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So many questions about this one. Why would something by in /usr/bin that would be manual deletion? Wouldn't it be in /usr/local/bin? Were they manually dele

So many questions about this one. Why would something by in /usr/bin that would be manual deletion? Wouldn't it be in /usr/local/bin? Were they manually deleting a package managed binary? For that matter, if you're manually installing a component like node with a large set of dirs and you might want a different version at some point (you're more likely to update to a newer major version of node than you are some base library for the system) why wouldn't you put it into /opt/node-X.Y.Z (if not an actual package for the distro)? We could assume the people weren't as much admins as devs with some minimal admin experience so weren't familiar with some of these common admin practices that have been developed over the years to manage stuff easier and safer, but then why are they root with the ability to blow out /usr/bin and not a user account installing node locally? It feels like there's some larger problems that even allowed something like this to happen. It's like hearing someone say "my simple webapp connected to the wrong DB server and completely deleted out all the databases there, including the billing one." The first response I have to something like that is "what were you guys doing that something like that was even possible?"

nexuist 6y ago
Yeah, I mean, obviously with the right precautions and best practices we could have avoided this. But this was a dev server, so it wasn't that serious if the entire thing got hosed. The only reason we recovered it using nc instead of just formatting the disk and starting over was because the server was physically in the office, and neither of us wanted to drive in (long commute), and we were mildly amused at the prospect of reviving a server over ssh. When I meant it's still used today; it is, but it just displays a dashboard on a TV screen, it's not actually handling customer data or doing anything critical.

nexuist 6y ago

Yeah, I mean, obviously with the right precautions and best practices we could have avoided this. But this was a dev server, so it wasn't that serious if the entire thing got hosed. The only reason we recovered it using nc instead of just formatting the disk and starting over was because the server was physically in the office, and neither of us wanted to drive in (long commute), and we were mildly amused at the prospect of reviving a server over ssh. When I meant it's still used today; it is, but it just displays a dashboard on a TV screen, it's not actually handling customer data or doing anything critical.