4 ms·

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? Sur

by 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. ;)
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
doki_pen 17y ago
Lazy is not the word. It would take less time to fix then it would to make a smart ass response. This guy has some personality problem, or is having a bad day.
viraptor 17y ago
I see a problem with a maintainer like that. Even if he thinks this is not a critical bug: 1) he could fix it in the time he took to argue the user made a stupid mistake (twice!) 2) he should've never said stuff like that as a member of the official Canonical team - in most real companies, he'd get at least a disciplinary meeting Even if he had more important stuff to do in the meantime, it's no reason to be a jerk about it. If things like that don't get corrected the first time it happens, the history will repeat, but you'll be the one running the script the next time. About the actual question: Why would you run any command without knowing its purpose? -- User knew the command's purpose. He didn't know that a parameter is required though. It was not documented apart from the source.
moe 17y ago
It seems this was in an upstart script, the equivalent to a sysv init script. Would you expect to lose your data, all your data, when running '/etc/init.d/mounted-tmp start'? Thought so.
ismarc 17y ago
Since Ubuntu 8.04, `rm -rf /` does not work. Like, seriously. You have to pass in --no-preserve-root.
- code_duck 17y ago
  Since a certain GNU coreutils version, more specifically... I think perhaps v. 6.

by nnutter 17y ago

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. ;)
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

doki_pen 17y ago

Lazy is not the word. It would take less time to fix then it would to make a smart ass response. This guy has some personality problem, or is having a bad day.

viraptor 17y ago

I see a problem with a maintainer like that. Even if he thinks this is not a critical bug: 1) he could fix it in the time he took to argue the user made a stupid mistake (twice!) 2) he should've never said stuff like that as a member of the official Canonical team - in most real companies, he'd get at least a disciplinary meeting Even if he had more important stuff to do in the meantime, it's no reason to be a jerk about it. If things like that don't get corrected the first time it happens, the history will repeat, but you'll be the one running the script the next time. About the actual question: Why would you run any command without knowing its purpose? -- User knew the command's purpose. He didn't know that a parameter is required though. It was not documented apart from the source.

moe 17y ago

It seems this was in an upstart script, the equivalent to a sysv init script. Would you expect to lose your data, all your data, when running '/etc/init.d/mounted-tmp start'? Thought so.

ismarc 17y ago

Since Ubuntu 8.04, `rm -rf /` does not work. Like, seriously. You have to pass in --no-preserve-root.

code_duck 17y ago
Since a certain GNU coreutils version, more specifically... I think perhaps v. 6.