted everything in htdocs and added a default index.html. Lots of people complained and the Gentoo maintainers said anyone not using virtual hosts was wrong, so it was not their fault the user's lost all their data and configuration on an upgrade. After that, I started noticing more and more arguments from maintainers and users. Frankly, I am glad I am no longer using Gentoo and fighting their system. And I am glad I don't use Ubuntu and fighting their system either.
- kgroll 17y ago
  What operating system are you currently using? I just transitioned from Ubuntu to Gentoo, but now you've got me wondering if I have overlooked a better alternative.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Uh, Debian? It's like Ubuntu but the packages don't break your system as often.
    - pyre 17y ago
      It's too bad that the last time I tried to install Debian the installer only supported WEP for wireless installation.
      - jrockway 17y ago
        One thing that's nice about being a long-time Linux user is that you don't even consider the possibility of installing over WiFi ;) (Though to be fair, good luck installing Windows or OS X with a 256M memory stick and a wireless router.)
SwellJoe 17y ago
Ubuntu has a cultural problem at times, wherein sane bug reports from experienced UNIX users are dismissed as "not getting it", or similar. There seems to be a certain smugness when they make decisions that are obviously wrong, and certitude where there shouldn't be. I don't know why this is so; Debian has a somewhat argumentative culture, and occasionally makes dumb decisions, but folks usually try to argue their way to a consensus rather than just say "This is the way it is". Ubuntu has diverged from that seemingly entirely, and maintainers sometimes make bizarre proclamations and stick to them against all reason. I think it's an interesting aspect of the different Linux distributions. Someone else mentioned Gentoo being similar to Ubuntu in this regard, and I would agree...though it takes it to such an extreme that it's hard for me to even take it seriously as an OS. At least the end result of Ubuntu's obstinance is pretty solid, even if every new release has some weird quirks that I just can't figure out how they made it through QC (and more often than I'm comfortable with, those quirks are intentional).
jrockway 17y ago
Quite the anti-Linux group of people here. I wonder how much data is silently corrupted every day by OS X's lack of an atomic rename syscall...
- pyre 17y ago
  Stories like this just become lightning rods for people with similar grievances against the group in question. If there was a story about OS X deleting all of your data, we would have threads full of people complaining about how poorly Apple manages their operating system, and how they delete threads on their forums about issues that don't want to address.
  - whatusername 17y ago
    Didn't that come out with Snow Leopard and Guest Accounts? http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=12031 http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=12031
- krainboltgreene 17y ago
  I'm not anti-Linux. I'm fed up with the Linux community.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    So you are fed up with yourself?
jsz0 17y ago
Sometimes I do wonder if these older established Linux distributions aren't doomed to implode on themselves. There's just so much complexity and legacy stuff all over the place that it's unsettling to me. I've been using Debian based Linux distros for more than a decade and I'm still confused trigger shy about doing certain things because I can't mentally calculate the outcome with confidence or have a clear back-out plan if something goes wrong. This is actually why I run Linux in a VM whenever possible. Snapshots have saved me so many times.
w00pla 17y ago
This crap is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with Linux. Another non-serious example. I used a dual-boot Linux&Vista laptop. Innocently tried to update Ubuntu. This changed the boot loader to Ubuntu only (removed the Windows menu). This may be fine for me, but it fails the grandmother test (or any other test of a normal casual computer user). Aren't updates tested before they are added?
- DrJokepu 17y ago
  To be fair, Windows would have overwritten the MBR (so that it boots Windows only) without asking too many questions either.
  - arvinjoar 17y ago
    Well, Windows is King, and so it can get away with stuff like that. However, Linux being the Maverick, it can't afford to pull shit like that anymore.
  - youngian 17y ago
    I've actually taken to installing Windows on a separate hard drive, and disconnecting my primary drive before I even begin the installation, because I've had Windows screw so many things up.
- ElliotH 17y ago
  I actually can't think of a context where this would happen. There has been a recent upgrade of grub which could cause problems with dual boot systems, but it wasn't automatically upgraded to for precisely this reason (you have to go out of your way or do a fresh install). And a standard grub upgrade should have kept your previous settings intact. So - since this happened and I can say with some certainty that it wasn't by design - have you opened a bug report about it? (I know that the unfortunate tone of this specific bug report is unfortunate but most are handled in a friendly manner)
- mmt 17y ago
  This may be fine for me, but it fails the grandmother test (or any other test of a normal casual computer user). I suspect that any dual-boot configuration would fail such a test, though I do admit to being out of touch with any computer user who might be considered normal.
lurkerperpetual 17y ago
Actually: How an Ubuntu script which is not meant to be run manually, temporarily had a bug that deleted the file system when using the development version of Ubuntu.
ErrantX 17y ago
If you check the recent update from the maintainer [1] this was just a misunderstanding - it was fixed yesterday and the bug report was wishlisted as an idea for a broader fix. 1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177/comments/24 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/55717...
- KC8ZKF 17y ago
  In which he calls his detractors "flaming idiots" and tells them to pick up their toys...
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    yep, but not nastily. And in this instance I don't really blame him :)
DrJokepu 17y ago
I think that this is a perfect illustration of software developers not being real engineers as they don't think as engineers. My first degree is in Mechanical Engineering and I can assure you that proper engineer would never consider anything like that short of being an "absolutely critical flaw". Real-life machines such as elevators or various industrial equipments have all sorts of fail-safe mechanisms built in. These people aren't born with safety always being the first thing they consider, it's something they are taught at university. Simply telling people to "don't do that" is not an adequate approach because people make mistakes, it is part of human nature.

127 points by mrud 17y ago

To add insult to insult to injury (the first insult was "Don't do that then"), the person handling the bug is a member of the "Canonical User Experience and Design team". It's like they're annoying people on purpose sometimes...

nas 17y ago
Seriously, add a "set -e -u" to the top of the script and close the bug already. He wasted more time arguing about it then it would take to fix it.
- viraptor 17y ago
  This could be a default one day really... Like php disabling register_globals. It would stop so many silly mistakes.

jacquesm 17y ago

I find the response of the maintainer to be typical of the kind of detached attitude that you come across every now and then with issues reported. I've had bugs converted to 'wontfix' and 'unconfirmed' in spite of giving detailed info and / or situations where it clearly is a bug. It shouldn't take a 'thinking over a cup of tea' to recognize this is highly undesirable behaviour, a fix is practically free and very easy, the results of executing that script are potentially very expensive. It's a bug. Not a feature for the wishlist. And I never did get why there has to be yet another way to start stuff up in the first place. /etc/inittab, /etc/init.d/ and now 'upstart'... It doesn't seem to be a great improvement over the previous system but requires a bunch of new stuff to be learned and old stuff to be unlearned. That should come with a clear advantage of sorts and I can't seem to find any.

jluxenberg 17y ago
One nice feature of upstart is its ability to start services, disk checks, etc, in parallel. This will dramatically decrease boot times on modern systems. ( http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/57213 http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/57213 )
krainboltgreene 17y ago
Yay open source! Yay linux! This is why I'm slowly backing away from anything to do with linux.
- cookiecaper 17y ago
  We may have flippant maintainers once in a while, but open-source is actually a protection against that, not a liability. Anyone can take care of this bug and release their own patches and spins with any given bug or set of bugs or set or features implemented/removed/whatever in open-source. If you get a flippant maintainer of, say, a component of Windows, you're just going to have wait until one of his bosses decides a given bug is a large enough threat to the company to demand it gets fixed. This can be a very, very long time, especially where only edge cases are affected, where you have no option to do anything but beg someone to listen to you. With open-source software, you can fix it yourself, you can hire someone else to fix it, you can put something else in its place, you can do anything! One of these options is obviously better.
  - houseabsolute 17y ago
    > open-source is actually a protection against that, not a liability Theoretically, but in practice open source software is decidedly worse at this sort of thing than OS X or Windows. I suspect that the profit motive is a driving factor here. You can tell that this maintainer does not care or lacks the capacity to empathize at all about his users. Maybe because they are not the ones paying the bills?
    - gcr 17y ago
      Hmm? Could you care to explain your reasoning? Are you speaking of bug counts per lines of code? Or something else? In my eyes, I'm glad that this bug report is in the wild. I'm glad microsoft employees are waving this around in our faces because look how many lives this bug report will save. Look how many people won't get bit by this bug now that they know about it. On the other hand, I can't explain how many times I've used Microsoft's installers, following the instructions to the T only to wind up with broken software or even yes, trashed filesystems. Perhaps you're right. Maybe open source software is more buggy than our middle-management-driven alternatives. But at least we aren't afraid to warn people of its faults. I think the fact that we don't need to cover critical bugs like this up to keep profits high says something positive about this model of development.

moe 17y ago

On Wed, 2010-04-07 at 14:12 +0000, Thomas Krause wrote: > The problem is, that you don't know this script is > dangerous before you executed it. Then you should not execute it. Scott -- Scott James Remnant <email address hidden> Brilliant. Exactly what you want to hear when a seemingly innocent vendor init-script just erased your harddrive.

noonespecial 17y ago
A few comments down is a particularly rich response to this: So, just to clarify that: What you are basically saying is that the manpage stating > start JOB... > Requests that the named jobs be started. The status of the jobs will be output to standard output until > they are succesfully running, or in the case of tasks, until they have completed. should in fact be read as: "might either start the job or delete all your data, and we neither check, warn or document regarding this issue anywhere visibly"? Seriously?

sswam 17y ago

what a lousy maintainer

davidw 17y ago
I think he made a bad choice and didn't like his responses either, but from that, on one bug report, to 'lousy maintainer' is pretty harsh.

thingie 17y ago

Such a lack of any failsafe behavior in a script that can potentially erase whole disk should have been against all reasonable policies that distribution's init scripts should have. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu, and I have very, very low opinion about it, but still, there must be such guidelines and policies. If there aren't, it's the primary bug.

nearestneighbor 17y ago
Are you saying that other Linux distributions are better? It used to be that Debian was more solid, but I don't think this is the case any more.
- ismarc 17y ago
  Debian is still considerably more solid. However, improvements and software development has outpaced the Debian release cycle. In order to be "competitive" for what a large number of people want on the desktop side, unstable or testing are the repo's they should be pulling from rather than stable. However, unstable and testing are exactly that, unstable and testing, and it can be pretty frustrating for unfamiliar users to have to deal with kinks that haven't been worked out yet.
  - nearestneighbor 17y ago
    I didn't do any statistical survey of thousands of users, but I am using Debian5 and Ubuntu8.04. The former feels and acts considerably more broken, in my experience. This is in addition to being more pain to install. Just my $0.02.
    - ismarc 17y ago
      The way Debian manages it, only bugfixes are added once something hit's "stable" (current Debian 5). This means that drivers and new versions of applications are typically frozen except for bug patches only. Debian 5 was released a little over a year ago, leading to the software being outdated by standard desktop/consumer use compared to the number of improvements and bugs fixed in the mean time (most applications provide feature+bug releases which are not added to Debian once it hits stable). For servers, this is reliable and actually wonderful to deal with. For desktop/laptop systems, it can be frustrating because the code exists, and it should be nice, easy and non-broken for applications and drivers, but in reality it's not, because the release is behind. Ubuntu's goal is to have a much quicker release cycle to keep this from happening, but in the mean time never get a system that's really 100% stable and usable. Ubuntu also does some weird crazy hacks to get things to appear smooth to the user, when in reality they have pre-programmed guesses you can't override. So if it doesn't work, the only recovery is seasoned Linux experience. Debian, on the other hand, gives a large number of options making the installation not seem as smooth, but is recoverable with quick Google searches or reading of the explanations.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

sswam 17y ago

I added a complaint to the bug report

sswam 17y ago
and may I suggest other people do the same if you feel this maintainer probably won't bother to fix it
gcr 17y ago
No, that's not where complaints go. Bug reports should hold information that explains how to fix the bug or how to reproduce it. A complaint that says "me too! hurry up and fix it!" adds nothing useful and pollutes the rest of the helpful posts there. Post your "me too!" comments on the Ubuntu forums. That's the place for them. Failing that, the "This bug affects me too [change]" button is more than willing to listen.

unperson 17y ago

Similar posting regarding the state of the community at Ubuntu: http://www.fewt.com/2010/03/bye-ubuntu-it-could-have-been-fun-but.html http://www.fewt.com/2010/03/bye-ubuntu-it-could-have-been-fu...

mmaunder 17y ago

Added my 2c to the bug thread. Reposted here: From: http://www.ubuntu.com/education http://www.ubuntu.com/education "Above all, Ubuntu is set apart from other operating systems by its unwavering focus on simplicity and ease of use. Ubuntu's motto is "Linux for Human Beings" and every development decision and application has that goal in mind."

nnutter 17y ago

Uh, Seriously? Why would you run any command without knowing its purpose? Should they also disable 'rm' because idiots wipe their system with that as well? Sure the maintainer is being a bit lazy about the issue but everyone always thinks their problems are the most important in the world. Everyone criticizing him is failing to question whether he may have more critical bugs, ones where a stupid user isn't involved.

pak 17y ago
Name any commonly used Linux executable that deletes the server root when run without any arguments, with no confirmation or warning. It's a little unexpected. Even after reading the script, you may not catch the fact that not setting the right environment variable causes massive damage--it's not documented anywhere.
- duskwuff 17y ago
  This isn't on Linux, granted, but killall will ignore its arguments and kill ALL accessible processes on a number of other UNIX-like OSes (such as Solaris).
  - viraptor 17y ago
    I'd consider the name killall to be both an explanation and a warning. But yeah - I made that mistake once on Solaris. That's why you should never have applications like that. Even shutdown needs some option for scheduling when it should work.
    - TallGuyShort 17y ago
      Even then - neither killall or shutdown is as serious as deleting the root partition. It's the difference between a reboot and a complete reinstall/restore from backup.
- gcr 17y ago
  Maybe cat, if invoked the right way. Just tack a >/dev/sda on the end and you're good to go. ;)

xenophanes 17y ago

This must be why the iPad doesn't have user runnable scripts.

snorkel 17y ago

I have a patch if [ -z $MOUNTPOINT ]; then echo "MOUNTPOINT not defined. Not deleting your file system."; exit(1); fi This patch will be included in Zippy Zebra due out in 2018

ableal 17y ago
Those in a hurry please check this reply first: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177/comments/24 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/55717...

varikin 17y ago

Reminds me of why I finally left Gentoo. Some maintainers started believing that their default configurations where the only correct configurations. For example, the Apache maintainer believed the virtual hosts was the correct way to run Apache. I felt that my simple static html webpage didn't need that, so I just used /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and /var/www/htdocs/index.html plus a handfull of other static files. Then around 2005 or so, an update to Apache replaced my httpd.conf with the default and deleted everything in htdocs and added a default index.html. Lots of people complained and the Gentoo maintainers said anyone not using virtual hosts was wrong, so it was not their fault the user's lost all their data and configuration on an upgrade. After that, I started noticing more and more arguments from maintainers and users. Frankly, I am glad I am no longer using Gentoo and fighting their system. And I am glad I don't use Ubuntu and fighting their system either.

kgroll 17y ago
What operating system are you currently using? I just transitioned from Ubuntu to Gentoo, but now you've got me wondering if I have overlooked a better alternative.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Uh, Debian? It's like Ubuntu but the packages don't break your system as often.
  - pyre 17y ago
    It's too bad that the last time I tried to install Debian the installer only supported WEP for wireless installation.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      One thing that's nice about being a long-time Linux user is that you don't even consider the possibility of installing over WiFi ;) (Though to be fair, good luck installing Windows or OS X with a 256M memory stick and a wireless router.)

SwellJoe 17y ago

Ubuntu has a cultural problem at times, wherein sane bug reports from experienced UNIX users are dismissed as "not getting it", or similar. There seems to be a certain smugness when they make decisions that are obviously wrong, and certitude where there shouldn't be. I don't know why this is so; Debian has a somewhat argumentative culture, and occasionally makes dumb decisions, but folks usually try to argue their way to a consensus rather than just say "This is the way it is". Ubuntu has diverged from that seemingly entirely, and maintainers sometimes make bizarre proclamations and stick to them against all reason. I think it's an interesting aspect of the different Linux distributions. Someone else mentioned Gentoo being similar to Ubuntu in this regard, and I would agree...though it takes it to such an extreme that it's hard for me to even take it seriously as an OS. At least the end result of Ubuntu's obstinance is pretty solid, even if every new release has some weird quirks that I just can't figure out how they made it through QC (and more often than I'm comfortable with, those quirks are intentional).

jrockway 17y ago

Quite the anti-Linux group of people here. I wonder how much data is silently corrupted every day by OS X's lack of an atomic rename syscall...

pyre 17y ago
Stories like this just become lightning rods for people with similar grievances against the group in question. If there was a story about OS X deleting all of your data, we would have threads full of people complaining about how poorly Apple manages their operating system, and how they delete threads on their forums about issues that don't want to address.
- whatusername 17y ago
  Didn't that come out with Snow Leopard and Guest Accounts? http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=12031 http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=12031
krainboltgreene 17y ago
I'm not anti-Linux. I'm fed up with the Linux community.
- Tichy 17y ago
  So you are fed up with yourself?

jsz0 17y ago

Sometimes I do wonder if these older established Linux distributions aren't doomed to implode on themselves. There's just so much complexity and legacy stuff all over the place that it's unsettling to me. I've been using Debian based Linux distros for more than a decade and I'm still confused trigger shy about doing certain things because I can't mentally calculate the outcome with confidence or have a clear back-out plan if something goes wrong. This is actually why I run Linux in a VM whenever possible. Snapshots have saved me so many times.

w00pla 17y ago

This crap is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with Linux. Another non-serious example. I used a dual-boot Linux&Vista laptop. Innocently tried to update Ubuntu. This changed the boot loader to Ubuntu only (removed the Windows menu). This may be fine for me, but it fails the grandmother test (or any other test of a normal casual computer user). Aren't updates tested before they are added?

DrJokepu 17y ago
To be fair, Windows would have overwritten the MBR (so that it boots Windows only) without asking too many questions either.
- arvinjoar 17y ago
  Well, Windows is King, and so it can get away with stuff like that. However, Linux being the Maverick, it can't afford to pull shit like that anymore.
- youngian 17y ago
  I've actually taken to installing Windows on a separate hard drive, and disconnecting my primary drive before I even begin the installation, because I've had Windows screw so many things up.
ElliotH 17y ago
I actually can't think of a context where this would happen. There has been a recent upgrade of grub which could cause problems with dual boot systems, but it wasn't automatically upgraded to for precisely this reason (you have to go out of your way or do a fresh install). And a standard grub upgrade should have kept your previous settings intact. So - since this happened and I can say with some certainty that it wasn't by design - have you opened a bug report about it? (I know that the unfortunate tone of this specific bug report is unfortunate but most are handled in a friendly manner)
mmt 17y ago
This may be fine for me, but it fails the grandmother test (or any other test of a normal casual computer user). I suspect that any dual-boot configuration would fail such a test, though I do admit to being out of touch with any computer user who might be considered normal.

lurkerperpetual 17y ago

Actually: How an Ubuntu script which is not meant to be run manually, temporarily had a bug that deleted the file system when using the development version of Ubuntu.

ErrantX 17y ago

If you check the recent update from the maintainer [1] this was just a misunderstanding - it was fixed yesterday and the bug report was wishlisted as an idea for a broader fix. 1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/557177/comments/24 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/55717...

KC8ZKF 17y ago
In which he calls his detractors "flaming idiots" and tells them to pick up their toys...
- ErrantX 17y ago
  yep, but not nastily. And in this instance I don't really blame him :)

DrJokepu 17y ago

I think that this is a perfect illustration of software developers not being real engineers as they don't think as engineers. My first degree is in Mechanical Engineering and I can assure you that proper engineer would never consider anything like that short of being an "absolutely critical flaw". Real-life machines such as elevators or various industrial equipments have all sorts of fail-safe mechanisms built in. These people aren't born with safety always being the first thing they consider, it's something they are taught at university. Simply telling people to "don't do that" is not an adequate approach because people make mistakes, it is part of human nature.